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POLI 244 Midterm Notes
- Course
- POLI 244
- Institution
- McGill University (Mcgillu)
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What is International Relations?- Study interactions among actors that participate in international politics
o States, international orgs, non-governmental organizations, individuals
o These interactions can be cooperative of conflict
o Traditionally in IR, State is the prominent actor
o Study of behaviors of these actors as they participate individually and together in
international political processes
o State Centrism: International politics is centered around the State (what it does and
doesn’t)
o How the past has an impact on the present and future, looking at theories, explaining
behavior (but we will look at much more)
▪ Beliefs, motives, cognitive processes...
- 3 scholars (key figures) that have been important in the discipline of International Relation
o Kenneth Waltz: Neo Realism
o Robert Keohane: Neo Liberalism
o Alexander Wendt: Constructivism
The Modern State System
- 2 key pillars
o Sovereign State (unit, main important unit of the State
▪ Implies that there is no higher authority to a sovereign within each State, as it’s
hierarchically organized, no supernational actor that will have authority over
that government/ruler (that’s what sovereignty implies
▪ Comes from the 16th 17th century after the 30 years war fought in Europe
(1648), no States in Europe are regarded as sovereign States (ex: I have no right
to butt into your affairs of your State, you must respect my control over my
internal affairs), arrangement to avoid wars
• Political unit with characteristics:
o Internal dimension: territoriality, population, hierarchy
▪ Territoriality: every state today has a territorial basis,
constitutive, boundaries may be contested
▪ Population: must have a population to live there that
the government has a significant amount of control
▪ Hierarchy: way political authority is organized within
the state, group of people at the top of the pyramid
that has the political power, distinguishes domestic
politics (within) and international policies (international
system), domestic = hierarchic, international = anarchic
o External dimension: peer recognition
▪ Not enough for you to perceive yourself as a State,
others have to recognize you as a sovereign State in
order to truly be one
, o International anarchy (most important structure of the system)
▪ No ruler within each State has a superior authority
▪ Political authority for the international community is anarchically organizes
(horizontal), no hierarchy
▪ Decentralized: no centralized political authority
• There is no authority out there that you can rely on in order to bring
someone's misbehavior back into compliance with the rules
• States make alliances and such, but to what extent are these promises
believable and reliable? There is no authority to force these alliances
(State can make a promise but they can break the promise)
• Being anarchic is a self-help system, States must rely on themselves to
protect themselves
▪ Self-help system: no monopoly of the legitimate use of force
- Explaining International Politics
o Simplifying a complex reality in order to explain it
o Parsimony: the optimal combination of simplicity and explanatory power
▪ Paradigms: realism, constructivism, what kind of actor is a State?
• Ontology: the nature of things
• What motivates States?
• What do they want?
• First approach to international politics
• Point us to the “who” question
• They provide different visions about International Politics
o Who are the different actors
o Main characteristics that define those actors
▪ Theories: democratic peace theory, why do States go to war?
• When and how?
• Theories exist within a paradigm
• General explanation
• Theory of war (realism paradigm)…
• When to States overcome cooperation problems?
• When does cooperation become sustainable?
• When are alliances formed/ended?
▪ Explanations: Why did the Vietnam War occur?
• Specific account derived from a theory
• Theory of war: extract an explanation for wars
• Theory extracted from theories
• Why did the first world war occur?
o Comes from a broader theory, theory about war in general
,International Politics has a strong sense of State Centrism
What is State centrism?
- Tendency in IR for theories to focus on State behavior
- Phenomena that are accounted for by State
- How actions affect other State
- State is a unit of analysis
- To theorize is to create a simplified model of reality
o In that modelling, there is a trade-off between simplicity and explanatory power
Why are State Centric theories meant to be parsimonious?
- Involves many other actors, simplifying by just looking at States
- Why is this retaining a lot of explanatory power but simplifying?
o State (not the only actor) has mechanisms: national interest
o NGOs, political actors, citizens, institutions, parliaments, lots go on inside the state
o State centric theories as if the state is the unitary actor
o Hierarchal organized
- State can extract resources and allocate (like taxes, collect money like no other actor can), place
strategies, policies and plans, compare to no other actor
- State’s ability to wage war, destructive capacity of states, extract sources
- Both of these mark the path of international politics
- State centrism is about what we are trying to explain and account for in that part
Levels of analysis:
- State centric theory of war: how will we explain the occurrence of war?
o Level of analysis has to do where the main causes of state behavior are located
LEVELS: Ex – Canada's non-intervention in Syria’s civil war
1. First image (individual)
a. Prime minister, ruler, king, queen
b. Ex: Trudeau’s pacifism
c. Ultimate decision makers and doers
d. Psychological theories (rational decision making, rationalism, cognitive limitations in
reason)
e. Sexe and gender
2. Second image (state)
a. Ex: Iranian lobby in Canada
b. Predominately culture by a state
3. Third image (international system)
, a. The distribution of power in the Middle East
b. Patterns of state behavior by looking at the structure of the system itself
c. Alliances, what kind, what characteristics
How did the Sovereign State come to dominate the international system?
Evolution of the European international system:
- 30 years war
- Push states to come to an agreement to organize political units (state sovereignty)
- Modern state system was born
o World with smaller numbers of political units (not like Empires ex: Roman Empire), but
not futile
o Smaller number of LARGER political units (sovereign)
- State sovereignty has gone through an evolution
o Permeable to external
o Sovereign prerogatives have a limit
- Religion was finally pushed below politics, monarch above the church (or whatever form of
government)
First theoretical account:
1st account from book: Coercion, capital and European States (early 90s) by Charles Tilly
- Focused on Europe (European states)
- Today's system is essentially a Globalized of European system
- Evolutionary frame of analysis
- 1. emergence of sovereign state
- 2. how is it that that one form of political unit (sovereign state) co-existed, and overtime
became predominant
- Competing forms out competed the others
- Sovereign state was fittest political form which is why it outlived the other forms
- War or preparation of war is why states acquired a territorial basis with one ruler, which led to
the organization of the sovereign state
- 3 types of competing states:
o Capital-intensive (city states like Venice, Genoa)
▪ Capital concentration, but coercion was not
o Coercion-intensive (Russia, Brandenburg)
▪ Coercion was concentrated in the hands of the state, but not large accumulation
of capital (resources could be extracted and put to work, but no capital0
▪ Had the military resources to extract capital, but no capital to pick up
o Capital-coercive (city league like France, England)
▪ Most efficient
▪ Combined balanced level of concentration
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