Summary Intro to International Relations Book Summaries IRO Year 1 Block 1
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Module
Introduction to International Relations
Institution
Universiteit Leiden (UL)
Book
The Globalization of World Politics
This document contains lecture notes from the Introduction to International Relations course, which is mandatory for all first-year International Relations and Organizations students.
The Globalization of World Politics - Baylis & Smith & Owens
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CONCEPTS AND THEORIES OF IR
The state in IR
● According to international law (Montevideo convention)
● Qualifications
○ permanent population
○ defined territory
○ government
○ capacity to enter into relations with other states
● Theory of statehood
○ Constitutive theory: a state exists exclusively via recognition by other states
○ Declarative theory: an entity becomes a state as soon as it meets the minimal
criteria for statehood
● Sovereignty: internal vs external
● Disaggregated state: a state is a series of institutions
FROM INTERNATIONAL POLITICS TO WORLD POLITICS
Explanatory theory:sees the world as something external to our theories of it
Constitutive theory: thinks our theories help construct the world
> Theories of World Politics
REALISM
● Main actors are states
○ Sovereign actors
○ Sovereignty: no actor above the state can compel it to act in specific ways
● Role of human nature
● World politics represents a struggle for power among states trying to maximize its national
interest
● Balance of power: States act so as to prevent any one state from dominating
● World politics is all about bargaining and alliances
○ Diplomacy: Key mechanism for balancing various national interests
○ Military force: Tool for implementing states’ foreign policies
● World politics is a self-help system
○ Objectives can be achieved through cooperation but the potential for conflict is ever
present
● Neorealism
○ Stresses the importance of the structure of the international system in affecting the
behavior of states
LIBERALISM
● Human beings can be improved, progress
● Democracy is necessary for liberal improvement; ideas matter
● Stresses the possibilities for cooperation: international institutions
● National interest
● Order in world politics: Laws, Norms, International regimes, Institutional rules
● Interdependence
,SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
● Argues that we make and remake the social world
MARXISM
● State behavior is determined by class forces
● Unequal world capitalist economy
● The most important actors are classes
POSTSTRUCTURALISM
● Concerned with distrusting and exposing any account of human life that claims to have direct
access to the “truth”
POSTCOLONIALISM
● Questions whether Eurocentric theories can really purport to explain world politics as a whole
○ Argue that the dominant theories are not neutral in terms of race, gender, and class
FEMINISM
● Focus on the construction of differences between women and men in the context of hierarchy
and power
● Analyses how gender affects world politics
● How women are excluded from power
● Some argue that the cause of women’s inequality is to be found in the capitalist system
HISTORY OF IR (1500-1989)
Benchmark dates for IR
● 1500 — establishment of commerce between Europe and the Americas, beginning of
globalization
● 1648 — Westphalia
● 1919 — End of WWI, Treaty of Versailles
● 1945 — End of WWII, start of Cold War
● 1989 — End of Cold War
International system: neutral term to discuss globality of interstate relations, web of relations shape
the actions of states, interactions are connected
International order: tried to argue that international system can organize itself, not automatically
anarchy, different order
> International orders
● Regularized practices of exchange among discrete political units that recognize each other
to be independent
● Regularized exchanges
○ Economic interactions: Long-distance trade routes
○ Systems of transport and communication: European voyages of discovery opened
up sea-lanes
○ Economic and infrastructural interactions
, ● Over time, regularized exchanges among political units generate interdependence
● Contemporary international order: dominance of Western ideas and institutions
○ liberal ideas, democratic practices, free markets
> Modern international order
The emergence of the Westphalian state system
● Peace of Westphalia (1648)
○ Treaty of Westphalia, important peace conference
○ Marked the end of the wars of religion in Europe, the Thirty Years’ War
○ Break with medieval/feudal non-sovereign system
○ Historical origins of the modern sovereign state
○ Established the principle of sovereign territoriality
■ A claim to political authority over a particular geographical space
○ Criticism: Not a European-wide agreement
● From a world of multiple regional international orders to one characterized by a global
international order
● Domestic order vs international system
The myth of Westphalia
● Nation-state not only successor to medieval system: empires, city-states, urban leagues
● Eurocentrism?
● Fall of Westphalia
○ Expanded role for multilateral institutions
○ Rules and norms made at the international level but affecting how domestic
societies are organized
○ Involvement of new actors
○ Coercive enforcement of global rules
○ Changes in political, legal, and moral understandings of state sovereignty
○ Changes in the relationship between the state, the citizen and the international
community
> Alternative argument about the emergence of the sovereign state
● Wars made the state and the state made war (Tilly)
1. Threat of war: Rulers forced to defend borders
2. Larger, more centralized states, increased tax collection and military recruitment
3. Expand representative rule and bureaucracy
4. Strong states survives, weak perish
● Explanation for the emergence of states and the “states system”
> The legacies of the long 19th century
I) The rise of the West and the “GREAT DIVERGENCE” (Pomeranz)
● The Great Divergence: process by which the Western world overcame pre-modern growth
constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world
civilization.
, Main sources of the great divergence (foundations of the modern international order)
1. Previous global networks*
○ Slave trade, land in the Americas
○ Control of the trade of commodities
■ Assumed control often coercively
■ Led to unequal patterns of trade and growth
2. Industrialization (and de-industrialization)*
○ Helped to produce a dramatic expansion of the world market
○ Monopoly of European commerce
3. Evolution of the state*
○ Emergence of rational states, changes in how states were organized, bureaucracies
○ Inclusive political institutions
■ Representative institutions
■ Promoted negotiation among elites and heightened links between elites and
publics
4. Imperialism (and colonialism)*
○ Extraction of resources from colonies
5. Technological changes*
○ Role of ideas: Enlightenment
■ Promoted new forms of scientific thinking
■ Advances in engineering and the sciences
○ Emulation and fusion of non-Western ideas and technologies
■ Western advances arose from non-Western ideas and technologies
6. Geographical and demographic advantages
○ Temperate climate: Inhospitable to parasites
○ Later marriage habits: Lower population densities
7. Role of capitalism
8. European inter-state wars
○ Led to technological and tactical advances, the development of standing armies and
the expansion of permanent bureaucracies
II) Emergence of a unified international order
● Consequence of the global transformation
1. Interdependence
○ Intensification in circulation of people, ideas and resources
○ Infrastructural gains prompted by the global transformation generated major efficiency
savings (Steamships, Railways, Telegraph)
2. Emergence of IOs and NGOs
○ International coordination and standardization
○ Sectoral specific: telecommunications, postal system
3. Development of an unequal international order
○ Economic exploitation and inequality at the global level
○ Early stages of globalization and inequalities
> The World Wars and IR
● Led to the emergence of the discipline of IR
● Changed the nature of war and its implications
● Further changing the state system: decolonization, new nation-states
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