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Summary Intro to International Relations Book Summaries IRO Year 1 Block 1 R98,47
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Summary Intro to International Relations Book Summaries IRO Year 1 Block 1

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This document contains lecture notes from the Introduction to International Relations course, which is mandatory for all first-year International Relations and Organizations students.

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  • Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14
  • November 10, 2020
  • 31
  • 2019/2020
  • Summary
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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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