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
