These classic international theories have been steadily refined by later thinkers by Marx, Mackinder and Morgenthau, by Waltz, Wallerstein and Wendt who laid the foundation for the contemporary science of International Relations IR.
The book places international arguments, perspectives, terms and theories in their proper historical setting.
It traces the evolution of IR theory in context. It shows that core ideas and IR approaches have been shaped by major events and that they have often reflected the concerns of the Great Powers. Yet, it also makes clear that the most basic ideas in the field have remained remarkably constant over time. Includes all testable terms, concepts, persons, places, and events.
Updated throughout to take account of major events and developments, such as the Arab Spring, it also includes new material on neo-realism and neo-liberalism, postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism. Arguing that theory is central to explaining the dynamics of world politics, editors Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki, and Steve Smith cover a wide variety of theoretical positions--from the historically dominant traditions to powerful critical voices since the s.
The editors have brought together a team of international contributors, each specializing in a different theory. The contributors explain the theoretical background to their positions before showing how and why their theories matter. The eighth edition engages with contemporary global challenges, featuring a brand new chapter on Refugees and Forced Migration and updated coverage of decolonization to ensure the book continues to cover those topics that will define the key issues in IR into the future.
Tailored pedagogical features help readers to evaluate key IR debates and apply theory and concepts to real world events. A fully updated Opposing Opinions feature facilitates critical and reflective debate on contemporary policy challenges, from decolonising universities to debates over migration and the state.
It is a branch of knowledge, aimed at the systematic understanding of a subject. As is often the case in the social sciences, in IR there is no one best way to master the subject. Instead, what we have are several significant theories and theoretical traditions: Realism, Liberalism, International Society, Social Constructivism, and International Political Economy. They interact and overlap in interesting and important ways that we investigate in the chapters that follow.
The closing years of the twentieth century seemed to provide strong support for alternative approaches. It appeared that liberal or constructivist theories could better appreciate and explain the changes taking place in the international arena. Varieties of contemporary realism There are at least four strands of political realism today: rise and fall realism, neoclassical realism, defensive structural realism, and offensive structural realism.
All four strands take the view that international relations are characterized by an endless and inescapable succes- sion of wars and conquest.
The four groupings can be differentiated by the fundamental constitutive and heuristic assumptions that their respective theories share. Since considerable benefit accrues to the leader, other great powers seek this pole position.
Rise and fall realism explains how states first rise to and then fall from this leading position, and the consequences of that trajectory for foreign policies. In particular, the approach is concerned with the onset of great power wars that often mark the transition from one leader to the next. The microfoundation that explains this behavior is rational choice. Given a narrowing of the gap between the first- and the second-ranked states, the leader will calculate the need for preventive action.
Failing that, the challenger will opt for a war to displace the current leader. International relations continue to be a recurring struggle for wealth and power among independent actors in a state of anarchy. States choose to engage in conflict because they calculate that the benefits of doing so exceed its costs. In particular, because the international system is created by and for the leading power in the system, changes in power lead to conflict over system leadership. Gilpin suggests that these dynamics have always applied to relations among states, and hence his framework is applicable to a wide swathe of human history.
Organski argues that states go through three stages: potential power, where an agrarian state has yet to industrialize; transitional growth in power, where a state modernizes both politically and economically and enjoys a substantial increase in growth rates; and finally power maturity, where a state is industrialized.
Because states go through the second stage at different times, it follows that their relative power position changes. Consequently, peace is most likely when current system leaders enjoy a substantial lead over other states. For example, Lemke , applies power transition theory to dyads other than those involving states directly contesting for system leadership.
Kim , , , amends power transition theory to allow alliances, and not just internal growth rates, to be counted. Neoclassical realism In part responding to what were perceived as the antireductionist excesses of neorealism Snyder 19 , neoclassical realism suggests that what states do depends in large part on domestically derived preferences.
For example, Schweller 76—7, 84; 92—9 insists that acknowledging and including different state motivations best serve realism. Thus, states rationally decide foreign policies depending on a combination of power and interests. Neoclassical realists agree that material capab- ilities and the distribution of power are the starting points for an analysis of international outcomes.
Accordingly, they also investigate domestic political features, such as the abilities of foreign policy-makers to extract resources for the pursuit of foreign policy goals. For example, Schweller 6 argues that states assess and adapt to changes in their external environment partly as a result of their peculiar domestic structures and political situations.
More specifically, complex domestic political processes act as transmission belts that channel, mediate, and re direct policy outputs in response to external forces primarily changes in relative power. Hence states often react differently to similar systemic pressures and oppor- tunities, and their responses may be less motivated by systemic level factors than domestic ones. Realism 17 Most realist theories predict that states will balance against threatening competitors, either by building their own arms or by forming alliances.
That is, they balance inefficiently in response to dangerous and unappeasable aggressors, when effective balancing was needed to deter or defeat those threats. Schweller locates his explanation for underbalancing at the domestic level of analysis.
Defensive structural realism Defensive structural realism developed, but is distinct, from neorealism Glaser ; Waltz Like neorealism, defensive structural realism suggests that states seek security in an anarchic international system — the main threat to their well-being comes from other states Glaser ; Waltz There are three main differences between neorealism and defensive structural realism. First, whereas neorealism allows for multiple microfoundations to explain state behavior, defensive structural realism relies solely on rational choice.
Second, defensive structural realism adds the offense—defense balance as a variable. This is a composite variable combining a variety of different factors that make conquest harder or easier. Defensive structural realists argue that prevailing technologies or geographical circumstances often favor the defense, seized resources do not cumulate easily with those already possessed by the metropole, dominoes do not fall, and power is difficult to project at a distance.
Accordingly, in a world in which conquest is hard it may not take too much balancing to offset revisionist behavior. Third, combining rationality and an offense—defense balance that favors the defense, defensive structural realists predict that states should support the status quo. Expansion is rarely structurally mandated, and balancing is the appropriate response to threatening concentrations of power.
In contrast to neorealism, this is a dyadic, not automatic, balance of power theory — linear, not systemic, causation operates. Rationalism and an offense—defense balance that favors the defense means that states balance, and balances result.
Their conduct is determined by the threats they perceive and the power of others is merely one element in their calculations. The resulting dyadic balancing explains the absence of hegemony in the system: Together, these four factors explain why potential hegemons like Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine Germany, and Nazi Germany eventually faced overwhelming coalitions: each of these states was a great power lying in close proximity to others, and each combined large offensive capabilities with extremely aggressive aims.
To explain how conflict arises in the first place, defensive structural realists must appeal to either domestic level factors which are outside their theory , or argue that extreme security dilemma dynamics make states behave as if they were revisionists. Herz was an early exponent of the concept of the security dilemma, arguing that defensive actions and capabilities are often misinterpreted as being aggressive.
Steps taken by states seeking to preserve the status quo are ambiguous and are often indistinguishable from preparations for taking the offense. This is IR as tragedy, not evil: bad things happen because states are placed in difficult situations. Defensive structural realism has some difficulty in relying on security dilemma dynamics to explain war. It is not easy to see how, in the absence of pervasive domestic level pathologies, revisionist behavior can be innocently initiated in a world characterized by status quo states, defense-dominance and balancing.
This is consistent with Wolfers —9 reading of the security dilemma, that states threatened by new, potentially offensive capabilities respond with measures of their own, leaving the first state in as precarious a position, if not worse off, than before. If states do seek hegemony, it is due to domestically generated preferences; seeking superior power is not a rational response to external systemic pressures. Under such circumstances, relative capabilities are of overriding importance, and security requires acquiring as much power compared to other states as possible Labs The stopping power of water means that the most a state can hope for is to be a regional hegemon, and for there to be no other regional hegemons elsewhere in the world.
From these assumptions, Mearsheimer deduces that great powers fear each other, that they can rely only on themselves for their security, and that the best strategy for states to ensure their survival is maximization of relative power. Careful timing by revisionists, buck-passing by potential targets, and information asymmetries all allow the would-be hegemon to succeed.
Power maximization is not necessarily self-defeating, and hence states can rationally aim for regional hegemony. Expanding against weakness or indecision, pulling back when faced by strength and determination, a sophisticated power maximizer reaches regional hegemony by using a combination of brains and brawn.
Mearsheimer argues that ultimate safety comes only from being the most powerful state in the system. The second best, and much more likely, objective is to achieve regional hegemony, the dominance of the area in which the great power is located. Finally, even in the absence of either type of hegemony, states try to maximize both their wealth and their military capabilities for fighting land battles Mearsheimer —5.
In order to gain resources, states resort to war, blackmail, baiting states into waging war on each other while standing aside, and engaging competitors in long and costly conflicts. While buck-passing is often preferred as the lower-cost strategy, balancing becomes more likely, ceteris paribus, the more proximate the menacing state and the greater its relative capabilities. While the theory applies to great powers in general, Mearsheimer distinguishes between different kinds: continental and island great powers, and regional hegemons.
A continental great power will seek regional hegemony but, when it is unable to achieve this dominance, such a state will still maximize its relative power to the extent possible.
Accordingly, states such as the United Kingdom act as offshore balancers, intervening only when a continental power is near to achieving primacy Mearsheimer —8, —4. A regional hegemon is a status quo state that will seek to defend the current favorable distribution of capabilities. Great power wars are least likely in bipolarity, where the system only contains two great powers because there are fewer potential conflict dyads: imbalances of power are much less likely and miscalculations leading to failures of deterrence are less common.
While multipolarity is, in general, more war-prone than bipolarity, some multipolar power configurations are more dangerous than others. Great power wars are most likely when multipolar systems are unbalanced; that is, when there is a marked difference in capabilities between the first and the second states in the system such that the most powerful possesses the means to bid for hegemony. As the discussion has shown, realism is a multifaceted and durable tradition of inquiry in IR, with an extraordinary facility for adaptation.
The divergence among the components of the realist tradition has at least two significant consequences. First, while the research programs have some common characteristics with each other, none make wholly overlapping arguments or predictions.
Although it is possible to support some general remarks about the realist worldview e. Different realist theories say and predict different things. They will also have very different implications when considered as the basis for prescriptive policy. For example, realists have recently been scolded for making self-serving adjustments to their theories to avoid contradiction by empirical anomalies.
Vasquez suggests that balance of power theory is empirically inaccurate, but that succeeding versions of the theory have become progressively looser to allow it to accommodate disconfirming evidence.
A related critique was launched by Legro and Moravcsik , who argue that recent realists subsume arguments that are more usually associated with competing liberal or constructivist approaches. The result, they argue, is that realist theories have become less determinate, coherent, and distinctive. It should be noted that the critiques sparked vigorous responses from realist scholars, who argue that the detractors are mistaken in their descriptions of the tradition and in their application of metatheoretic criteria.
Thus those who are anticipating that realism will soon become obsolete are likely to be in for a long wait to see their expectations fulfilled. Further reading Donnelly, J. Mearsheimer, J.
Waltz, K. Liberals tended to believe that the outbreak of World War I had vindicated their critique of the prevailing system of International Relations IR and sought to establish a liberal peace marked by open diplomacy, the right of self-determination, free trade, disarmament, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and the establishment of an international security organization in the form of the League of Nations. The role of the League would be to resolve differences between states, guarantee their political independence and territorial integrity, and address a range of other contemporary international questions such as the position of labor and minorities.
However, hopes for a reformed world, already badly damaged by the punitive Versailles Peace Treaty , were shattered with the militarization and expansionism of Italy, Germany, and Japan in the s, culminating in World War II. These events and the rapid onset of the Cold War after generated a number of influential realist critiques that were widely if not necessarily fairly perceived as devastating to liberal internationalism, both as an intellectual construct and as a guide to the practical conduct of IR.
When considered in these terms, liberalism is better understood not as providing a blueprint for thinking about IR or foreign policy, but rather as a cluster or matrix of underlying values, principles, and purposes that provide a guide and framework through which one can think flexibly about IR, albeit within certain normative parameters.
Despite this apparent indeterminacy, however, it is possible to identify a conceptual core within the worldview. Conceptually, one finds at the center of liberal internationalism an insistence upon the moral primacy of the individual and a tradition of political and philosophical interest in the conditions of individual freedom, or autonomy. These are regarded as offering a rational means of facilitating the greatest collective domain of freedom for equal individuals through being bound by the principles of the accountability of power, political representation through an independent legislature and the rule of law, and the enjoyment of human rights.
When the universal liberal assumption that the human species possesses a certain moral unity is also taken into account, one has the bases of the cosmopolitan sentiments that pervade liberalism. Two areas in which this universalism plays out politically are in the tension between liberalism and the Westphalian notion of state sovereignty, and in underpinning the cosmopolitan doctrine of human rights. Within liberalism persons are not only the subject of moral discourse, but also regarded as key agents of historical and political change.
But what conception of the individual do liberals hold? This conceptualization is consistent with the traditional liberal emphasis upon education, individual, and collective responsibility for action, and the notion of enlightened self-interest as the best hope for individual and collective progress.
During the nineteenth century, liberals tended to concentrate primarily upon the achieve- ment and consolidation of domestic political gains, but there was nevertheless an interna- tional dimension to their project. This pertained to the international requirements of the development of liberal politics at home and to the question of the legitimacy of intervention to assist liberal movements abroad.
One finds in this period a largely uncritical faith in the universal benefits of free trade, self-determination at least for Europeans , and the peaceful arbitration of disputes. However, this belief in the operation of providence or some other form of preordained or natural moral progression of human history could not survive the turmoil of the twentieth century.
Whilst many liberals attributed World War I as much if not more to a systemic failure than to wilful design, the expansionism and raw brutality of the s and the collapse of free trade presented a clear and unambiguous rebuttal of the optimistic assumptions of nineteenth-century liberalism. It was also in this period that Carr published his influential critique of liberalism, The 20 Years Crisis Liberal internationalism 23 Following World War II, mainstream liberalism became increasingly absorbed with the question of the Soviet threat and rallied round the policy of containment as a way to prevent the spread of state socialist or communist regimes.
A combination of military, political, economic, and ideological measures were employed, but with the expectation that ultimately state socialism would fail due to internal inefficiencies and domestic unpopularity. The containment doctrine came under criticism, however, from liberals on both the Left and the Right. On the left, containment was criticized for the pervasive militarization of foreign policy and support of authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records, so long as they were anticommunist.
The contingent nature of this latter claim has become more apparent since the end of the Cold War as disaffected and repressed social forces within authoritarian states allied with or formerly supported by the United States have emerged as hostile to the Cold War victors. Whilst the problem is not new — witness the Iranian Islamic Revolution of against the pro-American regime of the Shah — the rise of anti-American Islamic militancy in Saudi Arabia and the protracted issue of Iraq have created major new security problems for the United States.
This question of liberal foreign policy is but one aspect of the major debate with realism over the nature of IR and the possibilities for their reform. The liberal emphasis upon the determining power of factors at the state level — such as the spread of liberal democratic regimes — and the ability of states to refashion their national interests through the development of commerce has received fresh interest in recent years following the end of the Cold War as well as empirical support from the democratic peace research program.
Once liberalism fails to address itself to contemporary claims of justice and abuses of power it is prone to become the doctrine of the privileged and increasingly conservative or elitist in character. But, if liberalism fails to generate inspiring normative and political visions or fails to abide by those it does present, then it becomes open to charges of complacency, double standards, or hypocrisy and may generate disillusionment and cynicism, thereby squandering this valuable moral-political resource.
One example of such a coalition is that mustered by Roosevelt to underpin the New Deal in the s, comprising leaders of ethnic and minority groups, reform-oriented pressure groups, and civil society organizations including the vanguard of the intelligentsia , as well as the organized interests of labor and the local party machines.
Without a strong societal base, liberalism faces political marginalization or irrelevance. Finally, the maintenance of liberal gains and achievements requires managerial and administrative competence to avoid liberal institutions and programs becoming inefficient and wasteful. This issue is particularly problematic at the international level given that anarchy has often been thought to generate disincentives to effective collective action and cooperation.
To satisfactorily attain any of these critical, normative, political, and administrative dimensions individually, let alone collectively, is clearly a major task. Yet given that they are necessarily interdependent, there ought ideally to be some holistic vision that informs developments within each dimension.
The historical development of liberal internationalism Whilst the philosophical roots of liberalism are often located in the Judaeo-Christian tradi- tions, it is in the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment that one first finds a systematic statement of liberal internationalism. Old problems must be confronted in a new spirit; insular and vested prejudices must be removed; understanding and toleration need to be greatly developed.
It is an immense task and a myriad of agencies will be required to discharge it. Essential reading Baylis, J. Scott, L. Further reading Ashworth, L. Works cited Gaddis, J. The long peace: inquiries into the history of the Cold War. Hoffman, S. Morgenthau, H. Politics among nations. Introduction Although IR is a relatively young discipline, less than a century old, many of its most important questions and concepts have deep roots in intellectual history.
From Classical Greece to the British Empire, Ming China to modern America, leaders, advisers, academics and students have wrestled with problems of war, trade, culture and diplomacy. This is not to say, however, that there is nothing new under the sun. Even those who insist that the problems we face are more or less the same as those of the ancients, recognise that the world has changed dramatically in terms of its economic development, military technologies and rise of political democracy.
IR — whose ambitious goal is to understand the complex network of social, economic and political interactions that connect human societies — is a contradictory subject. Its first academic chair was 16 Chapter 1: The twentieth century origins of international relations established in the early twentieth century, many years after other social sciences, yet its fundamental questions are as old as any.
IR deals with the best and the worst of humanity: respect and hatred, cooperation and war. These are not new debates. Though none of these men thought of themselves as working in a subject called IR, each contributed to our understanding of topics that have since become associated with the discipline: the causes for war, the possibilities of peace, and the impact of trade and ideas.
Their works are the intellectual foundations upon which much of modern IR is constructed. The origins of international relations: the First World War and the interwar years Despite its deep intellectual roots, IR is a young discipline. For some time, scholars have been discussing who first taught IR, where and for what precise purpose. There is general agreement that its institutional growth in Western universities — notably British and American — is a twentiethcentury phenomenon directly connected to the simple and terrible fact that between and the world experienced three terrible and protracted conflicts: the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War.
These took tens of millions of lives, led to revolutionary social transformations around the world, nearly eliminated whole human populations, facilitated the rise of some great powers, and led to the demise of others. Stop and read sections 1 and 2 of Chapter 3, pp.
This list will be useful when you prepare essays and examination answers to questions on these topics. IR is sometimes thought of as being too pessimistic in its views on war and peace, and too theoretical in its approach to global issues. However, many of its key thinkers have been practical people keen to discover tangible and morally acceptable solutions to real world problems.
Instead, the postFirst World War settlement led to what E. He argued that the settlement contained within it the seeds for an even greater conflict. Carr saw powerful revisionist states, dissatisfied with the status quo created after the Great War, pushing hard to shift the balance of power in their favour.
As a seasoned British diplomat, and later as an influential academic, Carr hoped that German and Japanese ambitions might be contained through a strategy of diplomatic concession. Germany and Japan could not be satisfied through appeasement as he had hoped. The post world: American hegemony and European decline The Second World War compelled writers and statesmen to think with greater urgency about the kind of world that had produced such appalling aggression.
It also forced policy-makers to seriously think about how such disastrous events might be avoided once the war came to an end. Though neither question ever saw a consensus, these turbulent times generated an enormous amount of creative thought. Among Western powers at least, several important lessons were learnt. First, that global security would never be achieved so long as the international economy did not function properly.
Second, there was a need to construct some kind of reformed League of Nations, the United Nations UN , within which the great powers would be given a special role and special responsibilities for maintaining international peace and security, leading to the creation of the permanent five P5 within the UN Security Council.
The chances of a return to the pre-war status quo were very slim. This is rarely, if ever, what rising powers do, and it was certainly no longer an option. Here, we only need make passing reference to how much of this extraordinarily important commodity the USA possessed when the guns fell silent in Never had the world witnessed such a phenomenon.
By , every other great power — winners and losers alike — was in a state of severe disrepair, barely able to recover from a war 18 Chapter 1: The twentieth century origins of international relations that had left their societies in ruins. This included the USSR, which had lost over 25 million of its citizens.
The age of the superpower had begun. Even as the Second World War came to an end, analysts of international politics were aware that a huge power shift was underway; one that pointed towards the emergence of what IR would later define as a two power, bipolar system.
Bipolarity describes a distribution of power among two great powers in the international system, and and can be contrasted with unipolarity — with a single dominant great power — and multipolarity — in which capabilities are divided among many great powers.
Moreover, this emerging world order would be dominated not by European empires — still in possession of considerable assets in — but by the United States of America and, later, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
By , military planners in Washington DC were already wondering who the next enemy might be. As the colonial empires of the UK, France, Portugal and other European powers disintegrated, the USA saw a need to establish new forms of economic and political hegemony. Such was American self-confidence in the period that many of its policy-makers discounted any threat from the USSR, which had been economically weakened by its brutal three year war of extermination with Germany and confronted by the atomic bomb.
Stop and read section 3 of Chapter 3, pp. Which came first, the decline of European power in the international system, or the independence of its colonies around the world? Did the decline of European imperialism mark an end to all forms of hegemony in the international system?
If not, what new forms took its place? Very quickly, deep differences over the future shape of Europe, the status of Germany, the situation in China and even the future of capitalism divided the victorious allies. The origins of the ensuing year long Cold War have been hotly debated.
Some blame Soviet expansionism for causing the rift, others the political and economic policies of the USA. The Cold War has also been viewed as a natural consequence of competition between the two superpowers and their opposing ideologies, with the USA and its allies devoted to capitalist principles, while the Soviets and their allies were wedded to their vision of state socialism.
Stop and read sections 4 and 5 of Chapter 3, pp. Your answer should include a one-sentence thesis statement that clearly states your position, followed by the main points on which you base that position: To what extent were the Soviet and American blocs during the Cold War similar to the empires of European states prior to the Second World War? What made them similar and different? Furthermore, while both sides in the Cold War exaggerated the aggressive intentions of their opponent, the fact remains that the larger international system was in turmoil after the Second World War.
Insecurity was the order of the day. Nowhere was this more visible than in post-war Europe, where economic recovery was proving difficult and the pre-war balance of power had been overturned by the defeat of Germany and the enormous territorial gains made by the USSR.
Even if the USSR had no plans to invade Western Europe — and there is little evidence indicating that it did — there was every need to restore the health of European economies and the political self-confidence of individual states. Many Western policy-makers saw no reason to trust their Soviet counterparts.
This was certainly the view held by the USA and the UK by , and by early the idea was truly embedded. This very new kind of war would be conducted in a bipolar world where power was polarised in the hands of two nuclear-armed superpowers. First Europe and later many other regions of the world divided into blocs, one pro-Soviet and one pro-American. The Cold War was to have all the features of a normal war except — it was hoped — for direct military confrontation.
Unsurprisingly, this state of affairs had a profound impact on the way an emerging generation of increasingly American IR scholars thought about IR. These rising thinkers saw themselves living in dark and dangerous times, making them extraordinarily tough minded.
The vast majority of them continued to believe that diplomacy and cooperation were possible, even essential, in a nuclear age. Nevertheless, most were decidedly pessimistic. Having witnessed the outbreak of two global wars, one world depression, the rise of fascism and a confrontation with an expanded communist threat — often equated with fascism in official US minds — many analysts of world politics came to look at the world through a particularly dark prism born of harsh experience.
Pay special attention to who is considered an international actor, why they act the way they do, and what kind of international system they inhabit. The hugely influential American writer Hans J. Morgenthau, himself a Jewish exile from Nazi Germany, set the tone for this kind of thinking in his highly influential textbook Politics among nations Morgenthau was neither a natural conservative, nor uncritical of US foreign policy.
Lessons had to be learned, and if history taught anything it was not that we could build a better world based on new principles — as interwar Liberals had suggested prior to the Second World War. Rather, Morgenthau believed that we should be trying to build a more orderly world by learning from the past. This distinction between building a better world and a more orderly one continues to separate Liberals and Realists to this day.
However, he pointed out that it controlled a land mass stretching across 11 time zones, had a formidable army that had just defeated Nazi Germany, and was bound to want to convert this power into greater global influence. Kennan — termed a long-term and patient containment of Soviet ambitions.
In this way, some form of stability could be restored to the world. States might one day learn to work with each other but, for Morgenthau and Kennan, that day lay in the distant future. For the time being, it was better to plan for the worst case scenario on the assumption that by doing so the worse might never come to pass. This no-nonsense way of thinking about the world seemed logical and sensible, and called itself Realism — surely one of the most effective branding exercises in the social sciences.
Within the Realist framework there was room for disagreement. Others arrived at another, equally erroneous, conclusion: that the confrontation would never end at all! For many, what began as a dangerous global competition gradually evolved into what the structural Realist Kenneth Waltz regarded as an essential stabilising element in the anarchic international system. Two superpowers, he argues, were better than one hegemon or many great powers in terms of creating a balanced international situation.
The Cold War simplified world politics and, in doing so, made it far more predictable. Waltz concludes that in an international system without a supreme ruler — an anarchic international system — the see-saw of Cold War bipolarity was responsible for bringing some order to relations between the superpowers.
Waltz is not alone in this view. Remember, this was before the fall of the Berlin Wall in and disintegration of the Soviet Union two years later. Though Realism is normally identified as the dominant tradition in IR, it has never held the field alone. For Liberals, interdependence — mutual dependence on one another for social and material goods — provides the best foundations on which we can build a more peaceful world.
Increasing interdependence, they argue, means that states are not absolutely sovereign insofar as they remain vulnerable to transnational forces. This is not to deny the continued importance of the state and power in IR. However, in a world in which the USA appears to be losing its capacity to lead from a position of hegemonic strength, Liberals argue that additional means must be sought to guarantee the stability and improvement of the international system.
Their analysis, therefore, includes an expanded set of international actors, focusing also on the role of multinational corporations MNCs , nongovernmental organisations NGOs and intergovernmental organisations IGOs. Many of its theorists accept a good deal of what Realists have to say about power and the competitive, anarchic character of IR. Realism, argues the ES, cannot explain why states — even ones as hostile to each other as the USA and the USSR — work together, engage in diplomacy, and thereby generate forms of international order in an otherwise anarchic system.
Both are historically changeable, varying over time and space. Its institutions have evolved over time away from the use of force as a legitimate means of 22 Chapter 1: The twentieth century origins of international relations conflict resolution.
This does not mean that war in Europe is impossible, but only that it is made less likely as an alternative means of conflict resolution — mainly via the European Union EU — become available and accepted. For now, it should suffice to note that whereas Realism sees IR as conflictual and Liberalism sees it as cooperative, the ES leaves the answer open.
International societies can be cooperative or conflictual, depending on when and where you look. Furthermore, institutions evolve over time, changing the character of the international societies that they describe.
Analysing the character and evolution of international institutions therefore remains the main object of ES research. As the Cold War progressed, issues arose for which Realists and Liberals had few answers. In the s, a new generation of critical theorists began to question global power structures rather than merely taking them for granted.
Few of these thinkers traced their intellectual roots directly back to IR. The overwhelming majority were either historians of US diplomatic history dissatisfied with standard accounts of American conduct abroad, or radical economists with an interest in the Third World and its discontents.
Through the efforts of these thinkers, critical theories born in other branches of the social sciences began to have a major impact on the generation of IR scholars who entered the field in ever-larger numbers. In a related development, the s saw an upsurge of interest in what became known as International Political Economy IPE. This branch of IR seeks to explain links between the international economic and political systems.
The collapse of the post-Second World War Bretton Woods economic system in , perceptions of relative US economic decline, and a general recognition that one could not understand IR without at least having some knowledge of the material world forced some in IR to come to terms with economics, a branch of knowledge of which they had hitherto been woefully ignorant.
But even a little knowledge of international economics had its advantages. For, if the US was in decline — as some were already arguing in the s — a new form of world order had to be forged. These challenges to Realism have risen to greater prominence since the end of the Cold War in That said, Realism remains very much at the heart of the discipline, particularly in the USA where it originated.
Other attempts to dethrone this academic heavyweight have met with only limited success. Moreover, even while Realism has come under increasing attack, the USA has become the uncontested centre of our academic discipline. US resources, its ability to attract some of the best and the brightest from Europe and farther afield, and the appearance of having influence in the corridors of US power have made American IR look like an especially robust animal compared to its rivals elsewhere, making the USA an intellectual, if not political, hegemon.
The end of the Cold War was an unexpected and almost entirely peaceful revolution in world politics. We will look at this event in more detail in Chapter 3. For the time being, however, we need to consider its impact on IR as an academic discourse. List the terms and your answer in the space below.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in and the collapse of the Soviet Union in shattered the stability of the Cold War international system, plunging IR scholars into an intellectual crisis as they tried to come to terms with the end of bipolarity.
Many began to question old certainties and think about the shape of the post-Cold War world. These are qualitatively different from their classical and statist predecessors, and include issues such as human rights, crime, and the environment. It also reinforced a shift towards new kinds of theory and more issues relating to international ethics, some of which we will look at in Chapter 6.
To get a sense of this shift, it is worth comparing a standard IR textbook written during the Cold War with one produced after The former normally begins with a few well-chosen observations about the origins of Cold War following the Second World War, continues with a lengthy discourse on the foreign policies of the two superpowers, talks about key concepts, such as sovereignty and polarity, spends some time on the balance of power and the role of nuclear weapons, and probably concludes with a general discussion about why the world will not change much over the longer term.
A textbook written after , on the other hand, generally has very little to say about the Cold War except in an historical background context. Thus, the USSR and superpower rivalry will not be included for obvious reasons , while new topics — globalisation, failed states, the role of religion, and non-state actors — give the subject a new feel.
In some of the more theoretically daring studies authored after the Cold War, the focus has shifted away from the study of states and the notion of a well-structured international system whose laws can be discovered by careful analysis.
Topics include realism, liberalism, International Society, International Political Economy, social constructivism, post-positivism in international relations, and foreign policy.
Each chapter ends by discussing how different theories have attempted to integrate or combine international and domestic factors in their explanatory frameworks.
The final chapter is dedicated to key global issues and how theory can be used as a tool to analyse and interpret these issues. The text is accompanied by online resources, which include: short case studies, review questions, annotated web links, and a flashcard glossary.
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