Anne-Marie Slaughter International relations - principle theories Flashcards
What are the principle IR theories?
Realism, Contructivism, Instituitonalism, Liberalsim, The English school, Critical approaches (Feminism, Marxism, post-colonial and ecological fields).
Which social sciences have been used in connection with IR theories?
Economics, political science, anthropology, sociology and psychology.
What is realism defined by?
It is defined by a state of anarchy - an absence of central authority.
Who is the most important actor in International relations?
The nation state.
What determines international politics in Realism?
The distribution of coercive material capacity?
How does a state influence another state in Realism?
The only way in which a state can influence another state is through coercion or their own forcible consent.
Why is state power key in an anarchical world?
State power is the only way states can defend themselves and survive.
How is state power achieved in realism?
State power is achieved through increased military capacity, a bigger economy, and diplomatically.
What are the four assumptions of realism?
Realists hold states to be rational actors. Given the goal of survival, states maximise their likelihood of continuing to exist.
Survival is the key goal of any state - this means that foreign invasion and occupation are the most pressing threat that any state faces.
Realists assume that all states posses some military capacity, and no state knows what its neighbour intends precisely.
International relations is a story of great power as it is the states with the most military might and economic clout that are aggressive.
What are the two types of realist?
Offensive realist: In order to ensure survival, states will seek to maximise power relative to others. If rival countries posses enough power to threaten a state it can never be safe - hegemony is thus the best option.
Defensive realist: Focuses on the balance of power as seeking hegemony can be perceived as a threat. Polarity creates equal power.
What are the views of institutions through a realist lens?
They have a dim view of international relations.
They believe institutions do not influence state power, they merely reflect the balance of power.
Law is only enforced through state power.
Institutions only serve states material interests.
What is the basic insight of Liberalism?
It is that the national characteristics of individual states matter for their international relations - as opposed to realist and institutional accounts of equal goals.
What is democratic peace?
Democratic peace describes the absence of war between liberal states, defined as mature democracies. This theory has held and it is the closest thing we have to an ironclad law in International relations - there are few exceptions. It is also true however that democratising states are more likely to go to war.
What does liberalism put an emphasis on in terms of the interest of the state and how this conflict with law?
Although states seek survival and power they also believe that ideological beliefs and commercial interests also play a key role. The nature of these interests or regime type makes it difficult for international lawyers as law has few mechanisms to take this into account. This is thus best used for designing international institutions such as courts, that are intended to have an impact on domestic politics or to link up to domestic institutions.
What are the core assumptions of liberalism ?
Individuals and private groups, not states are fundamental actors in world politics.
States represent some dominant subset of domestic society whose interests they serve.
The configuration of the other two assumptions determines state behaviour across the international system. Information concerns are taken as fixed constraints on the interplay of socially-derived state preferences.
