CH 2 Flashcards
What ia a state?
A particular type of political unit that has two crucial characteristics: territoriality and sovereignty
Territorially: a state governs a specific, identifiable portion of Earth’s surface.
Sovereignty: the absolute right to govern it, ho higher authority to which they must
answer
To be a state, one must be recognized as a state by others. How do they decide?
- whether there is a government with de facto control over a certain territory;
- whether other states claim the authority, and if so, how strong their claim is;
- whether the people seeking to establish a new state are historically oppressed; 4. whether these people consider their government legitimate; 5. whether recognizing the new state as sovereign would affect their own claims and interests.
What is a nation?
A group of people who have some combination of common language, culture, religion, history, mythology, identity, or sense of destiny. The word is often, mistakenly, used as a synonym for a state.
What is a nation-state?
A state whose citizens are overwhelmingly members of a single nation. (Japan and the two Koreas)
What is Self-determination?
The ability to decide one’s own political fate. It frequently includes a claim to a state of one’s own
What is an Actor?
any person or body whose decisions and actions have repercussions for international politics. Both liberalist and realists believe that states are the most important actors in international politics for four reasons:
- All but the most fragile states have the capacity in principle to control the flow of people, goods and money across borders; 2. States are usually the only actors that wield significant armies;
- Only states have the power to tax and spend in significant amounts; 4. Only states promulgate and enforce laws. States are answerable to no higher authority.
What is Power?
The ability to achieve one’s purposes or goals. More specifically, it is the ability to affect others to get the outcome one wants.
What is Hard Power?
A method of exercising power by coercing other states to change. Such hard power can rest on payments (“carrots”) or threats (“sticks”)
What is Soft Power
To achieve preferred outcomes in world politics because other countries want to emulate it or have agreed to a system that produces such affects.
Soft power is not automatically more effective than or ethical than hard power. Moral judgements depend on the purposes for which power is used. Soft power is often more difficult for government to wield and slower to yield results.
Soft power is becoming more important in relations among the democratic postindustrial societies in the modern information age; hard power is often more important in industrializing and preindustrial parts of the world
What are the three forms of distribution of power
-Unipolar system: one country enjoys a preponderance of power and can effectively set the terms of international cooperation and enforce elicit compliance. -> Strongest country within a unipolar system is a hegemon
- Bipolar system: two countries of similar power enjoy primacy within their particular sphere among other states aligned with them. ->Strongest countries within a modern bipolar system are superpowers
- Multipolar system: three or more countries wield an unusual degree of power -> Strongest countries within a multipolar system are great powers
How social is the international system?
Realists disagree with liberals and constructivists on how social the system is.
->Realists: only social in a thin, superficial sense.
->Liberals, constructivists: the social constraints on action are much thicker. All agree that the social dimensions of international politics promote orderly interaction
What makes a system stable?
The quality of the social fabric of international society; the stronger the normative and institutional threads binding states, and the denser the connection between them, the greater the stake states have in preventing system breakdown and the more avenues they have for resolving disagreements before they get out of hand. System stability in:
- Unipolar systems: erode
- Multipolar or dispersed systems: alliances to balance power
- Bipolar systems: alliances become more rigid à higher probability of a large conflict
What are the three levels of causation for war?
- The individual
- The state
- The system
What can you tell more about the level, individual, of causation.
-Usage, focus on features specific to individual people § look for explanations in people’s common characteristics in the ‘human nature’ common to all individuals.
psychological tendencies:
- Cognitive psychology: examines the processes by which people seek to make sense of raw information about the world. People look for connections between the unfamiliar and the familiar.
- Motivational psychology: explain human behavior in terms of deep seated psychological fears, desires and needs. (self-esteem, social approval, sense of efficacy)
- Apply insights from behavioral economics and prospect theory. Prospect theory explains deviations from rational action by noting that people make decisions very differently depending on whether they face prospects of gain or prospects of loss.
- Psychobiography: explains leaders’ choices in terms of psychodynamics. This approach locates idiosyncratic personality traits in generally recognized neuroses and psychoses.
What can you tell more about the level, The state, of causation.
when explaining things on state level we ask whether what happens in world politics is a function of domestic politics, various features of domestic society, or the machinery of government.
Marxism and liberalism both put a great deal of emphasis on state-level: states will act similarly in the international system if they are similar domestically. Marxist arguments that capitalism causes war do not stand up to historical scrutiny. Classical liberalists came to the opposite conclusion: capitalist states tend to be peaceful because war is bad for business à discredited by WWI Bureaucratic politics (state-level line of inquiry): explanations that look not to the domestic political or economic arrangements of states, but to the interplay of governmental agencies and officials. One strand focuses on organizational dynamics. A second strand stresses the role of parochial bureaucratic interests. “Where you stand depends on where you sit” – Miles’s Law It can help us understand specific policy choices states make.
