Exam

Question 1

What is International Theory

Answer 1

body of writings that provides concepts and models for the organised study of relations among countries, or across borders

Wight, Waltz, Smith

Question 2

What does international theory also analyse

Answer 2

How our ways of thinking about these are unconsciously structured by issues of identity, gender, difference

Question 3

Early 20th century, moved through several great debates about its subject matter, there are two main areas of disagreement connected to international and theory

Answer 3

Wight and Waltz think the anarchic nature of the international requires a whole new way of thinking, whilst there are those (Steve Smith) who think we should take from other disciplines

Can we actually create theories that produce objective explanations, or are they all reproduced by bias of identity?

Question 4

Wight

Answer 4

International theory-

think the anarchic nature of the international requires a whole new way of thinking,

Question 5

Waltz

Answer 5

Realism-
due to anarchy, international politics cannot be explained by looking at the internal make up of different societies – the error that everyone had made since 19th century

We must theorize the international structure which explains why bathe basic character of IR hasn’t changed for 1000s of years

Question 6

Steve Smith

Answer 6

International Theory-

who think we should take from other disciplines

Question 7

What is Realism

Answer 7

Realists believe that anarchy condemns countries to a situation in which, in order to ensure their own survival, they have to struggle for power

Mearsheimer, Morgenthau, Waltz

Question 8

Morenthau

Answer 8

Realism -
Tragic situation because good intention can lead to bad outcomes

Insists political leaders must follow different moral codes than private individuals

Question 9

Liberalism

Answer 9

liberals believe that a change inside society – emergence of modern liberal democratic societies - is transforming the international condition and leading gradually to the possibility of world peace

Angell, Ikenberry, Moravcsik, Sorensen, Woodrow, Jackson

Question 10

Norman Angell

Answer 10

Liberalism-
1910 - Whilst power used to be defined by territory and military, it is becoming increasingly based on financial credit and scientific knowledge and therefore realism is under a ‘Great Illusion@

Question 11

Ikenberry

Answer 11

Liberalism-
The first attempt of league of nations had failed, but the second one after WW2 was a success and it was even possible that liberal internationalism 2.0 could be followed by liberal internationalism 3.0 whereby international organisations play a key role in running liberal order even after the end of US hegemony

UN and IMF should be reformed to redistribute power and enable the shift to use the international organisation to open up the liberal world order

Question 12

Constructivism

Answer 12

By the end of the cold war the fact it ended peacefully contradicted realism – constructivism says it undermined that anarchy must lead to conflict

Wendt, Finnemore

Question 13

Wendt

Answer 13

Constructivism-
consequences of anarchy is what states make of it – how states handle each other – state identity is not fixed, socially constructed through interaction

Question 14

Marta Finnemore

Answer 14

Constructivism-
how the norm of humanitarian intervention has changed several times during 20th and 21st century – showing relations are built on norms

Question 15

Marxism

Answer 15

The central fact about the modern world is capitalism

Marx, Rosenberg, Callinicos

Question 16

Marx

Answer 16

Marxism
General social theory based on the double relationship – look at how different societies collectively organise their productive interaction with nature and that will provide a key to the workings of power in those societies and the nature of their international relations with each other. Explains the possibility of a global sovereign state system rather than a world or territorial empires – modern IR in that sense is the empire of civil society.

Question 17

2 things make Marxism more than an objection against inequality.

Answer 17

1. In modern societies - The capitalist form of double relationship produces a separation of the economic and political and that gives rise to the abstraction of the state from civil society – will produces the modern state
2. Produces the ability of economic power to spread across borders in non-political ways

Question 18

Critical Theory

Answer 18

Or Reflectivist Theories
Rejection of positivism as a form of knowledge production

Linklater, Fisher, Cox, Devetak

Question 19

Andrew Linklater

Answer 19

Critical Theory
disconnecting from any social group – we can judge social systems in terms of how far they enable all social group to participate equally in the rights enjoyed by the most privileged in those societies – apply this to the international by asking far within a given international system do the countries in the systems operate as bounded communities – deny to outsiders the basis rights that they give their own citizens – when you look at IR in long world history terms – the modern international system does recognise more human rights than previous systems with contradicts the realist idea that there cannot be progress in IR

Question 20

Post-structuralism

Answer 20

First that pushed the critique of positivism to its logical conclusion

Fuko- Truth is a thing of this world meaning in other words that god is dead – there’s no this as an objective view from nowhere- ideas therefore need to be studied as a part of the reality that they claim to explain

Fuko, Campbell, Walker

Question 21

Campbell

Answer 21

Post-structuralism
There is nothing outside of discourse – you can’t separate the observer from the observed – what this meant in terms of US foreign policy during cold war – the representation of the outside world in terms of the soviet threat was playing an important role in the defining American identity and in the justification for the domestic authority of the US state and because the role of the USSR in framing US identity in these ways was replaced by other threats like IS – at a deeper level, the cold war never ended – it wasn’t about the USSR it was about the opposites to the US

Question 22

Feminism

Answer 22

• Realist theory had been operating as a regime of truth (Fuko) that silenced some voices whilst empowering others – The feminist distinction between sex and gender enabled Ann Tickner to do a gender analyses of Hobbes state of nature to show how it was from a version of masculinity – which if it was true would have left total the death of the species

Tickner, Hooper, Petersen & Runyan

Question 23

Ann Tickner

Answer 23

Feminism
The feminist distinction between sex and gender enabled…
Ann Tickner to do a gender analyses of Hobbes state of nature to show how it was from a version of masculinity – which if it was true would have left total the death of the species

Question 24

Charlotte Hooper

Answer 24

Feminism-
all 3 levels of analyses were defined on one side between the division of public and private and weren’t able to see the role of Women and children which crosses over both – and couldn’t see the role of the international in structuring gender relations

Question 25

Post-colonialism

Answer 25

Large blind sport- role of race in IR – recent contribution
Robert Vitalis – origins of American IR lie not in schemes for peace but discourse of racial development as a threat to the west

Seth, Fanon, Vitalis

Question 26

Robert Vitalis

Answer 26

Post-colonialism-

origins of American IR lie not in schemes for peace but discourse of racial development as a threat to the west

Question 27

Sanjay Seth

Answer 27

Post-colonialism-
the core feature of modern IR is not anarchy its hierarchy – the supposed origins or the international system coincide with the colonial expansion of Europe in which they remain entirely silent

Question 28

Franz Fanon

Answer 28

Post-colonialism-
Europeans organise their colonies in relation to racial hierarchy’s- theories like Marxism and liberalism that generalise from white societies need to be reworked in relation to the colonies

Question 29

End of IR Theory?

Answer 29

after the turbulent years of the ‘great debates’ of the 1930s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s-90s, the field of IR theory was exhausted, with no new ‘big ideas on the horizon’. Others too have often suggested that IR theory is over because we now live in a global, ‘post-international’ world.

Rosenberg, Sylvester