ID's For MIDTERM

Question 1

Sovereignty

Answer 1

1. the expectation of legal or political supremacy– ultimate authority– within territorial boundaries.
2. Since all states are sovereign, the international system is in a condition of Anarchy.
3. In the modern system of ‘states,’ states are expected to respect one another’s sovereignty within their borders.

Question 2

Interests

Answer 2

1. what actors want to achieve through political action.
2. There are three main categories of interests that
   are most relevant to IP: Power and Security, Economic or Material Welfare and Ideological Goals
3. Interests at any level can conflict, and strategic interaction with other actors explains why not all actors can obtain their interests, even when playing a best response strategy

Question 3

Power

Answer 3

1. The ability of Actor A to get Actor B to do something that it would not otherwise do.
2. In international Politics, the more power an actor has, the more it can expect to get in the final outcome of bargaining.
3. There are three ways that power is exercised in IP: using coercion, outside options or through agenda setting

Question 4

Cooperation

Answer 4

1. An interaction in which two or more actors adopt policies that make at least one actor better off relative to the status quo without making others worse off.
2. Cooperation gives small social benefits to a lot of people but has a large individual cost.
3. While society would benefit from collective
   cooperation, each individual prefers to defect, as shown in Prisoners Dilemma

Question 5

Particularistic Interests?

Answer 5

1. Interests held by only a relatively small
   number of actors within the country, such as a particular business, an ethnic minority group, or individuals within government.
2. Staying in power requires that autocratic leaders to prioritize policies that keep selectorates satisfied, privileging particularistic interests over the public good.
3. It can be argued that oil in the middle east is a particularistic interest rather than a national interest because companies stand to gain a lot from access to Middle East oil supplies.

Question 6

Realism

Answer 6

1. Realism is an international politics theory based on the idea that states are unitary, self interested actors, driven by national interests of maximizing security and power.
2. Realists assert that because of the anarchic nature of the international system, international institutions are weak and exert little independent effect on world politics.
3. Many important political figures have their
   views shaped by this theory, in fact, most scholars and politicians during the Cold War viewed international relations through a realist lens

Question 7

Credibility

Answer 7

1. A credible threat is a threat that the recipient believes will be carried out, while a credible commitment is a commitment or promise that the recipient believes will be honored.
2. Sometimes the information that would allow peaceful bargains and prevent war cannot be credibly communicated.
3. Credibility is hard to achieve because it is costly and Sometimes states have an incentive to misrepresent information; therefore, a state must build its credibility

Question 8

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Answer 8

1. The Prisoners dilemma is game that shows that While society would benefit from collective
   cooperation, each individual prefers to defect
2. Analysts have used the Prisoner’s Dilemma to capture the essential strategic dilemma at the core of the collective action problem.
3. Arms races can be modeled as a prisoners dilemma situation because each individual’s incentive to defect undermines their collective interest in cooperation in disarmament.

Question 9

Resolve

Answer 9

1. The willingness of an actor to endure costs in order to acquire some good.
2. Resolve has a direct impact on how much of the state’s potential capabilities are actually mobilized in the event of war.
3. When states have incomplete information about the capabilities and/ or resolve of their opponents, bargaining over goods that they both desire may fail to achieve peaceful settlements.

Question 10

Capabilities

Answer 10

1. Capabilities refers to the state’s physical ability to prevail in war: the number of troops it can mobilize, the number and quality of its armaments, the economic resources it has to sustain the war effort.
2. States may have private information concerning its true capability which, if the other state knew it, would open bargains.
3. When states have incomplete information about the capabilities and/ or resolve of their opponents, bargaining over goods that they both desire may fail to achieve peaceful settlements.

Question 11

Incomplete Information

Answer 11

1. A situation in which parties in a strategic interaction lack information about other parties’ interests and/or capabilities.
2. Incentive to misrepresent information can keep states from bargaining ex ante lead to war
3. When states have incomplete information about the capabilities and/ or resolve of their opponents, bargaining over goods that they both desire may fail to achieve peaceful settlements.
4. Media and opposition solves information problems by creating transparency

Question 12

Bargaining

Answer 12

1. Bargaining describes an interaction in which actors must choose outcomes that make one better off at the expense of another because it involves the the distribution of a fixed value.
2. Incentive to misrepresent information, commitment problems and issues of indivisibility keep states from bargaining ex ante.
3. We typically represent war as a bargaining interaction. In the case of the Iraq War, the United States and Iraq were not cooperating but bargaining over the latter’s WMD programs and, ultimately, its regime.

Question 13

Preventive War:

Answer 13

1. A war fought with the intention of preventing an adversary from becoming stronger in the future.
2. It arise because states whose power is increasing cannot commit not to exploit that power in future bargaining interactions.
3. Both preemption and prevention arise from the difficulty states can have in making credible commitments not to use their military power.

Question 14

Preemptive War

Answer 14

1. A war fought with the anticipation that an
   attack by the other side is imminent.
2. Preemption is the response from a state to an imminent threat when there is an already existing first-strike advantage.
3. Both preemption and prevention arise from the difficulty states can have in making credible commitments not to use their military power.

Question 15

Diversionary Incentive

Answer 15

1. The incentive that state leaders have to start international crises in order to “Rally ‘round the flag” (gain public support)
2. The Rally Effect shows us that there is incentive for leaders to start diversionary wars if they are insecure about their approval ratings
3. However, while diversionary incentives may increase chance of war, they account for only a small portion of the conflict behavior we observe.

Question 16

Democratic Peace

Answer 16

1. the observation that mature democratic states have rarely, if ever, engaged in a war against one another.
2. Using selectorate theory, we can see how democracies with large W have incentive to follow the will of the people, which is avoid war and the burden of HIGH cost associated with it.

Consequently, democracies enter fewer wars, but in the wars they
do enter, they expend more eort.

3. Democratic peace has been used to argue that to ensure our security and build peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.
4. Audience Costs solve commitment Problems
5. Media and opposition solve information problem by creating a transparency.

Question 17

Domestic Institutions

Answer 17

1. Domestic institutions determine the rules of political decision making within the state.
2. Domestic institutions play key role in accountability, or the ability to punish or reward leaders for the decisions they make.
3. Democratic Domestic Institutions can overcome bargaining problems that may otherwise lead to war
4. Domestic institutions determine who is included in N, S and W . This means domestic institutions determine the size of N, S and W

Question 18

Selectorate Theory

Answer 18

1. Selectorate identifies institutions that determines
   
   • the size of the group that can put a leader in power S
   • the size of the group whose support the leader actually requires to stay in power W as the relevant ones
2. One theory of how domestic political institutions influence the choices political leaders make, especially about war.
3. Helps us compare countries by comparing the types of institutions they have.

Question 19

Rally Effect

Answer 19

1. The tendency for people to become more supportive of their country’s government in response to dramatic international events, such as crises or wars.
2. The Rally Effect shows us that International conflict can create a diversion from problems
   internal conflict
3. As shown in Bush’s approval rating following 9/11, leaders gain support in form approval ratings, which jump up at the onset of a war/int crisis

Question 20

Balance of Power

Answer 20

1. An Alliance that forms between states to counter a state that is becoming too powerful.
2. International Peace is more secure when no
   state/alliance is strong enough to dominate
   others.
3. States tend to join the weakest alliances in
   conflicts, balancing power and avoiding
   conflicts.

Question 21

Audience Costs

Answer 21

1. Negative repercussions for failing to follow through on a threat or to honor a commitment.
2. Audience Costs solve commitment Problems because there is a cost in reputation associated with failing to follow through
3. Audience Cost can also help to convey credibility in communicating a threat, so it is more believable

Question 22

Collective Security Organization

Answer 22

1. Broad- based institutions that promote peace and security among their (universal) members. Examples include the League of Nations and the United Nations.
2. When one state takes actions that are “a threat to international peace and security,” all members of the organization are called on to act against the state.
3. They are the closest thing to international peace police because Serve as neutral observers and mediators

Question 23

UN Security Council

Answer 23

1. The UN Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security
2. Security Council can authorize PEACEKEEPING and PEACE ENFORCEMENT OPERATIONS
3. Unfortunately, Substantive resolution is hard to achieve because Unanimity can be hard to achieve

Question 24

Alliance

Answer 24

1. An alliance is Institutions that help their members cooperate militarily in the event of a war.
2. Alliances form between international states
   States tend to join the weakest alliances in
   conflicts, balancing power and avoiding
   conflicts.
3. A spontaneous alliance or drop of alliance can significantly change the bargaining interaction between two states,

Question 25

Collective Action Problem

Answer 25

1. Obstacles to cooperation that occur when actors have incentives to collaborate but each acts in anticipation that others will pay the costs of cooperation.
2. While society would benefit from collective
   cooperation, each individual prefers to defect.
3. Even though everyone wants the public good to be provided, each individual has an incentive to free ride by not contributing while benefiting from the efforts of others.
4. Small Economic interest Groups for example are More efficient in lobbying for war than those who pay
   for the war — collective action problem.

Question 26

Insurgency

Answer 26

1. Insurgency is a military strategy
   characterized by small, lightly armed bands practicing
   guerrilla warfare from rural base areas
2. This elusiveness helps to explain why civil wars often endure for years or decades and rely on international intervention, even when the rebel forces number only in the hundreds or low thousands.
3. Civil Wars are fought using insurgencies therefore countries that are at risk of civil war have conditions that favor insurgency.

Question 27

Civil War

Answer 27

1. A war in which the main participants are within the same state, such as the government and a rebel group.
2. Over half of the peacekeeping interventions by the UN were deployed to conflicts within single states; therefore, it is a international political issue
3. Furthermore Civil wars affect international politics because of the Spillover effect that tends to occur.

Question 28

Natural Selection

Answer 28

1. Among a group of organisms with variation in heritable traits, those better suited to reproduce will reproduce more, resulting in a population with more of their heritable traits in the future.
2. There is a evolutionary Account of Violence and war, which shows us that Natural selection favors strategic violence.. sometimes
3. So the question is: would being more war-prone or peace-loving make it more likely that one reproduces?
   And remember, organisms are evolving among other organisms. Unconditional peace-loving can be exploited. Unconditional war-prone get in violent con
   icts and may die before reproducing

Question 29

Cognitive Biases

Answer 29

1. Psychologically based biases that influence decision making for political leaders
2. Cognitive biases matter more for foreign policy in cases where individuals play a large role
3. If the decision making process is distorted by cognitive biases, decisions can be compromised

Question 30

Given that war is costly, why couldn’t states just agree to a
peaceful bargain over the object of interest ex ante and avoid the costs of war?
What keeps states from bargaining ex ante?

Answer 30

• Incentive to misrepresent information
• commitment problems
• issues of indivisibility

Question 31

Explanations for war

National Interest v. Pluralistic interest

Answer 31

National interest:
– Private Information with incentives to misrepresent
– Commitment Problem
– Indivisibility Problem

• Particularistic interests:
– Diversionary wars
– Special Interests

Question 32

Examples of commitment problem

Answer 32

• Nuclear proliferation.
• First strike advantage.
• Preventative wars.

Question 33

Indivisibility

Answer 33

Bargains require a bargain range.
• If good is indivisible, there is none
However, the idea of indivisibility is often used
as a bargaining tool.

Question 34

Diversionary wars:

Answer 34

• resurrection bramble

- rall around the flag

Question 35

Domestic reasons for War

Answer 35

1. Diversionary Incentive
– Rally ‘round the flag 
– Resurrection Gamble
2. Particularistic Interests
Special Interest:
– Military 
– Economic Interests (Iraq War; Guatemala)
– Hawkish Interests

Question 36

Resurrection Gamble

Answer 36

1. Leaders may try high risk policies (like war) when
   doing nothing is certainly bad (like being ousted).

• After a loss, politicians become reckless.

Question 37

Nash Equilibrium:

Answer 37

no player has an incentive to change their strategy given the strategies chosen by others.

Question 38

Pareto Efficient:

Answer 38

no other outcome to the game would be better for one player without being worse for the other player(s).

Question 39

Three sets of actors in selectorate theory

Answer 39

N=Residents of a country
(the class)
S= Selectorates
- set of people who have at least a nominal say in choosing leaders
- can become members of winning coalition
(ppl in first row)
W= Winning coalition
Subset of S without whose support the leader cannot remain in power
(a majority of the front row)

Question 40

The selectorate (S) and the winning coalition (W ) describe

Answer 40

how political systems select and retain leaders.

Comparing countries in terms of S and W will be more
informative than comparing them merely in terms of broad
categories like democratic' versus autocratic.’

Question 41

Comparing countries in terms of S and W will be more
informative than comparing them merely in terms of broad
categories like democratic' versus autocratic.

Answer 41

Comparing countries in terms of S and W will be more
informative than comparing them merely in terms of broad
categories like democratic' versus autocratic.

Question 42

Public v. Private Goods

Answer 42

Public goods (x): nonexcludable and nonrival; everyone
benets from them. (National defense, free speech, public parks)

Private goods (g): excludable and rival; only members of the
W benet from them.

Question 43

Who is the most benecial (to the leader) recipient of private
goods?

Answer 43

Answer: members of W.(They determine whether the leader
stays in office.)

Leaders remain in power if enough of W supports the leader.

Other members of S and N receive only the public goods that the leader decides to provide.

Question 44

As W gets bigger, distributing public goods becomes a…

Answer 44

… more EFFICIENT way to for a leader to retain the support of W (the leader is not more civic-minded).

Question 45

What does Selectorate Theory mean for War?

Answer 45

Institutions shape how nations interact with the wider world.
Large-W leaders need successful foreign policies.
- The bigger the Winning Coalition (W ), the more a leader has tocare about war going badly

Small-W leaders need only to pay o supporters.