International relations relates to politics between states

Question 1

“State” and “Nation”

Answer 1

State: formally constituted, sovereign political institution encompassing people and territory

Nation: Collective identity grounded in a shared history and culture and may or may not lay claim political recognition or a specific territory

Question 2

International Relations

Answer 2

Emerges as a discipline following WW1
Primary focus on relations between sovereign states
Today also focuses more broadly on non-state actors (NGO’s, MNCs, civil society, organized crime and terrorist groups)

Question 3

Global

Answer 3

“Global” or “world Politics” is replacing “international relations”

Typically used to refer to the entire world

“Globalization” emphasizes interconnectedness across state boundaries

Question 4

Core Questions

Answer 4

How does Power Shape the international system?

What causes war, and how can peace be achieved?

Can international politics be ethical? What is the connection, if any, between how politics is conducted versus how it should be?

How do international organizations and law shape global governance?

How do states’ interests form and evolve and how do they influence global politics?

Question 5

States and International Systems in world History

Answer 5

Empires have come and gone

The sovereign state system is also likely to be replaced by something else

International organizations? Multinational companies? Or devolution into sub-state tribes, clans, nations, cities, religions, etc?

Question 6

Early “States”

Answer 6

Political communities recognizable as “States” have been around since the beginnings of agriculture
Relationship to the land was a key commonality
A way of organizing and protecting people and resources

Question 7

Ancient Greece

Answer 7

Athen’s city-state was the model of democratic society
Aristotle: “man is by nature a political animal”
Thucydides (the Peloponnesian War): a key figure in the tradition of realist thought

Question 8

The Roman Empire

Answer 8

Best-known empire of the ancient world

Central in the development of republicanism

Origin of the main legal systems in Europe

Linked to the predominance of Christianity in Europe

Question 9

Empire

Answer 9

Earliest Empires found in the regions around the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile Rivers

Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Persian empires

Later also in Africa, India and China

Question 10

The Chinese Empire

Answer 10

Lasted from Shang Dynasty (18th century BCE) until early 20th century

Interrupted by the “warring states” period

Confucius writes in a time of violence, and is largely concerned with the proper political and social arrangements for good order

Question 11

Modern Empires

Answer 11

Current international system shaped by empire

British empire by far the most influential

Mantle of power transferred from the British to the Americans following WW11

Question 12

A new definition of Empire

Answer 12

Doesn’t have to impose direct rule

Question 13

The emergence of the State System in Europe

Answer 13

Typically understood to have emerged around 1500

Associated with the rise of European science and technology, leading to industrialization, increased military power, and other social changes

Took place in the context of ideas imported from China, Arabia, and the New World

Question 14

The Peace of Westphalia (1648)

Answer 14

Establishes the Key characteristics of the modern state and the modern state system; grounded in the principle of the sovereign state (as a concept and a practice)

Includes the principle of religious co-existence, the state’s claim to sole authority in matters such as the declaration of war and the negotiation of peace, diplomatic representation, and the authority to make treaties with foreign powers

Question 15

Sovereignty

Answer 15

Internal Leviatan, but, external anarchy

Question 16

Sovereignty and Nationalism

Answer 16

Idea that each nation should have its own state
Arises late in the 19th century along with democracy, which requires a distinct sovereign people

Question 17

The concert of Europe

Answer 17

Established at the congress of Vienna (1815), following the Napoleonic wars

Emergence of new “national” states in Greece (1830), Belgium (1831), Italy (1861), Germany (1871), and Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro (1878)

By the early 20th century, the sovereign nation-state system was well entrenched in Europe (and to several settler societies), but had yet to spread elsewhere

Question 18

Changes in the Sovereign State System

Answer 18

By the end of WW11, the European colonial system was collapsing

A range of new sovereign states with legal international sovereignty but many are domestically weak, fragile, or failed states

Globalization of economies has put increasing pressure on the sovereign state

Difficulties of independent statehood have produced a range of weak,quasi, and fragile or failed states:

Weak or quasi states lack capacity to organize, regulate, and deliver political and economic goods to their citizens. Sometimes depend on foreign aid to the detriment of their sovereign status (Jackson 1990)

Failed states are weak states that have reached the point of Breakdown, social unrest, and violence (e.g., Somalia)

Even if many of the problems facing states as internal, there are also external factors

Economic globalization has put increasing pressure on the sovereign state system

Rise to both globalization and regionalization call into question the persistence of the sovereign state-model

Question 19

From war to international cooperation

Answer 19

Thirty years war (1618-48)
- Treaty of Westphalia (1648)

War of Spanish Succession (1701-14)
-Treaty of Utrecht (1713)

Napoleonic Wars (1803-15)
-Concert of Europe (1815-1914)

WW1 (1914-18)
-League of Nations (1920-46)

WW11 (1939-45)
-United Nations (1945-)

Future?