International System Structure Flashcards
Power as capacity
- Military strength
- Economic development
- Population size
- Level of literacy or skills
- Geographical factors
Structural power
- Ability to affect the rules of the game
Hard and Soft Powers
- Ability to attract or influence the behaviour or interest of others
Power as status
If a country has “power” (as influence) in military, diplomatic, cultural and economic spheres.
Power as security
Power is also used when describing states or actors that achieved military victories or security for their state in the International System.
Power as influence
Actor’s ability to exercise influence over other actors within the International System.
Hagemon
Leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others
Superpowers
State with a dominant position which is characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on global scale
Great Powers
Sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability to exert its influence on a global scale
Middle power
Sufficient strength and authority to stand on its own without the need of help from others
Small powers
Instruments of the other powers and may at times be dominant.
Buzan and Weaver: great powers
- Achieving great power status is less demanding in terms of both capability and behaviour.
- Great powers need not necessarily have big capabilities in all sectors, and they need not be actively present in the securitisation processes of all areas of the international system.
- Great power status rests mainly on a single key: what distinguishes great powers from merely regional ones is that they are responded to by others on the basis of system level calculations about the present and near-future distribution of power
Buzan and Weaver: Regional Power
- Regional powers define the polarity of any given RSC: unipolar as in Southern Africa, bipolar as in South Asia, multipolar as in the Middle East, South America, and Southeast Asia.
- Their capabilities loom large in their regions, but do not register much in a broad-spectrum way at the global level.
- Higher-level powers respond to them as if their influence and capability were mainly relevant to the securitization processes of a particular region.
- They are thus excluded from the higher-level calculations of system polarity whether or not they think of themselves as deserving a higher ranking (as India most obviously does)” .
Polarity
+Polarity in international relations is any of the varius ways in which power is distributed on the international system. It describes the nature of the International System at any given period.
+Generally, distinguishes four types of systems: + Unipolarity
+ Bipolarity
+ Tripolarity
+ Multipolarity (4+)
Type of system completely dependent on the distribution of power and influence of States in a region or globally.
Unipolarity
- In international politics is a distribution of power in which one State exercises most of the cultural economic and military influence
- Interstate system, not an empire. Implies the existence of many juridically equal non-states.
Characteristics of Unipolarity
- It’s anarchical
- Waltz “a great power cannot exert a positive control everywhere in the world”
- The power projection limitation is one of the differences between unipolar and hegemonic system.
- Unipolar system possesses only one great power (or superpower?) and faces no competition.
- For Walt the US is the only pole to possess global interest
Why Polarity Matters?
- More stable – less prone to war
- Bipolar order are simple to menage
- Multipolar order can slip into war due to chain ganging and buck- passing
- Chain ganging: raise of the chances of conflict due to the formation of coalitions and alliances
- Buck-passing: avoid or refuse confrontation expecting others to do so +Idea of unipolarity as peace
- International institutions and hegemonic self-restrain
Bipolarity
- Distribution of power in which two states have the majority of economic, military and cultural influence internationally or regionally
- Results from two rival power poles
- The world is devided into a sphere of influence.
- Power poles tries to win states away from their rivalry sphere of influence
Multipolarity
- Distribution of power in which more than two nation-states have nearly equal amounts of military, cultural and economic influence
- 4+ power actors
- Balance of power
- Examples:
- 17th to 19th century
- Current system
The debate on the academy
- One of the problems we face in this understanding of the distribution of power in the International System is that we don’t have a consensus.
- Some academics are going to defend that we are un a unipolar world, others are going to defend the idea the we are in a multipolar world, and there is Huntington idea of a uni- multipolar world.
- Also, there are differences about what is the better and safer system.
