Learning Outcomes

Question 1

Discuss Martin Wight’s three traditions

Answer 1

Realism: war of all against all, international anarchy (Hobbes)
Rationalism: conflict but also “goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation” (Wight, 1994)
Revolutionists: international society into a worldstate

Question 2

Critically evaluate the problem of Eurocentrism in the theory canon

Answer 2

Hobson, 2012: many classical thinkers justified colonialism and racism. Therefore there are growing calls to decolonise (reevaluate) IR

Question 3

Outline Grotius’s main ideas relevant to international politics

Answer 3

Natural law:
- there exists a single, universal, divinely ordained law that transcends custom (eg murder always wrong)
- natural law is a set of rationally accessible moral rules by which all human beings are capable of abiding
- states are necessary to enforce natural law
- foundation for universal human rights
- also the basis for law-governed relations between states
- De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625): laws of war

Sovereignty:
- supreme Power
- sovereignty resides in the state itself, not the ruler.
- sovereignty applies both internally, within the state’s borders, and externally, in its relations with other states

International Society

Question 4

Assess the relation between Grotius and the English School’s conception of international society

Answer 4

Relations between states can and should be those of a ‘society’ (a collectivebody in which certain rules and values are institutionalised) rather than a ‘system’ (an anarchic collection of separate states, which have to coexist but which are unable to trust one another).

Bull (1990): Grotius’ idea of international society “was given concrete expression in the Peace of Westphalia, and Grotius may be considered the intellectual father of this first general peace settlement of modern times.”

Wight (1994): Grotius as the forerunner of rationalism

Question 5

Critically evaluate the extent to which Grotius’s writings on the law of nations serve as justifications for imperialism

Answer 5

Grotius never directly argued that the world was divided in two, but critics (e.g. Osiander, 2001) accuse him of strongly implying it

Keene (2002): Grotius provided ‘an account of the law of nations that was used by Europeans to legitimise their behaviour towards non-European peoples’ –> underlined by Stelder (2021): punitive action for breach of contract as pretext for colonisation

Question 6

Outline Hobbes’s main ideas relevant to international politics

Answer 6

Relations between states are characterised by international anarchy. An international Leviathan is not possible, and thus there is no law like that which governs relationships within states that extends to the realm of the international

Question 7

Discuss strengths and weaknesses in Hobbes’s political theory, outlining why you agree or disagree with his ideas

Answer 7

Criticisms of Hobbes:
- system does not provide for checks and balances
- meritocracy does not extend beyond metrics of security

Question 8

Discuss the role of empire and colonialism in shaping Hobbes’s political ideas

Answer 8

• Native Americans used as example of state of nature
• This in turn reinforced racist and imperialist attitudes (Nichols, 2005)

Question 9

Outline Kant’s main ideas relevant to international politics

Answer 9

Prerequisites of Perpetual Peace:
- all states must become republics, since a state will be more likely to behave responsibly and prudently if it has to be accountable to its people than if it is ruled by unaccountable princes
- republican states must enter into a pacifist union with one another, leading to them regulating their interactions and renouncing war as a means of foreign policy. However: NO WORLD STATE
- guarantee of a cosmopolitan right

Philosophy of History:
Like Grotius, Kant think moral law is accessible by human reason.
Even if people are simply driven by passions and desires, they will still be impelled to form communities and eventually to live in peace with other communities
because of their own fear (of war) and greed (want of more production and trade)

Question 10

Critically assess how Kant’s writings have influenced liberal IR theory

Answer 10

> Moral Cosmopolitanism
Democratic peace theory (Doyle 1983) vs universality of union of states regardless of democratisation

Question 11

Examine the relation between Kant’s views on race and his moral philosophy

Answer 11

Some scholars argue that Kant’s views on race, while appalling, are peripheral and should not cloud our interpretation of his moral and political philosophy (Kleingeld, 2007). Others (Bernasconi, 2001; Mills, 2017) argue that Kant’s writings on race reveal the bankruptcy of his wider ethico-political project, which frames itself in the language of universalism but is premised on a global structure of white supremacy.

Question 12

Outline Marx’s main ideas relevant to international politics

Answer 12

• Capitalism is inherently international and demands the constant expansion of markets
• State refelcts interest of ruling class, all ideologies are refelctions of deeper economic class interests
• Proletarians all share aclass interest with each other, which cuts across differences of nationality, religion, race and gender
• No more state boundaries after Capitalism

Question 13

Critically analyse Marx’s views on colonialism

Answer 13

• Colonialism distinct from capitalism, not often adressed by Marx

Anderson (2010):
young Marx: “non-western societies would necessarily be absorbed into capitalism and then modernized via colonialism and the world market”
later writings: multilinear approach, alternative paths to development

Question 14

Discuss the impact of the Haitian revolution on the ideas of Hegel

Answer 14

Buck-Morss (2009):
- Haitian revolution influenced Hegel’s slave-master dialectic
- dialectic of freedom (from Phänomenologie des Geistes) as a thus historically grounded metaphor inspired by slave rebellion against European colonialism
> This would mean that “the universal history theorised by Enlightenment thinkers must be understood as a product of anti-colonial revolutions, and not of Europe’s endogenous development.”

Question 15

Discuss the relation between liberalism and empire in the work of J.S. Mill

Answer 15

• Empire as a civilising mission
• while the relations between civilised nations ought to be governed by the principle of non-intervention, relations between civilised and barbarian states ought to be based on hierarchy and ‘benevolent despotism’
• societies outside of Europe not ready for self-determinaion

Question 16

Evaluate Mill’s ideas about civilisation, self-determination and (non-)intervention

Answer 16

• four separate stages: savagism, slavery, barbarism and modern civilisation
• civilisation achieved through either leadership of a person of extraordinary genius, or the governance of a culturally superior power
• free discourse important for societal progress
• individualism and self-development therefore important (differing viewpoints)
• government intervention musst be shown to be necessary (harm principle)
  -> ultimately a quality that must be developed organically

Mill (2006): opposes intervention, even in those cases where a people is fighting to overthrow a ‘native tyrant’ or free themselves from ‘a foreign yoke.’

Exceptions to non-intervention:
- Cases of protracted civil war where there are “severities repugnantto humanity”

• In “dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement”

Question 17

Explain the influence of Mill on contemporary liberal IR theory

Answer 17

Key ideas for modern liberals:
Individual Liberty
Harm Principle
Marketplace of Ideas
Limited Government

While Mill’s writings have inspired subsequent debates on intervention and self-determination, critics argue that Mill provides a moral justification for imperialism, which he frames as a question – not of self-interest, but of an ethical imperative to improve, civilise and help ‘barbarians’

Question 18

Assess liberal internationalist arguments about the prospect of progress and peace in world politics

Answer 18

Liberalism: progressive change is possible; single moral code and universal notion of justice; commitment to rationality, free will and the primacy of the individual

Liberal Internationalism:
- war as a product of imperfect institutions, nationalism, ignorance, international anarchy and sinister interests
- progression towards peace through spread of democracy, growth of international law, disarmament, collective security (through League) open diplomacy, abolition of alliances

Question 19

Evaluate E.H. Carr’s critique of liberal internationalism

Answer 19

Carr (1939/2001):
- no universal harmony of interests
- the interests taken into account are only those of the rich and powerful

Question 20

Critically analyse whether a ‘First Great Debate’ took place

Answer 20

Schmidt (2012): the revisionists’ claim that the first great debate is nothing more than a disciplinary myth has not escaped critical scrutiny. Referencing Waever (2011): myth has become integral to field; regardless of accuracy.
Ashworth (2006): “idealists” as wholy inaccurrate description
Kahler (1997): international relations was not marked by a clear Kuhnian paradigm shift after 1945; the field remained heterogeneous
Quirk and Vigneswaran (2005): the First Debate is a story that ultimately stems from a genuine controversy in the history of academic international thought, and we are yet to be convinced that a scholar, or group of scholars, has intentionally constructed this concept in order to create boundaries within or around the discipline. The problem appears to be that, despite the existence of a significant body of contradictory historiographical literature, various scholars concerned with defining more recent events clumsily attached an entirely inappropriate chronology to a prior period of disciplinary development.

Question 21

Discuss competing explanations of the origins of the discipline of IR

Answer 21

Traditional view: IR emerged after WW1 as a noble and heroic social science determined to solve the problem of interstate war

Revisionist view: racial and imperialist fears of an end to white hegemony. Vitalis (2015): Foreign Affairs once held the name Journal of Race Development. Angell and other liberal internationalists were pro imperalism.

Question 22

Critically evaluate the impact of the colonial history of the discipline for how we think about IR today

Answer 22

Vitalis (2015): Foreign Affairs once held the name Journal of Race Development. Angell and other liberal internationalists were pro imperalism.
He argues that early IR thinkers were less concerned with interstate relations in an anarchical world politics, and much more concerned with questions of imperial governance and theories of race development.

Question 23

Assess the contribution of W.E.B. Du Bois to international political theory

Answer 23

‘The African Roots of War’ (1915): ‘scramble for Africa’ and imperial rivalry were main causesof WW1: ‘in a very real sense Africa is a prime cause of this terrible overturning of civilization which we have lived to see’

Question 24

Compare and contrast classical and structural realism

Answer 24

Classical realism: Morgenthau (1948)
- world is not composed of a single moral vision, but of a multiplicity of opposing interests. Conflict is thus inevitable.
- this reality means that national interest defined as power ought to guide foreign policy. As such, moral progress is not possible in international politics

Classical realism is seen as being opposed to ethics and morality, though Williams (2004) maintains that ‘when read carefully and in context’, Morgenthau’s ‘realist theory emerges as a sophisticated, self-conscious, and highly political interrogation of
the relationship between power and politics’. This view is not shared by other classical realists.

Structural realism: Kenneth Waltz
Three elements of international system which explains the behaviour of states:
* The ordering principle, which is anarchy. Anarchy in this context means that there is no hierarchical order (no world government)
* The units of the system, which are sovereign states
* The distribution of capabilities between the units, which means the relative power of states in relation to each other

Crucially, it is the focus on ‘system level’, as opposed to state or substate level, factors in generating explanations for international politics that differentiates neorealism/ structural realism from classical realism.

Classical realism: pursuit of power as a consequence of human psychology. Classical realism aims to be a guide to foreign policy.
Structural realism: the pursuit of power as consequence of a security dilemma. Neorealism aims to provide a coherent framework for the dynamics of international politics in general.

Bell, 2017

Question 25

List Morgenthaus 6 principles of international politics

Answer 25

1. Politics are governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature.
2. National interest is defined in terms of power.
3. This is an objective category which is universally true.
4. Universal moral principles should not be applied to a state’s action.
5. There is a difference between the moral aspirations of a state and universal moral principles.
6. The political sphere is autonomous.

Question 26

Critically evaluate the role of ‘science’ and ‘morality’ in the realist intellectual tradition

Answer 26

Science
Behaviouralism, originally a new approach towards the social sciencies, is what mainly informs strucutral realism/neorealism.

Morality
Drawing on Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes, realists argue that moral sentiment, however important it may be in domestic matters such as justice, it is not an effective guide in the world of the international, which is governed by “objective” laws that have their roots in human nature. Morality therefore does not play a role in realist considerations or indeed the realm of international politics as they perceive it. Realists consequently oppose liberals by maintaining that moral progress is impossible in international politics.

Question 27

Critically compare and contrast Morgenthau and Waltz’s understanding of ‘science’.

Answer 27

Both Morgenthau and Waltz aimed to elevate IR to a more scientific discipline, but they differed in their interpretations. Morgenthau sought universal principles based on studying human behavior, while Waltz focused on the scientific analysis of the international system itself.

Morgenthau didn’t believe IR could perfectly mirror the natural sciences, but he saw their methodology as a guiding principle. His concept of “political realism” aspired to be a rigorous and objective theory, much like the natural sciences that aim for universal laws. He emphasized studying history and political philosophy to identify recurring patterns in human behavior that could be said to be governing international politics that hold true across time and contexts. Morgenthau believed a scientific IR theory should explain past events and offer some ability to predict future behavior of states in the international system.

Waltz focused on the systemic structure and state behavior within it. Scientific IR theory, using as little assumptions as possible, should analyse the international system itself, particularly its anarchic structure (lack of central authority). Understanding this system’s dynamics and identifying patterns provided a more objective foundation for studying state behavior.

Question 28

Analyse the relation between knowledge and power in realist
theorising

Answer 28

Realist theory highlights the crucial link between knowledge and power in the international system. Knowledge empowers states to navigate the complexities of international politics, but power also shapes the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

Question 29

Outline the key ideas of Césaire and Fanon

Answer 29

Césaire: Discourse on colonialism (1950/2001)
- colonialism is a selfish and violent project, not a benevolent one
- supposed “subhumanness” of the colonised as justification for violence
- eurofascism as a “boomerang” of those violent attitudes returning from the colonies to be turned against other Europeans
- sovereignty not the solution to colonialism, instead, supranational, federal states should be created to provide for self-determination without sovereignty

Fanon: The wretched of the Earth (1963)
- empire not benevolent. European wealth built on empire.
- bourgeoisie not to be trusted, may well step “into the shoes of its former colonial masters” and act as the new middle hand for the wider colonial-capitalist world system. Independence is not enough
- violence in anticolonial struggles justified

Question 30

Critically examine the relation between colonialism and fascism

Answer 30

According to Césaire, the fascism that had gripped Europe during the first half of the 20th century was not an aberration from European normality, but a product of its history of empire, enslavement and colonial genocide returning home, like a ‘boomerang’

Question 31

Reflect on the use of culture and nationalism in decolonisation

Answer 31

Césaires use of culture: his Négritude movement sought to rediscover African thought, culture and history to forge a transnational black identity and thereby change how the colonised viewed themselves.

Nationalism, according to Fanon, will keep the bourgeoisie in power, the newly independent country continuing to be enslaved to world capitalism and neocolonialism. National independence can only be the first step in the struggle for freedom.
According to Césaire, national independence is not sufficient for decolonisation.

Question 32

Compare and contrast Arendt’s and Fanon’s theorisation of violence

Answer 32

Arendt: for Arendt, what set the Nazi Holocaust apart from the European colonial genocide was its anti-utilitarian character: in short, the fact that it did not benefit anybody. Arendt therefore believes that there was a chasm between European colonialism and European fascism. In this view, violence is an instrument which can be used to make others obey. As Arendt (1970) explains, ‘it is close to strength, since the implements of violence, like all other tools, are designed and used for the purpose of multiplying natural strength until, in the last stage of their development,they can substitute for it’. However, Arendt (1970) also contends that “[though] Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it’. The revolutionary struggle should not be seen or conducted as inherently violent.

Fanon: there is no non-violent option for revoltuion in a world which is already saturated by violence. Fanon thus rejects the instrumentalist viewof violence, which is common among both liberals and realists: violence cannot be picked up and put down like a hammer, because violence is a structural force which permeates the world.
The revolutionary is struggle IS violence, just like colonialism is violence

Question 33

Examine the relationship between power, politics and violence

Answer 33

Arendt (1968) defines power as the human ability to act in concert: it exists among
people as they act together and disappears once the group dissolves. Unlike power, violence is an instrument which can be used to make others obey. Consensus and agreement through debate are essential features of power. Rather than being integral
to politics (Hobbes, Machiavelli), violence destroys the capacity for political life.

Question 34

Critically reflect on the contemporary relevance of Arendt’s and Fanon’s writings on violence

Answer 34

BLM “peaceful” protests, Hamas vs Israel

Question 35

Examine the social, economic and historical conditions in which modernisation theory emerged

Answer 35

Bipolar System: The Cold War rivalry between the US and the USSR created a framework where newly independent states were categorized as either “First World” (capitalist) or “Second World” (communist), with the remaining states falling into the “Third World.” Modernization theory saw development as a linear process where Third World countries needed to follow the path of Western industrialized nations. This theory, while seemingly objective, often overlooked the historical and structural inequalities created by colonialism
Background: Climate of decolonisation and the newly established American order.

Rostow (who wrote “the stages of economic growth” in 1960) argued that promotion of modernisation in the global South would both ensure a steady supply of resources, labour and markets, and simultaneously alleviate the conditions that paved the way for the spread of communism.

Question 36

Critically evaluate the relation between modernisation theory and 19th century discourses of imperialism

Answer 36

Escobar (1995): development theory as a successor to the “White mans Burden”
- eurocentric and linear
- dependency on the West
- ignoring the damage done by colonialism

Question 37

Assess the contributions of dependency theory

Answer 37

• Resources are extracted from ‘peripheral’ countries and transferred to a ‘core’ of wealthy states. Underdevelopment is therefore not the absence of development: rather, it is a product of it – what Gunder Frank (2008) calls the ‘development
  of underdevelopment’.
• dos Santos (1970): ‘By dependence we mean a situation in which the economy of certain countries is conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to which the former is subjected.

Wallerstein (1979):
- core of wealthy (imperial) states which focus on high-skill and
capital-intensive production
- periphery of cheap labour and raw materials
- semi-periphery, which combines huge wealth and mass poverty.

Question 38

Discuss arguments for and against the militarisation thesis

Answer 38

Militarisation thesis: Iraq-war military grade technologies including body armour, drones, SWAT vehicles, toxic chemicals, military aircrafts and machine guns have been integrated into policing in what effectively amounts into a militarisation of law enforcement.

Howell (2018): ‘those ‘civilian’ things that are claimed to be in danger of ‘militarisation’ have much deeper roots in warfare… and colonial violence.’

Question 39

Examine the global and colonial roots of carceral violence

Answer 39

Khalili (2010):
counterinsurgency tactics employed in colonies later adopted in counterinsurgency campaigns at home.

Schrader (2019):
- draws on black radicals such as George Jackson, who in the 1960s described policing
as ‘internal colonisation’
- expansion of incarceration and policing in the USA in this period needs
to be understood within the wider context of the USA’s global war on
communism. Just as (neo)colonial technologies and techniques have often ‘boomeranged’ back home, so domestic policing methods have frequently
served as models for counterinsurgency tactics and operations abroad
- the war on crime at home cannot be understood in isolation from the ‘war on communism’ abroad

Howell (2018):
- ‘martial politics’ = ‘the process by which war and peace are imbricated’ and enacted on racialised, indigenous, disabled and queer populations

Viewed from this perspective, the world is structured not so much through territorial state sovereignty as by what W.E.B. Du Bois called a global ‘colour line’

Question 40

Critically reflect on abolitionist frameworks and their relevance for
global justice

Answer 40

• abolition is both a negative project of dismantling violent structures, as well as a generative project of building new democratic institutions (Davis, 2005)

Lipsitz (2004):
- “any anti-racist struggle has to be transnational as well as national, inter-ethnic as well as pan-ethnic”
- “The empire is ‘in here’ as well as ‘out there’. White supremacy is a global as well as a
national project”

Question 41

Discuss the role of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ in contemporary
neoliberal capitalism

Answer 41

Harvey (2003) argues that accumulation by dispossession is a neoliberal response to the crisis of overaccumulation that has plagued the world economy since the 1970s.
- this is a crisis arising from the absence of profitable outlets for surplus capital to be invested in.
- ‘the main effect of neoliberalism has been redistributive’, not generative, therefore ‘ways had to be found to transfer [existing] assets and channel wealth and income either from the mass of the population toward the upper classes or from vulnerable to richer countries’ (Harvey, 2007)

This includes:
- the privatisation of social services, publicly owned land, and natural resources
- the rise of financialisation and various forms of predatory lending
- the violent ‘opening up’ of economies in the global South
- the curtailment of labour rights and trade union power.

Question 42

Evaluate black radical and feminist theories of primitive accumulation

Answer 42

• capitalism relies on a “racialised” servant class
• Chris Chen (2018):
  “The history of capitalism isn’t simply the history of the proletarianisation of an independent peasantry but of the violent racial domination of populations whose valorisation as wage labour, to reverse a common formulation, has been merely historically contingent”

-Frederici (2004): the onset of capitalism coincided with a restriction in womens liberties
-For scholars such as Federici or Smith (2020), patriarchy cannot be seen as a transhistorical or transcultural phenomenon. Instead, it is directly linked to the capitalist mode of production. This means that sexual and gender relations are a form of class relation; and, equally, that women’s history, just like queer history, is a form of class history. Put differently, gender and sexuality are critical terrains in the class struggle against capitalism.

Question 43

Understand the role of racial, gendered and colonial violence in the
global political economy

Question 44

Compare and contrast cosmopolitan and communitarian approaches

Question 45

Evaluate critiques of human rights

Question 46

Critically discuss Wynter’s analysis of the relation between humanism
and dehumanisation

Question 47

Discuss reasons for the historical omission of environmental concerns
in IR

Question 48

Examine the roots of global environmental problems

Question 49

Critically reflect on the uneven distribution of climate catastrophes

Question 50

Evaluate the current state of IR as a discipline

Question 51

Compare and contrast calls to globalise, decolonise, abolish and
preserve international political theory

Question 52

Gregor 1997

Answer 52

Fascism embraces elements of modernity