Lecture #2: Conceptualizing International Relations

Question 1

What is the Peloponnesian War?

Answer 1

• war between Athens and Sparta
• Sparta won
• United several Greek city-states under Athens
• marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece (478 BC)
• small states like Corinth and Cocyra to get bigger allies like Athens and Sparta involved in their wars
• liberate the states under Athenian

Question 2

What is the legacy of the Peloponnesian War?

Answer 2

• human beings are never fully satisfied with the status quo, states are inevitably seeking to maximize their interests
• increase in power of rival state must be challenged because an imbalance will encourage aggression (“Power Transition”)
• ex: sounds like the beginning of WWI
• power shift from Athens to Sparta

Question 3

What are the 3 approaches to politics?

Answer 3

• normative (moral priority of justice)
• institutional (development of law & IO)
• interpersonal/inter group (centrality of struggle for power)

Question 4

What is normative politics?

Answer 4

• politics defined in moral terms
• quest for justice
• quest for “good life” (public good) achieved when community life is “just”
• “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
• fundamental aim of politics is establishment of community justice (Plato, Socrates is Plato’s teacher)
• democracy prohibits tyranny bc ppl have freedom of choice

Question 5

What is the difference between Classical Thinkers and Medieval Thinkers?

Answer 5

• Socrates > Plato > Aristotle (classical)
• Thomas Aquinas & Dante Alighieri (Italian Christian thinkers)
• medieval thinkers/Middle Ages added religious purpose of quest for peace and justice

Question 6

What is the League of Nations?

Answer 6

• creative idea from Woodrow Wilson
• formed after WWI at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920 (Geneva, Switzerland)
• ultimately failed at world peace because WWII happened
• US did not join (isolationist policy to not get involved in war at all)

Question 7

What is the legacy of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points speech?

Answer 7

• main idea: concept of national right to “self-determination”
• he was vague
• many groups took it to mean an identified grouping of people should have the liberty to create their own gov’t
• led to new nation states and independence inspirations

Question 8

Who is E.H. Carr?

Answer 8

British diplomat historian who warned of the danger in using moral language to clothe national interest
- ex: Japan’s “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”
- ex: free trade as justification for imperialism

Question 9

Who is Joseph Rudyard Kipling?

Answer 9

• wrote The Jungle Book and The White Man’s Burden
• white man’s burden was poem about Philippine-American war
• moral of white race to civilize non-white peoples

Question 10

What is institutional politics?

Answer 10

• main authority is given to gov’t institution
• gov’t reserves right to enforce laws and use force

Question 11

Who is Max Weber?

Answer 11

• 19th century German sociologist
• defined politics as the authoritative decision-making actions of the state

Question 12

Who is David Easton?

Answer 12

• 20th century American political scientist from University of Chicago
• systems theory: defined politics as process of making authoritative decisions for an entire society

Question 13

What is interpersonal politics?

Answer 13

• “Power politics”
• politics is a quest for influence and power

Question 14

Who is Robert Dahl?

Answer 14

• 20th century American political scientist (Yale)
• politics is human relationships involving control, influence, power, and authority

Question 15

Who is Hans Morgenthau?

Answer 15

• German-American political scientist
• realist
• all politics (domestic or international) involve a struggle for power

Question 16

What is a paradigm?

Answer 16

Framework for theoretical analysis (essential basis for theory)

Question 17

Who is Samuel Huntington?

Answer 17

• “Clash of Civilizations” author (Foreign Affaird, 1993)
• thesis: future wars not likely between countries but between cultures
• cultural and religious identities will be primary source of conflict
• global interdependence heighten cultural and religious identities
• rising economic regionalism (EU, NAFTA, etc)

Question 18

Who is Francis Fukuyama?

Answer 18

• author of “End of History”
• the world reached the ‘end of history’ in a Hegelian dialectical sense
• end-point if mankind is the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of gov’t
• human rights, liberal democracy, capitalist free market economy only remaining ideological alternative post-Cold War

Question 19

What is the Hegelian Dialectic?

Answer 19

• created by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German philosopher) and Immanuel Kant
• clash of opposing ideas leads to creation of new idea
• humanity working toward an end point
• spiritualism!
• unfolding of God’s ideas - struggle between divinely inspired ideas -> change in earthly political and social environment

Question 20

What is the Marxist dialectic?

Answer 20

• Karl Marx (German)
• basis of Communism (and a utopia coming out of capitalism)
• materialism replaces Hegel’s spiritualism
• proletarian rule and development of a democratic communistic utopia

Question 21

What are the 3 ways to analyze world politics?

Answer 21

• traditionalism (WWII~1960s, history law and organizations role of power)
• behavioralism (1960s-70s, scientific methodology to world politics, quantitative)
• post-behavioralism (70s to now, combination of the above two)

Question 22

What is realism?

Answer 22

• approach to understanding world politics with the pessimistic understanding of human nature (allows to expect wars, etc.)
• Aristotle, “man is by nature a political animal”
• survival of the fittest

Question 23

What is neorealism/structural realism?

Answer 23

Same emphasis on state actors, National power, national security but less emphasis on morality

Question 24

What is liberalism/idealism?

Answer 24

• optimistic view of human nature
• politics based on power and authority contrary to common goal
• priority of law and institutions
• priority of moral purpose

Question 25

What are some examples of neoliberalism/neoliberal institutionalism?

Answer 25

• UN
• NATO
• EU
• all can increase aid and cooperation between states

Question 26

Who are some famous liberals?

Answer 26

• John Locke (called Father of Liberalism)
• Woodrow Wilson (League of Nations)
• Immanuel Kant (On Perpetual Peace)

Question 27

What is interdependence?

Answer 27

• growing influence of non-state actors
• declining role of force in world politics (rise of non-security issues like environment, human rights, natural disasters, finance, resources)