Terms Flashcards
Power
Power: capacity of one state to force another state to do its will against theirs (realists: power mitigates anarchy, is the only guarantor of your sovereignty; power made up of military (most important), economy, geography, unity of population-anything that establishes and maintains control of man over man (Morgenthau)) Waltz: power is a means, not an end
Hegemon
Hegemon: advantageous for a state to have political strength, military force, and superior national power, large and growing economy, will to lead and have a hegemonic regime and enforce the rules in the system
Harmony of Interests
Harmony of Interests: in pursuing his own interest, the individual pursues that of the community, and in promoting the interest of the community he promotes his own, adam smith roots (Carr anti) Owen-all persons share a fundamental interest in self-preservation and material well-being, leads to harmony of interests
State System
State system: group of independent neighboring states more or less connected with one another and of relatively equal power, must possess a clearly defined territory (Gulick); two or more states with sufficient contact between them and sufficient impact on one another’s decisions (Waltz proponent)
Balance of Power
Balance of Power: Aim is to insure the survival of independent states; prevent preponderance of power of one member of system, preserve individual states through preservation of system, need watchfulness, can keep through coalitions or alliances (Gulick) several actors of relatively equal power, states must want to survive, states able to ally with each other to promote short-run interests, war is a legitimate instrument of statecraft (Jervis); a competitive system
Band Wagoning
ally with the most threatening state (including most physically powerful)
Self-Help System
Self-help system: Waltz: present in international system with no international government in anarchy; considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political interest; those who do not help themselves suffer (also Layne)
Anarchy
Anarchy: independent states with no central authority above them (Mearsheimer) not incompatible with economic interdependence (Bull) Anarchy spurs you to pursue hegemony (Gilpin) world politics is decentralized rather than hierarchic, states are subject to no superior govt (Keohane); for realists, leads to self-help; for liberals possibility of harmony of interests through trade and comparative advantage; for constructivists anarchy doesn’t necessarily lead to self help
Security Dilemma
Security dilemma: reflects the logic of offensive realism (Mearsheimer); stronger when offense is more potent than defense and when hard to distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons (Jervis) potential in US/China relations (Friedberg)
Order
Order: a pattern of behavior that sustains the primary goals of social life; maintained by rules (Bull)
Rules
Rules: General imperative principles which require or authorize prescribed classes of persons or groups to behave in prescribed ways, socially effective because of institutions; rules can be constitutional, rules of coexistence (sovereignty, restricting violence), regulating cooperation (Bull) specific prescriptions or proscriptions for action (Krasner)
Bipolarity
Bipolarity: Pro: Waltz (great powers conservative) Con: Gilpin (states can fail to counterbalance each other, thrown out of whack by minor changes)
Bi-multipolarity
Bi-multipolarity: Rosecrance: bipolar states are cooperative to repel challenges and competitive to prevent other from attaining predominance, multipolar countries work together to check ambitions of bipolar states, act as buffers
Multipolarity
Multipolarity: Pro-Deutsch and Singer-less instability than bipolar, system maintains characteristics
Unipolarity
Unipolarity: Wohlforth: unipolar w/US is stable, prone to peace, durable-preponderance in economic, military, technological, geopolitical; US has to be interventionist and spend money; Layne-con, great powers will emerge; based on power-nobody else can balance
Power Cycle Theory
Power cycle theory: Doran: States go through stages-rapid growth, slower growth, peak, rapid descent, slower descent, demise; war most likely at inflection points of rate of growth change; can have absolute gain but relative decline
Hegemonic Stability
Hegemonic Stability Theory- International system likely to remain stable when one national state is the dominant world power, so the fall of an existing hegemon or state of no hegemon can result in a loss of stability in the international system; lack of dominant economy between WWI and WWII contributed to the Great Depression
- need political strength, military force (also navy and air necessary), large and growing economy, will to lead and become a hegemon
- (neo-realists: Gilpin) anarchic system creates power hungry states that will each attempt to install themselves as global hegemons, and the system is created and maintained by coercion. Hegemon will begin to undermine system when not in its interests
- (neo-liberalists) hegemon provides public goods through institutions and works in the best interests of everyone; it is motivated by enlightened self interest; with the decline of the hegemon, interests do not die, but take on a life of their own
Liberalism
Liberalism: improvement/progress to manage politics is possible and tangible in history; individual (people not as selfish), commercial, democratic, intl. regimes/institutions; Doyle: liberal rights, less likely to have wars when citizens who elect govts bear burdens of war, capitalism and democracy pacifying
Democratic Peace Theory
Democratic Peace Theory: Owen: Democracies accommodate fellow democracies, but sometimes call for war with non-democracies (perception that non-democracies may be interested in conquest or plunder); come from institutional constraints or ideas/norms; perception of other country as liberal democracy is the key to dem. peace theory; democracies build institutions that enhance peace
International Regime
International regime: general pattern of international activity that follows more or less established rules on how you should behave; no cost for leaving, more narrow in purpose than institutions (human rights, monetary policy), made up of principles, rules, norms, and decision-making procedures (Krasner); the sets of governing arrangements that affect relationships of interdependence (Nye and Keohane) establish legal liability, provide symmetrical information, and arrange costs of bargaining so that agreements can be more easily made (Keohane)
International Institutions
International Institutions: arrangements built by man/states based on principles, have procedures for how to deal with principles; modify state behavior by reducing uncertainty, lowering transaction costs, solving collective action problem; most needed when hegemon declines (Keohane) or after hegemonic victory (Ikenberry) Sticky because formal, legal, binding; create transgovernment connections, can become vehicle for other organizing activity (Ikenberry) Institutions improve actors’ ability to implement rationality, which leads to an environment for greater cooperation
Interdependence
Interdependence: where there are reciprocal costly effects of transactions; have sensitivity (how quickly and size of costs) and vulnerability (costs to address challenge) (Nye and Keohane)
Interconnectedness
Interconnectedness: Where interactions do not have significant costly effects
Complex interdependence
Complex interdependence: (Nye and Keohane): multiple channels connect societies (interstate, transgovernmental, transnational), intl relationships consist of multiple issues not in clear or consistent hierarchy, military force is not used by govts towards other govts within the region when complex interdependence prevails
Linkage
Linkage (Nye and Keohane): linkage of unrelated issues is often a means of extracting concessions or side payments from rich and powerful states-poor states can use intl organizations
Norms
Norms: standards of behavior, rights, and obligations (Krasner)-ex free trade, sovereignty, diplomatic immunity; Rosecrance: important for 21st century economy (free trade, open domestic economies) to reinforce economic incentives to reduce conflict between intl. units
Constructivism
-Constructivism: The meanings in terms of which action is organized arise out of interaction; the process of signaling, interpreting, and responding completes a social act and begins the process of creating intersubjective meanings (Wendt) emphasis on intersubjective human action, need mutually recognized constitutive rules resting on collective intentionality (Ruggie) states have agency; nothing objective/fixed in time
Social Construction
Social construction: processes of interaction produce and reproduce the social structures, cooperative or conflictual, that shape actors’ identities and interests and the significance of their material contexts; fact that groups interact leads to shared ideas, etc (Wendt)
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity: history of interactions between states and what states share: norms, values, culture etc.
Norms entrepreneurs
Norms entrepreneurs: actors that establish new norms of behavior or rules in anarchy (Constructivists emphasize non-state actors and actions)
Rationality
Rationality- actors have consistent goals that they know; several options to achieve goals; actors can calculate costs/benefits; actors rank options and pick the one that is most cost effective (Allison discussion of rational actor model- analysts attempt to understand happening as the more or less purposive acts of unified national governments)
Organizational Process Model
Organizational process model: State policy is less an outcome of a deliberate decision, but more of an output of organizations functioning with certain existing rules and standard operating procedures.; organizations are slow to change, greater chance of normal accidents (ex Cuban missile crisis-normal us nuclear test heightened tensions, Cubans shot down U2 based on SOPs but could have expanded conflict) (Allison Discussion)—Monten and Bennett say was strong influence in Gulf War I and crisis
Bureaucratic politics model
Bureaucratic politics model: Policies are formed based on the different competing preferences of different organizations-decisions made not on single choice, more from pulling/hauling. Bureaucratic interests likely to be in competition with each other-what matters is your ability to influence process, resources, agenda setting, controlling information-not necessarily rational outcomes (Allison discussion-perceptions, motivations, positions, power, maneuvers of principle players)
Coercion
Coercion: use of threat of force to achieve a specific outcome: requires rationality, threat alters process of logic of other side, use of force seen as failure of coercion (Schelling: make opponent to be better off doing what we want considering threatened penalty
Deterrence
Deterrence: preventing someone from taking an action (keep same behavior)-difficult because indefinite duration, have to maintain threat; alter intentions of other side by showing your intentions; (Schelling: persuading countries that you will invade is not sufficient; also requires communicating and projecting intentions to make other country behave) Direct vs extended (allies); immediate vs general; deterrence by punishment/denial (hardening targets); need capability, credibility, rationality
Nuclear Deterrence
Nuclear deterrence: minimum (to destroy country), massive (no form of life possible), nuclear warfighting; second strike capability important
Compellence
Compellence: Want to change behavior of opponent; has a clear end (when behavior is altered); escalation vs immediate unacceptable punishment
Ideology
Ideology: agendas for action; normative; non-falsifiable; mirror imaging can happen
Prospect Theory
Prospect theory: how we interpret our choices, as gains or losses, influences how much risk we will take; how we frame information influences judgment (Mercer discusses) people are more willing to take risk if outcome is framed as a loss rather than a gain
Groupthink
Groupthink: (Janis): a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action
Misperception
Misperception: ideology, expectations that state will behave in certain way, imperfect information; Jervis-need devil’s advocates, awareness that decisionmakers do not make unbiased assessments of new information
Concert
Concert: expectation of mutual restraint that leads to less emphasis on making short term gains, and less nervousness by others to see a state register a gain.; form after a large war against a potential hegemon because it alters assumptions about alliances and use of war
Alliance
Alliance: two or three powers (smaller than a coalition) get together to check preponderant power (Gulick)-need an enemy; for realists, stay in as long as you continue to have same interests
Organizational Culture Approach
Organizational Culture Approach: takes into account the patterns of assumptions, ideas, and beliefs that prescribe how a group should adapt to its external environment and manage its internal structure. Different dynamics for groups whose cultures differ (Legro)
Leadership
Leadership: Classical realist-prudent (pursue policies that maximize power but do not extend commitments beyond capabilities; bluffing is dangerous)
Neorealist: following the system tells you what to do
Liberal: Domestic system more powerful than leaders (accountability)
Liberal Institutionalist: Leaders play role in building regimes, institutions, which constrain the leaders
Constructivists: stress leadership; leaders are catalysts for change, can alter state behavior (ex EU driven by leaders)
Collective Action Problem
Collective Action Problem: Challenge to figure out who will act against a problem because of a fear that you will pay more than the others, but all will benefit (ex free rider problem-NATO)-solve through institutions
