Whole thing Flashcards
What is the difference between anarchy and chaos?
Anarchy is organized chaos, chaos means complete disorder with no organization or structure at all
Anarchy can exist without chaos, while chaos is inherently disordered.
How does Fearon (1995) define anarchy?
Anarchy is the absence of a central authority capable of enforcing agreements or preventing the use of force between states
Why can’t anarchy explain warfare?
According to Fearon (1995), anarchy alone cannot fully explain warfare because to fails to address why rational actors would choose costly and risky wars when there are typically negotiated settlements that both sides would prefer to fighting.
Why may anarchy be a necessary condition for war, but not a sufficient condition?
Fearon argues that anarchy is a necessary condition of war, but other conditions are necessary for war or conflict to erupt.
Anarchy creates an environment where conflict can occur, but it is not sufficient in itself for conflict to arise. These conditions are: commitment problems, private information and indivisibility are
What does Fearon mean with private information ?
War can result from states withholding or misrepresenting key information about their capabilities or resolve to gain better bargaining positions, leading to miscalculation.
What does Fearon mean with commitment problems ?
War may occur if states cannot credibly commit to respecting agreements, particularly in situations of shifting power. Anarchy only exacerbates this issue; it doesn’t directly cause it.
There’s no governing body to oversee countries holding true to their commitments. States are therefore hesitant and reluctant to commit to an agreement (or in essence, peace)
What is preemptive war?
This type of war occurs when a state believes that an attack by an adversary is imminent and strikes first to gain an advantage. The logic is to disrupt or neutralize the adversary’s ability to launch their intended strike. It is often tied to the concept of a “first strike advantage”, where acting primitive provides a better strategic position or mitigates the anticipated damage from the opponent’s initial attack (Fearon 1995)
What is preventive war?
Preventive war arises from a state’s perception that its relative power will decline in the future due to the adversary’s growing power. The state then chooses to attack before the adversary becomes too strong or influential. Preventive wars are based on long-term calculations and are linked to commitment problems.
Ex: a declining state fears that a rising power won’t honor agreements when it becomes dominant in the future, leading to the declining state to take action whilst it still holds the advantage.
Are intangible incentives rational?
Blattman (2022) acknowledges that intangible incentives are rational from the perspective of the actors who hold them, but they often lead to outcomes that are suboptimal or destructive.
He highlights that these incentives shrink the bargaining range because they make compromise seem like betrayal or failure. However, this doesn’t mean the motivations themselves are irrational; rather, they are a reflection of deeply held values and beliefs.
What are Blattman’s five reasons for why we fight?
- Intangible incentives (direct and indirect utility)
- Uncertainty
- misperception
- commtiment problem
- unchecked interests
What are specialists in violence?
As agrarian societies spread and developed, a surplus of food led to a bigger population. The traditional societal structure of “everyone does everything” was not longer efficient, and the need for sociatel structure and organization emerged. The surplus of food needed to be proteced from bandits, and thus the specialists in violence came to be.
Violence was used to protect food surplus, territory and external threats in general
What are illiberal democracies?
Zakaria (1997) defined illiberl democracies without constitutional liberalism. Constitutional liberalism refers to the upholding of rule of law, freedom of speech, religion and assembly.
Illiberal democracies are often characterized by limited freedom of speech, as a means to consolidate power for the government and elite. Illiberal democracies prioritize majority rule, and ethnic groups or other marginalized societies are often repressed - which causes grievances and incentives for discontent amongst the population.
What are roving bandits?
Groups or individuals that pilage and plunder resources in a region without establishing and long-term governance or stability. They prioritize immediate gain, and extract wealth without precaution to long term economic gain in the society.
They do not impose any sense of roder in the area, and their presence is chaos and can dismantel the incentives to invest in the area.
What does populism do to democratic norms?
Zakaria (1997) wanrs that unckecked populism in democracies can erode democratic norms and lead to illiberal democracies, undermining institutional safeguards.
Misperceptions is considered to stem from irrationality, how so?
Mispercpetions is rooted in irrationality because it comes from emotional decisions, biased beliefs, cognitive biases, rather than from a rational analysis of information
