POL114H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Dependency Theory, Perpetual Peace, Bourgeoisie
21 Jun 2018
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Wednesday – May 9th, 2018
Week 1 – Lecture 2 – Chapter 1
International Relations Theory
It is the body of literature that seeks to define and explain the nature of the international system
and the behaviour of the actors within it.
What Is A Theory?
-A falsifiable and a generalizable explanation.
-Simplifies reality and leaves out details → Parsimony: explain most with least.
-Makes assumptions.
-Can only be refuted by another theory.
What Is A Theory For?
-Explaining
-Understanding
-Predicting
Problems with A Theory
-Humans read the things we write about them.
-Theories are not value-neutral (influenced by one’s beliefs, attitudes, and values), and this is
because knowledge in general is always for someone and for some purpose.
Realism/Classical Realism
-It was developed following World War II and emphasizes the role of human nature by providing
clear evidence that idealist claims about progressive inclination of human nature are naive.
-People are self-interested and political relations between groups revolve around conflict.
-They constitute unitary and rational actors seeking to protect and advance their own collective
self-interest.
-For realists, the most important form of power is hard power.
-Thomas Hobbes says that life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,
and states mitigate this by imposing order on people from above, but there is no world
government that can do so internationally on those same states.
-International politics is a zero-sum struggle for power, where the relative gain in power by one
actor implies a relative loss in power for the other actor.
-This results in national interest coming down to maintaining and maximizing the military
power.
-States must rely on self-help to ensure their own security instead of alliances and international
law.
-Order is achieved by a balance of power system where stability is maintained by flexible
alliances.
-Realpolitik are politics which are based on given circumstances and factors rather than
ideology.
Neorealism/Structural Realism
-Emphasizes the anarchic nature of the system as determinant of state behaviour, instead of
emphasizing the role of human nature.
-Anarchy does not mean complete chaos but implies the lack of a central authority (world
government and police force) that ensures order.
-The primary actors in the global politics system are states, and military power is the guarantor
of survival, and sometimes states must choose what to do based on pure self-interest, therefore,
in an anarchic environment, states would choose to go to war.
-When it comes to national interest (maintaining and maximizing military power), anarchy
results in self-help (no reliance on alliances or international laws).
-A non-anarchic world can prevent this, but it would require a world government and police
force, which is an idea that is rejected by realists because they view it as a virtual impossibility.
-State as a black box, means that the state’s internal dynamics are only known to those that are
part of the system.
-Billiard ball means that studying the internal politics of a state is unnecessary to understand
international relations which instead can be understood by examining the pressures and
interactions on and in between them.
-Polarity is any of the various ways in which power is distributed within the international
system.
-Unipolarity is when one state has majority of the cultural, economic, and military power and
influence.
Document Summary
Week 1 lecture 2 chapter 1. It is the body of literature that seeks to define and explain the nature of the international system and the behaviour of the actors within it. Simplifies reality and leaves out details parsimony: explain most with least. Humans read the things we write about them. Theories are not value-neutral (influenced by one"s beliefs, attitudes, and values), and this is because knowledge in general is always for someone and for some purpose. It was developed following world war ii and emphasizes the role of human nature by providing clear evidence that idealist claims about progressive inclination of human nature are naive. People are self-interested and political relations between groups revolve around conflict. They constitute unitary and rational actors seeking to protect and advance their own collective self-interest. For realists, the most important form of power is hard power.
