POLSCI 3Q03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Human Nature, Kenneth Waltz, Jane Goodall
19 Sep 2016
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Poli science 3qo3 - lecture september 19 2016. Has personal experience in war which is why he studied it. His undergraduate degree was interrupted by war. A part of discipline when it was divided between realist theories and liberal theories: he was working within the realist theories. He was contending with people who thought power was the most important factor in states. That self-interest was all there was to think about. Explain state behaviour based on human nature: understanding state as a human actor. Waltz shifted way realist thought about things, brought it to classical-liberalism: interstate conflict is rooted in the absence of structural authority, said human nature was not the focus, rather the system is the focus. Believed there was three sources of war: these were levels at which you have the causes, level at which you can limit thinking, this is not a theory, it is a way of classifying different causal factors.
