PLSC 2287 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Offensive Realism, Defensive Realism, Security Dilemma
12 Feb 2018
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The individual level: beliefs ideologies, personality how did u grow up, mentality, perception ability of human beings to perceive, misperception decisions, question: would different leader in the same situation make different. Too much focus on specific and non-generalizable cases. Interest groups: question: would states with different regimes act differently in the same situation. Advantages and disadvantages of the state level: advantages: allows a richer differentiation between actors with very different characteristics, disadvantages: too much focus on specific and non generalizable cases, exaggerates the importance of differences between states. Advantages and disadvantages of state level: advantages: the only comprehensive view of ir in their entit. The goal of defensive realism: the balance of power: definition: a distribution and opposition of forces among nations such that no single nation is strong enough to assert its will or dominate all other states. Internal balancing: external balancing, ww2 did great powers balance each other, elements with balance of power failed and succeeded.
