The nature of sophisticated realism: Raymond Aron and international relations

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Hall

Aron made a distinctive, cognitively high-powered addition to classical realism. As a sociologist he stressed that war was likely to be relatively limited if two conditions were fulfilled. First, the international system needed to be relatively homogeneous, so as to increase understanding between states. Second, states needed to become intelligent, able to calculate clearly. In the absence of these factors war was likely to move towards the extremes.

Author(s):  
Ekaterine Lomia

Realism, also known as political realism, is one of the most dominant theories of international relations. The school of thought in realism was established in the post-World War II era; however, it is widely associated with the ancient Greek studies, particularly, in the works of Thucydides who allows a more sophisticated analysis of the conception of power and its place in the anarchic international system. Unlike idealism and liberalism, which underline the idea of cooperation in international relations, realism stresses a competitive and confrontational side of human nature and argues that in global politics there is no space for morality. Thus, states show constant readiness to obtain power and achieve their political ends. The article aims at studying the basic approach, the theory of realism is based on. The study has been prepared as a result of examining articles and books written by dominant realist scholars who have influential opinions in the field.        


1989 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Jarvis

Many scholars in International Relations will register surprise and perhaps amusement at the recent 'discovery' of the state by sociologists. They could accurately claim, it has never been similarly neglected in their own discipline. International Relations is about states and the system of states. Classical realism relies on explicit understandings about what states are and their place in the international system.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Jalal Dehghani Firoozabadi ◽  
Mojtaba Zare Ashkezari

<p>Neo-classical realism is result of foreign policy studies through studying both structure of international system and domestic factors and their complex interactions with each other. The main goal of neoclassical realism is to find out how distribution of power in international system, motivations and subjective structures of states toward international system shape their foreign policy. Neo-classical realists reject the idea of neo-realism in which it is argued that systemic pressures will immediately affect behaviours of units. They believe that the extend of systemic effects on states behaviour depends on relative power and also internal factors of states in anarchical system. This article is to study how neo-classical realism applies assumptions such as anarchy, effects of structure-agent, role of power in creating behaviours, national interests, survival and security in order to analyse international politics.</p>


Author(s):  
Anwar Mohammed Faraj Mahmood ◽  
Bakhan Ako Najmalddin

The field of international relations has been assessed through diverse theoretical framework including realism. Classical realism has been reformed by neorealists for analyzing current actors and interactions in international relations. For neorealists, the most essential characteristic of the international arena is anarchy, which they argue exists because the international system lacks a world government with the capability of making and imposing international law, which in turn makes cooperating among states difficult. Then, competition and conflict can never be avoided in such situation. Thus, states must eventually guarantee their own survival and security.   Neorealists describe states as the main actors in international relations and they have a negative view about non-state actors, in particular international and regional organizations; they state that organizations have no capacity to control a states' attitude or to prevent war or at least minimize anarchy in the international politics. Moreover, neorealists emphasize that organizations are ineffective because the agendas they set tend to be controlled by the superpower states, and they are in fact tools for increasing superpower influence. Neorealists support their argument by highlighting many case studies such as the United Nations, the European Union, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and World Trade Organization.


Author(s):  
Marwan Awni Kamil

This study attempts to give a description and analysis derived from the new realism school in the international relations of the visions of the great powers of the geopolitical changes witnessed in the Middle East after 2011 and the corresponding effects at the level of the international system. It also examines the alliances of the major powers in the region and its policies, with a fixed and variable statement to produce a reading that is based on a certain degree of comprehensiveness and objectivity.


Author(s):  
Salah Hassan Mohammed ◽  
Mahaa Ahmed Al-Mawla

The Study is based on the state as one of the main pillars in international politics. In additions, it tackles its position in the international order from the major schools perspectives in international relations, Especially, these schools differ in the status and priorities of the state according to its priorities, also, each scholar has a different point of view. The research is dedicated to providing a future vision of the state's position in the international order in which based on the vision of the major schools in international relations.


Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-545
Author(s):  
Mark Beeson

AbstractOne of the more striking, surprising, and optimism-inducing features of the contemporary international system has been the decline of interstate war. The key question for students of international relations and comparative politics is how this happy state of affairs came about. In short, was this a universal phenomenon or did some regions play a more important and pioneering role in bringing about peaceful change? As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay suggests that Western Europe generally and the European Union in particular played pivotal roles in transforming the international system and the behavior of policymakers. This helped to create the material and ideational conditions in which other parts of the world could replicate this experience, making war less likely and peaceful change more feasible. This argument is developed by comparing the experiences of the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their respective institutional offshoots. The essay uses this comparative historical analysis to assess both regions’ capacity to cope with new security challenges, particularly the declining confidence in institutionalized cooperation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.


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