The Rise of Democracy

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Hobson
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Negative Perceptions ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Very High ◽  
The Way

Little over 200 years ago, a quarter of a century of warfare with an ‘outlaw state’ brought the great powers of Europe to their knees. That state was the revolutionary democracy of France. In the intervening period, there has been a remarkable transformation in the way democracy is understood and valued – today, it is the non-democratic states that are seen as rogue regimes. This book looks at the historical contrast between the strongly negative perceptions of democracy in the 18th century and the very high degree of acceptance and legitimacy in contemporary international politics. It considers democracy’s remarkable rise from obscurity to centre stage in contemporary international relations, and uses history as a foundation for developing a normative defence of democracy.

Empires, systems and states: great transformations in international politics

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cox ◽  
Tim Dunne ◽  
Ken Booth
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
International History ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

‘History is too important to be left to the historians”.The relationship between history, international history and international relations has never been an easy or a particularly amicable one. To talk of a cold war may be something of an exaggeration, but it does capture something about the way in which the various subjects tended to regard the other for the greater part of the post-war period. Thus practising historians and international historians appeared to have little time for each other, and together had even less for those seeking to establish the new discipline of International Relations.

scholarly journals Anarchy Is What Explains the History of International Relations

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
William C. Wohlforth
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
World War ◽  
National Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Antecedents ◽  
The Great War

The article examines the major events of the two previous centuries of international relations through main concepts of political realism. The author argues that in order to understand the present dilemmas and challenges of international politics, we need to know the past. Every current major global problem has historical antecedents. History from the late 19th century constitutes the empirical foundation of much theoretical scholarship on international politics. The breakdown of the Concert of Europe and the outbreak of the devastating global conflagration of World War I are the events that sparked the modern study of international relations. The great war of 1914 to 1918 underlined the tragic wastefulness of the institution of war. It caused scholars to confront one of the most enduring puzzles of the study of international relations, why humans continue to resort to this self-destructive method of conflict resolution? The article shows that the main explanation is the anarchical system of international relations. It produces security dilemma, incentives to free ride and uncertainty of intentions among great powers making war a rational tool to secure their national interests.

scholarly journals Structural Realism, Classical Realism and Human Nature

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Classical Realism ◽  
The Way

Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics is a modern classic, and deserves to be read the way classic texts ought to be read, i.e. in context and in its own terms. Recovering the context in this case is difficult because of the changes in the discourse since 1979, but one difference between the contemporary and the current reception of the text does seem clear — Waltzian structural realism (or neorealism) is now, but was not then, seen as breaking with the traditions of classical realism. How is this discontinuity to be understood? Part of the answer lies in the rhetoric employed by participants in this debate, but, more substantively, there is a genuine disagreement between neorealism and classical realism over the role played by human nature in international relations. Waltzian neorealism appears, contrary to the tradition, to reject any major role for human nature, describing theories that emphasise this notion as `reductionist'; however, on closer examination, the picture is less clear-cut. Waltz's account of human nature can be related quite closely to the major strands in the realist genealogy, but at a tangent to them. Interestingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, it is also compatible with at least some of the findings of contemporary evolutionary psychology.

When Right Makes Might: How Prussia Overturned the European Balance of Power

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacie E. Goddard
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Structural Variables ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Way

From 1864 to 1871, Prussia mounted a series of wars that fundamentally altered the balance of power in Europe. Yet no coalition emerged to check Prussia's rise. Rather than balance against Prussian expansion, the great powers sat on the sidelines and allowed the transformation of European politics. Traditionally, scholars have emphasized structural variables, such as mulitpolarity, or domestic politics as the cause of this “underbalancing.” It was Prussia's legitimation strategies, however—the way Prussia justified its expansion—that undermined a potential balancing coalition. As Prussia expanded, it appealed to shared rules and norms, strategically choosing rhetoric that would resonate with each of the great powers. These legitimation strategies undermined balancing coalitions through three mechanisms: by signaling constraint, laying rhetorical traps (i.e., framing territorial expansion in a way that deprived others states grounds on which to resist), and increasing ontological security (i.e., demonstrating its need to secure its identity in international politics), Prussia effectively expanded without opposition. An analysis of Prussia's expansion in 1864 demonstrates how legitimation strategies prevented the creation of a balancing coalition.

Theorizing Agency in Hobbes's Wake: The Rational Actor, the Self, or the Speaking Subject?

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Epstein
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The Self ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe rationalist-constructivist divide that runs through the discipline of International Relations (IR) revolves around two figures of agency, the rational actor and the constructivist “self.” In this article I examine the models of agency that implicitly or explicitly underpin the study of international politics. I show how both notions of the rational actor and the constructivist self have remained wedded to individualist understandings of agency that were first incarnated in the discipline's self-understandings by Hobbes's natural individual. Despite its turn to social theory, this persistent individualism has hampered constructivism's ability to appraise the ways in which the actors and structures of international politics mutually constitute one another “all the way down.” My purpose is to lay the foundations for a nonindividualist, adequately relational, social theory of international politics. To this end I propose a third model of agency, Lacan's split speaking subject. Through a Lacanian reading of the Leviathan, I show how the speaking subject has in fact laid buried away in the discipline's Hobbesian legacy all along.

Is Russia Resurrected?

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-28
Author(s):  
Kathryn E. Stoner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
First Century ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
The Military

Russia has developed outsized influence in international politics in the twenty-first century, although on paper it does not have the traditional means of power that the United States or China does, for example. Yet, if we look beyond traditional realist measures of power in international relations of human capital, size of the military, and economic means, to also include the relative scope and weight of Russian influence in key policy areas, as well as assessing its geographic domain of influence under Vladimir Putin, Russia is not as weak relative to other great powers as it might at first appear. Under Putin’s autocracy, his regime has also become more willing to project power abroad in order to maintain domestic stability.

Forum on Social Theory of International Politics

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-124 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Scientific Realism ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Social Kinds ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

It is fitting that one of the last major statements of International Relations theory in the 1990s should be a response to Kenneth Waltz's path-breaking book, Theory of International Politics. Unlike many other critically inclined scholars, Wendt believes that Waltz asked the right questions but supplied the wrong answers. Putting it simply, Waltz incorrectly conceptualized the structure of the international system. The first half of Wendt's book sets out to offer an alternative social theory of international politics to the ‘materialism’ and ‘individualism’ found in Waltz's work (specifically, chapters on ‘Scientific realism and social kinds’, ‘Ideas all the way down? On the constitution of power and interest’, and ‘Structure, agency, and culture’).

E.H. Carr and IPE: An Essay in Retrieval

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 952-962
Author(s):  
Randall Germain
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Scale ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Abstract Although the work of E.H. Carr has a prominent place in the scholarly history of international relations (IR), it is notably absent from the discipline of international political economy (IPE). This is puzzling, because Carr's analysis of international politics places a strong emphasis on the organic connection between politics and economics on an international scale. On this reading, his principal publications on IR can also be seen to chart a sophisticated conceptualization of what I want to label historical IPE. This essay retrieves such a reading of Carr for the discipline of IPE. It begins by interrogating the way in which Carr's work has been appropriated by modern IPE scholarship, in order to highlight the limited use made of the political economy dimension of his research. I then explore the historical and political economy aspects of Carr's writings to consider how his contribution might advance recent contemporary theoretical debate in the discipline. I pay particular attention to how his work charts an historical conception of IPE that can synthesize and move beyond the rationalist/constructivist binary that currently dominates theorizing in the discipline.

Realism as tragedy

2004 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian C. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Essential Dynamics ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
Influential Book ◽  
The University ◽  
Dominant Theory

In 1948, Hans J. Morgenthau wrote his classic text, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, that was largely responsible for establishing realism as the prevailing theory in the field of International Relations (IR). In 1979, Kenneth N. Waltz wrote an immensely influential book, Theory of International Politics, that resulted in a new structural version of realism – neorealism – becoming the dominant theory in IR. John J. Mearsheimer, who is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, has written a profoundly important book that rightfully deserves a prominent place along with Morgenthau and Waltz in the canon of realist thought about international politics. Mearsheimer's clearly written book puts forth a new structural theory of realism that he terms offensive realism. This version of realism argues that the observable patterns of behaviour among all of the great powers throughout history, most notably their ubiquitous power-seeking, can be explained by the fact that they exist in a condition of anarchy in which there is no higher source of authority above them. While sharing many of the same basic assumptions with neorealism, offensive realism, as elucidated by Mearsheimer, provides a fundamentally different account of the essential dynamics of international politics than that which Waltz and his students have been offering for the last twenty years or so.

International Relations and the Problem of Time

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Hom
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Problem Of Time ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

What is time and how does it influence our knowledge of international politics? For decades International Relations (IR) paid little explicit attention to time. Recently this began to change as a range of scholars took an interest in the temporal dimensions of politics. Yet IR still has not fully addressed the issue of why time matters, nor has it reflected on its own use of time—how temporal assumptions and ideas affect the way we understand political phenomena. Moreover, IR remains beholden to two seemingly contradictory visions of time: the time of the clock and a long-standing tradition of treating time as a problem to be solved. International Relations and the Problem of Time develops a unique response to these interconnected puzzles. It reconstructs IR’s temporal imagination by developing an argument that all times—from the rhythms of the universe to individual temporal experience—spring from social and practical timing activities, or efforts to establish meaningful and useful relationships in complex and dynamic settings. In IR’s case, across a wide range of approaches scholars employ narrative timing techniques to make sense of political processes and events. This innovative account of time provides a more systematic and rigorous explanation for all manner of temporal phenomena in international politics. It also develops provocative insights about IR’s own history, its key methodological commitments, supposedly “timeless” statistical methods, historical institutions, and the critical vanguard of time studies. This book invites us to reimagine time in theory and practice, and in so doing to significantly rethink the way we approach the study of international politics.

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