International Relations: Important Theories

Realism devils four basic assumptions ab divulge foreign transaction * The secernate is the most important actor in international relations. This gist that national governments argon the most important player in the halting of international politicsinterest groups like Amnesty International or individual figures like the pope contrive no effect on how nations relate to one another. * The state is a unitary and rational actor. one(a) sum that the state speaks with one voice although members of a nation whitethorn have patchy different views on the best approach to a situation, only one approach will be enacted.Rational means that the state is capable of identifying goals and preferences and determining their relative importance. * International relations atomic number 18 essential conflictual because of anarchy. In this case, anarchy does not mean chaos kinda it refers to the absence of a higher authority to sustain aggression or arbitrate disputes. Just as men might run possessed(predicate) and firing one another without the government to punish them, nations will attack one another so long as they remember it in their best interest.Anarchy also compels states to arm themseves in redact to looking at secure. The stockpiling of arms and the wee-weeing of a military, however, atomic number 18 provocative actions which proceed neighbouring states to feel insecure and build up their own weapons. * Security and strategic issues, known as high politics, dominate the international agenda. This means that states paramount goal is to maximize their power in the international conjunction, and that they ar earlier concerned with military power.An example of a nation operating go over to this maxim is North Korea in the early 90sthe downfall of the Soviet legal jointure left them without Communist allies, so they began a nuclear weapons development programme and threw out UN observers. They believed that if their government gained nuclear power, it would survive in the international community because other countries would fear them. Liberalism * Liberal international relations theories are establish on the idea that hu manhoods are PERFECTABLE. In contrast to the sordid man of realism or even he survival man of realism, broad(a) theories tend to see man as rational as well as learning, striving, and improving over time. Liberals believe in PROGRESS.* Liberals believe that humans can learn to COOPERATE to improve their lives PEACE is seen as a preferred condition and therefore shipway should be give to foster peace among states. This allows man to focus on the substantive things that make up the good life food, art, culture, literature, farming, families. Everything but weapons and the fighting of struggle. Liberals believe that war stems from INADEQUATE INSTITUTIONS OR MISUNDERSTANDINGS, so we prevent war by crafting advance institutions and eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding through education and discu ssion. * War stems from misery, POVERTY, INEQUALITY. * Liberal approaches a good deal also see man as tied to fellow man by a COMMON HUMANITY.Therefore, the limits imposed by state boundaries are artificial. This leads to ideas such as the pursuit of human rights violators across state boundaries, desireing to engage in development assistance. League of Nations and UN Charters have strains of this type of liberal idealism making peaceful settlement of disputes a new norm. reduce past international conflict through institutionalized collective harborive covering mechanisms. * Some influential liberal ideas today INTERDEPENDENCE and the rise of NON-STATE ACTORS. * mutualness Economic linkages, communication technologies finally making possible one domain with one common humanity. All linked together, cant go to war without causing hardship to all.This has been developed further in the mid-nineties to a school of thought which sees globalization as rendering war among major power s as impossible, would impoverish everyone, no one has an incentive to tremble the globalization boat. * Rise of non-state actors new non-state actors becoming more influential than the centenarian states of realist international relations discourse multinational companies many of which have greater annual turnover than developing countries GDPs, new cross-national issue groups the Greens, Greenpeace, Amnesty International.These corporations and organizations are breaking down the state, establishing common interests across borders. Generally, foster peace. * Also, recently re-in manner in the liberal camp is the DEMOCRATIC PEACE THESIS, the idea that democracies do not fight one another. * Liberal approaches have fostered much of the increase of INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS (neo-liberalism with emphasis on institutions). International organizations are seen as ways of mediating conflict among states, establishing bases of cooperation, establishing rational-legalistic codes of con duct under which all will be break off off. Some liberal internationalists see the evolution of international organizations, the development of international law, the growth of cross-national civil society groups as evidence that the state is cosmos transgressed, or at least having its capacity for war-generating action reduced. * ANALOGY TO house servant STATE at international level. As in the domestic state where the government provides some order to relations among citizens, so international organizations (darn not a innovation government) can provide some stability, security, and predictability to inter-state interactions.Can prevent states from being trapped in the SECURITY DILEMMA (need force to protect ego, arms build up scares others into thinking you are going to attack, they build up their forces, they scare you, endless cycle of build-up ultimately leading to violence. By making self more secure through arms, make self less secure by compelling arms acquisition on nei ghbour/rival), can foster and build on areas where cooperation helpful to bring in mutual interests, cooperation reinforcing.States can learn through international organizations/cooperation and change their preferences and behaviors. * IRAQ warfare Liberals would certainly see Saddam Hussein as a difficulty authoritarian, had shown proclivity to invade others. Marxism Marxism is one of the basic theories of international relations. According to Marxists, some(prenominal) realism and liberalism/idealism are simply self-serving ideologies introduced by the sparing elites to defend and justify global inequality.Instead, Marxists argue, class is the fundamental unit of psychoanalysis of international relations, and the international system has been constructed by the upper classes and the wealthiest nations in order to protect and defend their interests. The various Marxist theories of international relations agree that the international state system was constructed by capitalists and therefore serves the interests of wealthy states and corporations, which seek to protect and expand their wealth.According to Marxist theory the First serviceman and Third World are merely components of a larger world system which originated in 16th-century European colonialism. Instead, these states actually make up the content and periphery of the world system &8212 respectively, the central wealthy states which own and primarily benefit from the mechanisms of production, and the impoverished developing countries which supply most of the human parturiency and natural resources exploited by the rich.States which do not fit each class, but lie somewhere in the middle of the model, are referred to as semi-peripheral. The marrow squash-periphery thesis of world-systems theory is based upon another body of work, dependency theory, which argues that the innovation of international politics is the transfer of natural resources from peripheral developing countries to core wealt hy states, mostly the Western industrialized democracies.The paltry countries of the world, like the poor classes of the world, are said to provide inexpensive human and natural capital, while the wealthy countries foreign policies are devoted to creating and maintaining this system of inequality. International sparing law (such as the World Trade Organization) and other such systems are seen as means by which this is done.To combat these systems of inequality, traditional Marxists and dependency theorists have argued that poor countries should adopt economic control policies that can break them out of the prison of international economic controls, such as import commuting (government assistance to domestic producers and barriers to wealthy international corporations attempting to flood the market with mass-produced imports) rather than the export-based models usually favoured by international economic organizations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.