Chapter 12: What is International Relations?
A system with no central authority above states.
What is anarchy?
This measure represents the total value of all goods and services produced within a country.
What is gross domestic product (GDP)?
This type of relationship occurs when two variables move in opposite directions.
What is a negative correlation?
This term refers to rights that all people are entitled to regardless of nationality or citizenship.
What are human rights?
This type of organization is made up of states, such as the United Nations.
What is an intergovernmental organization (IGO)?
A power that relies on attraction, culture, and persuasion rather than force.
What is soft power?
This term refers to money sent by migrants back to their home countries, often forming a key part of national economies.
What are remittances or remittance economies?
This term describes a relationship between two variables that appears causal but is actually caused by a third factor.
What is a spurious correlation?
This court settles disputes between states and is different from the court that prosecutes individuals.
What is the International Court of Justice (ICJ)?
This type of organization is made up of private actors and operates independently of governments.
What is a non-governmental organization (NGO)?
This distribution of power, seen during the Cold War, involves two dominant states.
What is bipolarity?
The primary distinction between the Global North and Global South is this difference.
What is wealth, development, and global power (rather than just geography)?
This hypothesis predicts that democracies are unlikely to go to war with one another, and empirical evidence largely supports this claim.
What is the democratic peace hypothesis?
This term refers to the right of a group or people to govern themselves and determine their own political status.
What is self-determination?
This concept explains why countries struggle to cooperate on global issues because each wants the benefits without bearing the costs.
What is a collective action problem?
This concept helps explain state behavior by identifying what a country prioritizes, such as security, power, or economic interests.
What is national interest?
In recent decades, the global trend in extreme poverty (living under $1.90/day) has generally moved in this direction.
What is a decrease (overall decline in extreme poverty)?
This type of war occurs within a single state, often between the government and internal groups.
What is a civil war?
This concept explains how international human rights frameworks often prioritize male experiences, leading to gaps in how rights are defined and enforced.
What is androcentrism?
This concept explains environmental degradation when individuals overuse a shared resource, such as water during a drought.
What is the tragedy of the commons?
Compare realism, liberalism, constructivism, and Marxism by explaining what each says drives state behavior in the international system.
Realism: power and survival
Liberalism: cooperation and institutions
Constructivism: ideas, norms, identity
Marxism: capitalism and economic inequality
This approach to international political economy focuses on everyday life (like labor, caregiving, and consumption) rather than just states and markets. Explain what it is and why it matters.
What is everyday international political economy? And it matters because it shows how global economic systems affect people’s daily lives, revealing inequalities and experiences ignored by traditional state-focused approaches.
Applying this lens to security means understanding how different identities shape people’s experiences of insecurity.
What is an intersectional approach to security?
Statism is described as the foundation of international law. Identify two ways states are central to the international system and explain why this creates challenges for enforcing human rights.
States are central because
1. They create international law through treaties and agreements, and
2. They enforce (or fail to enforce) those laws domestically.
This creates challenges because states can refuse compliance, prioritize sovereignty, or lack capacity, making international enforcement weak.
The international community has been more successful at addressing ozone depletion than climate change. Identify two reasons why.
1. Fewer actors and industries involved, making coordination easier
2. Clearer, cheaper alternatives (like replacing CFCs), whereas climate change involves fossil fuels embedded in all economies