Level of Analysis & Actors
Collective Goods/Action Problem
What is: All individual actors have incentives assume that other states will pitch in which results in “free riding” when dealing with non-rival, non-excludable goods?
Relative Power
What is: States can have power only relative to other states’ power. States’ perceptions of relative power matter. It could be states caring about relative quantities of physical resources, but it could also be more than that.
Role of International Institutions
What is: to foster cooperation in the int'l system; they institutionalize rules and hold their members accountable and make it rational to cooperate
Type of Power
What is: social power?
Anarchy
What is: Anarchy is a “self-help” system where states must pursue power and compete against each other to survive – This system makes conflict in the int’l system unavoidable, according to realists. Conflict is a given, since competition between states is the basis of survival here. There is no world police?
State's right to do whatever it whats within its own territory
What is sovereignty?
Balancing vs Bandwagoning
What is: According to balance of power theory, balancing is when the power of 1+ states is used to balance that of another state or group of states.
Bandwagoning is when weaker states side with the stronger state. So instead of balancing against a powerful state (like in balancing), they team up with the strong state.
Liberal Institutionalism v Liberal Internationalism
What is: caring about international institutions vs domestic political institutions (elections, public opinion, domestic norms) or actors respectively?
Norms are created by...
What is: social interactions between states or other actors
Rationality
What is: Actors in IR can be viewed as rational individuals or units who make informed, calculated decisions that maximize value and perceived benefits. These actors are acting in their best interest?
The main actors in international politics
What are:
States– the border-possessing territorial entities controlled by a government and inhabited by a population; answer to no high authority and exercises sovereignty over its territory which is recognized by other states internationally?
Goal of Alliances
What is: Pooling capabilities and enhancing their members’ power, or even just acting out the interests of the Great Powers within them
Logic of consequences v. appropriateness
What is: consequences (State behaves a certain way because they calculate the possible consequences of their actions) vs appropriateness (state behaves in a certain way because they believe they should behave a certain way)
Common critiques of constructivism
What is: Can you tell if someone’s ID is genuine or adopted for strategic purposes; are norms just really self-interested states’ interests in disguise?
Unitary Actor Assumption
What is: This assumption treats states as a single entity that tries to maximize national interest. Ex. we can rule out political cleavages between leaders and their citizens, aka the domestic realm, for sake of making inferences at the systemic level.
Non-state actors
What are IGOs; NGOs; multinational corporations; Others: individuals, cities, constituencies?
Power Transition Theory
What is: Looking at the structure of the international system, we can infer the largest wars result from challenges to the top position in the status hierarchy, when a rising power is surpassing or will surpass the most powerful state
The Democratic Peace
What is: democracies tend not to go to war with one another possibly due to similar domestic political institutions which hold leaders accountable to their public, mutual understanding on ideological grounds (democratic norms), etc.
Marxism
What is: Marxists think that unequal relationships between economic classes shapes int’l and domestic politics
Prisoner's Dilemma
What is: Assumes that actors do not know each other's true intentions. Actors use strategy to pursue good outcomes in bargaining with 1+ actors, which means an actor will think of other actor’s interests even while pursuing its own.
In the Prisoner’s dilemma, where 2 criminals are separated and questioned: there are different payoffs (best case scenario is if they both do not rat on each other, but if they both rat on each other they both serve jail time, but less jail time than if just 1 of them rats on the other one)
So, both will confess (defect) since they are trying to maximize their payoff – either they will go free or serve 5 years; rather than being ratted on and serving 20 years (if 1 squeals and the other stays silent). Despite the best payoff being both of them staying silent, this option is too risky given the cost-benefit analysis they have undertaken. This decision is rational.
Levels of Analysis in IR + EX
What are:
Systemic Level (e.g. international system impacts global norms of human rights)
Domestic Level (e.g. domestic pressures impact international institutional membership of states)
Individual level (e.g. how perceptions of individuals impact international politics)
Realism vs. Neorealism
What is: Neorealists still think states are unitary rational actors who maximize their own self-interest on the international sphere, BUT they account for power imbalances in the international system and thus think of structural factors (rather than individual country capabilities). They think the international distribution of power tells us more about international relations than does the individual makeup of states (individual capabilities like geography, political will, and diplomacy are not important here)?
Liberals agree with Realists on...
What are: key assumptions– anarchy, material power (+ institutional power), states or domestic actors are driven by preferences
Gender Theories in IR
What is: some scholars disagree on whether women would change how the international system operates (difference v. liberal feminists), while others go further to challenge assumptions about gender when theorizing about the int'l system (e.g. the masculine assumptions in realism infer how states are likely to act, but derive this behavior from what we have observed in the patriarchal world)
Postmodernism challenges assumptions by...
What is: thinking there is no objective reality/truth and challenge the unitary actor assumption (e.g. IR scholars thought the USSR was a unitary actor, but they missed out on predicting the collapse when they did not think about the various diverse interests coming from the 15 republics)?