Week 1: Realism
What is the objective of states in Classical, Defensive, and Offensive realism?
Classical = Power
Defensive = Survival
Offensive = Survival through power
Why do states comply with regimes, even when it would be in their self-interest to break them?
Existing regimes are valuable. Even if all states would prefer an alternative regime, creating a new one is very costly. Regimes also impose reputational costs—states need to be able to continue to negotiate with other states in the future.
Explain (and attribute) the phrase: "Anarchy is what states make of it."
•Wendt
•It’s shared ideas, not pre-determined material forces, that determine the structure of the international social system.
•Interests, identities are not given by nature but result from the international social system.
What are the four values that Mead describes in American politics? Define each.
•Hamiltonianism: U.S. should replace the United Kingdom as the center of the world order—the U.S. should shape the security and economic systems.
•Wilsonianism: The U.S. should promote a global liberal order through human rights, democratic governance, and the role of law.
•Jeffersonianism: Realists, who argue that reducing the U.S. global profile would reduce the costs and risks of foreign policy, but that the U.S. should narrowly seek its goals and advance them in safe and economical ways.
•Jacksonianism: Populist nationalism, which believes America “is the nation-state of the American people, and its chief business lies at home.”
What are Allison's three conceptual models? Define each.
•Rational Policy Model: State behaviors are actions taken by a unitary actor with a specified set of preferences.
•Organizational Processes Model: State behavior reflects the independent output of several domestic organizations, whose preferences are filtered through their standard operating procedures.
•Bureaucratic Politics Model: State behavior is the result of bargaining among many actors through regularized channels; actors have different preferences.
Do morals and domestic interests play a role in politics according to Classical, Defensive, and Offensive realism?
Classical: No; the political sphere is independent.
Defensive: Maybe; states are averse to any one state gaining “too much” power and are sensitive to intentions.
Offensive: No; states can never be certain about each others’ intentions, so decisions are made only about power.
What are externalities and how do regimes solve them? Which reading introduces this concept?
Externalities occur when “actors do not bear the full costs, or receive the full benefits, of their own actions” (Keohane, 85). Regimes (cooperation) solve externalities.
Explain how sovereignty, the evolution of cooperation, and efforts to create collective identities can shape the international system.
Sovereignty requires the preservation of property rights. Therefore, a system that values sovereignty will also respect territorial integrity.
States get better at cooperation over time. Cooperation can create new identities (slowly) that are then sticky.
Individual actors can try to change the identity of their states or the states of others, and this changes interactions in the international system.
How are domestic politics and international relations entangled? Which reading answers this question?
Putnam:
–A two-level game, where the second level is domestic groups pursuing their interests, and the first level is national governments seeking to satisfy domestic pressures while minimizing the adverse consequences of foreign developments (similar to Moravcsik’s argument.)
–Agreements can only happen in a “win-set” in which both international and domestic goals are satisfied.
–Win-sets are influenced by preferences, coalitions institutions, and negotiator strategies.
Are humans rational actors? Why or why not? Give 1 example of rational behavior in international politics and 1 example of irrational behavior, and explain.
[There are many valid responses.]
Issue Indivisibility
Commitment Problems (e.g. Preemptive & Preventative War)
Information Problems
What are three ways regime can solve externalities?
Mutual expectations, working relationships, reduced transaction costs, enforcement mechanisms, clustering of related issues, resolve information asymmetry by establishing reputations and sometimes providing transparency mechanisms.
Define norms. What is the difference between regulative and constitutive norms? Give examples.
Norm: A standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity.
Regulative: Defines appropriate action, e.g. "don't build nuclear weapons."
Constitutive: Defines identities/values, e.g. "it's good to be a peace-loving country."
What are Doyle's three theories of liberalism? Explain/define each.
–Shumpeter: liberalism pacificism
Humans are rational, individual, democratic, homogenized. Capitalism and democracy are forums for peace.
–Machiavelli: liberal imperialism
Citizens are diverse and unequal. Republics are expansionist, not pacifist. We are “lovers of glory.”
–Kant: liberal internationalism
Individuals are capable of appreciating moral equality and treating others as ends, not means. Republicans are capable of peace if they exercise caution. International rights come from individual rights, through norms of legitimacy, e.g. international law, cosmopolitan law, and constitutional law.
Name and define two heuristics that affect decision-making. For each, given an example of how it might matter in international relations.
•Common Heuristics:
•Sunk Costs
•Scarcity
•Stereotyping
•Anchoring & Adjustment
•Escalation of Commitment
•Familiarity
•Representativeness
•Naïve Diversification
•Contagion Heuristic
•Prospect Theory
•Menu Framing
How does balancing happen in defensive vs. offensive realism?
Defensive: External balancing, i.e. alliances, because internal balancing is too expensive for most states.
Offensive: Internal balancing, i.e. power—alliances are not reliable and there is a collective action problem (“buck-passing)
What are three levels of liberalism, according to Moravcsik, and how are they related? What are the three factors that he argues can determine a state’s preferences?
Unit level (private entities) actors have a set of preferences, which are represented at the state level (via political institutions), and the filtered set of preferences determines actions at the systemic level (state behavior). Preferences can be about identity, market forces, and domestic political institutions/bureaucracy.
Part A: What are the three stages of the norm life-cycle, and what happens in each?
Part B: What are two reasons why adopting norms can be rational?
A:
•Emerge: Norm entrepreneurs are committed to norms and use organizations to spread the idea.
•Cascade: Organizations get the norms adopted into law or international organizations. Critical states can influence others through mimicry.
•Internalize: Scale shift happens when multiple actors adopt the norm.
B:
•Adopting norms can be rational.
•It can provide legitimization.
•States might be interested in conformity.
•Norm adoption can appeal to domestic or international audiences.
How did the American liberal tradition (1950’s America) emerge, according to Hartz? Give a critique of this argument. What's another explanation for the emergence of the liberal tradition?
Hartz:
–America lacks Europe’s feudal past --> no class oppression, no history of conservative, hierarchical structure.
–America always had a frontier --> Material abundance, belief in individualism
Alternative Explanations:
Maybe individualism has economic value / comes from market ideology.
Maybe individualism is a social norm, created by norm entrepreneurs with rational, self-interested incentives (e.g. the government doesn't have to provide welfare if it's an individual responsibility)
Maybe individualism comes from anarchy; the frontier meant that Americans had to compete for resources without governance, so individuals learned to act in their own self-interest.
Perception: Faulty memory, bad attention span, etc.
Deliberation/Evaluation:
•Difficulty understanding probability, e.g. “Linda is a bank teller.”
•Framing, e.g. “save 200 lives vs. 1/3 chance of saving 600 and 2/3 chance of saving 0.”
•Fairness, e.g. punish adversaries even when it isn’t rational to do so.
Define the bargaining range, and include the formula. What happens to the bargaining range if the costs of war increase? What happens to the bargaining range if one state's probability of victory increases?
War Value = [Prob. Win] x [Value of Stakes] – [Costs of war]
Shrinks as the costs of war increases.
Stays the same size but shifts towards a higher payoff for whichever state has the higher probability of victory.
Part A: Is a state more likely to trade if relative gains or absolute gains matter more? Why is this the case?
Part B: Does trade encourage peace? Why? Is this dependent on the system of gains?
Trade means that every state increases its power; this is a problem if we’re in a relative gains world, since power is only measured vis-à-vis other states, but in an absolute gains world, the reciprocity associated with trade is good, because power is measured by material factors.
Trade creates interdependence, which raises the costs of war, regardless of the system of gains.
Barnett and Duval define four types of power that vary along two dimensions. Draw the 2-by-2 that depicts this. Define each term. (4 kinds of power + 2 labels for each of 2 dimensions.)
Interaction Constitution
Direct Compulsory Institutional
Indirect Structural Productive
Direct/Indirect: Specificity of social relations.
Interaction/Constitution: Kind of social relations; Interaction = Regulative, an attribute possessed by an actor and used knowingly, “Power over”; Constitution = Constitutive, a social process of constituting what actors are as social beings, “Power to.”
Compulsory: Actor A compels behavior/attitude from Actor B.
Institutional: A set of actors/institution takes actions that have indirect effects on members of the set or others.
Structural: The capacities of A and B create a structural relationship defined by the distribution and dynamics of power.
Productive: An actor or set of actors creates classifications or systems of meaning that in and of themselves exert power.
What is the "Democratic Peace"? Provide 5 possible explanations for this phenomenon. (The explanations must explain *democratic* peace, not just peace, e.g. MAD is not a valid explanation.) What are three types of exceptions to the democratic peace?
Explanations: Kantian Peace, Trade, IOs, Identity, Democratic Military Advantage, Democratic Constraints.
Exceptions: Democracies only don't fight other democracies, there are exceptions e.g. India-Pakistan/Israel-Lebanon/Turkey-Cyprus/Bosnia-Croatia-Serbia/Ecuador-Peru/Poland-Lithuania, democracies in transition are more likely to go to war than either democracies or autocracies.
What’s the difference between how theories of evolutionary psychology and of social norms (constructivism) might explain biased decision-making?
How does biased state decision-making happen in realism and liberalism? What about domestic politics? Organizational politics?
Evolutionary Psych: These are biological traits that had material benefits (especially for ancient humans) that affect how we think today, even when it isn't beneficial anymore.
Social Norms: Identity, norms can affect how we process information. These components are newer, and while they might have some value, they can still result in problematic decision-making (e.g. Americans place a high value on political party, but that means we might believe information given to us by a member of one party and not believe the same information given by a member of the other party.)
Realism/liberalism: States don't have complete information, and even when they do, they might make decisions that are individually good but collectively bad because of externalities.
Domestic Politics: Domestic preferences might be rational, but they get filtered through institutions, and different constituencies have different levels of influence.
Organizational Politics: Individual incentives don't always meet collective incentives.