0% found this document useful (0 votes)
25 views24 pages

CH 1 Global Trend Trend Short Note

The document discusses the significance of nationalism in shaping international relations, emphasizing its role in the emergence of nation-states and the complexities of global politics. It outlines the evolution of international relations from medieval times to the modern era, highlighting the impact of the sovereign state system and the importance of diplomacy. Additionally, it addresses the interconnectedness of global communities and the necessity of understanding international dynamics in contemporary society.

Uploaded by

seadkedir45
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
25 views24 pages

CH 1 Global Trend Trend Short Note

The document discusses the significance of nationalism in shaping international relations, emphasizing its role in the emergence of nation-states and the complexities of global politics. It outlines the evolution of international relations from medieval times to the modern era, highlighting the impact of the sovereign state system and the importance of diplomacy. Additionally, it addresses the interconnectedness of global communities and the necessity of understanding international dynamics in contemporary society.

Uploaded by

seadkedir45
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 24

ADMAS UNIVERSITY MEKANISA CAMPUS

GLOBAL AFFAIRS

BY: TEMESGEN DOJA

2022

1
CHAPTER ONE
UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1.1. Conceptualizing Nationalism, Nations and States


 Nationalism is the most influential force in international affairs.
 It has caused the outbreak of revolutions and wars across the globe.
 It is noted as a factor for the collapse of age old empires, marker for new borders, a
powerful component for the emergence of new states and it is used to reshape and
reinforce regimes in history
 Nationalism’s triumph is the coming of the nation-state as key actors in world politics.

Nationalism‘s triumphis accepted as ultimate, legitimate and the most basic form of political entity.

As Heywood (2014) said:

 Nationalism is the doctrine that asserts the nation as the basic political unit in organizing society.
 The words nation’, state’ and country’ are used interchangeably and this is not correct.

According to Heywood,
 Nations are historical entities that evolve more similar ethnic communities and they
reveal themselves in myths, legends, and songs (2014).
 At the end of the 19th c this state came to be radically transformed.
 The state‘was combined with a nation’ forming a compound noun.

Nation - state constitutes or represents a community of peoplejoined by a shared identity and


one common social practice.
 Nationalist leaders argued that; the nation should take over the state and make use of
its institutional structures to further the nation’s ends.
 In one country after another the nationalists were successful in these aims.
 The nation added an interior life to the state, we might perhaps say; the nation was a soul
added to the body of the early modern state machinery.

Nationalist reactions (sentiments) were:


 Growing across the continent and
 They constantly threatened to undermine the settlement.
 All over Europe national communities demanded to be included into the politics of their
respective countries.
Nationalism in the first part of the 19th c was a liberal sentiment:
 concerning self-determination
 The right of a people to determine its own fate.

2
The idea of self-determination undermined the political legitimacy of Europe‘s empires.
 If all the different peoples that these empires contained gained the right to determine their
own fates, the map of Europe would have to be radically redrawn.
 In 1848 this prospect seemed to become a reality as nationalist uprisings quickly spread
across the continent.
 Everywhere the people demanded the right to rule themselves.
1.2. Understanding International Relations
 International relation is not merely a field of study but it is an integral aspect of our
everyday lives.
 It is impossible to isolate our experiences and connections from an international
dimension.
Studying international r/n
 Enables to make better understand the information we receive daily from newspapers,
television and radio.
As members world community,
 people have to be equally aware of both their rights and their responsibilities
 People should be capable of engaging in important debates concerning the major issues
facing the modern international community.
One crucial feature of the world in which we live is:
 its interconnectedness by geographically,
 Intellectually and socially – and thus we need to understand it.

In the study of international relations


 There is no one accepted way of defining or understanding international relations.
 IR is established as individual ways of understanding
 It was seen largely as a branch of the study of law, philosophy or history.
 The study of international relations (a term first used by Jeremy Bentham in 1798)

International relations:
 - describe a range of interactions between people, groups, firms, associations, parties,
nations or states or between these and (non) governmental international organizations.
 IR - could have direct or indirect implications for political relations b/n groups, states or
inter-national organizations.

3
What are the main causes for study of international relations?
 international conflict
 inter-nationalconferences
 International crimes.
In International relations:
 Participation in IR/n or politics is also unavoidable (inescapable).
 No individual, people,nation or state can exist in isolation or be master of its own fate.
 No one state can maintain or enhance their rate of social or economic progress or keep
people alive without the contributions of foreigners or foreign states.
 Every people, nation or state is a minority in a world that is (anarchic) disordered, that is,
there is an absence of a common sovereign over them.
 There is politics among entities that have no ruler and in the absence of any ruler.
 That world is pluralistic and diverse.
 Each state is a minority among humankind.
 No matter how large or small, every state or nation in the world must take account of
foreigners‘.
In International relations:
 There are legal, political and social differences between domestic and international
politics.
 Domestic law is generally obeyed, and if not, the police and courts enforce sanctions.
 International law rests on competing legal systems, and there is no common
enforcement.
 Domestically a government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

In international politics
 No one has a monopoly of force or power,
 Therefore international politics has often been interpreted as the realm of self-help.
 States are stronger than others.

Domestic and international politics are:


 Differ in their underlying sense of community in international politics, divided peoples
do not share the same loyalties
 People disagree about what seems just and legitimate; order and justice.

Individuals can be the victim or victors of international politics.


 Studying international relations helps us to understand what to make a difference.

Studying of international relationsprovides:


4
 the necessary tools to analyze events
 To gain a deeper understanding (comprehension) of some of the problems that policy-
makers confront
 To understand the reasoning behind their actions.
Thomas Hobbes said that, the state of society to be continual fear, danger of violent death; and
the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short‘.

Locke took
 He took a more optimistic( positive) view
 He suggested that sociability was the strongest bond between men – men were equal,
sociable and free
 They were not dissolute because they were governed by the laws of nature.
 It was clear that nature did not harm man against man,
 International politics is pre - eminently (extremely) concerned with the art of achieving
group ends against the opposition of other groups.

International politics involves the delicate adjustment of power to power.

 If physical force were to be used to resolve every disagreement there would result an
intolerable existence for the world’s population.
 Society would not prosper and every human being would be suspicious of every other
human.
 Sometimes this happens on the international stage, given that every state is judge and jury
of its own interests and can decide for itself whether to use force.

In order to resolve disagreements

 It is necessary that states and international organizations can come up with a way of
resolving differences.
 Although such ideals have been difficult to establish across the board it has become the
case that there are non-violent options available to states.

 International politics is also about maintaining international order.


 Interdependence implies that people, businesses and organizations rely on each other in
different places for ideas, goods and services.
 International relations and politics are necessary for all states, but political power is
not centralized and unequal.

1.3. The Nature and Evolution of International Relations

5
The rise of the sovereign state in medieval Europe consisted of a complicated pattern of
overlapping jurisdictions and loyalties.
Most of life was local and most political power was local too.
At the local level there was an enormous diversity of political entities:
 feudal lords who ruled their respective estates ,
 cities made up of independent merchants,
 States ruled by clerics and smaller political entities such as principalities and duchies.

In medieval Europe there were two institutions with pretensions to power over the continent as
a whole – the (Catholic) Church and the Empire.

The Catholic Church was the spiritual authority, with its center in Rome.
 Apart from a small Jewish minority, all Europeans were Christian and the influence of
the Church spread far and penetrated deeply into people‘s lives.

The Empire was known as the Holy Roman Empire


 Was established in the 10th in central, predominantly German-speaking, Europe.
 It also included parts of Italy, France and Netherlands and Belgium.
 It too derived legitimacy from the Roman Empire, but had none of its political power.
The political system of medieval Europe was combination of the local and the universal.

In 14th c, the system was greatly simplified as the state emerged as a political entity located
between the local and the universal.
 The new states simultaneously set themselves in opposition to popes and emperors on
the universal level, and to feudal lords, peasants and mixed other rulers on the local level.
 This is how the state came to make itself independent and self-governing. The process
started in Italywhere northern city-states such as Florence, Venice, Ravenna and Milan
began playing the pope against the emperor, eventually making themselves independent
of both. Meanwhile, in Germany, the pope struggled with the emperor over the issue
of who of the two should have the right to appoint bishops. While the two were fighting
it out, the constituent members of the Holy Roman Empire took the opportunity to assert
their independence.
Self-assertive states were:
 Not only picking fights with universal institutions but also with local ones.
 In order to establish themselves securely in their new positions of power, the kings
rejected the traditional claims of all local authorities.
 This led to extended wars in next to all European countries.
 Peasants rose up in protest against taxes and the burdens imposed by repeated wars.
 There were massive peasant revolts in Germany in the 1520s with hundreds of thousands
of participants and almost as many victims.
6
In the latter part of the 16th c,
 There were major peasant uprisings in Sweden, Croatia, England and Switzerland.
 In France, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the nobility rose up in defence of its
traditional rights and in rebellion against the encroachments of the king.

From the 16th c onwards;

 The states established the rudiments of an administrative system and


 Raised armies, both in order to fight their own peasants and in order to defend themselves
against other states.
 Since such state-building was expensive, the search for money became a constant
concern.
 The early modern state was more than anything institutional machinery designed to
develop and extract resources from society.
 In return for their taxes, the state provided ordinary people with defense and a
rudimentary system of justice. If they refused to pay up, state officials had various
unpleasant ways to make them suffer.

 The European states emerged in the middle of struggle and strife (conflict), and struggle
and strife have continued to characterize their existence.
 Yet, in early modern Europe it was no longer the competing claims of local and universal
authorities that had to be combated but instead the competing claims of other states.

The 30’ Yrs ‘War, 1618–1648, was the bloodiest and most protracted military confrontation of
the era.
 As a result of the war, Germany‘s population was reduced by around a third.
 What the Swiss or the Scottish mercenaries did not steal, the Swedish troops destroyed.
 Many of the people who did not die on the battlefield died of the plague.
 The Thirty Years’ War is often called a religious conflict since Catholic states
confronted Protestants.
 Yet, Protestant and Catholic countries sometimes fought on the same side and religious
dogma was clearly not the first thing on the minds of the combatants.
 Instead the war concerned which state should have hegemony (or dominance) over
Europe.
 The main protagonists were two Catholic states, France and Austria, but Sweden – a
Protestant country – intervened on France‘s side and in the end no dominant power
emerged.
 The Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, which concluded the 30 years of warfare, has come to
symbolize the new way of organizing international politics.

7
From this point onwards,
 International politics was a matter of relations b/n states and no other political units.
 All states were sovereign, meaning that they laid claims to the exclusive right to rule their
own territories and to act, in relation to other states, as they themselves saw fit.
 All states were formally equal and they had the same rights and obligations.
 The states interacted with each other in a system in which there was no over arching
power.
 Sovereignty and formal equality led to the problem of anarchy.

States had made themselves independent both of the pope and the emperor;
 They soon discovered that their relations had become vastly more complicated.

In order to avoidmisunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts,


 the different rulers began send out ambassadors to each other‘s courts.
 This diplomatic network provided a means of gathering information, of spying, but also a
way o f keeping in contact with one another, of carrying out negotiations and concluding
deals.

The practices of diplomacy soon


 expanded to include a number of mutually advantageous provisions:
 the embassies were given extra territorial rights and legal immunity,
 Diplomatic dispatches were regarded as inviolable and
 Ambassadors had the right to worship the God of their choice.

The practices of diplomacy was


 originally start in north Italian
 this practices was gradually expanded to embrace more states and
 At the 17th c the system were included France, Spain, Austria, England, Russia, Poland,
Denmark, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire.
 Diplomatic practices were never powerful enough to prevent war, really wars continued
to be common, but they did provide Europeans with a sense of a common identity.
 A European state was, more than anything, a state that participated in the system of
shared diplomatic practices.

On the other hand


 Most of what happened in Europe before the 19 th c was of great concern to the Europeans
but of only marginal relevance to people elsewhere.
 Europe certainly had a significant impact on the Americas, North and South.
8
 It had far less impact on Asia and relations with Africa were largely restricted to a
few trading ports.
 The large, rich and powerful empires of East Asia were organized quite differently than
the European states, and international politics followed different principles.
 The same can be said for other parts of the world such as the Indian subcontinent, Central
Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world.
 And yet, it was the European model of statehood and the European way of organizing
international relations that eventually came to organize all of world politics.

It was only in the 19th c that


 Relations between Europe and the rest of the world were irrevocably transformed.
 The reason is above all to be found in economic changes taking place in Europe itself.
At the end of the 18th c,
 new ways of manufacturing goods were invented which made use of machines powered
by steam, and
 Later by electricity, this made it possible to engage in large-scale factory production.
As a result of this so called industrial revolution‘,
 The Europeans could produce many more things and do it far more efficiently.
 As cheap, mass-produced goods flooded European markets, the Europeans began looking
for new markets overseas.

Towards the end of the 19th c,

 Other European countries joined in this scramble for colonies, not least in Africa.
 Colonial possessions became a symbol of great power‘ status, and the new European
nation-states often proved themselves to be very aggressive colonizers.
 France added West Africa and Indo - china to its growing empire, and
 The Germans and Italians also joined the race once their respective countries were
unified.
 This explains in the First World War 1914, most parts of the world were in European
hands.
 But – China, Japan, Siam, Persia, Ethiopia and Nepal, among others are independent
countries.

But this was not how the European state and the European way of organizing international
relations came to spread to the rest of the world, at least not directly.
 After all, a colonized country is the very opposite of a sovereign state;
 The colonized peoples had no nation-states and enjoyed no self-determination.

9
1.4. Actors in International Relations

1.4.1. State Actors


 Traditionally IR is focused on the interactions between states.
 Means the Relationships between all sorts of political entities, including international
organizations, multinational corporations, societies and citizens.
 IR capture a vast array of themes ranging from the growing interconnectedness of people
to old and new forms of security, dialogue and conflict between visions, beliefs and
ideologies, the environment, space, the global economy, poverty and climate change.
 States are obviously very different from each other, but they are also similar to each other
in important respects.
 All states are located somewhere, they have a territorial extension; they are surrounded
by borders which tell us where one state ends and another begins.

All states have their own


 Capitals, armies, foreign ministries, flags and national anthems.
 All states call themselves sovereign’, meaning that they claim the exclusive right to
govern their respective territories in their own fashion.
States are sovereign in relation to each other:
 they act in relation to other states,
 declaring war,
 concluding a peace,
 Negotiating a treaty, and many other things.
 In fact, we often talk about states as though they were persons with interests to defend
and plans to carry out.

1.4.2. Non-State Actors


Our everyday lived experience is influenced by
 global firms,
 international governmental institutions, and
 Non - governmental organizations that necessitate the remit of our investigations in order
to account for the diversity of actors and forms of inter - actions which take place in
global politics.
Multinational corporations (MNCs) –
 Often with headquarters in one state and operational capability in a range of others
 Contribute significantly to international relations.

Trans-governmental organizations
 where the relations between players are not controlled by the central foreign policy of the
state – such as the exchange rate of a state‘s currency being determined by the money
markets.

10
 The relations between states were governed by mutual cooperation.
In the traditional context –
 State is the main framework of political interaction and the main point of reference for
both society and the individuals within it has lost a lot of its meaning and importance.
The majority of global interactions -
 related to global finance, production, education, personal and professional travel, labor
migration or terrorism
 No longer occur via state channels the way they once did.
 We could say that the increased focus on non-state actors and cross-border issues has
marked a close-to-revolutionary turn in IR; something that could be interpreted as a shift
away from the inter-national (‗between-states‘) to the ‗trans-national‘ (‗across/beyond-
states‘ and their borders).
Robert Keohane, stated that:
 I R’ is no longer a suitable label
 In today‘s world, few societal and political issues, challenges and problems are neatly
confined by the borders of individual states or even groups of states. Thinking about
world affairs in ‗ trans – national’ rather than in purely ‗inter-national’ terms therefore
seems more of an analytical necessity than just a choice.

 International commercial aviation and the rapid spread of information technologies has
further increased people‘s mobility and the rate at which interactions occur across and
beyond state borders.

1.5. Levels of Analysis in International Relations


 From 1919 until after the WW II IR could be called as traditional.
 It was not concerned with any potential distinctions between different levels of analysis
or theoretical perspectives.
J. David Singer (1961: 78) would simply roam up and down the ladder (ranking) of :
 organizational complexity with remarkable abandon,
 focusing upon the total system,
 international organizations,
 regions, coalitions, extra-national associations, nations,
 domestic pressure groups, social classes, elites, and
 Individuals as the needs of the moment required.

You would investigate factors


1.5.1. The individual level
 International relations can be analyzed from the perspective of individuals.
 individual level we would look:

11
 at the behaviors,
 motivations,
 beliefs and
 Orientation of the individual in affecting a particular international phenomenon.
 Psychological factors do not only matter at the level of individual members of society or
of a group.
 They are also an important factor in the analysis of foreign policy, whenever particular
mindsets and perceptions of political leaders and key actors might influence their
decisions and behavior.

1.5.2. The group level


 A group level analysis would try and break the analysis down into certain kinds of
groups, how they relate to the state level and where they position themselves with respect
to the global dimension of the issues they are dealing with.
 A group-level analysis focusing on foreign policy would look, for example, at the role of
lobbying groups and the way they influence national decision-making on an issue.
 A group-level analysis would be more interested in the actions of groups of individuals,
such as all voters of a country and the way they express their views in the general
election, political parties picking up on the issue in their campaigns or social movements
forming to counter the effects of the crisis on society.
 A group-level analysis could be interested in activist / pressure groups like
Anonymous‘that seek to influence the global debate about the winners and losers of
globalization and capitalism, and so forth.
1.5.3. The state level
 Is referred to as the relative ‘state-centrism’ of the discipline.
- This means that states as the central unit of analysis - We investigate (such as economic indicators,
refugee flows, and the attitude of key partners)

 They also consider state as a point of reference for other types of actors.
 The state acts as the arena in which state officials, politicians and decision-makers operate.
 The state is seen as the framework that sum up society and as the main point of reference
for the individual.

A state level analysis is might be interested to look:


 it can consider states as actors in their own right as if they were clearly defined entities
that have certain preferences, and look at their actions and decisions to find an answer to
our analytical questions;

12
 how states interact with each other to deal with the crisis, their foreign policy; how they
build off each other’s suggestions and
 how they react to international developments and trends;
 how they cooperate, in the framework of international organizations.
A state-level study would also require careful consideration of
 what kinds of states we are looking at (how they are ordered politically),
 their geographical position,
 their historical ties and experiences and
 Their economic standing.

1.5.4. The system level


 would like to consider the global system as the structure within which states
 cooperate,
 compete and
 Confront or meet each other over issues of national interest.
 It is important the distribution of power among states, meaning, whether there is
 one main concentration of power (uni polarity),
 Two (bipolarity) or several (multi polarity).

In this perspective,

 Global conditions are seen as the ability and opportunity of individual states and groups
of states to pursue their interests in cooperative or competitive ways.
 The view of states being embedded in a global context traditionally comes with the
assumption that our international system is anarchic‘.

An anarchic system is one that lacks a central government that regulates and controls what
happens to states in their dealings with each other.

The international system can be considered as


 A made up of states,
 groups of states,
 organizations,
 Societies or individuals within and across those societies.

IR generally distinguishes between three levels of analysis:


 the system, the state, and the individual but the group level is also important to consider
as a fourth.

A system-level study would need to consider

13
 Global linkages that go beyond single interactions between states.
 It would need to look the balance of power between states and how that determines what
happens in global politics.
 This could include developments that are even outside the immediate control of any
particular state or group of states, such as the global economy, transnational terrorism or
the internet.
 A global level would give us the big picture and help us to grasp wide ranging dynamics
that emerge from the global economic system’ to affect its various components, states,
national economies, societies, and individuals.
1.6. The Structure of International System
International Relations scholars maintain that political power is usually distributed into three
main types of systems namely:

 uni-polar system,
 bipolar system and,
 Multi polar system.

These three different systems reflect the number of powerful states competing for power and
their hierarchical relationship.

1. In a uni-polar international system,


 There is one state with the greatest political, economic, cultural and military power and
hence the ability to totally control other states.
2. in both bipolar and multi polar systems there is no one single state with a preponderant power and
hence ability to control other states.

In the case of the bipolar system,

 There are two dominant states (super powers) and the less powerful states join either
sides through alliance and counter alliance formations.

The problem with bipolar system

 It is vulnerable for zero-sum game politics because when one superpower gains the
other would inevitably lose.
 One typical historical example where the world was under bipolar system is the cold
war period.

Multi polar system is the most common throughout history.

 During the period around WWI it was a typical world system.


 It usually reflects various equally powerful states competing for power.
 It is not necessary for states to change their relationship with zero-sum game.

14
 In such system, it is possible to bring change without gaining or losing power.

Power
 Power is the currency of international politics.
 As money is for economics, power is for international relations (politics).
 In the international system, power determines the relative influence of actors and it
shapes the structure of the international system.

Power can be defined in terms of both relations and material (capability) aspects.
 The relational definition of power is formulated by Robert Dahl.
 Dahl‘s definition understands power as A‘s‘ ability to get B‘ to do something it would
not otherwise do.
Anarchy
 Anarchy is a situation where there is absence of authority (government) be it in national
or international/global level systems.
 Within a country ‘anarchy’ refers to a breakdown of law and order, but in relations
between states it refers to a system where power is decentralized and there are no shared
institutions with the right to enforce common rules.
 An anarchical world is a world where everyone looks after themselves and no one looks
after the system as a whole.
 Instead, states had to rely on their own resources or to form alliances through which the
power of one alliance of states could be balanced against the power of another alliance.
 Yet, as soon became clear, such power balances were precarious, easily subverted, and
given the value attached to territorial acquisitions, states had an incentive to engage in
aggressive wars.
 As a result, the new international system was characterized by constant tensions and
threats of war – which often enough turned into actual cases of warfare.

Sovereignty
Sovereignty is another basic concept in IR and it can be defined as an expression of:

 (i) a state‘s ultimate authority within its territorial entity (internal sovereignty) and,
 (ii) the state‘s involvement in the international community (external sovereignty).

1.7. Theories of International Relations

 The politics of global interactions is now more accessible than the past.
There are a variety of factorsglobal interactions

15
 conflict in the Middle East,
 the break-up of Yugoslavia,
 human rights violations or
 poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa,

Theories of international relations allow us


 To understand and try to make sense of the world around us through various lenses.

1.7.1. Idealism / Liberalism


 Liberalism in IR was referred to as a utopian ‘theory and is still recognized as such to
some degree today.
 Its proponents or supporter view human beings asinnately good and believe peace and
harmony between nations is not only achievable, but desirable.
 Immanuel Kant developed the idea of Liberalism in the late 18 th C that states that shared
liberal values should have no reason for going to war against one another.

In Kant‘s eyes,

 the more liberal states there were in the world,


 the more peaceful it would become,
 liberal states are ruled by their citizens and
 Citizens are rarely disposed or willing to desire war.
 the rule of kings and other non-elected rulers who frequently have selfish desires
 His ideas continue to be developed by modern liberals,
 Especially in the democratic peace theory,
 B/se democracies do not go to war with each other

Taking liberal ideas into practice,US President Woodrow Wilson addressed his famous.

He presents 14 Points’ to the US Congress in January 1918 during the final year of the WWI.

 As he presented his ideas for a rebuilt world beyond the war,


 The last of his points was to create a general association of nations, which became the
League of Nations.
 Dating back to 1920, the League of Nationswas created
 the purpose of control affairs between states and implementing,
 Maintaining international peace.

In the early from 1919 to the 1930s, years


 The discipline was dominated by liberal internationalism.

The two interrelated ideas of Woodrow Wilson and Kant’s

16
 it reflect a perpetual or permanent peace
 it form the basic foundations for the liberal internationalism

The two influential pillars of liberal internationalism are


 democracy and free trade
 This required the establishment of international relations which would promote
collectivist aspirations.

A system of collective security’ was


 Advocated to replace antagonistic alliance systems with an international order based on
the rule of law and collective responsibility.

The creation of the League of Nations after the end of the WWI
 Was the culmination of the liberal ideal of international relations.
 The League would function as the guarantor of international order
 the League was collapsed due to its failure and the outbreak of the WWII in 1939,
 Its failure became difficult for liberals to comprehend the events seemed to contradict
their theories.
Therefore, despite the efforts of prominent liberal scholars and politicians such as Kant and
Wilson, liberalism failed to retain a strong hold and a new theory emerged to explain the
continuing presence of war.

Liberals are argue that


 International law present a mechanism by which cooperation among states is made
possible.
 Refers to the body of customary and conventional rules which are binding on civilized
states in their intercourse with each other.
 However, states are the subjects of international law.
 It provides the normative framework for political discourse among members of the
international system.
 The framework does not guarantee harmony, but
 It does foster the discourse and participation needed to provide conceptual clarity in
developing legal obligations and gaining their acceptance.

International law performs two different functions.


1. To provide mechanisms for cross-border interactions,
2. To shape the values and goals these interactions are pursuing.
 The first sets of functions are called the operating system of international law
 The second sets of functions are the normative system.
17
In short, the purpose of international law is
1. To regulate the conducts of governments
2. To regulate the behaviors of individuals within states.

There are three competing views on the purpose of international law.

1. International law is not a law at all but a branch of international morality.


2. International law is a law in all senses of the term.
3. International law is a matter of definition.

As a result,

 The operating system of international law functions in some ways as a constitution does
in a domestic legal system and not as law proper i.e it does nothing beyond setting out the
consensus of its constituent actors on distribution of authority, rights and responsibilities
for governance within the international s9ystem.

1.7.2. Realism
 Liberal internationalist ideals are now recognized for their significant contribution in the
development of normative approaches,
 They appear at the beginning of the 1930s and ultimately the outbreak of the WWII,
futile and utopian.
Therefore
 it was the subject matter of international relations,
 it was dominated as it had been by international law and diplomatic history,
 it was was transformed to an intellectual agenda which placed power and self-interest at
the forefront of concern.
The idealism’ of the interwar period
 was henceforth to be replaced by realism, and
 it is this school of thought which, in its various articulations, remains dominant in the
discipline. E.H.
 Carr‘s Twenty Years’ Crisis’, published in 1939, was the text which positioned what he
called utopianism in opposition to realism.
Realists argue that;
 values are context bound,
 morality is determined by interest, and
 The present conditions are determined by historical processes.

The formative theory of realism as a school of thought view;


 The international system is anarchic‘, in the sense that it is devoid of an all-encompassing
authority.

18
 Domestic society is ruled by a single system of government;
 The international system of states lacks such a basis and renders inter-national law non-
binding and ultimately ineffectual in the regulation of relations between states.
 Conflict is hence an inevitable and continual feature of inter-national relations.

Key Concepts:
 Liberalism depicts optimism by arguing that human beings are good, cooperation is
possible and conflict can be resolved peacefully
 Realism depicts(show) pessimism by arguing that human beings are bad, conflict is
inevitable and war is the most prominent instrument of resolving conflict
 Structuralism / Marxism focused on the structure of dependency and exploitation caused
by the international division of labor
 Constructivism / Critical Theories challenge the foundations of the dominant perspectives
and argue for the marginalized and the voiceless

One central area that sets realism and liberalism apart is how they view human nature.

 Realists do not typically believe that human beings are inherently (naturally) good, or
 Have the potential for good, as liberals do.
 Instead, they claim individuals act in their own self-interests.

For realists,
 People are selfish and behave according to their own needs without necessarily taking
into account the needs of others.
 Realists believe conflict is unavoidable and continuous or perpetual
 So, war is common and inherent to humankind.
Hans Morgenthau, a prominent realist,
 He is known for his famous statement all politics is a struggle for power’
 He demonstrates politics is primarily about domination as opposed to cooperation
between states.
 Here, it is useful to briefly recall the idea of theories being lenses.

Liberals share an optimistic view of IR,


 Believing that world order can be improved, with peace and
 Progress gradually replacing war.
 They may not agree on the details, but this optimistic view generally unites them.
Conversely, realists

19
 Tend to dismiss optimism as a form of misplaced idealism and instead they arrive at a
more pessimistic view.
 This is due to their focus on the centrality of the state and its need for security and
survival in an anarchical system where it can only truly rely on itself.
As a result,
 realists reach an array of accounts that describe IR as a system where war and conflict is
common and
 Periods of peace are merely times when states are preparing for future conflict.

Both liberalism and realism

 consider the state to be the dominant actor in IR,


 Although, liberalism does add a role for non-state actors such as international
organizations.
 Nevertheless, within both theories states themselves are typically regarded as possessing
ultimate power.
 This includes the capacity to enforce decisions, such as declaring war on another nation,
or conversely treaties that may bind states to certain agreements.

1.7.3. Structuralism / Marxism


Marxism argues that a capitalist society is divided into two contradictory classes – the business
class (the bourgeoisie) and the working class (the proletariat).This theory argues that a capitalist
society is divided into two contradictory classes:
 The business class (the bourgeoisie) and
 The working class (the proletariat).
The working classes (proletariats) are
 At the mercy of the bourgeoisie who control their wages and therefore their standard of
living.
 Marx hoped for an eventual end to the class society and overthrow of the bourgeoisie by
the proletariat.

This third perspective or paradigm which emerged


 as a critique of both realism and pluralism concentrated on the inequalities that exist
within the international system,
 inequalities of wealth between the rich North’ or the First World’ and the poor South’ or
the Third World’.

20
 It is inspired by Marx and Lenin scholars within what came to be known as the
structuralist paradigm focused on;
 dependency,
 exploitation and
 the international division of labor which relegated the vast majority of the global
population to the extremes of poverty, often with the complicities of elite groups
within these societies.

As many in this tradition argued,


 Most states were not free.
 Instead they were subjugated by the political, ideological and social consequences of
economic forces.
 Imperialism generated
 by the vigor of free enterprise capitalism in the West and
 By state capitalism in the socialist bloc imposed unequal exchange of every kind
upon the Third World.

The basis of such manifest inequality was the capitalist structure of the international system
which accrued benefits to some while causing, through unequal exchange relations, the
impoverishment of the vast majority of others.

 The class system that pre - dominated internally within capitalist societies had its parallel
globally, producing centre – periphery relations that permeated every aspect of
international social, economic and political life.

Therefore pluralism and its liberal associations


 had viewed networks of economic interdependence as a basis of increasing international
cooperation founded on trade and financial interactions,
 Neo - Marxist structuralism viewed these processes as the basis of inequality, the debt
burden, violence and instability.

1.7.4. Constructivism
 Is commonly viewed as a middle ground, but this time between mainstream theories and
the critical theories that we will explore later.
 Unlike scholars from other perspectives, constructivists highlight the importance of
values and shared interests between individuals who interact on the global stage.

21
Alexander Wendt,

 He was a prominent constructivist,


 He describes the relationship between agents (individuals) and structures as one in which
structures not only constrain agents but also construct their identities and interests.
 His famous phrase anarchy is what states make of it’ (Wendt 1992) sums this up well.

1.7.5. Critical Theories


 Refer to theories that have been established in response to mainstream approaches in the
field, mainly liberalism and realism.
 Critical theorists share one particular trait – they oppose commonly held assumptions
in the field of IR that have been central since its establishment.
 Critical theories are valuable because they identify positions that have typically been
ignored or overlooked within IR.
 They also provide a voice to individuals who have frequently been marginalized,
particularly women and those from the Global South.

Critical theorists who take a Marxist angle:

 regularly argue that the internationalization of the state as the standard operating principle
of international relations has led ordinary people around the globe becoming divided and
alienated, instead of recognizing what they all have in common as a global proletariat.
 For this to change, the legitimacy of the state must be questioned and ultimately
dissolved. In that sense, emancipation from the state in some form is often part of the
wider critical agenda.

 Post-colonialism differs from Marxism by focusing on the inequality between nations or


regions, as opposed to classes.
 The effects of colonialism are still felt in many regions of the world today as local
populations continue to deal with the challenges created and left behind by the former
colonial powers.
 Post-colonialism’s origins can be traced to the Cold War period when much activity in
international relations centered on decolonization and the ambition to undo the legacies
of European imperialism.
 This approach acknowledges that politics is not limited to one area or region and that it is
vital to include the voices of individuals from other parts of the world.
Generally, realists believe that:

 International organizations appear to be successful when they are working in the


interests of powerful states.
 But, if that condition is reversed and an organization becomes an obstacle to national
interests, then the equation may change.

22
 The realists explain why the League of Nations was unsuccessful – failing to allow for
Germany and Japan‘s expansionist desires in the 1930s.
 A contemporary example would be the United States invading Iraq in 2003 despite the
Security Council declining to authorize it.
 The United States simply ignored the United Nations and went ahead, despite
opposition.

On the other hand liberals would argue that:

 Without the UN, IR would likely be even more chaotic – devoid of a respectable
institution to oversee relations between states and hold bad behavior to account.

A constructivist would look that

 It is true that the United States ignored the UN and invaded Iraq, by doing so it violated
the standard practices of international relations.

The United States

 unseen a norm’ and even though there was no direct punishment,


 Its behavior was irregular and so would not be without consequence.
 The United States faced in its international relations gives considerable weight to the
constructivist and liberal viewpoints.

In contrast to liberals and constructivists:

Marxists would argue that:


 Any international body, including the United Nations, works to promote the interests of
the business class.
 The UNis composed of states who are the chief protagonists in global capitalism
 The UN can be said to be dominated by imperial (or neo-imperial) powers.
 According to Marxist doctrine, Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

Finally, post-colonialists would argue that;


 The discourse perpetuated by the United Nations is one based on cultural, national or
religious privilege.
 They would suggest that it has no African or Latin American permanent members; the
Security Council fails to represent the current state of the world.

23
 Post-colonialists would also point to the presence of former colonial powers on the
Security Council and how their ability to veto proposals put forward by other countries
perpetuates a form of continued indirect colonial exploitation of the Global South.

24

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy