Theories in International Relations

The IR course introduced several prominent theories in International Relations, each offering a distinct lens through which to understand global politics, state behavior, and the dynamics of conflict and cooperation.

1. Realism

◦ Core Principles: Realism is presented as the dominant and enduring theory in international relations, viewing the international system as anarchic, meaning there is no overarching authority above sovereign states. States are the primary actors, acting out of self-interest to ensure their survival and security.

◦ Self-Help and Power: Due to anarchy, states must rely on self-help to navigate threats, driving them to accumulate power and influence, particularly military advantage, as the best way to guarantee survival.

◦ Continuity and Skepticism about Peace: Realism emphasizes the persistent patterns of conflict and power struggles throughout history, arguing that the fundamental logic of power politics remains unchanged despite globalization or other factors. Realists are skeptical that economic interdependence or institutions diminish the anarchic nature of international politics or significantly reduce the likelihood of conflict.

◦ Cooperation: While cooperation between states occurs, realists believe it is difficult to achieve and sustain, primarily due to relative-gains considerations (how much one state gains compared to another) and concerns about cheating.

◦ Institutions: Realists view international institutions as reflections of the distribution of power, created and shaped by powerful states to maintain or increase their influence. Institutions are tools of great powers and have minimal independent effect on state behavior or the causes of peace.

◦ Critique of Liberalism: Realism provides a pragmatic and enduring framework that contrasts sharply with idealist or liberal perspectives that emphasize cooperation, norms, and institutions. Mearsheimer argues that Western elites' subscription to a flawed liberal view of international politics led to the Ukraine crisis.

◦ Examples: The Cold War order is characterized as bounded and realist. The emerging multipolar world is predicted to consist of realist-based international orders.

2. Liberal Institutionalism (Neoliberal Institutionalism)

◦ Focus: This theory is less ambitious than other institutionalist theories, focusing mainly on explaining cooperation in economic and environmental issues where states have mixed interests rather than fundamentally opposed ones. It does not directly address how to prevent war.

◦ Acceptance of Realist Assumptions (with a twist): Liberal institutionalists claim to accept realism's core assumptions, such as states being rational egoists in an anarchic system, but argue that cooperation is easier to achieve than realists recognize.

◦ Overcoming Cheating: The principal obstacle to cooperation is the threat of cheating, which institutions help overcome by:

▪     Increasing the number of transactions over time (iteration), raising the costs of cheating and allowing for reciprocation.

▪     Tying together interactions in different issue areas (issue-linkage), making states reluctant to cheat in one area for fear of retaliation in another.

▪     Increasing the amount of information available for monitoring, which discourages cheating and provides early warning.

▪     Reducing transaction costs, making cooperation more efficient and attractive.

◦ Flaws and Critiques: A major theoretical failing is its oversight of relative-gains concerns, assuming states focus exclusively on absolute gains. This limits its applicability, especially in security matters, as military might depends on economic might. Empirical evidence for liberal institutionalism is described as unpromising.

3. Collective Security

◦ Goal: This theory directly confronts the issue of how to cause peace by recognizing the continued importance of military power but arguing for its proper management through institutions.

◦ Anti-Realist Norms: It is explicitly anti-realist, rejecting balance-of-power logic and traditional alliances. It proposes that states base their behavior on three profound norms:

▪     Renounce the use of military force to alter the status quo, settling disputes peacefully.

▪     Equate national interest with the broader interests of the international community, viewing an attack on any state as an attack on every state.

▪     Trust each other to sincerely renounce aggression and to automatically confront any aggressor with overwhelming military power.

◦ Challenges and Flaws: Collective security is deemed an incomplete theory as it does not satisfactorily explain how states overcome their inherent fears and learn to trust each other in an anarchic world. It faces numerous demanding requirements that make it difficult to implement in practice, such as clearly distinguishing aggressor from victim, overcoming historical enmities, distributing the burden of intervention, and ensuring rapid response. It also impinges on state sovereignty.

◦ Empirical Record: The historical record provides little support for collective security; the League of Nations was a "spectacular failure," and the UN was not seriously tested in the Cold War.

◦ Fallback Positions: Peacekeeping and concerts are sometimes seen as less ambitious versions, but Mearsheimer argues they operate on different logics (peacekeeping is non-coercive and limited to minor powers, while concerts reflect the balance of power and are largely consistent with realism).

4. Critical Theory

◦ Aims and Approach: This is the most ambitious theory, aiming to fundamentally transform the nature of international politics to a "world society" or "peace system" where security competition and war are relegated to history.

◦ Ideas and Discourse: Critical theorists believe ideas and discourse are the driving forces shaping the world, not material structures. The world is "socially constructed" by individuals whose behavior is mediated by shared thoughts.

◦ Transforming State Identity: The key is to radically alter state identity, from solitary egoists to a powerful "communitarian ethos" where states see themselves as mutually conditioned parts of a larger whole, caring about "rectitude," "rights," and "obligations".

◦ Critique of Realism: Critical theorists seek to challenge and undermine realism, which has been the dominant discourse for centuries, to pave the way for a more peaceful world.

◦ Flaws and Critiques: The explanation for how change occurs is incomplete or contradictory; it fails to adequately explain why some discourses become dominant or why realism has persisted for so long. Paradoxically, when attempting to explain the decline of realism, critical theorists often point to changes in the material world, contradicting their own emphasis on social construction. It cannot predict the future or guarantee that a new discourse will be benevolent.

◦ Empirical Record: There is little empirical support for critical theory's claims, and much to contradict them, including the argument that the feudal era was not dominated by realist behavior.

5.

Liberal Internationalism

(as distinct from Liberal Institutionalism's focus on economic cooperation)

◦ Historical Evolution: This is a dominant form of statecraft pursued by liberal states, shaping global order-building for over two centuries, from Enlightenment thinkers to the post-WWII order institutionalized by the US and UN.

◦ Core Ideas: Grounded in the belief that international relations can be governed by law, cooperation, and moral purposes like peace, justice, and prosperity. It emphasizes rule-based order, multilateral institutions, and the promotion of democracy and human rights.

◦ Tensions: It faces persistent dilemmas, including the tension between interventionist and non-interventionist approaches, balancing cultural diversity with universal moral goals, and the role of non-liberal states. It also grapples with the coexistence of internationalism with imperialism and self-interest.

◦ Challenges: Faces contemporary challenges like democratic recession, declining Western hegemony, and rising powers challenging the liberal order. Calls for reform to address social/economic exclusion and enhance global justice.

6. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth

◦ Model Type: A linear model describing how all countries can develop economically through five distinct stages.

◦ Stages:

        1. Traditional Society: Subsistence agriculture, limited technology, low productivity.

     2. Preconditions for Take-off: New attitudes toward progress, investment in infrastructure, new technologies, rise of entrepreneurs.

         3. Take-off: Rapid industrial growth in key sectors, rising investment, urbanization, self-sustaining growth.

       4. Drive to Maturity: Diversified economy, sophisticated technologies, wider range of goods, skilled workforce, less import dependence.

        5. Age of High Mass Consumption: Widespread affluence, mass production, consumerism, high standard of living.

◦ Drivers and Critique: Emphasizes capital accumulation, technological advancement, and social change as drivers. Critiqued for being ethnocentric, overly linear, not accounting for diverse development paths or setbacks, and reflecting a Western-centric view. This theory is listed as a required reading in the International Relations course, indicating its relevance to the politics of development.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1: What is the primary purpose of the "International Relations" course at XIM University? 

    A1: The "International Relations" course is designed as an eclectic introduction to the important intersections between public policy and international relations. It aims to help Ph.D. students imagine public policy on an international scale, expose them to various avenues of research on global politics, and help them understand challenges in global policy and the impact of international politics on policy.

Q2: What is Mearsheimer's central argument regarding the liberal international order? 

    A2: John J. Mearsheimer argues that the liberal international order, led by the United States since the Cold War, was "bound to fail" and is now in deep trouble. He contends that it contained the seeds of its own destruction due to three fatal flaws: 

    1. Difficulty in spreading liberal democracy globally due to nationalism and balance of power politics. 

    2. Its tendency to privilege international institutions over domestic considerations and promote porous borders, clashing with nationalism over sovereignty and national identity within liberal states themselves. 

    3. Hyperglobalization, which caused economic costs (lost jobs, declining wages, inequality) for many in liberal democracies, eroding support, and simultaneously fueled the rise of China, ending unipolarity, a prerequisite for a liberal order.

Q3: How does Mearsheimer connect the Ukraine crisis to Western foreign policy and International Relations theories? 

    A3: Mearsheimer attributes most of the responsibility for the Ukraine crisis to the United States and its European allies. He argues that the "taproot of the trouble" was NATO enlargement, alongside the EU's eastward expansion and Western backing of pro-democracy movements in Ukraine (e.g., the Orange Revolution in 2004). He states that Russian leaders have consistently opposed NATO enlargement, particularly into Georgia and Ukraine, viewing it as a direct threat. Mearsheimer asserts that Western leaders were "blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics," tending to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the 21st century and that Europe could be kept whole and free on liberal principles. In essence, Putin and his compatriots acted according to realist dictates, while their Western counterparts adhered to liberal ideas, unknowingly provoking the crisis.

Q4: What is the difference between "international orders" and "bounded orders" according to Mearsheimer? 

    A4: Mearsheimer distinguishes between: 

    * International Orders: These orders must include all of the world's great powers and ideally every country in the system. Their main purpose is to facilitate cooperation between states, either among great powers or virtually all countries. They are a constant feature of contemporary international politics. 

    * Bounded Orders: These consist of institutions with limited membership, usually regional in scope, and are typically dominated by a single great power. They are primarily designed to allow rival great powers to wage security competition with each other, rather than to advance cooperation between them. They are not a constant feature; only realist international orders are accompanied by bounded orders. 

    * Example: During the Cold War, there was a thin international order (e.g., the UN for cooperation between superpowers) and two thick bounded orders (the U.S.-led Western order, like NATO, and the Soviet-led communist order, like the Warsaw Pact) designed for security competition. In the new multipolar world, Mearsheimer predicts a thin international order and two thick bounded orders (one Chinese-led, one U.S.-led).

Q5: What are the main types of international orders discussed by Mearsheimer? 

    A5: Mearsheimer identifies three main types of international orders, determined primarily by the global distribution of power and, in unipolar systems, the political ideology of the dominant state: 

    * Realist Orders: Emerge in bipolar or multipolar systems (two or more great powers) where states engage in security competition. Ideological considerations are subordinate to security concerns. These orders may include features consistent with liberal values, but they are driven by balance-of-power logic. 

    * Agnostic Orders: Occur in unipolar systems when the dominant state does not have a universalistic ideology and is not committed to imposing its political values on other countries. The unipole is more tolerant and pragmatic. 

    * Ideological Orders (e.g., Liberal): Arise only in unipolar systems where the leading state is a liberal democracy (or another universalistic ideology like communism). The aim is to reshape the world in its own image by spreading democracy, promoting economic intercourse, and building powerful international institutions. Mearsheimer argues these are "destined to have a short life span".

Q6: What is the significance of "relative gains" in the context of international cooperation, and how do realists and liberal institutionalists differ on this? 

    A6: Relative gains refers to a state's concern not just about its own absolute profit from cooperation, but also how well it does compared to other states. 

    * Realists contend that states are primarily motivated by relative gains concerns in a competitive international system, especially because economic gains can be translated into military advantage. This concern makes cooperation more difficult to achieve. 

    * Liberal Institutionalists were initially criticized for ignoring relative-gains considerations, assuming states focused exclusively on absolute gains (maximizing their own profit without caring about others' gains). While they later acknowledged this oversight, Mearsheimer argues that their proposed repairs rely on realist explanations for when relative gains matter less, thus making liberal institutionalism subordinate to realism.

Q7: How does Mearsheimer characterize American foreign policy elites' view of realism? 

    A7: Mearsheimer argues that American elites and the public tend to regard realism with hostility because it clashes with basic American values. Specifically: 

    1. Realism is a pessimistic theory that depicts a harsh, competitive world with little promise of becoming benign, which goes against the American belief in progress and solving social problems. 

    2. Realism treats war as sometimes necessary and an extension of politics, while most Americans prefer to view war as a hideous enterprise justified only by lofty moral goals. 

    3. Realism does not distinguish between "good" and "bad" states, treating all as driven by the same goal of maximizing relative power, which contradicts the American belief in their own good intentions. 

    4. America has a long history of anti-realist rhetoric, emphasizing isolationism and opposing "entangling alliances". Mearsheimer concludes that institutionalist theories appeal to Americans because they offer an optimistic alternative to realism that aligns with these values.