POLS 2000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Rational Agent, Bandwagoning, World-Systems Theory
5 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Kim 1
-Realism & alliances
-Motivations for making war
-Opportunity
-Going after gains when opportunity arises
-Fear
-Rational response to fear is to attack
-Strategies for security
-Balance of power
-Distribution of power across international system influences pattern of
alliances that tend to form in an anarchic environment
-Forming alliance to counter or balance against the power of others
and either protect what you consider to be valuable or gain the power
to pursue what you want
-Bandwagoning
-Siding with alliance that has more power to get some of the war
spoils
-More theories of international politics…
-Understand the weaknesses of Realism
-Understand the strengths and limitations of alternative perspectives to international politics
-Review on realism
-Best example of how international politics operates in an anarchic environment
-States are rational unitary actors
-These unitary rational states interact in an anarchic environment
-Power is the fundamental resource to be pursued
-Shortcomings of realis…
-Alternative perspectives
-Tend to be faddish, depending on the decades
-1960s/70s – Marxist perspectives
-Politics occurs within an economic structure defined by exploitative trade
relationships by corporate, class, and multinational entities
-1980s – Postmodernism
-Wealth flows from the core economic elites to core leaders at the periphery
-1990s – Constructivism
-Media driven foreign policy
-Human beings construct the reality around them
-Many of these not even coherent theories
-But, it does’t mean they’re not valuable for the study of international politics
-Back to that states-as-unitary-actors assumption
-Foreign Policy Analysis
-Understanding how individuals (not states) make decisions within the structure,
process, and context of domestic politics is essential to understanding international
politics
-One of the theoretical perspectives that directly challenges the realist presumption
of the state as a unitary rational actor
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Distribution of power across international system influences pattern of alliances that tend to form in an anarchic environment. Forming alliance to counter or balance against the power of others and either protect what you consider to be valuable or gain the power to pursue what you want. Siding with alliance that has more power to get some of the war (cid:862)spoils(cid:863) Understand the strengths and limitations of alternative perspectives to international politics. Best example of how international politics operates in an anarchic environment. These unitary rational states interact in an anarchic environment. Power is the fundamental resource to be pursued. Tend to be faddish, depending on the decades. Politics occurs within an economic structure defined by exploitative trade relationships by corporate, class, and multinational entities. But, it does(cid:374)"t mean they"re not valuable for the study of international politics. Understanding how individuals (not states) make decisions within the structure, process, and context of domestic politics is essential to understanding international politics.
