POLSCI 1AA3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Collective Action, Washington Naval Treaty, Collective Security
1 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
The discipline of international relations is divided into different theoretical camps. Each theory offers a different explanation for why the international realm looks as it does: why war and peace, why cooperation and conflict. Idealists suggested no it may be widespread and recurrent, but it is not inevitable. The logic here is as follows: human nature is essentially cooperative, not antagonistic nor belligerent. We know this to be the case from the fact that humans always group together into social organizations the problem has to be some type of social institution. War is a product of poorly constructed institutions: this being so, war must be caused by something that channels this natural cooperation into something more destructive. Poorly designed institutions can pervert the natural human tendency to cooperate: because war is caused by institutional failure rather than human nature, war can be rendered obsolete, provided that defective international institutions are reformed.
