POLS 2200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Billiard Ball, Security Dilemma, Defensive Realism

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 2200
• Professor: Janine Clark

Document Summary

In classical realism, state leaders and their international decisions and actions are the centre of attention: neo-realists regard the distribution of power as the central analytical focus, the distribution of power determines the structure of the international system. In addition: with the number of great powers fewer, the possibility of great-power war is less. What do neo-realists think about uni-polarity: consensus that uni-polarity is inherently unstable and that other states will balance against it to create a bi-polar or multi-polar system. It is imposed by events on statesmen, not the other way around. Defensive versus offensive realists: realists disagree on the implications of anarchy and how much weight should be attributed to it in terms of the power-seeking behavior of states. It provokes hostile alliances by other states: states can never escape the security dilemma caused by anarchy but the security dilemma does not mean that states are always expansionist.