POLS 1000 Lecture 8: Week8
16 Apr 2020
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Document Summary
Liberal international theory promotes optimism about the prospects for a peaceful international order, established through strong international institutions under-pinned by international law. It accepts that sovereign states are key actors in international affairs but maintains that their behaviour, even under conditions of anarchy, can be bettered through such institutions. Briefly, it sees human nature as amenable to positive change and learning. Realism purports to analyze things as hey really are, rather than how they ought to be. In this way, it marks itself off from the idealism of liberal thought, which in the interwar years was considered often criticized as utopian. In developing their ideas, classic realist scholars of the mid 20th century claimed to belong to a tradition they traced to thinkers such as thucydides, machiavelli, and hobbes. Realism comes in different forms, but virtually all realist international theory focuses on the struggle for power and security of sovereign states in conditions of international anarchy.
