PSCI 3123 Lecture 7: Thucydides
24 Feb 2017
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What are the two sides in a war guided by: self-interest, the goal of behavior is to gain power (realism). Realism : you cannot generate power, if you gain power you must take it from someone else, who has more vs. who has less, ex. You don"t have to add weapons to gain power, you just have to take them from someone else. Why do states what power: so others do not have power, the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Greed for power drives state behavior: every country acts the same, do all leaders act the same, realists say that they won"t act differently given their situation. Realism assumes that actors act rationally and act as a single unit. This means that given the same situation, leaders will all act and respond the same: domestic politics are irrelevant to realist theory.
