POLS 1402 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Microfoundations
13 Apr 2017
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Consult ta about deadline if in thursday discussion group. Utility is defined as power and security [within the system]. Everybody wants to maximize this (no one has any goal other that this one); everyone is competing for the utility available: utility is security. Nobody in this situation is evil, everyone"s just trying to be secure. This is what neorealists believe is the tragedy of international politics. Neorealists believe that it makes no difference what individuals are in power; they are interchangeable for they all think and act in the same way. Neorealists find the constituent units of the system uninteresting because there"s no absolutely no variation between them. Neorealists believe the system is very sparse, simple, straightforward and clean. They think they are the only ones that cut to the core of what international politics is, removing all the fluff and breaking it down to its most fundamental elements. (but neoliberals say,
