POLI 12 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: North American Free Trade Agreement, Democratic Peace Theory, Consistency
Lecture 20:
Key actors: (actors have goals)
• International level: representatives of states with different interests, ambassadors, head of state
• Domestic level: subnational actors, including politicians, bureaucrats, business, labor groups and
voters
• Transnational level: groups whose members span borders like multinational corporations and
transnational advocacy networks and terrorist orgs. Groups with potential influence on foreign
policy. Or peace groups that lobby at the UN or at the Govs for diff countries.
Framework:
• Interests: goals that actors have, the outcomes they have to attain through political action
• Interactions: the ways in which two or more actors’ choices combine to form a political outcome,
interactions can produce cooperation or conflict.
• Bargaining: an interaction in which actors have to choose outcomes that benefit one party at the
expense of another (territorial disputes). When bargaining fails this could raise the probability of
war.
• Institution: Set of rules that are known and shared but he relevant community that structure
interactions. Treaties and laws are examples of this such as the EU or NAFTA. Legal frameworks
that attempt to bind nations to the treaties. Countries in the EU give up sovereignty in return of
free movement and free trade. It creates constrains that shape the states’ behavior. On the other
hand, NAFTA in which Canada, Mexico and US agreed to not impose tariffs but now it looks like
tariffs and sanctions will be imposed on Mexican exports, this means NAFTA has not been very
effective at constraining states’ behaviors.
The approach political scientists take to explain phenomenons is by the use of theories. Theories are
logically consistent sets of statements that explain a phenomenon of interests. Scholars develop and
test hypothesis based on theories. Common theories are democratic peace theory which states that in
a democracy leaders are less likely to want to go to war as the voters will be critical of it and hence
the might get punished electorally. The hypothesis for this would be if pairs of democracies are more
or less likely to go toward than pairs of autocracies. Or are countries bound by treaties less likely to
go to war? Its tricky to study IR with a scientific method because war is very rare, there is a finite
number of countries and you can’t establish experiment like conditions of controlled factors, you
can’t keep other factors constant to isolate the effect of a single factor. Or you can’t force a country to
sign a treaty.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Or peace groups that lobby at the un or at the govs for diff countries. When bargaining fails this could raise the probability of war: institution: set of rules that are known and shared but he relevant community that structure interactions. Treaties and laws are examples of this such as the eu or nafta. Legal frameworks that attempt to bind nations to the treaties. Countries in the eu give up sovereignty in return of free movement and free trade. It creates constrains that shape the states" behavior. The approach political scientists take to explain phenomenons is by the use of theories. Theories are logically consistent sets of statements that explain a phenomenon of interests. Scholars develop and test hypothesis based on theories. Common theories are democratic peace theory which states that in a democracy leaders are less likely to want to go to war as the voters will be critical of it and hence the might get punished electorally.
