POL326Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Unilateralism, Orbital Inclination, Tabula Rasa
Document Summary
Constructivist: alternative view that argues essentially that to understand politics it is important to pay attention to symbolic aspects of politics, how societies construct meaning. This applies to foreign and domestic policy, more so to foreign policy. Realists argue that states are fundamentally motivated and form rational by security and try to gain as much power to preserve that security and pursue those interests in order to enhance their security. Sense of security, how to they determine their interests and go about advancing them. Public opinion: volatile, unstructured and incoherent; something to be manipulated by elites rather than something that provides elites a guide. Ideology: tends to be far more stable than public opinion, in that regard we noted that the literature on ideology in the us has tended within the us to paint a picture of the us as relatively non-ideological. This is surprising since observers of american politics see a high level of ideology.
