PSC 116G Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Non-Governmental Organization
PSC Chapter 1 Outline
Highlighted= concepts on study guide
INTRO
• International politics matters to everybody, in one way or another. It affects the daily
lives even if people care about it or don’t.
• Int’l Politics can be thought up as a set of vexing puzzles with high stakes.
• Involves ethical quandaries, highest aspirations of mankind, etc
PURPOSE: THE GOALS OF POLITICS
• Power and Purpose, central concepts in understanding political behavior – center of most
widely applied theories of int’l politics
• Purpose – refers to the goals of political action
o Definition: the goals that actors pursue, including the notion of “national interest”.
Whether actors see themselves as having shared or competing goals is a central
concern
• Example of actors: states, individuals, bureaucracies, firms, nongovernmental
organization (NGOs), international organizations and ever terrorist groups.
o Regardless of actors, we need to consider the purpose they are trying to achieve
o How do the purposes of states and of the international community change, and
what happens if they do?
THE PROBLEM WITH POWER
• Power, an essential concept but it’s definition and how it works is widely debated
• Power – the ability of an actor to achieve it’s goals. Exactly what constitutes power and
how to measure it are vexing problems in international relations
• Five different meanings of the word power:
o The ability to compel, or coercive power
o Compulsion according to rule, or institutional power
o Persuasion, or soft power
o The power of unquestioned beliefs, or structural power
o The power gained by working together, or collaborative power
THE SCIENCE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
• The goal of analysis is to decide whether to accept or to reject an assertion
• We can discover patterns in politics
• The branch of political science known as methodology studies how to best verify or reject
different hypothesizes (assertions) about politics
• Methodology – the set of principles, strategies, and practical steps used to evaluate
competing hypotheses.
o Profound disagreement about which methodological approaches are best.
o Profound disagreement about the use of the word scientific.
• Patterns of international affairs, The Process: THE GENERAL MODEL OF POLITICAL
SCIENCE (page 10)
o Begin with a question, the question must be clearly defined
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Document Summary
International politics matters to everybody, in one way or another. It affects the daily lives even if people care about it or don"t. Int"l politics can be thought up as a set of vexing puzzles with high stakes. Involves ethical quandaries, highest aspirations of mankind, etc. The problem with power: power, an essential concept but it"s definition and how it works is widely debated, power the ability of an actor to achieve it"s goals. Science (page 10: begin with a question, the question must be clearly defined, what causes civil wars? , identify potential answers, probabilistic answers, can come from history, political theory ect, ex: 2 prominent causes of international wars are 1. War results from an imbalance in military power. The role of theory: specific answers to specific questions are almost always linked to general explanations of how international politics works, these general explanations are called theories.
