Key Theories By Oxford §

(F) Day of the week: Thursday Class: IS310 Created Time: March 18, 2021 8:33 PM Database: Class Notes Database Date: March 18, 2021 8:33 PM Days Till Date: Passed Last Edited Time: June 16, 2021 11:02 AM Type: Reading Notes

• Classical RealismA theory of IR associated with thinkers such as Thucydides, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes. They believe that the goal, the means, and the uses of power are central preoccupations of international relations, which is an arena of continuous rivalry and potential or actual conflict between states that are obliged to pursue the goals of security and survival. In comparison with neorealism, which largely ignores moral and ethical considerations in IR, classical realism has a strong normative doctrine.
• Structural RealismFor structural realists, sometimes called neorealists, human nature has little to do with why states want power. Instead, it is the structure or architecture of the international system that forces states to pursue power. In a system where there is no higher authority that sits above the great powers, and where there is no guarantee that one will not attack another, it makes eminently good sense for each state to be powerful enough to protect itself in the event it is attacked. Structural realist theories ignore cultural differences among states as well as differences in regime type, mainly because the international system creates the same basic incentives for all great powers. Whether a state is democratic or autocratic matters relatively little for how it acts towards other states. Nor does it matter much who is in charge of conducting a state’s foreign policy. Structural realists treat states as if they were black boxes: they are assumed to be alike, save for the fact that some states are more or less powerful than others.
• LiberalismThe liberal tradition in IR emphasizes the great potential for human progress in modern civil society and the capitalist economy, both of which can flourish in states which guarantee individual liberty. The modern liberal state invokes a political and economic system that will bring peace and prosperity. Relations between liberal states will be collaborative and cooperative.
• NeoliberalismA renewed liberal approach which seeks to aovid the utopianism of earlier liberalist theory. Neoliberals share classical liberal ideas about the possibility of progress and change, but they do repudiate idealism. They also strive to formulate theories and apply new methods which are scientific.
• The English SchoolAcademic writers who seek to develop the argument that states in interaction with each other constitute an international society.
• Marxism The political economy of the nineteenth century German philosopher and economist Karl Marx in many ways represents a fundamental critique of economic liberalism. Economic liberals view the economy as a positive-sum game with benefits for all. Marx rejected that view. Instead, he saw the economy as a site of human exploitation and class inequality. Marx thus takes the zero-sum argument of mercantilism and applies it to relations of classes instead of relations of states. Marxists agree with mercantilists that politics and economics are closely intertwined; both reject the liberal view of an economic sphere operating under its own laws. But where mercantilists see economics as a tool of politics, Marxists put economics first and politics second. For Marxists, the capitalist economy is based on two antagonistic social classes: one class, the bourgeoisie, owns the means of production; the other class, the proletariat, owns only its labour power which it must sell to the bourgeoisie. But labour puts in more work than it gets back in pay; there is a surplus value appropriated by the bourgeoisie. That is capitalist profit and it is derived from labour exploitation.
• Critical Theory A post-positivist approach to IR influenced by Marxist thought advanced by the Frankfurt School. Critical theory rejects three basic postulates of positivism: an objective external reality, the subject/ object distinction, and value-free social science. Critical theorists emphasize the fundamentally political nature of knowledge. They seek to liberate humanity from the conservative forces and ?oppressive? structures of hegemonic (US-dominated) world politics and global economics. Critical theorists are similar to idealists in their support for progressive change and their employment of theory to help bring about that change.
• ConstructivismConstructivists argue that the most important aspect of international relations is social, not material. Furthermore, they argue that this social reality is not objective, or external, to the observer of international affairs. The social and political world, including the world of international relations, is not a physical entity or material object that is outside human consciousness. Consequently, the study of international relations must focus on the ideas and beliefs that inform the actors on the international scene as well as the shared understandings between them.
• FeminismEmphasizes that women are a disadvantaged group in the world, both in material terms and in terms of a value system that favours men over women. A gender sensitive perspective on IR investigates the inferior position of women in the international political and economic system, and analyses how our current ways of thinking about IR tend to disguise as well as reproduce a gender hierarchy.
• PoststructuralismFocused on language and discourse; it adopts a critical attitude towards established approaches in that it highlights the ways in which these theories represent and discuss the world. It is particularly critical of neorealism because of its one-sided focus on (Northern) states. Neorealism presents a world where a variety of actors (e.g., women, the poor, groups in the South, protest movements) and processes (e.g., exploitation, subordination, environmental degradation) are not identified and analysed. Neorealism therefore constructs a biased picture of the world that needs to be exposed and criticized.
• PostcolonialismAdopts a post-structural attitude in order to understand the situation in areas that were conquered by Europe, in particular in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. When scholars talk about ?traditional? and ?underdeveloped? ?Third World? countries, they are really constructive certain images of these areas which reflect how the powerful dominate and organise the ways in which states in the South are perceived and discussed. Any real liberation of the South thus need to critically expose such images; online in that way can the road be paved for really democratic and egalitarian relationships.
• Normative International Relations TheoryA field of study that draws on a combination of political theory, moral philosophy, and IR in order to address explicitly ethical question about international politics.