2501 THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

1
2501THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

• Lecture 3
• REALISM
• (Classical Realism)

2
KEY ASSUMPTIONS

• States are the principal or most important actors
  (IR is the study of relations among these units).
  Hence, the notion of an international system of
  states
• State as a unitary actor (an integrated unit)
• State as a rational actor (rationality end-means
  relationship) Distinction between high and
  low politics
• National Security as the most important issue for
  states

3
Intellectual Roots(Classical Realism)

• Thucydides
• History of the Peloponnesian War (The Melian
  Dialogue)
• The standard of justice depends on the equality
  of power to compel and that in fact the strong do
  what they have power to do, and the weak accept
  what they have to accept

4
Machiavelli1469-1527

• The Prince
• it is much safer to be feared than to be loved,
  if one must choose

5
Hobbes1588-1679

• Leviathan
• Key assumption about human nature
• In the absence of a sovereign authority, life of
  the individual is solitary, poor, nasty,
  brutish, and short
• The Passions that Incline Men (and Women) to
  Peace The passions that inline men to peace, are
  fear of death desire of such things as are
  necessary to commodious life and a hope by their
  industry to obtain them. And reason suggesteth
  convenient articles of peace, upon which men may
  be drawn to agreement

6
Modern RealistsE.H. Carr Hans Morgenthau

• E.H. Carr (1892-1982)
• The Twenty Years Crisis (1939)
• Critique of Utopianism (Liberal Internationalism)
• (1) history is a sequence of cause and effect,
  whose course can be analysed and understood by
  intellectual effort, but not (as the utopians
  believe) directed by " imagination
• (2) theory does not (as the utopians assume)
  create practice, but practice theory
• (3) Politics are not (as the utopians pretend) a
  function of ethics, but ethics of
  politics.Morality is the product of power.

7
MORGENTHAU(1904-1980)

• Politics Among Nations (1948)
• Context of US hegemony
• Objective Scientific study of IR (apply
  natural sciences to IR)
• Distinction between liberal utopianism realism
  (Different conceptions of human nature)

8
Six Principles of Political Realism

• Politics is governed by objective laws
• Centrality of the concept of interest defined in
  terms of power (national interest as the guiding
  principle of international politics)
• Nature of power can change, but the concept of
  interest remains consistent
• Universal moral principles do not govern state
  behaviour, but interest
• No universally agreed set of moral principles
• Politics is a separate sphere of human activity

9
KEY POINTS

• International Politics as a struggle for power
  among nations
• Pessimistic View of Human Nature
• Amoral Perspective

10
Critique of Political Realism

• Understanding of human nature
• Reification of the state (regards state as a real
  thing)
• Limited notion of power (military power is
  primary)
• Weak notion of change and transformation in world
  politics