IR Midterm Study Guide
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lamoroso9IR Midterm Study Guide
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lamoroso91.
Order of theories
Realism, liberalism, constructivism, postmodernism
2. International relations
Interactions among member states
3. Globalization
Expanded international trade, telecom, monetary coordination, technology and scientific
cooperation, multinational corporations, migration and refugee flow, relations among rich and
poor countries, and cultural exchange
4. Realism
A school of thought looking at IR in terms of power (power politics) and promotion of national
interest
Positive claim: ‘this is the way the world is’
Normative claim: ‘this is the way the world should be’
Thucydides and Machiavelli
5. Liberalism
John Locke (1600s) consensual government, natural rights, private property
- Market: private, voluntary
- Self regulating phenomenon
6. Neorealism
- Introduces structure to distribution of power
Unipolar: one state has most power (hegemony), provide public goods, can be in decline or
replaced by another hegemon, transition periods are very volatile
Bipolar: two states, erode or explode
Multipolar: three+ states
- Alliances are flexible in multipolar systems as well as high war probability
7. Constructivism
Identities and interests are constructed socially, through repeated interaction - individual role
can be limiting
8. Marxism
State is not as important as social class
- Counter-liberal philosophy
- Would view markets as benevolent users of resource; exploitative, volatile, unequal and
over time unsustainable
- Industrial society is dominated by 2 social classes: working and capitalists
- Membership is based on relationship to means of production
- Superstructure
- State advances interests of capitalist class
9. Postmodernism
Push hard on arbitrariness of meaning; every experience is mediated through language and
TEXT; deal with ‘fictional’ claims
10. Feminism
Difference feminism - men and women do things differently
They are socialized to be different
Realism and traditional state interaction has a masculine perspective: tends to value
aggression and acts in self interest
Female perspective: concrete, broader, and more likely to compromise
11. Balance of power
The general concept of one or more states’ power being used to balance that of another state or
group of states
(1) any ratio of power capabilities between states or alliances
(2) a relatively equal ratio
(3) the process by which counterbalancing coalitions have repeatedly formed to prevent one
state from conquering an entire region
12. Collective goods
A tangible/intangible good created by members of a group available to all group members
regardless of individual contribution - shortage possible (better for small groups)
- Dominance: imposing solutions hierarchically
- Reciprocity: positive forms of leverage to promise rewards vice versa
- Identity: changing participants’ preferences based on shared sense of belonging to a
community
13. Collective security
A system by which states have attempted to prevent or stop wars.
An aggressor against any one state is considered an aggressor against all other states, which
act together to repel the aggressor
14. The democratic peace
Democracies don’t wage wars with other democracies
- Neo-democracies are an exception since they are new
- How democracies perceive each other - tend to view choices of other democracies as
legitimate
15. Economic (or social) class
A categorization of individuals based off of economic/social status
16. Intergovernmental organization
An organization (such as the United Nations and its agencies) whose members are state
governments.
17. Levels of analysis
Individual: individual perception
Domestic: regime type, democratic/not, political institution, cultural attributes, economic factors
Interstate: presence/absence of allies, relative measures of power, power distributions, structure
Global: world = interdependent, climate change, epidemics, N/S gap, global reach issues
18. Militarism
To maintain a strong military
19. Nation neo- or structural realism; structure
Nation: a group of people that believe they share the same ethnic background/heritage
Neorealism put structure in the distribution of power uni, bi, multi…
20. North-South gap
North states are rich, south states are poor
Relation between Northern, rich parts of world and Southern, poor parts of the world and how
we interact
21. Positive peace
A peace that resolves the underlying reasons for war; not just a cease-fire but a transformation
of relationships, including elimination or reduction of economic exploitation and political
oppression.
22. Power
- Military power: Hard
- Moral power: Soft
- Cultural power: Soft
23. Prisoner’s Dilemma
A standard example of a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two completely rational
individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so
24. Security dilemma
A situation in which actions that states take to ensure their own security (such as deploying
more military forces) are perceived as threats to the security of other states.
25. Sovereignty
Legal right of a country to rule itself without intervention - foundation of modern IR
26. States and the modern state (Westphalian) system
Ended 30 years of religious war in Europe, marked beginning of Nation-State system and
separation of church and state 1648
State: must have territory, population, and government (economic system)
- Strategically rational actors
