International Relations: An Introduction

International Relations is actually a pretty new field there's a lot of debate over when it started but it's pretty much came about in the early 20th century after the end of World War one more or less but it only really started being studied in most universities after World War two so International Relations is always trying to justify its existence why isn't it politics why isn't it history the LSE is one of the few places in the country where we have a separate Department for international relations in most other departments it's in politics but ir scholarship or is a subfield of the science brings to the study of international politics it's the application of concepts theories and methods I don't think there's one view of the subject there are different people working in the field and they have different approaches and I think this is a good thing I think it is good that there is a diversity of approaches diversity of methods to be used in understanding the world but what unites them is that we're not talking about solely domestic contexts within a particular territory but much more on how that territory be at a state or regional whatever links in with other territories and then more globally with sort of the the community the international community but as those relations have become more complex as transnational relations have involved multinational companies smugglers refugees international relations then focuses on everything that is above the state that flows above the territorial extent of one governments jurisdiction but also then dynamics and trends and factors which could affect those relationships or which could affect particular States but do not stem from the states themselves anything from say international migration to pollution international you know pollution which goes across borders to war so international relations looks at those crucial decisions when to go to war how wars a way why we should or shouldn't go to war war is the bread and butter of IR but I think it's better to talk in terms of violence because war reduces you to looking at one state fighting another state but when you look at violence you can look at conflict within a state or a trans transnational conflict or these non-state Wars kind of terrorism that sort of thing and I think that's a much broader and more useful way of studying international politics and international relations I think what unites us then is trying to identify you might say at least a large part of the discipline is trying to identify causes of why certain things happen and when you start to do that you're going much deeper into events into developments into longer-term trends than you can could understand from a newspaper article most international relations is about foreign policy and then most foreign policy is about what a state thinks it should do in the world there is always this tension between domestic political objectives a politician's wanting to get reelected or stay in power and therefore they focus on their more parochial local interest and they neglect the broader international cooperation that is necessary if an international economy is going to remain stable now what is interesting about IR is how in the past 30 years or so people have questioned this state centric notion of I R so rather than just accepting that international relations is just foreign policy studies a lot of especially in the IR department at the LSE are looking at reactions to this and who is left out now you and I ultimately give our allegiance to our country and our country can ask us in extreme situations to die for it to go and fight to defend it so the the benefit for the community that we live in is understanding how we interact with other communities other states but also examining the moral and behavioral dynamics that structure the interaction so international relations scholars don't just study war and atrocities we also study processes of cooperation and and integration the French and Germans had murdered each other for you know for at least 100 years you know leading up to a world war one and then the process of European integration has meant that the prospect of war between France and Germany is obsolete I mean it is simply inconceivable that is phenomenal I mean that in and of itself is an extraordinary achievement an accomplishment there is a tension between thinking about the world as it is and the world as it should be I think it's impossible do to take out all your own sort of normative proaches etc and simply make the study of the world a mechanical study but there is a good case for trying to be very clear about what your own proclivities are when you do the study in order to be able to dig deeper and to consider questions out of context as well and decide stab the emotion and the morality that often attaches to issue such as crisis in Syria or crisis in Ukraine and so you will have to come clean on the moral stuff where you stand and you would also have to try and suspend it when you're doing your studies and this kind of detachment delivered from on the foundation of broad scholarship is probably something that can inform it can improve in advance journalistic debates and debates in society more genuinely and that is one of the big differences between the pub conversation about international relations and the academic conversation about international relations that you can't start with outrage I mean that can be the impetus for you to study something but you will have to do the argument and it's interesting to see that it takes a couple of weeks or even months for students to get that when they come to the department that this is not simply about sort of yelling at the top of your voice about what you think is right it's about understanding and underpinning that I think there are two distinct groups of students the first I think which are the most interesting are those who just want to understand how to use the LS C's motto to understand the causes of things so why across this broad sweep of global politics why are these things happening and that's pure intellectual inquiry there's another group of students equally as large who want to go into diplomacy international relations international economic relations and they want to understand how the world functions how international relations functions have interstate relations functions so they can get involved and do it better so you have a pure intellectual pursuit of understanding and also the desire to become a States person to become a decision-maker and do the job better than their peers when people watch Star Trek they are presented with the world that has a number of systemic factors of how states should interact and that leaves a mark on people viewing show because when we say that something is utopia it doesn't mean that people who make it or people who watch it are simply transporting themselves to a no place it means that we are presented with a mirror of our own world where certain things are different but certain things are similar so you know you could study that it's a Star Trek indeed there is a division straight down the middle of international relations between what would be called realists and idealist between the pessimists who think international ations interstate relations are set in a certain way that leads directly obviously and repeatedly to state conflict and all they're trying to do then on that basis is to manage and minimize that conflict on the other side there is a great deal of idealists who believe that the world can and is moving towards a better place that you have greater democracy greater education greater understanding of the ordinary people of what their leaders are doing in a name so restraining them and demanding collaboration and cooperation between states and not conflicts there used to be this strand of IR theory called idealists or idealism which came out of World War one and it's about we should all get along we should have collective security where we rely on each other rather than building alliances against each other but some people ask are there any idealists anymore the future is I think in principle open so you know you can't rule out that at some point the world will be politically United that's definitely not on the card in the near future it will be great if IR became irrelevant because everybody had a law I don't see that happening so I see differences one of the main themes coming up in relations which means that it's unlikely there's going to be some universal human society

Channel: LSE

Views: 799,855

Rating: 4.9600801 out of 5

Keywords: LSE, London School Of Economics And Political Science (College/University), International Relations (Field Of Study), What is, Why study

Id: NVCDnUZqLzU

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 20 2014