Major Theories of IR

okay so I want to say a few more things about realism and and liberalism and then highlight just a few things about some other theories of international relations all right so if we think about realism the focus of the analysis for realists is the struggle for power among states in that anarchic international system that I talked about before so the major actors for realists are States and these states are rational and they are unitary actors by rational Ramin they have an economic perspective let me rephrase that we're borrowing from the economic discipline about what rationality means the idea that they are rational but doesn't mean crazy are not crazy it means States act rationally in order to make decisions so an rational actor is one who has an ordered preferences they have their list of things they would like to accomplish in some ordered fashion and they choose them they choose the option that's going to provide the most utility a unitary actor means that the black box of the state is going to speak with one voice they can squabble all they want domestically but eventually out pops as international level decision making or decision what we'll call for a foreign policy alright the goal of the state is to enhance their power thereby enhancing their security that's what is the real concern of most realists is the protection of the state and so the key concepts that we tend to think about or the security dilemma already described before power politics and our key self-help system and all that is indicative or describes the realist perspective ok the strengths of realism is that it's simple its straightforward and there's historical evidence to help support the theory on the other hand critics argue that there's much too there's too much emphasis on conflict that realists tend to underestimate the role of international institutions and promoting cooperation there's too much emphasis on Nate in states and not enough attention paid to toward other actors in the international system and perhaps most importantly the internationalism cannot explain the end of the Cold War so it has a hard time explaining peaceful change for realists the way that you have a change in the distribution of power in the international system is through war and the demise the bipolar system at the end of the Cold War into a unipolar system isn't explained very well through realist behavior all right for liberalism the focus is on enhancing global political and economic cooperation and so beyond just the state other actors are i-gos NGOs and multinational corporations so states aren't always seeking rational behavior so much as they are seeking compromise that occurs between various interests within the States in order to provide cooperation across States so the goals of States from a liberal perspective is economic prosperity and stability so economics plays a huge role in the liberal paradigm the key concepts again we can kind of think of as AI Geo's international law collective security economic interdependence and so kind of think of anything that is cooperative if you will is is pretty much something that would fall into the liberal key concept bucket of course there are strengths to liberalism helps explain cooperation in a international system which would at first glance suggest that cooperation isn't beneficial it also helps under to understand the economic economics of international relations but some of the weaknesses is that they don't explain or have a hard time explaining some of the conflict that does occur in spite of cooperation and many people argue that in the end the weakness is that push comes to shove states are going to fall back on national security as their number-one concern all right but there's other theories constructivism for example okay constructivist are it's a more recent theoretical perspective and constructivist are looking at how and why we arrived at the current state of affairs and international relations and basically they argue that the structure of the international system whether it's by pole or multipolar or what-have-you is not an all determining factor in how states behave okay they don't believe that anarchy has some sort of unavoidable deterministic impact on the behavior of states remember realists argue that because of Anarchy states behave a certain way liberals pay attention to Anarchy but says it can be overcome constructivist says that's not the case at all in fact Alexander Wendt who is probably one the most famous constructivist says anarchy is what states make of it he says while Anarchy permits the realist world of power politics and self-help to emerge does not always by itself necessitate such a response so what's really important are the role of human actors and those human beings as active agents and understanding and expressing their ideas so basically this concept of anarchy is what states make of it is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy if States believe that Anarchy is going to lead to war and that's likely what's going to happen so constructivist tends to focus more on the ideas and norms of individuals and societies and how they help construct if you will behavior of states so you have these changing ideas and understandings of the world that play an important role in why States behave the way they do so individuals and non-state actors are key to the promotion of these ideas and one of the best examples is Gorbachev's new thinking if you will about how relation should be or how the Soviet Union should pursue it's interests okay so we will see as we move forward that human rights has a lot of our constructivism has a lot of influence on the human rights field of course there's feminism and feminism is a political movement as well as a theoretical movement and thinness scholarship became pretty prominent toward the late 80s early 90s in the field of IR and basically what this scholarship asserts is that realism is basically a male perspective on how the world of international relations work so they argue that realist is a gendered perspective and they look at not only who is engaged in international relations theory which has been traditionally men and foreign policy maker has been the PERT foreign policymaking has been the purview of men feminists also look at the issues that states find important and point to the idea that because men have run states that the issues that are important to women and children and specifically have been if not ignored at least not put into and at the top of the list so feminists tend to argue that a shift needs to occur in terms of not only who is engaged in scholarship who's engaged in leadership in terms of states but also the issues that are being considered by both states and scholars Marxists look at the class as the driving factor in both domestic relations as well as international relations okay they agree with realists that perhaps conflict is inevitable however they tend to focus on the socio-economic classes as the key actors and said these classes will indeed conflict with one another and we'll talk a lot more about Marxism when we focus in on the issues of economic development and how that might affect human rights violations okay so again that's just a very brief overview of the theories and as we move through the semester and these theories come up I will provide more information about them

Channel: Rhonda Callaway

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Keywords: IR Theories

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Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2013