Introduction to International Relations Theory

Introduction to IR Theory

• IR theory provides a way of looking at the world.
• All students and practitioners of international politics rely on theories to comprehend their surroundings.
• Simplify theories to make sense of the complex world.
• Strive for organized thinking to help make sense of complex global issues.
• Theories allow for explanation and prediction of phenomena.
• Developing a theoretical mindset allows consideration of the reasons behind actions.
• Considers global issues, including terrorist attacks, the spread of COVID-19 and economic recessions or depressions.
• Theorize about why events might have occurred.
• Theory allows analysts and decision-makers to transform numbers and files into a logical construction.
• Theories are applied to evaluate specific situations and in decision-making.
• Analysis involves breaking something complex into smaller parts to understand the essential features and relations.
• Foreign policy debates ultimately rest on competing theoretical visions.
• Thinking theoretically helps build knowledge and evaluate information.
• It allows citizens to evaluate proposed public policies.
• Check personal biases and assumptions.
• Chapters 3-4 and subsequent lectures present realism, liberalism, Marxism, constructivism, and feminism: five theoretical approaches for further study.
• Individual work is influenced by a particular doctrine, image of the world, ideology, paradigm, or perspective.
• Value-free and objective goals can be achieved only imperfectly.
• Theories are creative mental pictures that give form and purpose to complex phenomena.
• Complete explanatory power in any IR theory is lacking.
• Every theory has cases that contradict the main claims of the theory.
• Better theories have fewer anomalies.
• Theories encounter anomalies because they simplify reality by emphasizing certain factors while ignoring others.
• Theories are mentally formed pictures of a bounded realm or domain of activity, depicting organization and connections among its parts (Kenneth Waltz).
• Theory creation involves a flash of perception and making linkages.

What is Theory? (General Character)

• Theory is moving from the particular to the general.
• International theory offers descriptive and explanatory statements about patterns, regularities, and changes in structural properties and processes of international systems and their major component units.
• It concerns classes of events, which include typical behavior or trends instead of specific occurrences (Kal Holsti).
• Theories must have explanatory or predicting quality.
• Whenever A is present, B can be expected to follow.
• If states engage in arms races, the likelihood of war increases.

Assumptions of IR Theory

• Assumptions should be viewed regarding how fruitful they are in generating insights and valid generalizations about international politics
• Assumptions are neither true nor false, but useful to derive stable propositions or hypotheses about IR.
• Hypotheses are developed and tested against the real world.
• Theorists use simplifying assumptions to develop hypotheses and theories about the causes of various international political phenomena, like war, arms races, and the formation of international organizations.
• It is debated how important it is for assumptions to be realistic.
• Some social scientists argue that assumptions that underpin a theory need not conform to reality
• Milton Friedman maintains that the best theories have wildly inaccurate descriptive representations of reality.
• According to Friedman, the more significant the theory, the more unrealistic the assumptions.
• Most social scientists distinguish between assumptions that are simply useful simplifications of reality and those clearly contrary to reality.

Types of Theories

• Problem-solving theories take the world as it is and attempt to make institutions and relationships work more smoothly within that framework, which includes realism and liberalism.
• Critical approaches question the very framework accepted by problem-solving theory and are concerned with relations of inequality and unexplored or invisible issues within more mainstream approaches to IR, including Marxism, Feminism, and Postmodernism.
• Problem-solving theories are predominantly instrumental and predicated on implicit normative assumptions, while critical theories have an explicit normative agenda.
• Problem-solving theories have an objectivist worldview, treating problems as pre-given and interventions as discrete acts, while critical theories maintain that the social world is socially constructed.
• Problem-solving theories do not reflect on this relationship, whereas critical theories uncover the ideological preferences of dominant theories and practices and seek alternatives.

What is Methodology?

• The study of IR involves substantive issues, questions of fact that can include:
  • What were the leading causes of WWI?
  • Does democracy foster peace?
  • Does globalization hinder or help Third World development?
• The study of IR also involves investigation techniques and research designs.
• Methodological issues are conceptual and philosophical questions involved in how IR specialists carry out their research and can include:
  • Can IR be studied using objective scientific methods?
  • How plausible are the main assumptions concerning the nature of political reality upon which neorealism is based?
  • Should we accept the realist view of human nature as basically competitive or the liberal view of human nature as basically cooperative?
• Substantive questions also embody conceptual issues:
  • How is "war" defined?
  • What are "causes"?
  • What constitutes "democracy" or "peace"?
  • What do "globalization" or "development" mean?
• Methodological issues are in almost everything that IR scholars study.
• Gathering of governmental and non-governmental reports, eyewitness sources, and reports, official communications, intelligence, surveys, content analysis, experimental methods.
• Eyewitness sources' personal testimonies can offer success stories, reveal problems, disclose violations of international law, and describe political events.
• Investigative journalists enter foreign countries.
• Representatives of non-government organizations visit where journalists or diplomats are prohibited.
• Although witnesses try to describe facts truthfully, they inevitably put their spin on them.
• Forms of official communication include speeches, interviews, television/radio programs, letters, newspaper articles, blogs, and social media.
• A communiqué is an official report about an international meeting.
• Government documents remain classified for years.
• Freedom of Information Act allows citizens and entities to request government documents
• Wikileaks releases stolen classified documents.
• Content analysis is a research method to analyze texts.
• Intelligence includes information about the interests, intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign countries
• Multiplicity of intelligence signals poses problems.
• Two types of surveys are most valuable for the study of international relations: opinion polls and focus groups
• Opinion polls gather information, usually on a national sample, about attitudes related to other countries, international events, or one's own country's foreign policy.
• A focus group includes 7 to 10 experts who discuss a particular situation and express their opinion about issues raised by the group's moderators.
• Analysis: Breaking down a complex whole into smaller parts to understand its features and relationships, sometimes using sophisticated statistical tools.
• Scholars put participants in controlled conditions in experiments.
• One early contribution of experimental methods related to group decision-making, such as within a government team or the president's cabinet.
• Experiments often study conflict analysis and resolution.
• Critical thinking involves actively and systematically understanding international relations based on sound reasoning and evidence.
• The inquiry process is based on curiosity, doubt, and intellectual honesty.
• International relations is not a "hard science."
• Facts include verifiable events and developments.
• Opinions are speculations or intuitions about how and why such developments may have taken place.
• Recognizing multiple causes of events and outcomes, and awareness of bias is important for critical thought.
• Bias is often caused by different experiences and life circumstances.
• Emotional biases and narrow experiences can affect logical analyses.
• Hard science involves a controlled lab setting, whereas social sciences study the world around us.
• In physics, researchers share a common understanding of terms like mass, density, heat, and speed, unlike IR, where there is disagreement over terms like democracy.
• The goal of hard sciences is to derive laws of behavior, whereas social sciences aim to derive laws of behavior, with probability used to state the generalized form of causal relationships.

Summary

• Theories have both empirical (factual) and normative (value-based) attributes.
• Characteristics of good theories include description and explanation, prediction, and prescription.

Explore the purpose and importance of International Relations (IR) theory in understanding global politics. Learn how theories simplify complex issues, enable explanation and prediction, and guide decision-making. Discover how a theoretical mindset aids in analyzing events and transforming data into logical frameworks.