Levels of Analysis in International Relations

Levels of Analysis

• Levels of analysis are used to examine international relations.

Learning Objectives

• The different levels of analysis are describable.
• The system level is applicable to theoretical schools.
• Waltz and Wallerstein's views of the international system are focused on.

Levels of Analysis in International Relations

• Individual analysis looks at personality, perceptions, activities, and choices.
• State analysis involves government, economy, interest groups, and national interest.
• System analysis encompasses multinational corporations, alliances, anarchy, and international norms/rules.

Table 1-2 Levels of Analysis

• Individual level focuses on the role of political leaders and the effects of their decisions.
• State level focuses on domestic political, economic, and social factors. -Global level focuses on the complex interaction of global factors and contexts, and considers the effects of globalization.
• Example of individual level: Kim Il-Sung lobbied Joseph Stalin to support his attack on South Korea in January 1950.
• State level example: Foreign policy actions in the United States are designed to satisfy potential voters and domestic lobby groups.
• Global level example: Booming manufacturing and industrial production leads to increases in water and air pollution.

Individual Level

• This focuses on individuals influencing politics such as Heads-of-State (e.g Presidents, Prime Ministers), UN Secretary-Generals, Business and Religious Leaders, etc.
• Emphasis is placed on understanding limitations of rational thinking, as humans are irrational due to self-interest or emotions.
• Individuals are guided by cognitive factors, such as cognitive consistency (ignoring contradictory information), optimistic bias (overestimating favorable outcomes), and heuristic devices (mental shortcuts).
• Sex is a biological condition, while society is a societal construct.
• It's still not certain how gender interacts in global politics.
• The gender opinion gap accounts for differing attitudes regarding men and women in leadership roles involving war.
• Leadership focuses on individual characteristics.
• Personality type involves relationships with self and others, and attitudes about power and authority.
• Operational code includes philosophical and instrumental beliefs.

State Level

• This focuses on states and decision-making.
• A state's structure and processes shape its beliefs, behaviors, and decisions.
• Elements to examine this inquiry include:
  • Governmental sources - impact of statecraft
  • State sovereignty - recognized authority over certain territory
  • Regime authority - from authoritarianism to democracy
  • Bureaucracy - components of government (e.g. departments)
  • Military capabilities - defense spending, military personnel
  • Economic capacity - natural resources, industrial output
• Societal factors:
  • Political culture - values, beliefs, practices
  • Demographics - population size, age cohorts
  • Human development - education, healthcare
• Physical and technical factors:
  • Technological sophistication - innovation
  • Geography - size, topography (i.e. rivers, lakes)

The International System

• Each of the major theoretical schools describes an international system.
• The notion of an international system is vital to realists and Marxists.
• For liberals and feminists it is less precise and consequential
• To understand the international system, the notion of a system itself must be clarified.

Systems

• A system is an assemblage of units, objects, or parts united by some form of regular interaction.
• Systems are made of different interacting units at the micro (cell, plant, animal) and macro (natural, ecosystem, or global climate) levels.
• A change in one unit causes changes in all others
• There are patterns to actions from interacting parts tend to respond in regularized ways.
• Boundaries separate systems, but exchanges across these boundaries can occur.
• Significant changes can cause a system to "break down" and a new system emerges.
• This is a "Top-Down" approach to global politics.
• Organization of Authority has a role of International Institutions (GATT, WTO) Interdependence involves:
  • Amount of Interaction Between States/Nations
  • Role of Information and Communications Technologies
• Polarity is the Number of Actors Existing in Global System.
  • Important to Realism and Balance of Power (BOP)
  • Can be:
    • Unipolar System (one state)
    • Bipolar System (two states) – Cold War Politics
    • Multipolar System (many states)
• Hegemony maintains power and control of political system

Contending Perspectives on the International System

• Realism:
  • Principal attribute: Anarchy.
  • System units: State is primary unit.
  • Constraints: Polarity, stratification.
  • Possibility of systemic change: Change occurs when balance of power shifts.
• Liberalism:
  • Principal attribute: Interdependence, international society, anarchy.
  • System units: Multiple units: states, IGOs, NGOs, MNCs, substate units.
  • Constraints: None – there are ongoing interactions.
  • Constant change as units are involved in new relationships.
• Marxism:
  • Principal attribute: Highly stratified.
  • System units: Capitalist States vs Less-Developed States.
  • Constraints: Capitalism, stratification.
• Radical change is desired, but is limited by capitalist structure.

Kenneth Waltz (1924-2013)

• IR Professor at Columbia University.
• Authored Man, the State, and War (1959) and A Theory of International Politics (1979).
• A neo-realist pioneer

Waltz's Man, The State and War (1954)

• Third Image: International System
• Second Image: Nation-States
• First Image: Human Nature
• In order to discern the Causality of war all three images must be looked at

A Theory of International Politics

• Neorealism was Waltz's response to what he saw as the deficiencies of classical realism.
• The main distinction between the these is:
  • Classical realism uses human nature to explain war
  • Neorealism emphasizes the anarchical system (3rd Image) regardless of human nature (1st Image) or domestic regimes (2nd Image)
• Waltz did not write a theory of foreign policy and does not attempt to predict or explain specific state actions, such as the collapse of the USSR.
• The theory explains only general principles of behavior that govern relations between states in an anarchic international system, rather than specific actions.
  • These recurring principles of behavior include:
    • Balancing against threats
    • Entering into individually sub-optimal arms races
    • Exercising restraint in proportion to relative power

Anarchy

• Realists see anarchy as the international system.
• Anarchy is the absence of a world government.
• There is no central or superordinate authority with coercive powers that states are obligated to obey.
• Thus, states are sovereign with a right to be independent and autonomous with respect to one another.
• Instead of being analyzed as politics without government, anarchy is misconstrued as life without politics.
• A state of anarchy is not war of all against all.
• Wars are costly, and their results are unpredictable, so states have an incentive to pursue their interests by other means.
• There are many agreements, conventions, treaties, understandings, and other arrangements to facilitate cooperation among states.
• These conventions and agreements (like IGOs in general) merely reflect the interests of the states subscribing to them.
• When it is no longer in a state's interests to abide by a certain convention, the state withdraws.
• Often, a state would find it more useful to ignore the convention while continuing to pay lip-service to it.
• Anarchy does not mean that war is constant and endemic in the international system.
• However war is always possible in the absence of a common sovereign, that states must be vigilant and prepare for war.

Consequences of Anarchy

• Great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability
• States can never be certain about other states' intentions.
• Survival is the primary goal of great powers
• Great powers are rational actors

General Patterns of Behaviour

• Anarchy leads to fear.
• Anarchy leads to self-help.
• Anarchy leads to power maximization.

Fear

• The basis of this fear is that in a world where great powers have the capability to attack each other and might have the motive to do so, any state bent on survival must be suspicious of other states and reluctant to trust them.
• The possible consequences of falling victim to aggression further amplify the importance of fear as a motivating force in world politics.

Self-Help

• States cannot depend on others for their own security, and therefore each state tends to see itself as vulnerable and alone
• This emphasis on self-help does not preclude states from forming alliances
• Although alliances are only temporary marriages of convenience :
  • Today's alliance partner might be tomorrow's enemy
  • Today's enemy might be tomorrow's alliance partner
• States operating in a self-help world almost always act according to their own self-interest and do not subordinate their interests to the interests of other states, or to the interests of the so-called international community.

Power Maximization

• Given the above conditions, states must seek to be the most the most powerful
• States seek to ensure their survival

Realism and Systemic Change

• Even though realists value the continuity of the anarchical system, they recognize that international systems do change.
• Realists attribute system change to three factors:
  • Changes in the distribution of power among units
  • Changes in the norms of the system (ie., the taboo against nuclear war)
  • Changes emanating from outside the system (ie., technological change expanded the boundaries of the international system)

World Systems Theory

• Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019)
  • Authored The Modern World System (1976) and The Capitalist World Economy (1979).
• Scholars must examine international relations from a holistic approach in which there is no distinction between economics, history, and politics.
• Wallerstein states that capitalism should be examined as an integrated system that transcends geographical or political boundaries
• WST describes the world market as a mechanism for the economic exploitation of the less developped states by advanced economies
• Further stating that the class struggle over political and group conflict as a determinant of human behaviour.
• "a unit with a single division of labour and multiple cultural systems."
  • World-Empires have a common political system (i.e Roman Empire)
  • World-Economies do not have a common political system
• The "Hegonomic" States:
  • Netherlands during 18th Century
  • Britain during 19th century
  • United States during 20th Century
• This emerged in 16th century and requires :
  • The state system
  • The development of the international trade and investment

Elements of the World System and of WST

• Market forces and political/military forces
• Technology
• Gunboat Diplomacy
• The Market forces are used to reinforce the "accident of history"which gave a headstart the Europeans to the European
• Exploitation of the strong over the weak, for national interest.
• There is an international hierarchy and struggle of states and economic classes.
• The world economy contains a dominant core and a dependent periphery that interacts and functions as an integrated whole.
• WST views them as an integrated whole so that the same mechanisms that produce capital accumulation and development in the core produce economic and political development in the periphery.
• States belonging to the core grouping:
  • Control wealth
  • Control governance mechanisms
  • Can create the rules that propogate their power
• Core are mainly democratic governments
• Semi-periphery authoritarian
• Periphery are none-democratic

Explore levels of analysis in international relations: individual, state, and system. Understand how each level examines global interactions. Discover the views of Waltz and Wallerstein on the international system.