Neorealism and International Relations

• Neorealism, developed by Kenneth Waltz, focuses on anarchy, balance of power, and the security dilemma as key elements in international relations.

What is Realism?

• Realism is also known as Waltzian Neorealism, Structural Realism, or Defensive Realism.

Realism's Dependent Variable

• State interactions in the international sphere and the impact of the international system's structure on state behavior are key focuses.
• Realism seeks to explain the causes of war, avoidance of major power conflict, and alliance patterns.

Level of Analysis

• Realism relates to the third image which is the levels of system: Individual, group, state, system.

Contrast to Classical Realism

• Classical realism, exemplified by Morgenthau, posits that humans inherently desire scarce goods and power, influencing state behavior.

Realism's Key Actors

• Great or major powers are the primary actors, possessing significant diplomatic, economic, and military strength to influence international affairs.

Realism's Independent Variable

• The distribution of power and capabilities, specifically the number and alignment of great powers, shapes international relations.
• Polarity types: Multipolarity (3+ great powers), Bipolarity (2 great powers), and Unipolarity (1 great power).

Realism's Assumption: International Anarchy

• International anarchy, according to Waltz, signifies the absence of a central monopoly of legitimate force, distinguishing it from political anarchism.
• Absence of world government leads to states ensuring their survival, arising from the interaction of self-regarding states.
• Thucydides' Melian Dialogue illustrates the principle that "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

States are interested in Survival

• States prioritize survival, with defensive realism (Waltz) emphasizing security maximization and offensive realism (Mearsheimer) focusing on power maximization.

Power is Fungible

• Power, as defined by Dahl, is the ability of one actor to influence another to do something they wouldn't otherwise do.
• Power is a currency in international politics applicable to various goals.

States are Rational, Unitary Actors

• States act as rational, unitary actors, prioritizing self-interest and survival.
• Independence is valued over interdependence.
• States are functionally undifferentiated, alike in tasks but not in capabilities.

Consequences of International Anarchy

• Anarchy leads to self-help as states must provide for their own security due to constant risk.
• Anarchy results in competition and conflict, serving as a "permissive cause of war."
• Self-help leads to natural selection where "the price of inattention or miscalculation is often paid in blood".
• Learning leads to the diffusion of innovations affecting state behavior.

External Balancing

• States form alliances to ensure their survival and check the rise of potential revisionist states.
• Military alliances help maintain the status quo.
• Alliances are often short-lived due to self-help dynamics.

Short-lived Alliances?

• NATO's continued existence challenges the notion of short-lived alliances.

Balance of Power

• It is a state of equilibrium among nations, preventing any single one from dominating.
• Historically, no single state has been strong enough to dominate all others.

Bandwagoning

• It involves a threatened state joining a rising power to gain advantages.
• It is a dangerous strategy typically chosen out of necessity.

Chain-Ganging

• Allies become entangled in unwanted wars due to reckless partners.

Buck-passing

• Allies avoid balancing efforts and free-ride on coalition partners.

Internal Balancing

• States build their military and economic capabilities to ensure survival.
• Status quo states use internal balancing to counter potential revisionists, because allies are unreliable
• Self-help leads to arming.

Security Dilemma

• Uncertainty leads to the security dilemma.
• States question whether others are hostile or benign.
• Actions taken to enhance one's security can be perceived as threatening by others, leading to countermoves.
• Rousseau's Stag Hunt illustrates how self-help and uncertainty can prevent actors from achieving a common goal.

Why Cooperation is difficult?

• Cooperation may bring disaster if others do not cooperate.

International Cooperation as a Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma

• Cooperation is mutually beneficial when gains from cooperation increase and costs of exploitation decrease.
• Increased costs of mutual defection and reduced gains from exploitation also foster cooperation.
• Increased expectations of cooperation further facilitate collaboration.
• Cooperation is more likely when mutually and equally beneficial.
• Relative gains concerns can hinder cooperation more than absolute gains.

Liberal Institutionalism, Neoliberalism, Complex Interdependence

• Robert Keohane contributed significantly to these theories in the 1970s and 1980s.

Institutionalism's Dependent Variable

• State interactions in the international sphere.
• Explaining pervasive cooperation between states.
• Understanding why states form international institutions.
• Determining whether institutions can constrain great powers.

What is cooperation?

• Achieving cooperation requires mutual adjustment and coordinated policies to facilitate the realization of objectives. and common interests are important.

Interested in explaining

• Third image (system).

Contrast to Wilsonian Liberalism

• Collective security and the universalization of Western liberal democracy is relevant.

Institutionalism Independent Variable

• Institutional arrangements and the distribution of information are influential.
• Institutions shape the context in which states make decisions based on self-interest, enabling mutual adjustment to achieve common goals.

International Anarchy

• Waltz emphasizes the absence of a world government.

States are interested in survival and wealth

• States prioritize wealth maximization as a complement to power and are rational egoists.

Credible Commitment

• Involves the prospect of punishment for non-compliance.

Transaction Costs and Focal Points

• Institutions reduce negotiation and monitoring costs improving efficiency.
• Lower transaction costs increase profitability, and focal points help when coordination is difficult.

Issue Linkage

• Institutions are created to address multiple issues, leading to complex interdependence.
• It eases retaliation and increases the costs of cheating.

Overcoming Relative Gains concerns

• Reduced concern about relative gains from High absolute gains and multiple players.
• Institutional focal points and information reduces anxiety over distribution issues.

International Regimes

• Krasner defines as sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures.

Where do international Institutions come from?

• Collective action problems lead to free-riding behavior.
• Gilpin says a hegemon must bear the costs of providing global public goods.
• Kindleberger says a hegemon is necessary for global economic stability, acting as a lender of last resort and ensuring stable exchange rates and markets.

Is a hegemon needed?

• Keohane opposes the hegemon theory
• Small states derive sufficient benefits to contribute to institutions.
• Institutions are products of states' interests and capabilities.

Social Constructivism

• Alexander Wendt, Martha Finnemore, and Kathryn Sikkink are key figures.

Is there Anarchy?

• Norms, social structures, and intersubjectivity are central to social constructivism.

Critical Perspectives in International relations

• Feminism, Marxism, and Post-Positivism offer alternative perspectives.

What is social constructivism?

• It is a theory emphasizing ideas, norms, and shared understandings in international politics.
• It focuses on non-material social structures and acknowledges that these structures shape identities and interests, not just behavior.
• "Anarchy is what states make of it".

Constructivism's Dependent Variable

• State Interactions in the international sphere.
• Influence of ideas and norms.
• Why some regions have formed security communities.
• Whether norms constrain behavior.

Chemical weapons usage is a norm

What is a security community?

• Deutsch defines as a group that will not fight each other physically.
• War becomes unthinkable within a security community.
• Third Image: ideas determine security communities.

Constructivism's Independent Variable

• Social structures and the distribution of ideas.
• Intersubjectivity: Collective, social understandings of state relationships.
• Social structures give meaning to material capabilities.
• Social structures and ideas shape practices and interests.

Are Social Structures Objective?

• Wendt sees them as externally existing social facts.

Opposition to materialism

• Power and material capabilities do not have intrinsic meaning.
• Social structures and collective understandings give meaning to the distribution of power.
• Social learning and interaction imbue power with meaning.
• US-Japan relations differ from US-North Korea relations due to social factors.
• Balance of threat is a constructivist concept.

Opposition to rational choice

• Interactions → changing interests and identities.
• Evolution of the special relationship.

Norms in everyday life

• Non-instrumental regularities in behavior.
• Behaviours are socially constructed
• Appropriate behavior

State Behaviors

• Territorial Integrity.
• Humanitarian Intervention.
• Chemical weapons.
• Landmines.
• Decolonization.

The Norm Life Cycle

• Stage 1 is Norm emergence.

Norm Emergence

• Norm entrepreneurs are organizations and activists who promote issues and formative ideas with altruistic goals.
• Activists may need to be explicitly inappropriate to challenge existing norms.
• Transnational Advocacy Networks are important in norm emergence.

Norm Cascades

• Tipping Point: A critical mass of norm supporters leads to widespread adoption.
• Identity and peer pressure influence norm cascades.

Norm Internalization

• Norm violations are no longer considered.
• Norms gain a "taken for granted quality."
• Institutionalization and habit lead to conformity.

Democratic Peace

• Institutions and audience costs help maintain peace.

Are democracies more peaceful than non democracies?

• Addresses whether democracies are inherently more peaceful.

What is the democratic Peace?

• Democracies are not more peaceful in general, but they are more peaceful towards other democracies.

Cold War Lineage

• Fears of communist expansion led to the spread of democracy.
• Wilson: The world must be made safe democracy.

Kant vs. Schumpeter vs. Machiavelli

• Doyle analyses different viewpoints
• Schumpeter on imperialism
• Machiavelli on republicanism
• Kant's perpetual peace

Kant's Perpetual Peace

• 3 joint conditions for perpetual peace.

How liberal democracy fosters pacifism

• Norms of peaceful dispute resolution prevail in democracies.
• Leaders are accountable via elections in democracies.
• Publics bear costs of war which may lead to opposition.

How a Pacific Union Emerges

• Externalization of domestic norms supporting peaceful dispute resolution.
• Democracies expect other democracies to behave peacefully.
• Joint democracy fosters learning, mutual trust, and respect.
• Nondemocracies are not trusted.

How the cosmopolitan Law operates

• Within a union of liberal states, movement and commerce expand.
• Mutual trust and respect facilitate exchange of goods, people, and ideas.
• Material incentives for moral, cooperative behavior.

Democracies are Also effective war fighters

• Democracies rarely lose wars.
• Individual rights lead to effective battlefield leadership.

Institutional Accounts of Democratic Pascisms

• Voting and freedom of assembly influence war decisions.
• Legislative institutions slow down mobilization for war.
• Civilian control prevents surprise attacks.

Audience Cost

• Fearon: Democratic leaders face electoral costs for making threats and backing down.
• Democracy is an efficient communication of information

Criticism of Democratic Peace

What is democracy?

• Individual freedom, political participation, private property, and equality of opportunity are relevant.

When did the US become a democracy? Hard.

Democracy as a moving goalpost

• Oren: The need to distance America from countries has historically shaped democracy's definition.

What is a war?

• Cyprus.
• Militarized interstate disputes and covert actions.

Reverse Causality

• Examines whether democracy leads to peace or vice versa.

Omitted Variables

• Capitalist Peace.
• Hierarchical, liberal orders which lead to democratic peace.
• War is rare.

Norms, not acceptable to use violence

• It discusses international norms against violence.

Second-Image THeories

• Examines the influence of domestic factors on international relations.
• Regime Type
• Bureaucracy
• Two-level Games

Regime Types and IR

• Considers how different regime types affect international relations behavior.

Marxist Theories of Conflict

• Capitalism leads to overproduction, class inequality, and imperialism.

Revolutionary State

• Walt: Perceptions of threat are a function of second-image variables.
• Revolutionary States increase conflict risks.
• Opportunistic violence.
• Elite ambitions and mistrust contribute to conflict.

Why Autocracies could be more Belligerent

• Autocratic leaders face constraints on the use of force.
• Autocratic leaders may face constraints on the use of force either accountable to civilian or military elite

Civil-Military relations

• Relationship between military organizations and leaders, government agencies, and civil society.
• Military conservatism vs Militarism influences relations.
• Cult of the offensive.

Diversionary War

• Domestic instability and unrest lead to international conflict through the rally-round-the-flag effect, distraction, or gambling for resurrection.

Oil and War

• The Oil and war hypothesis states that oil wealth leads to unearned income, political redistribution, petrostate aggression, increasing military capabilities.

Second Image Reversed

• Gourevitch: the international system shapes domestic politics.

Two Level Games

• Putnam: Diplomacy entangles the domestic politics of multiple countries.
• It analyzes the politics of international negotiation.
• Domestic Level groups lobby for policy concessions.
• Diplomats seek cooperative bargains while maximizing ability to satisfy domestic pressure at the International Level.

Strategy of Negotiation

• Win set contains all possible international agreements with domestic majority support.
• A large win set makes international agreements more likely.
• A smaller win set strengthens bargaining leverage.
• Domestic institutions influence size of win set.

Organizational Process Model

• Allison: Government agencies use scripted playbooks and coordinate activities formulaically.
• The Quarterback model is relevant.
• Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) define how things are done.

Bureaucratic Politics Model

• Allison: Bureaucracies maximize budgets, and opinions depend on position.

Bargaining and War

• Power to hurt influences bargaining power.

Bargaining Model of War

• The inefficiency puzzle of war: war is costly but recurrent.
• What prevents states from finding a mutually acceptable bargaining short of war?

Bargaining in international politics

• International politics involves disputes over scarce resources and negotiations.
• Bargaining leads to mutual agreement on contract provisions. States use words and war to achieve
• International disputes are defined by scarce goods and negotiation about their distribution.

War is usually limited

• Belligerents do not expend all resources in pursuit of total destruction.
• Wars usually resolved by negotiation, not total defeat.

Strategy of Conflict

• Schelling highlights common interests in avoiding enormous destruction.

The diplomacy of violence

• Military force gives a country bargaining power.
• Modern arms grant the power to hurt, gaining coercive leverage.
• By destroying or threatening to destroy things my adversary cares about, I gain coercive leverage

Coercive Bargaining

• Effective coercion requires violence to be targeted, anticipated, and avoidable.
• The power to hurt is most successful when held in reserve.

Critical for realist theories of war & parameters of the bargaining model

• Assumptions:
  • War is Costly
  • War is risky.
  • War is costly lottery fighting is costly gamble always inefficient. States are risk averse

Mutual Optimism, Uncertainty, and War

• Blainey: Wars begin when nations disagree on their relative strength.
• Conflicting estimates of military victory lead to fighting.
• States hold private, asymmetric information about capabilities and resolve.
• Informational frictions cause miscalculation of strength or resolve.

Private information and incentives to misrepresent

• States have incentives to misrepresent in order to get the best deal.
• Exaggerate resolve and capabilities.
• Hide weaknesses and conceal military advantages.
• Rational miscalculation results from private information and incentives.

Costly signalling to reveal information

• Signaling = costly actions states take ex ante to reveal information about their capabilities and resolve .
• Mobilizing troops, signing alliances, and supporting foreign mobilization are a couple costly actions.
• Informative signals are costly and carry a real risk of war.

Informative fighting and war duration

• Fighting reveals information about capabilities and resolve.
• Information problems do not fully explain prolonged wars. If that is true, wars should be short. But some wars are long

Commitment Problems

• Anarchy leads to fears of cheating and exploitation.
• Commitment problems arise when disputants cannot credibly commit to deals.

Strategic Territory

• Valuable concessions increase bargaining leverage.

Preventive War

• Large, rapid shifts in the balance of power may lead to preventive war.
• Declining powers cannot commit not to fight today.

Preemptive Wars

• Large first-strike advantages make ex-ante bargains unenforceable, leading to preemption.
• I.e. Israel Egypt conflict.

Issue Divisibility

• Disputed objects can be divided in various ways.

Territorial Indivisibility

• Religious things

Nuclear Weapons

The diplomacy of Violence

• Military force gives a country bargaining power..
• Modern arms grant the power to hurt, which leads to coercive leverage.

coercive diplomacy

• Affect behavior of an adversary by indicating the contingency of action → actual use of military force supporting the policy is held in reserve.
• What is the goal?
  • Dissuasion which is to Maintain status quo.
  • Persuasion which is to Change status quo.
• What is the strategy?
  • Deterrence

Nuclear Deterrence

• Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
• Survuvable second strike capability retaliatory capacity.

Counterforce vs. Countervalue

• Counterforce = target military sites particularly those values for nuclear warfighting.
• Countervalue = target cities, civilian populations, and economic hubs.

Major Power Nuclear Strategies

• US: Mutual Assured Destruction + first use.
• Russia: Mutual Assured Destruction + first use.
• China, India: Minimum Credible Deterrence + NO first use.
• UK, France, Pakistan, North Korea: Minimum Credible Deterrence + first use.
• Israel: Minimum Credible Deterrence + first use + Samson Doctrine.