Global Affairs Module PDF

Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) Common Course Teaching Module Course Title: Global Affairs Course Code: GLAF---- Prepared by: Moges Demissie (PhD) Seife Hailu (Ass. Prof) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia September 2019 Global Affairs Module Contents………………………………………………………………………..Page Module Introduction....................................................................................................................................... 5 Course Objectives....................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter One: Understanding International Relations..................................................................................... 6 Introduction................................................................................................................................................. 6 Objectives.................................................................................................................................................... 6 1.1. Conceptualizing Nationalism, Nations and States.............................................................................. 6 1.2. Understanding International Relations................................................................................................ 9 1.3. The Nature and Evolution of International Relations....................................................................... 13 1.4. Actors in International Relations....................................................................................................... 18 State Actors........................................................................................................................................... 18 Non-State Actors................................................................................................................................... 19 1.5. Levels of Analysis in International Relations................................................................................... 22 1.5.1. The individual level........................................................................................................................ 23 1.5.2. The group level............................................................................................................................... 23 1.5.3. The state level................................................................................................................................. 24 1.5.4. The system level............................................................................................................................. 25 1.6. The Structure of International System............................................................................................... 26 1.7. Theories of International Relations....................................................................................................... 29 1.7.1. Idealism/Liberalism........................................................................................................................ 29 1.7.2. Realism............................................................................................................................................ 32 1.7.3. Structuralism/Marxism................................................................................................................... 37 1.7.4. Constructivism................................................................................................................................ 38 1.7.5. Critical Theories.............................................................................................................................. 39 Summary................................................................................................................................................... 41 Self-Check Exercise.................................................................................................................................. 42 Chapter Two: Understanding Foreign Policy and Diplomacy...................................................................... 43 Introduction.................................................................................................................................................. 43 Objectives:................................................................................................................................................. 43 2.1. Defining National Interest................................................................................................................. 44 Global Affairs Module 2.2. Understanding Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Behaviors............................................................ 49 2. 2.1. Defining Foreign Policy.............................................................................................................. 50 2.2.2. Foreign Policy Objectives............................................................................................................ 51 2.2.3. Foreign Policy Behavior: Patterns and Trends........................................................................... 53 2.2.4. Foreign Policy Dimensions.......................................................................................................... 55 2.2.5. Instruments of Foreign Policy..................................................................................................... 58 2.3. Overview of Foreign Policy of Ethiopia............................................................................................. 65 2.3.1. Foreign Policy during Tewodros II (1855-1868)........................................................................ 65 2.3.2. Foreign Policy during Yohannes IV (1872-1889)....................................................................... 66 2.3.3. Foreign Policy during Menelik II (1889-93)............................................................................... 66 2.3.4. Foreign Policy during Emperor Haile Selassie I (1916-1974)..................................................... 68 2.3.5. Foreign Policy during the Military Government (1974—1991)................................................. 71 2.3.6. The Foreign Policy of Ethiopia in the Post 1991....................................................................... 74 Summary....................................................................................................................................................... 76 Self Check Exercise........................................................................................................................................ 77 Chapter Three: International Political Economy (IPE).................................................................................. 77 Introduction.................................................................................................................................................. 77 3.1. Meaning and Nature of International Political Economy (IPE)......................................................... 79 3.2. Theoretical perspectives of International Political Economy........................................................... 82 3.3. Survey of the Most Influential National Political Economy systems in the world........................... 87 3.3.1. The American System of Market-Oriented Capitalism.............................................................. 87 3.3.2. The Japanese System of Developmental Capitalism.................................................................. 90 3.3.3. The German System of Social Market Capitalism...................................................................... 92 3.3.4. Differences among National Political Economy Systems........................................................... 94 3.4. Core Issues, Governing institutions and Governance of International Political Economy............... 96 3.4.1. International Trade and the WTO.............................................................................................. 96 3.4.2. International Investment and the WB........................................................................................ 98 3.4.3. International Finance and the IMF........................................................................................... 100 3.5. Exchange Rates and the Exchange-Rate System............................................................................. 101 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 102 Self-Check Exercise...................................................................................................................................... 102 Global Affairs Module Chapter Four: Globalization and Regionalism............................................................................................ 104 Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 104 Objectives.................................................................................................................................................... 104 4.1. Defining Globalization...................................................................................................................... 105 4.2. The Globalization Debates............................................................................................................... 106 4.2.1. The Hyper-globalists................................................................................................................. 106 4.2.2. The Skeptics.............................................................................................................................. 107 4.2.3. The Transformationalist............................................................................................................ 108 4.3. Globalization and Its Impacts on Africa........................................................................................... 109 4.4. Ethiopia in a Globalized World........................................................................................................ 114 4.5. Pros and Cons of Globalization........................................................................................................ 115 4.6. Defining Regionalism and Regional Integration.............................................................................. 116 4.6.1. The Old Regionalism................................................................................................................. 118 4.6.2. New Regionalism...................................................................................................................... 120 4.7. Major Theories of Regional Integrations......................................................................................... 123 4.7.1. Functionalism............................................................................................................................ 123 4.7.2. Neo-functionalism.................................................................................................................... 124 4.8. Selected Cases of Regional Integration........................................................................................... 126 4.9. Regionalization versus Globalization and State.............................................................................. 127 4.10. The Relations between Regionalization and Globalization.......................................................... 127 Regionalization as a Component of Globalization: Convergence...................................................... 128 Regionalization as a Challenge or Response to Globalization: Divergence....................................... 128 Regionalization and Globalization as Parallel Processes: Overlap..................................................... 129 4.11. Regionalization, Globalization and the State................................................................................ 129 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 131 Self-Check Exercise...................................................................................................................................... 132 Chapter Five: Major Contemporary Global Issues..................................................................................... 133 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 133 Objectives.................................................................................................................................................... 133 5.1. Survey of Major Contemporary Global Issues................................................................................. 134 5.1.1. Global Security Issues............................................................................................................... 135 Global Affairs Module 5.1.2. Global Environmental Issues.................................................................................................... 140 5.1.3. Global Socio-economic Issues.................................................................................................. 142 5.1.4. Global Cultural Issues............................................................................................................... 146 Summary..................................................................................................................................................... 147 Self-Check Questions.................................................................................................................................. 147 References................................................................................................................................................... 148 Global Affairs Module Module Introduction This module is basically designed for the course, Global Affairs. The course is designed to equip students with the basics of international relations so that they will be exposed to global challenges and perspectives. The course is very comprehensive, broad and multidisciplinary in its nature. Perhaps you may find it as an ice-breaking course since it touches up on wide range of issues, concepts, theories, approaches and debates that are helpful in understanding the contemporary international relations. Concepts, such as national interest, foreign policy, actors, globalization, balance of power, cold war, multi-polar systems, international law and other relevant concepts are being introduced. Different debates and approaches to the study of international relations including realism, liberalism are also given due emphasis. Due to the vastness of the course, its contents are organized into six chapters. The first chapter lays the foundation of the course by introducing major concepts, such as: the nature, scope, evolution, actors and levels of analysis, structure as well as theories of international relations. In the second chapter topics such as; national interest, foreign policy, diplomacy and Ethiopian foreign policy under successive regimes are discussed in some length. Chapter three brings out the contending issues of international political economy with emphasis on global institutions of governance. Last chapter the debates between regionalism and globalization with contemporary global issues that affect international relations. Course Objectives After completing this course, students will be able to:  Understand nations, nationalism and states  Explain the nature and historical development of international relations  Examine the extent and degree of influence of state and non-state actors in the international system  Gain basic knowledge of the major theories of International Relations and develop the ability to critically evaluate and apply such theories  Elucidate national interest, foreign policy and diplomacy  Assess the overriding foreign policy guidelines of Ethiopia in the past and present  Explicate the nature and elements of international political economy  Examine the roles major international and regional institutions play in world politics  Explore Ethiopia’s role in regional, continental and global institutions and affairs  Critically evaluate the major contemporary global issues Global Affairs Module Chapter One: Understanding International Relations Introduction International relations, as it is presented in the flow of daily news concern a large number of disparate events; leaders are meeting, negotiations are concluded, wars are started, acts of terror committed, and so on. In order to make sense of all this information we need to know a lot about the contemporary world and its history; we need to understand how all the disparate events hang together. At university, we study these topics, but it is a basic tenet of the academic study of international politics that this rather messy picture can be radically simplified. Instead of focusing on the flow of daily news, we focus on the basic principles underlying it. This is what we will try to do in this module. So, let us begin by thinking big; what is international relations?, how was it made?, and how did it come to be that way? Objectives After completing this chapter, you will be able to:  Define the meanings and nature of nation, states and nationalism  Describe the meaning and evolution of International Relations  Acquaint yourself with different perspectives, approaches and paradigm of international relations  Identify and analyze the roles different actors play using the three levels of analysis  Examine the structure of international system and the laws governing its operation Brainstorming Question:  Why does it matter to understand nationalism, nation and states? 1.1. Conceptualizing Nationalism, Nations and States Nationalism is the most influential force in international affairs. It has caused the outbreak of revolutions and wars across the globe. It is noted as a factor for the collapse of age old empires, marker for new borders, a powerful component for the emergence of new states and it is used to reshape and reinforce regimes in history. Nationalism’s triumph is the coming of the nation-state as key actors in world politics-accepted as ultimate, legitimate and the most basic form of political entity. According to Heywood (2014), nationalism is the doctrine that asserts the nation as the basic political unit in organizing society. Global Affairs Module In common parlance, the words ‘nation’, ‘state’ and ‘country’ are used interchangeably and this is not correct. For instance, the word the ‘United Nations’ is a misnomer since in reality it is an association or a society of states-instead of nations. In international politics, it is also common but incorrect to refer the ‘Chinese’, the ‘Americans’ and the ‘Russians’ as ‘nations’. Hence, the question remains: what is a nation? According to Heywood, ‘nations are historical entities that evolve organically out of more similar ethnic communities and they reveal themselves in myths, legends, and songs (2014). On the other hand, at the end of the eighteenth century this state came to be radically transformed. The ‘state’ was combined with a ‘nation’ forming a compound noun – the ‘nation- state’ – which was organized differently and pursued different goals. A nation, in contrast to a state, constitutes a community of people joined by a shared identity and by common social practices. Communities of various kinds have always existed but they now became, for the first time, a political concern. As a new breed of nationalist leaders came to argue, the nation should take over the state and make use of its institutional structures to further the nation’s ends. In one country after another the nationalists were successful in these aims. The nation added an interior life to the state, we might perhaps say; the nation was a soul added to the body of the early modern state machinery. The revolutions that took place in Britain’s North American colonies in 1776, and in France in 1789, provided models for other nationalists to follow. ‘We the People of the United States’ – the first words of the Preamble to the US Constitution – was a phrase which itself would have been literally unthinkable in an earlier era. In France, the king was officially the only legitimate political actor and the people as a whole were excluded from politics. In addition, the power of the aristocracy and the church remained strong, above all in the countryside where they were the largest landowners. In the revolution of 1789, the old regime was overthrown and with it the entire social order. The French nation was from now on to be governed by the people, the nation, and in accordance with the principles of liberté, égalité et fraternité– liberty, equality and brotherhood. Activity  Discuss in groups the similarities and differences of nationalism, nation, nation-state  Examine the place of war in the evolution of the European state system Global Affairs Module The Congress of Vienna of 1815, where a settlement was reached at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, was supposed to have returned Europe to its pre-revolutionary ways. Yet, nationalist sentiments were growing across the continent and they constantly threatened to undermine the settlement. All over Europe national communities demanded to be included into the politics of their respective countries. Nationalism in the first part of the nineteenth century was a liberal sentiment concerning self-determination – the right of a people to determine its own fate. This programme had far-reaching implications for the way politics was organized domestically, but it also had profound ramifications for international politics. Most obviously, the idea of self- determination undermined the political legitimacy of Europe’s empires. If all the different peoples that these empires contained gained the right to determine their own fates, the map of Europe would have to be radically redrawn. In 1848 this prospect seemed to become a reality as nationalist uprisings quickly spread across the continent. Everywhere the people demanded the right to rule themselves. Although the nationalist revolutions of 1848 were defeated by the political establishment, the sentiments themselves were impossible to control. Across Europe an increasingly prosperous middle-class demanded inclusion in the political system and their demands were increasingly expressed through the language of nationalism. The Finns wanted an independent Finland; the Bulgarians an independent Bulgaria; the Serbs an independent Serbia, and so on. In 1861 Italy too – long divided into separate city-states and dominated by the Church – became a unified country and an independent nation. Yet it was only with the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 that self-determination was acknowledged as a right. After the First World War most people in Europe formed their own nation-states. As a result of the nationalist revolutions, the European international system became for the first time truly ‘inter-national’. That is, while the Westphalian system concerned relations between states, world affairs in the nineteenth century increasingly came to concern relations between nation-states. In fact, the word ‘international’ itself was coined only in 1783, by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham. In most respects, however, the inter-national system continued to operate in much the same fashion as the Westphalian inter-state system. Nation-states claimed the same right to sovereignty which meant that they were formally equal to each other. Global Affairs Module In international politics, nevertheless, the implication of nationalism and its essence is highly questioned. Especially in the contemporary period, nation states are put under pressure and their role in world politics is significantly challenged. However, there is also an emerging narrative which advances the idea that a revival of nationalism is happening across the world with the post-cold war assertions of religion, culture and ethnicity as potent forces in world politics – hence we have S.P. Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ as an alternative to Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis on world politics. 1.2. Understanding International Relations Brainstorming Questions:  How do international relations affect you in your daily life?  Why do we study International Relations? International relations is not merely a field of study at university but is an integral aspect of our (increasingly international) everyday lives. We now live in a world where it is impossible to isolate our experiences and transactions from an international dimension. If an Ethiopian student watches the sitcom Friends or the soap opera Neighbors, they are both learning about and participating in a culture different from their own. If a student flies from Addis to Washington DC or London they are subject to international air space agreements and contributing to global warming. If a student chooses to buy a fair-trade coffee they are making a conscious decision about contributing to a state and a people’s development. Should you work for an inter-national company or international organization, or even if you work for a locally based company there will inevitably be an international dimension to the functioning of the company as it negotiates the myriad of regional laws, international trade laws, international employment laws and tax laws. The limits to how international relations will continue to impact your life is tremendous. Studying international relations enables students and professionals to better comprehend the information we receive daily from newspapers, television and radio. People not only live in villages and towns, but form part of the wider networks that constitute regions, nations and states. As members of this world community, people have to be equally aware of both their rights and their responsibilities – and should be capable of engaging in important debates concerning the major issues facing the modern international community. One crucial feature of the world in Global Affairs Module which we live is its interconnectedness – geographically, intellectually and socially – and thus we need to understand it. Originally, the study of international relations (a term first used by Jeremy Bentham in 1798) was seen largely as a branch of the study of law, philosophy or history. However, following the carnage of the First World War there emerged an academic undertaking to understand how the fear of war was now equal only to the fear of defeat that had preceded the First World War. Subsequently, the first university chair of international relations was founded at the University of Wales in 1919. Given such diverse origins, there is no one accepted way of defining or understanding international relations, and throughout the world many have established individual ways of understanding international relations. Any attempt to define a field of study is bound to be somewhat arbitrary and this is particularly true when one comes to international relations. Today, international relations could be used to describe a range of interactions between people, groups, firms, associations, parties, nations or states or between these and (non) governmental international organizations. These interactions usually take place between entities that exist in different parts of the world – in different territories, nations or states. To the layperson interactions such as going on holiday abroad, sending international mail, or buying or selling goods abroad may seem personal and private, and of no particular international concern. Other interactions such as choosing an Olympics host or awarding a film Oscar are very public, but may appear to be lacking any significant international political agenda. However, any such activities could have direct or indirect implications for political relations between groups, states or inter-national organizations. More obviously, events such as international conflict, inter- national conferences on global warming and international crime play a fundamental part in the study of international relations. If our lives can be so profoundly influenced by such events, and the responses of states and people are so essential to international affairs, then it is incumbent on us to increase our understanding of such events. Participation in international relations or politics is also inescapable. No individual, people, nation or state can exist in splendid isolation or be master of its own fate; but none, no matter how powerful in military, diplomatic or economic circles, even a giant superpower, can compel everyone to do its bidding. None can maintain or enhance their rate of social or economic progress or keep people alive without the contributions of foreigners or foreign states. Every Global Affairs Module people, nation or state is a minority in a world that is anarchic, that is, there is an absence of a common sovereign over them. There is politics among entities that have no ruler and in the absence of any ruler. That world is pluralistic and diverse. Each state is a minority among humankind. No matter how large or small, every state or nation in the world must take account of ‘foreigners’. On the other hand, there are legal, political and social differences between domestic and international politics. Domestic law is generally obeyed, and if not, the police and courts enforce sanctions. International law rests on competing legal systems, and there is no common enforcement. Domestically a government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In international politics no one has a monopoly of force, and therefore international politics has often been interpreted as the realm of self-help. It is also accepted that some states are stronger than others. Domestic and international politics also differ in their underlying sense of community – in international politics, divided peoples do not share the same loyalties – people disagree about what seems just and legitimate; order and justice. It is not necessary to suggest that people engaged in political activity never agree or that open and flagrant disagreement is necessary before an issue becomes political: what is important is that it should be recognized that conflict or disagreement lies at the heart of politics. To be political the disagreement has to be about public issues. Nonetheless, recent experience has taught us that matters that were once purely domestic and of no great relevance internationally can feature very prominently on the international political agenda. Outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and avian flu exemplify how domestic incidents can become international and can lead to foreign policy changes and commitments. International relations, therefore, is too important to be ignored but also too complex to be understood at a glance. Individuals can be the victim or victors of events but studying international relations helps each one of us to understand events and perhaps to make a difference. This, however, requires competence as well as compassion. Some come to study international relations because of an interest in world events, but gradually they come to recognize that to understand their own state or region, to understand particular events and issues they have to move beyond a journalistic notion of current events. There is a need to analyze current events, to examine the why, where, what and when, but also to understand the factors that Global Affairs Module led to a particular outcome and the nature of the consequences. Studying international relations provides the necessary tools to analyze events, and to gain a deeper comprehension of some of the problems that policy-makers confront and to understand the reasoning behind their actions. Box 1.1: Key concepts  Participation in international relations is inescapable  Distinction between domestic and international politics real but declining  Philosophical debates on human nature: Hobbesian vs Lockean (realist vs liberal) Scholars and practitioners in international relations use concepts and theories to make their study more manageable. This, however, was complicated due to the emergence of major philosophical disputes about the fundamental nature of international relations: the Hobbesian versus the Lockean state of nature in the seventeenth century; and the Realist versus Idealist debate of the first part of the twentieth century. Hobbes, writing in 1651, interpreted the state of society to be: ‘continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. The concepts articulated by Hobbes still reverberate in many modern fundamental assumptions about the nature of the system and of human beings. Whereas, Locke took a more optimistic view and suggested that sociability was the strongest bond between men –men were equal, sociable and free; but they were not licentious because they were governed by the laws of nature. He was clear that nature did not arm man against man, and that some degree of society was possible even in the state preceding government. Three and a half centuries later the differing perceptions and assumptions concerning human nature that influenced Hobbes and Locke are still able to divide approaches to the study of the nature of international relations. International politics is pre-eminently concerned with the art of achieving group ends against the opposition of other groups. But this is limited by the will and ability of other groups to impose their demands. International politics involves the delicate adjustment of power to power. If physical force were to be used to resolve every disagreement there would result an intolerable existence for the world’s population. Society would not prosper and every human being would be suspicious of every other human. Sometimes this happens on the international stage, given that every state is judge and jury of its own interests and can decide for itself whether to use Global Affairs Module force – with the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a US coalition of the willing as a prime example. In order to resolve these disagreements it is necessary that states and international organizations can come up with a way of resolving differences. Although such ideals have been difficult to establish across the board it has become the case that there are non-violent options available to states. Activity:  Who is responsible for maintaining international peace and order?  How is international peace and order maintained? International politics is also about maintaining international order. But that order has to be maintained in an anarchical world. The arena of international relations and politics seems to be continually expanding. To appreciate this, one needs to reflect on the multiplication of independent states. In 1800 there were no international organizations, but now there is one for almost every activity– both governmental and non-governmental. When the United Nations Charter was signed in October 1945, 51 states signed it. In the first decade of twenty-first century the UN grew between 189 and 192 member states. There has also been the continuing growth of governmental and international services. There are now increased organizational demands in terms of meeting the ordinary everyday needs of citizens. Interdependence implies that people, businesses and organizations rely on each other (and their rivals) in different places for ideas, goods and services. International relations and politics are necessary for all states, but political power is not centralized and unequal. That is why power, coercion and bargaining still hold sway. 1.3. The Nature and Evolution of International Relations Brainstorming Question:  Where and how do you think modern international relations emerged? The rise of the sovereign state in medieval Europe consisted of a complicated pattern of overlapping jurisdictions and loyalties. Most of life was local and most political power was local too. At the local level there was an enormous diversity of political entities: feudal lords who ruled their respective estates much as they saw fit, cities made up of independent merchants, states ruled by clerics and smaller political entities such as principalities and duchies. In Global Affairs Module medieval Europe there were two institutions with pretensions to power over the continent as a whole – the (Catholic) Church and the Empire. The Church was the spiritual authority, with its centre in Rome. Apart from a small Jewish minority, all Europeans were Christian and the influence of the Church spread far and penetrated deeply into people’s lives. As the custodian, from Roman times, of institutions like the legal system and the Latin language, the Church occupied a crucial role in the cultural and intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The Empire – known as the Holy Roman Empire – was established in the tenth century in central, predominantly German-speaking, Europe. It also included parts of Italy, France and today’s Netherlands and Belgium. It too derived legitimacy from the Roman Empire, but had none of its political power. The Holy Roman Empire is best compared to a loosely structured federation of many hundreds of separate political units. The political system of medieval Europe was thus a curious combination of the local and the universal. Yet, from the fourteenth century onward this system was greatly simplified as the state emerged as a political entity located at an intermediate level between the local and the universal. The new states simultaneously set themselves in opposition to popes and emperors on the universal level, and to feudal lords, peasants and assorted other rulers on the local level. This is how the state came to make itself independent and self-governing. The process started in Italy where northern city-states such as Florence, Venice, Ravenna and Milan began playing the pope against the emperor, eventually making themselves independent of both. Meanwhile, in Germany, the pope struggled with the emperor over the issue of who of the two should have the right to appoint bishops. While the two were fighting it out, the constituent members of the Holy Roman Empire took the opportunity to assert their independence. This was also when the kings of France and England began acting more independently, defying the pope’s orders. Between 1309 and 1377, the French even forced the pope to move to Avignon, in southern France. In England, meanwhile, the king repealed the pope’s right to levy taxes on the people. With the Reformation in the sixteenth century the notion of a unified Europe broke down completely as the Church began to split apart. Before long the followers of Martin Luther, 1483– 1546, and John Calvin, 1509–1564, had formed their own religious denominations which did not take orders from Rome. Instead the new churches aligned themselves with the new states. Or rather, various kings, such as Henry VIII in England or Gustav Vasa in Sweden, took advantage Global Affairs Module of the religious strife in order to further their own political agendas. By supporting the Reformation, they could free themselves from the power of Rome. All over northern Europe, the new ‘Protestant’ churches became state-run and church lands became property of the state. In this climate, the increasingly self-assertive states were not only picking fights with universal institutions but also with local ones. In order to establish themselves securely in their new positions of power, the kings rejected the traditional claims of all local authorities. This led to extended wars in next to all European countries. Peasants rose up in protest against taxes and the burdens imposed by repeated wars. There were massive peasant revolts in Germany in the 1520s with hundreds of thousands of participants and almost as many victims. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, there were major peasant uprisings in Sweden, Croatia, England and Switzerland. In France, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the nobility rose up in defence of its traditional rights and in rebellion against the encroachments of the king. From the sixteenth century onwards the states established the rudiments of an administrative system and raised armies, both in order to fight their own peasants and in order to defend themselves against other states. Since such state-building was expensive, the search for money became a constant concern. The early modern state was more than anything an institutional machinery designed to develop and extract resources from society. In return for their taxes, the state provided ordinary people with defense and a rudimentary system of justice. If they refused to pay up, state officials had various unpleasant ways to make them suffer. Activity  What factors contributed to the evolution of international relations?  Examine the dominant institutions in medieval Europe and discuss the struggle they waged against each other  Why do these struggle and what consequences have resulted ?  What is the Westphalian state system about?  How did Europe come to relate with the rest of the world? The European states emerged in the midst of struggle and strife, and struggle and strife have continued to characterize their existence. Yet, in early modern Europe it was no longer the competing claims of local and universal authorities that had to be combated but instead the competing claims of other states. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648, was the bloodiest and most Global Affairs Module protracted military confrontation of the era. As a result of the war, Germany’s population was reduced by around a third. What the Swiss or the Scottish mercenaries did not steal, the Swedish troops destroyed. Many of the people who did not die on the battlefield died of the plague. The Thirty Years’ War is often called a religious conflict since Catholic states confronted Protestants. Yet, Protestant and Catholic countries sometimes fought on the same side and religious dogma was clearly not the first thing on the minds of the combatants. Instead the war concerned which state should have hegemony (or dominance) over Europe. That is, which state, if any, would take over from the universal institutions of the Middle Ages. The main protagonists were two Catholic states, France and Austria, but Sweden – a Protestant country – intervened on France’s side and in the end no dominant power emerged. The Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, which concluded the 30 years of warfare, has come to symbolize the new way of organizing international politics. From this point onwards, international politics was a matter of relations between states and no other political units. All states were sovereign, meaning that they laid claims to the exclusive right to rule their own territories and to act, in relation to other states, as they themselves saw fit. All states were formally equal and they had the same rights and obligations. Taken together, the states interacted with each other in a system in which there was no overarching power. Sovereignty and formal equality led to the problem of anarchy. Once these states had made themselves independent both of the pope and the emperor, they soon discovered that their relations had become vastly more complicated. In order to avoid misunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts, the different rulers began dispatching ambassadors to each other’s courts. This diplomatic network provided a means of gathering information, of spying, but also a way of keeping in touch with one another, of carrying out negotiations and concluding deals. The practices of diplomacy soon expanded to include a number of mutually advantageous provisions: the embassies were given extraterritorial rights and legal immunity, diplomatic dispatches were regarded as inviolable and ambassadors had the right to worship the god of their choice. These originally north Italian practices gradually expanded to embrace more states and by the middle of the seventeenth century the system included France, Spain, Austria, England, Russia, Poland, Denmark, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Diplomatic practices were never powerful enough to prevent war, indeed wars continued to be common, but they did Global Affairs Module provide Europeans with a sense of a common identity. A European state was, more than anything, a state that participated in the system of shared diplomatic practices. On the other hand, most of what happened in Europe before the nineteenth century was of great concern to the Europeans but of only marginal relevance to people elsewhere. Europe certainly had a significant impact on the Americas, North and South. However, it had far less impact on Asia and relations with Africa were largely restricted to a few trading ports. The large, rich and powerful empires of East Asia were organized quite differently than the European states, and international politics followed different principles. The same can be said for other parts of the world such as the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab world. And yet, it was the European model of statehood and the European way of organizing international relations that eventually came to organize all of world politics. It was only in the nineteenth century that relations between Europe and the rest of the world were irrevocably transformed. The reason is above all to be found in economic changes taking place in Europe itself. At the end of the eighteenth century, new ways of manufacturing goods were invented which made use of machines powered by steam, and later by electricity, which made it possible to engage in large-scale factory production. As a result of this so called ‘industrial revolution’, the Europeans could produce many more things and do it far more efficiently. As cheap, mass-produced goods flooded European markets, the Europeans began looking for new markets overseas. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, other European countries joined in this scramble for colonies, not least in Africa. Colonial possessions became a symbol of ‘great power’ status, and the new European nation-states often proved themselves to be very aggressive colonizers. France added West Africa and Indochina to its growing empire, and the Germans and Italians also joined the race once their respective countries were unified. This explains how, by the time of the First World War in 1914, most parts of the world were in European hands. There were some exceptions to this rule – China, Japan, Siam, Persia, Ethiopia and Nepal, among others – but even in these ostensibly independent countries the Europeans had a strong presence. Box 1.2. Key Concepts  The Holy Roman Empire, the Emperor and the Pope  The Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia Global Affairs Module But this was not how the European state and the European way of organizing international relations came to spread to the rest of the world, at least not directly. After all, a colonized country is the very opposite of a sovereign state; the colonized peoples had no nation-states and enjoyed no self-determination. It was instead through the process of liberating themselves from the colonizers that the European models were copied. Since the Europeans only would grant sovereignty to states that were similar to their own, the only way to become independent was to become independent on European terms. To create such Europe-like states was thus the project in which all non-European political leaders engaged. Once they finally made themselves independent in the decades after the Second World War, as an international climate of decolonization took hold, all new states had a familiar form. They had their respective territories and fortified borders; their own capitals, armies, foreign ministries, flags, national anthems and all the other paraphernalia of European statehood. Whether there were alternative, non-European, ways of organizing a state and its foreign relations was never discussed. Whether it made sense for the newly independent states to try to live up to European ideals was never discussed either. This, briefly, is how the modern world was made. 1.4. Actors in International Relations Brainstorming Questions:  Who are the dominant players in the International system?  What roles do these play in affecting the dynamics of the relations? 1.4.1. State Actors International Relations (IR) traditionally focused on interactions between states. However, this conventional view has been broadened over the years to include relationships between all sorts of political entities (‘polities’), including international organizations, multinational corporations, societies and citizens. IR captures a vast array of themes ranging from the growing interconnectedness of people to old and new forms of security, dialogue and conflict between visions, beliefs and ideologies, the environment, space, the global economy, poverty and climate change. The sheer number of actors and issues that are relevant to IR can be overwhelming. This can make it seem like a daunting task to not just study various aspects of IR but to try to grasp the bigger picture. Global Affairs Module There are a lot of states in the world – in fact, according to the latest count there are no fewer than 195 of them. States are obviously very different from each other, but they are also similar to each other in important respects. All states are located somewhere, they have a territorial extension; they are surrounded by borders which tell us where one state ends and another begins. In fact, with the exception of Antarctica, there is virtually no piece of land anywhere on earth’s surface that is not claimed by one state or another and there is no piece of land that belongs to more than one state (although, admittedly, the ownership of some pieces of land is disputed). Moreover, all states have their own capitals, armies, foreign ministries, flags and national anthems. All states call themselves ‘sovereign’, meaning that they claim the exclusive right to govern their respective territories in their own fashion. But states are also sovereign in relation to each other: they act in relation to other states, declaring war, concluding a peace, negotiating a treaty, and many other things. In fact, we often talk about states as though they were persons with interests to defend and plans to carry out. According to a time-honoured metaphor, we can talk about international politics as a ‘world stage’ on which the states are the leading actors. Considered in relation to the primacy of the state, international politics come to be defined in terms of interactions between states in an international system of states where these are ‘sovereign’ entities, territorially bound, and independent ultimately of any external authority. The ‘international’ is hence structurally differentiated from the ‘domestic’ in that where the former, according to this ‘realist’ perspective, is defined as ‘anarchical’, the latter is hierarchical. State sovereignty comes to be the defining element in the study of international relations, even where other perspectives challenge the primacy of the state. 1.4.2. Non-State Actors Our every day lived experience is influenced by global firms, international governmental institutions, and non-governmental organizations that necessitates the remit of our investigations in order to account for the diversity of actors and forms of inter-actions which take place in global politics. Considered in terms of the dynamics of change and how we provide explanations of change, the question begins to shift attention back to an earlier problematic, namely the capacity to make a difference. When thought of in terms of ‘capacity’, the ‘agency’ of states is as much as that of the UN or Amnesty International, for each acts within a wider whole, whether Global Affairs Module this is conceived in terms of the international political economy or the international legal order, or indeed the anarchical international system (Giddens, 1984). Similarly, multinational corporations (MNCs) – often with headquarters in one state and operational capability in a range of others – contribute significantly to international relations. Additionally there are other trans-governmental organizations where the relations between players are not controlled by the central foreign policy of the state – such as the exchange rate of a state’s currency being determined by the money markets. However, despite all the challenges and many new theories of international politics/relations the state remains, for many, the primary actor in international politics. These ideas and debates demonstrate that although the term ‘international relations’ has for centuries inferred a particular concern with relations between nations, it does not have to remain so confined. Thus, contrary to the narrow traditionalist realist view of international relations and foreign policy/relations, which focuses on the physical security and protection of the territory of the state and its people, one needs to look wider. Activity:  Define the state and identify its major the components  Enumerate non-state actors affecting international relations?  How different are the roles these play and to whose benefit? Furthermore, are the relations between states governed by mutual cooperation and interdependence or are they best conceived as conflictual and subject to the imperatives of a self- help system based on survival in an anarchical system? How these questions are answered depends on assumptions made in relation to the elements (agents, structures) conferred primacy, how we acquire knowledge about these, and the arguments we present in justifying our claims to knowledge. Much controversy in the discipline of international relations relates to these assumptions and how they impact on explaining and understanding global politics and phenomena such as war, identity and affiliation, the workings of the international political economy, the causes of inequality and poverty, the potentials for regulating behavior in relation to climate change, and so on. Global Affairs Module What is significant in this context is that, the traditional conception of the state as the main framework of political interaction and the main point of reference for both society and the individuals within it has lost a lot of its meaning and importance. If we look at the world around us, state borders do not seem to accurately delimitate global affairs. The majority of global interactions – be they related to global finance, production, education, personal and professional travel, labor migration or terrorism – no longer occur via state channels the way they once did. We could say that the increased focus on non-state actors and cross-border issues has marked a close-to-revolutionary turn in IR; something that could be interpreted as a shift away from the inter-national (‘between-states’) to the ‘trans-national’ (‘across/beyond-states’ and their borders). Robert Keohane, one of the leading scholars in the field, recently stated that ‘International Relations’ is no longer a suitable label and that we should instead refer to the discipline as ‘Global Studies’ or ‘World Politics’ (Keohane 2016). In today’s world, few societal and political issues, challenges and problems are neatly confined by the borders of individual states or even groups of states. Thinking about world affairs in ‘trans-national’ rather than in purely ‘inter- national’ terms therefore seems more of an analytical necessity than just a choice. Individuals and groups interact across borders and thus relativize the meaning of space and territory as conventional IR knew it. International commercial aviation and the rapid spread of information technologies has further increased people’s mobility and the rate at which interactions occur across and beyond state borders. The ability for common people to store, transfer and distribute large amounts of information, the possibility for data to travel across the world in virtually no time, and the increasing availability of high-speed internet have not only changed lives at personal and community levels but also dramatically altered the general dynamics in politics and global affairs. Social media provide accessible platforms of communication that allow for the projection and promotion of ideas across borders at virtually no cost to the individual or group generating and advocating them. Various political agendas – be they progressive, revolutionary or outright dangerous – can unfold in a relatively uncontrolled and unregulated way, posing real challenges to governmental agencies and the political leaders that try to improve and direct them. Random individuals can potentially start a revolution from their homes, bypassing any conventional conceptions of power and transcending spatial and material boundaries to the point where Global Affairs Module political activity and even confrontation become weightless and immaterial altogether IR and you. 1.5. Levels of Analysis in International Relations Brainstorming Question:  Have you ever thought that a single international political phenomenon can be analyzed at different levels? How? In the early days of IR – say, from 1919 until after the Second World War – a lot of what could be called traditional or conventional IR was not concerned with any potential distinctions between different levels of analysis or theoretical perspectives. J. David Singer (1961: 78) lamented that scholars would simply roam up and down the ladder of organizational complexity with remarkable abandon, focusing upon the total system, international organizations, regions, coalitions, extra-national associations, nations, domestic pressure groups, social classes, elites, and individuals as the needs of the moment required. Singer’s criticism of this ‘general sluggishness’ (Singer 1961: 78) highlights another value in thinking of IR as something that can be studied from different and distinctive perspectives. Being clear about our level of analysis can prevent us from indulging in analytical ‘cherry-picking’, that is to say, from randomly gathering evidence across different levels in pursuit of an answer to our research questions. We also need to acknowledge the analytical consequences of drifting between levels: that our search for evidence will need to be comprehensive and that we might have to look at a different set of data or material for each additional aspect. For example, if you were to explain Germany’s decision to open its borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees in 2015 you might want to look at the external pressures as much as the personal motivations of German chancellor Angela Merkel. You would investigate factors at the system level (such as economic indicators, refugee flows, the attitude of key partners) and at the individual level (such as Merkel’s ideological background, her interests and perceptions of the problem as it emerges from statements and key decisions throughout her career). Each would contribute to an overall explanation, but you would need to be prepared to look at different sets of information. From the 1950s onwards, more and more IR scholars endeavored to specify the focus of their analysis more clearly. The most prominent example was Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State and Global Affairs Module War: A Theoretical Analysis (1959) which introduced an analytical framework for the study of IR that distinguished between what he referred to as different ‘images’ of an issue: the individual, the state and the international system. Waltz’s contributions to the discipline generated interest in analyzing the international system as a place of interactions between states. 1.5.1. The individual level International relations can be analyzed from the perspective of individuals. Here we would look at the behaviors, motivations, beliefs and orientation of the individual in affecting a particular international phenomenon. If looking at the actions of individuals, we would likely also need to engage with the implications of human nature. This can be seen in the psychology and emotions behind people’s actions and decisions, their fears and their visions as well as their access to information and capacity to make a difference. Psychological factors do not only matter at the level of individual members of society or of a group. They are also an important factor in the analysis of foreign policy, whenever particular mindsets and perceptions of political leaders and key actors might influence their decisions and behavior. For example, a Prime Minister, encountering the leader of another state to negotiate an important financial agreement, the head of a large corporation adopting a policy to rescue their business or even the situation of individual citizens and their attitude towards austerity measures? Focusing on the individual level and, say, particular actions of specific personalities in the public realm–be they politicians, diplomats or bankers – would lead us to drawing different conclusions again about the causes and consequences that phenomenon. In short, being aware and acknowledging the potential gaps in our observation – that is to say, all of what is not directly captured by our perspective or level of analysis – is important. Applying rigor in our analysis is also important. Scholarly writings are nevertheless not always explicit about their particular perspective or level of analysis. So, as a reader, it is important to stay critical and to look closely and enquire whenever an argument presented to us appears to straddle potentially conflicting analytical lenses. 1.5.2. The group level A group level analysis would try and break the analysis down into certain kinds of groups, how they relate to the state level and where they position themselves with respect to the global dimension of the issues they are dealing with. An example of this can be seen in the work of Global Affairs Module Engelen et al. (2012), who discuss the global financial crisis as the ‘misrule of experts’, pointing at the politicized role of technocratic circles and the relative lack of democratic control over the boards of large banks and corporations. A group-level analysis focusing on foreign policy would look, for example, at the role of lobbying groups and the way they influence national decision- making on an issue. In this sense, a group-level analysis would be more interested in the actions of groups of individuals, such as all voters of a country and the way they express their views in the general election, political parties picking up on the issue in their campaigns or social movements forming to counter the effects of the crisis on society. A group-level analysis could be interested in activist/pressure groups like ‘Anonymous’ that seek to influence the global debate about the winners and losers of globalization and capitalism, and so forth. 1.5.3. The state level Although this idea of the global or system level as a context of anarchy features in many contributions to the IR literature, the main focus remains on the state as the dominant unit of analysis. This enduring focus on the state, and therefore, on the state level of analysis, is referred to as the relative ‘state-centrism’ of the discipline. This means that IR scholars would generally not only regard states as the central unit of analysis as such, they also conceive of the state as a point of reference for other types of actors. From this perspective, the state acts as the arena in which state officials, politicians and decision-makers operate. The state is seen as the framework that encapsulates society and as the main point of reference for the individual. This predominant focus on the state is strongly related to an assumption IR scholars have made about the state also being the main location of power within the international sphere. This idea that the state is where power is primarily concentrated and located has to be seen against the historical context within which some of the most prominent IR scholars operated – the Cold War. It was an era in which much of international affairs appeared to be run via state channels and in line with particular state interests. Although the Cold War has long since passed, a lot of today’s political life remains managed in the state framework, based on issues like national security, domestic cohesion or internal stability. States form the primary kind of actor in major international organizations such as the United Nations, they feature prominently in the global discourse on most of the major challenges of our time, and states still hold what famous German sociologist Max Weber called the Global Affairs Module monopoly on violence – the exclusive right to the legitimate use of physical force. States continue to matter and thus have to be part of our considerations about what happens in the world and why. The state as a unit of analysis and frame of reference will certainly not go away any time soon, nor will the interactions of states as a key level of analysis in IR. A state level analysis might be interested to look at any one of the following: it can consider states as actors in their own right as if they were clearly defined entities that have certain preferences, and accordingly, look at their actions and decisions to find an answer to our analytical questions; it may look at how states interact with each other to deal with the crisis – in other words, their foreign policy; how they build off each other’s suggestions and react to international developments and trends; how they cooperate, say, in the framework of international organizations; or how we look at them as competitors and antagonists, each of them pushing for a stronger position in what makes up the world economy. A state-level study would also require careful consideration of what kinds of states we are looking at (how they are ordered politically), their geographical position, their historical ties and experiences and their economic standing. It would likely also look at the foreign policy of states, meaning their approach to and practice of interacting with other states. Key indicators of the foreign policy of states would be the policies proposed and decided by governments, statements of top-level politicians but also the role and behavior of diplomats and their adjoining bureaucratic structures. 1.5.4. The system level The system level perspective would like to conceive the global system as the structure or context within which states cooperate, compete and confront each other over issues of national interest. You might visualize it as a level above the state. Particularly important in that context is the distribution of power amongst states, meaning, whether there is one main concentration of power (unipolarity), two (bipolarity) or several (multipolarity). In this perspective, global circumstances are seen to condition the ability and opportunity of individual states and groups of states to pursue their interests in cooperative or competitive ways. The view of states being embedded in a global context traditionally comes with the assumption that our international system is ‘anarchic’. An anarchic system is one that lacks a central government (or international sovereign) that regulates and controls what happens to states in their dealings with each other. Global Affairs Module Activity:  Discuss in groups how the various levels of analysis to a particular international problem offer differing perspectives of international relations. The international system can be conceived of as made up of states, groups of states, organizations, societies or individuals within and across those societies. IR generally distinguishes between three levels of analysis: the system, the state, and the individual – but the group level is also important to consider as a fourth. To be able to use the level of analysis as an analytical device, we need to be clear about what we are most interested in. If we were to study and understand the 2008 global financial crisis and its consequences, for example, there would be various ways of approaching, discussing and presenting the issue. To determine the level of analysis we would need to determine what those levels are and ask ourselves some questions, which we can explore below. A system-level study would need to consider global linkages that go beyond single interactions between states. It would need to look at such things as the balance of power between states and how that determines what happens in global politics. This could include developments that are even outside the immediate control of any particular state or group of states, such as the global economy, transnational terrorism or the internet. A global level would give us the big picture and help us to grasp wide ranging dynamics that emerge from the global economic ‘system’ to affect its various components, states, national economies, societies, and individuals. 1.6. The Structure of International System Brainstorming Question:  Have you ever thought that the international system has a structure? If so discuss how?  What would the international system look like if it is left to the whims of sovereign states? International Relations scholars maintain that political power is usually distributed into three main types of systems namely: (i) uni-polar system, (ii) bipolar system and, (iii) multipolar system. These three different systems reflect the number of powerful states competing for power and their hierarchical relationship. In a uni-polar international system, there is one state with the Global Affairs Module greatest political, economic, cultural and military power and hence the ability to totally control other states. On the other hand, in both bipolar and multipolar systems there is no one single state with a preponderant power and hence ability to control other states. As a result, the states in such systems are forced to balance each other’s power. In the case of the bipolar system, for instance, there are two dominant states (super powers) and the less powerful states join either sides through alliance and counter alliance formations. The problem with bipolar system is that it is vulnerable for zero-sum game politics because when one superpower gains the other would inevitably lose. One typical historical example where the world was under bipolar system is the cold war period. Multipolar system is the most common throughout history. During the period around World War I it was a typical world system. It usually reflects various equally powerful states competing for power. It is not necessary for states to change their relationship with zero-sum game. In such system, it is possible to bring change without gaining or losing power. Activity:  Define unipolarity, bipolarity and multipolarity  Which system do you think is more stable and peaceful? Why? Power Power is the currency of international politics. As money is for economics, power is for international relations (politics). In the international system, power determines the relative influence of actors and it shapes the structure of the international system. That is also why it is often said that international relations is essentially about actors’ power relations in the supra- national domain. For instance, Hans Morgenthau, a famous thinker of realism theory in IR, argues that International politics, like all other politics, is a struggle for power. It thus follows from this that power is the blood line of international relations. Power can be defined in terms of both relations and material (capability) aspects. The relational definition of power is formulated by Robert Dahl. Dahl’s definition understands power as ‘A’s’ ability to get ‘B’ to do something it would not otherwise do. To better understand this definition, consider this historical example: The United States and Soviet Union had roughly balanced capabilities during the cold war era. Even though they can mutually destruct each other, the two Global Affairs Module world powers were in a stalemate for the whole of the cold war period. Why? Because wherever capabilities are equal, power tends to vanish totally. However, a small rise in the capabilities of one of the two nations could translate into a major advantage in terms of power balance. With the demise of the Soviet Union, for instance, the power balance between Russia and the United States has changed in favour of the latter, i.e. the United States emerged as more powerful than Russia and in consequence managed to exercise power over Russia- meaning the USA owned the ability to get Russia to do what Russia would not otherwise do. Anarchy Anarchy is a situation where there is absence of authority (government) be it in national or international/global level systems. Within a country ‘anarchy’ refers to a breakdown of law and order, but in relations between states it refers to a system where power is decentralized and there are no shared institutions with the right to enforce common rules. An anarchical world is a world where everyone looks after themselves and no one looks after the system as a whole. Instead, states had to rely on their own resources or to form alliances through which the power of one alliance of states could be balanced against the power of another alliance. Yet, as soon became clear, such power balances were precarious, easily subverted, and given the value attached to territorial acquisitions, states had an incentive to engage in aggressive wars. As a result, the new international system was characterized by constant tensions and threats of war – which often enough turned into actual cases of warfare. Sovereignty Sovereignty is another basic concept in international relations and it can be defined as an expression of: (i) a state’s ultimate authority within its territorial entity (internal sovereignty) and, (ii) the state’s involvement in the international community (external sovereignty). In short, sovereignty denotes double claim of states from the international system, i.e., autonomy in foreign policy and independence/freedom in its domestic affairs. Activity:  Define power in the international system  Discuss what anarchy means in the context of the international system  Explore the multiple meanings inherent in the concept of sovereignty Global Affairs Module 1.7. Theories of International Relations The politics of global interactions is more accessible now in the present age than it ever has been in the past. Whether it is conflict in the Middle East, the break-up of Yugoslavia, human rights violations or poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, we are daily confronted by images of global interactions which in some way cross-national boundaries, involve a variety of factors, and impact upon a widespread number of issues which may or may not affect our own lives, values and welfare. What is beyond dispute is that we, as individuals, may no longer claim immunity or distance from events which occur elsewhere, which affect others beyond our shores. Relationships which take place across state boundaries seem, therefore, to include interactions involving not only the diplomatic core or representatives of our individual states, but the business community, the media, charitable organizations and so on. Theories of international relations allow us to understand and try to make sense of the world around us through various lenses, each of which represents a different theoretical perspective. In order to consider the field as a whole for beginners it is necessary to simplify International Relations theory. This section introduces the traditional theories, middle-ground theories and critical theories of international relations. Examples are used throughout to help bring meaning and perspective to these positions Brainstorming Questions:  Have you ever thought that the theoretical orientations of people in the foreign policy circle of great powers affect the behavior of states resulting in different consequences? Elaborate how? 1.7.1. Idealism/Liberalism Liberalism in IR was referred to as a ‘utopian’ theory and is still recognized as such to some degree today. Its proponents view human beings as innately good and believe peace and harmony between nations is not only achievable, but desirable. Immanuel Kant developed the idea in the late eighteenth century that states that shared liberal values should have no reason for going to war against one another. In Kant’s eyes, the more liberal states there were in the world, the more peaceful it would become, since liberal states are ruled by their citizens and citizens are rarely disposed to desire war. This is in contrast to the rule of kings and other non-elected rulers Global Affairs Module who frequently have selfish desires out of step with citizens. His ideas have resonated and continue to be developed by modern liberals, most notably in the democratic peace theory, which posits that democracies do not go to war with each other, for the very reasons Kant outlined. Further, liberals have faith in the idea that the permanent cessation of war is an attainable goal. Taking liberal ideas into practice, US President Woodrow Wilson addressed his famous ‘Fourteen Points’ to the US Congress in January 1918 during the final year of the First World War. As he presented his ideas for a rebuilt world beyond the war, the last of his points was to create a general association of nations, which became the League of Nations. Dating back to 1920, the League of Nations was created largely for the purpose of overseeing affairs between states and implementing, as well as maintaining, international peace. In the early years, from 1919 to the 1930s, the discipline was dominated by what is conventionally referred to as liberal internationalism. The primary concern of this approach was that conditions which had led to the outbreak of the First World War and the devastation which followed should not be allowed to occur in the future. The driving force was therefore normative in orientation and the underlying assumption was that the academic study of international relations had the potential to contribute to the prevention of war and the establishment of peace. With foundations in the Enlightenment and the eighteenth century, liberal internationalism, as Scott Burchill points out, suggested that ‘the prospects for the elimination of war lay with a preference for democracy over aristocracy, free trade over autarky, and collective security over the balance of power system’ (Burchill, 1996: 31). The two interrelated ideas that emerge from Kant’s reflections on a perpetual peace and which formed the basic foundations for the liberal internationalism that dominated the discipline of international relations in its early days centered on democratic governance and institutionalized law-governed relations of cooperation between states. The two formative pillars of liberal internationalism, democracy and free trade, required the establishment of international relations which would promote collectivist aspirations in place of the conflictual relations which formed the basis of balance-of-power thinking. For it was just such thinking, based as it was on the premise that relations between states are determined solely by the pursuit of power, which led to violations of international law and ultimately to the outbreak of war in 1914. A system of ‘collective security’ was advocated to replace antagonistic alliance systems with an international Global Affairs Module order based on the rule of law and collective responsibility. The domestic analogy of a social contract was deemed to be transferable for the international level. The creation of the League of Nations after the end of the First World War was the culmination of the liberal ideal of international relations. The League would function as the guarantor of international order and would be the organ through which states could settle their differences through arbitration. Any deviance from international law would be dealt with collectively in the name of a commonly held interest in the maintenance of peace and security. However, when the League collapsed due to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, its failure became difficult for liberals to comprehend, as events seemed to contradict their theories. Therefore, despite the efforts of prominent liberal scholars and politicians such as Kant and Wilson, liberalism failed to retain a strong hold and a new theory emerged to explain the continuing presence of war. Liberals also argue that international law offers a mechanism by which cooperation among states is made possible. International law refers to the body of customary and conventional rules which are binding on civilized states in their intercourse with each other. Notwithstanding this, however, states are the subjects of international law in the sense that they are in principle obliged to implement the decisions of international tribunals or courts. Essentially, international law provides the normative framework for political discourse among members of the international system. The framework does not guarantee consensus, but it does foster the discourse and participation needed to provide conceptual clarity in developing legal obligations and gaining their acceptance. In playing this role, international law performs two different functions. One is to provide mechanisms for cross-border interactions, and the other is to shape the values and goals these interactions are pursuing. The first set of functions are called the ‘‘operating system’’ of international law, and the second set of functions are the ‘‘normative system.” In short, the purpose of international law is thus to regulate the conducts of governments and the behaviors of individuals within states. For instance, in the case of human rights law we have one area called International human rights law which provides a normative system for regulating states’ behavior in their treatment of human rights within or outside their jurisdiction. Today, we have more than 190 states/ governments, international institutions created by states, and elements of the private Global Affairs Module sector – multinational corporations and financial institutions, networks of individuals, and NGOs participating in the international legal processes. However, the legal standing of international law is a contentious issue among scholars. There are three competing views on this matter. Some scholars say international law is not a law at all but a branch of international morality. Others say it is a law in all senses of the term. Yet, others say it is a matter of definition. As a result, the operating system of international law functions in some ways as a constitution does in a domestic legal system and not as law proper-i.e it does nothing beyond setting out the consensus of its constituent actors on distribution of authority, rights and responsibilities for governance within the international system. Activities:  What is International Law?  Do you think that International Law is playing a meaningful role in the governance of today’s international system? If yes, explain how? If not explain why? 1.7.2. Realism Though liberal internationalist ideals are now recognized for their significant contribution in the development of normative approaches to the subject, they seemed, at the outset of the 1930s and ultimately the outbreak of the Second World War, futile and utopian. Thus it was that the subject matter of international relations, dominated as it had been by international law and diplomatic history, was transformed to an intellectual agenda which placed power and self-interest at the forefront of concern. The ‘idealism’ of the interwar period was henceforth to be replaced by realism, and it is this school of thought which, in its various articulations, remains dominant in the discipline. E.H. Carr’s ‘Twenty Years’ Crisis’, published in 1939, was the text which positioned what he called utopianism in opposition to realism. Carr called for a ‘science’ of international relations, one which would move away from what he saw as the wishful thinking of liberal internationalism. By presenting the fact–value distinction, that which separates the ‘what is’ from the ‘what ought to be’, in dichotomous or oppositional Global Affairs Module terms, Carr’s text called for a move away from utopian doctrine which, he suggested, was based on an unrealistic negation of power and its impact on international politics. Realists argue that values are context bound, that morality is determined by interest, and that the conditions of the present are determined by historical processes. Where idealism sought a universally applicable doctrine, Carr’s call is for a historical analysis of the contingent frameworks which determine politics. The formative assumptions of realism as a school of thought centre on the view that the international system is ‘anarchic’, in the sense that it is devoid of an all-encompassing authority. Where domestic society is ruled by a single system of government, the international system of states lacks such a basis and renders inter-national law non-binding and ultimately ineffectual in the regulation of relations between states. Conflict is hence an inevitable and continual feature of inter-national relations. As liberal internationalism sought foundations in the Enlightenment and the birth of reason so realism locates its roots further back, citing Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes as its founding voices. Thucydides and his account of the Peloponnesian War is read as the formative paradigmatic text in that it covers themes such as power, intrigue, conquest, alliance-building and the intricacies of bargaining. Here we see portrayed a system of city states, the units or members of which are self-reliant and independent, with war breaking out in 431 BC. Hans Morgenthau, whose Politics among Nations(1948) leads the realist perspective, points to a clear line of descent from Thucydides when he asserts that ‘realism assumes that its key concept of interest defined as power is an objective category which is universally valid, but it does not endow that concept with a meaning that is fixed once and for all’. Morgenthau’s text starts with the assumption that there are objective laws which have universal applicability, ‘international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power’. Where liberal internationalism had been openly normative and prescriptive in orientation, the realism expressed by Morgenthau purports to be scientific and explanatory. Theories of international relations must, according to Morgenthau, be consistent with the facts and it is these which must be the ultimate test of the validity of theoretical statements. Morgenthau, like other realists, hence assumes a clear separation of fact and value, of theory and practice. By the late 1950s and into the 1960s we see a discipline dominated by realist conceptions of international relations, based as these were on the state as the primary unit of analysis, on Global Affairs Module interactions between states governed by the relentless pursuit of power, and on a substantive empirical agenda defined by Cold War concerns. Realism gained momentum during the Second World War when it appeared to offer a convincing account for how and why the worst conflict in known history originated after a period of supposed peace and optimism. Although it originated in named form in the twentieth century, many realists have traced its origins in earlier writings. Indeed, realists have looked as far back as to the ancient world where they detected similar patterns of human behavior as those evident in our modern world. As its name suggests, advocates of realism purport it reflects the ‘reality’ of the world and more effectively accounts for change in international politics. Thomas Hobbes is often mentioned in discussions of realism due to his description of the brutality of life during the English Civil War of 1642–1651. Hobbes described human beings as living in an order-less ‘state of nature’ that he perceived as a war of all against all. To remedy this, he proposed that a ‘social contract’ was required between a ruler and the people of a state to maintain relative order. Hedley Bull was one of the prominent scholars that criticized Morganthau’s approaches. His concern was that relations between states could not be reduced to measurable attributes of power or models of decision-making. If features of ‘society’ characterized relations between states and if, indeed, we could locate codes of conduct which formed such a society, we could legitimately look to history and philosophy to conceptualize the complexity of international politics. Bull’s, ‘The Anarchical Society’, first published in 1977, came to represent what subsequently has been referred to as the ‘English School’, demarcated from the United States-dominated realist and scientific perspective mainly through its normative approach to the subject (Bull, 1977). Activity:  Organize yourselves into two groups and play the role of Hitler and W. Wilson in affecting the international stability and present your findings to the class.  Do you think that these leaders had differing orientation of international relations? How? Kenneth Waltz’s ‘Man, the State and War’ (1959) and his later ‘Theory of International Politics’ (1979) define a neo-realist agenda and absolutely dominated the discipline and some would Global Affairs Module argue do so to the present day. Where Morgenthau’s realism concentrates on the attributes and behavior of states within the international system, Waltz focuses on the international system itself and seeks to provide a structuralist account of its dynamics and the constraints it imposes on state behavior. The international system is, for Waltz, anarchical and hence perpetually threatening and conflictual. What is of interest to Waltz is not the set of motives which may determine state behavior, but the imperatives of the international system and the distribution of capabilities within it. This is hence a structural account, but it is an account that markedly differs in approach and substantive content from the neo-Marxist structuralism outlined below. It has much akin to realism and must therefore be placed within that perspective. Today, we take such ideas for granted as it is usually clear who rules our states. Each leader or ‘sovereign’ (a monarch, or a parliament for example) sets the rules and establishes a system of punishments for those who break them. We accept this in our respective states so that our lives can function with a sense of security and order. It may not be ideal, but it is better than a state of nature. As no such contract exists internationally and there is no sovereign in charge of the world, disorder and fear rules international relations. That is why war seems more common than peace to realists indeed they see war as inevitable. When they examine history they see a world that may change in shape, but is always characterized by a system of what they call ‘international anarchy’ as the world has no sovereign to give it order. Key Concepts:  Liberalism depicts optimism by arguing that human beings are good, cooperation is possible and conflict can be resolved peacefully  Realism depicts pessimism by arguing that human beings are bad, conflict is inevitable and war is the most prominent instrument of resolving conflict  Structuralism/Marxism focused on the structure of dependency and exploitation caused by the international division of labor  Constructivism/Critical Theories challenge the foundations of the dominant perspectives and argue for the marginalized and the voiceless One central area that sets realism and liberalism apart is how they view human nature. Realists do not typically believe that human beings are inherently good, or have the potential for good, as liberals do. Instead, they claim individuals act in their own self-interests. For realists, people are Global Affairs Module selfish and behave according to their own needs without necessarily taking into account the needs of others. Realists believe conflict is unavoidable and perpetual and so war is common and inherent to humankind. Hans Morgenthau, a prominent realist, is known for his famous statement ‘all politics is a struggle for power’ (Morgenthau 1948). This demonstrates the typical realist view that politics is primarily about domination as opposed to cooperation between states. Here, it is useful to briefly recall the idea of theories being lenses. Realists and liberals look at the very same world. But when viewing that world through the realist lens, the world appears to be one of domination. The realist lens magnifies instances of war and conflict and then uses those to paint a certain picture of the world. Liberals, when looking at the same world, adjust their lenses to blur out areas of domination and instead bring areas of cooperation into focus. Then, they can paint a slightly different picture of the same world. It is important to understand that there is no single liberal or realist theory. Scholars in the two groups rarely fully agree with each other, even those who share the same approach. Each scholar has a particular interpretation of the world, which includes ideas of peace, war and the role of the state in relation to individuals. And, both realism and liberalism have been updated to more modern versions (neoliberalism and neorealism) that represent a shift in emphasis from their traditional roots Liberals share an optimistic view of IR, believing that world order can be improved, with peace and progress gradually replacing war. They may not agree on the details, but this optimistic view generally unites them. Conversely, realists tend to dismiss optimism as a form of misplaced idealism and instead they arrive at a more pessimistic view. This is due to their focus on the centrality of the state and its need for security and survival in an anarchical system where it can only truly rely on itself. As a result, realists reach an array of accounts that describe IR as a system where war and conflict is common and periods of peace are merely times when states are preparing for future conflict. Another point to keep in mind is that each of the overarching approaches in IR possesses a different perspective on the nature of the state. Both liberalism and realism consider the state to be the dominant actor in IR, although liberalism does add a role for non-state actors such as international organizations. Nevertheless, within both theories states themselves are typically regarded as possessing ultimate power. This includes the capacity to enforce decisions, such as Global Affairs Module declaring war on another nation, or conversely treaties that may bind states to certain agreements. In terms of liberalism, its proponents argue that organizations are valuable in assisting states in formulating decisions and helping to formalize cooperation that leads to peaceful outcomes. Realists on the other hand believe states partake in international organizations only when it is in their self-interest to do so. Many scholars have begun to reject these traditional theories over the past several decades because of their obsession with the state and the status quo. Activity:  Discuss in groups about Idealism and Realism in explaining international problems 1.7.3. Structuralism/Marxism Marxism is an ideology that argues that a capitalist society is divided into two contradictory classes – the business class (the bourgeoisie) and the working class (the proletariat). The proletariats are at the mercy of the bourgeoisie who control their wages and therefore their standard of living. Marx hoped for an eventual end to the class society and overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. It was during the 1960s, however, that other perspectives came to constitute alternative modes of conceptualizing international politics. With decoloniz

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