International Politics - Chapter 1 from text International Relations

1. IR 2
World Politics:
Seeking Security
in a Complicated
and Connected
World
1
SCOTT / CARTER / DRURY
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World Politics
• Political, economic and social activities and
interactions among states and non-state
actors
• IGOs, NGOs, TNCs
• Evolved to include an increasingly diverse
set of states from the developed and
developing worlds and non state actors

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A Complex World Connected to You
• World politics and you
• World politics affects our daily lives
- Security delays at airports
- War
- Economic crises
- Agricultural concerns

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Search for Security in a Challenging
Environment
• Security: Survival and safety
• Military, intelligence, and law enforcement
arenas
• Special emphasis on conflict, violence, and war

5. 5IR2 | CH1
Figur
e
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1-1 Pursuit of Security in Three
Arenas

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Search for Security in a
Challenging Environment
• Fundamental challenges
• Anarchy: Absence of central government in world
politics
• Does not mean chaos or disorder
• International norms- regular patterns of behavior
• Diversity: Variation in values, norms, identities,
goals, and other political, economic, and cultural
factors in world politics
• Complexity: Multidimensional issues, actors, and
connections that characterize international relations

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• Levels of analysis- different perspectives from
which IR may be examined
• Systemic or international level
• Directed to the broad patterns and interactions among the
players of world politics
• Emphasis on the impact of the structural characteristics of the
international system
• State or national level
• Attention is directed to the states or units
• Emphasis on the attributes of countries and nations and how
these attributes shape policy goals and behavior and, the
interactions among the players
• Individual or local level
• Attention is directed to people
• Emphasis on personalities, perceptions, and preferences of
individual decision makers and their effects on policy and
interactions

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Levels of Analysis

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Explaining the Patterns of World
Politics
• Theories: Tools for explaining cause-and-
effect relationships among complex
phenomena
• Help to strategically simplify the world
• Aid in the explanation of patterns and the
prediction of likely developments

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Explaining the Patterns of World
Politics
• Theoretical paradigms
• Realism
- Revolves around the issue of conflict and
power and stresses the role of states pursuing
their self-interests
• Liberalism
- Emphasizes cooperative approaches and
addresses the role and influence of non-state
actors

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Explaining the Patterns of World
Politics
• Theoretical paradigms
• Constructivism
- Builds on the social construction of reality and
stresses the role of the identity, ideas,
culture, norms and interactions of people
• Foreign policy analysis
- Emphasizes the individuals and groups who
make decisions, and the processes and
policies produced

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Explaining the Patterns of World
Politics
• Theoretical paradigms
• Marxism
- Stresses class-based economic interests and
the role of wealth and who controls it as the
key to behavior
• Feminism
- Focuses on gender issues and approaches and
asks what the world would be like if it were
not historically dominated by men

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Dilemmas of Cooperation in
International Relations
• The prisoner’s dilemma: Situation in which
two prisoners must decide whether to
collaborate with each other or not
• Stag hunt: Situation in which hunters must
decide whether to collaborate with each
other or act on their own

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Dilemmas of Cooperation in
International Relations
• Together these theories:
• Highlight several key issues about the nature of
world politics
• Suggest there are important structural obstacles
for cooperation between states
• Illustrate the tension between pursuing self-
interest and broader collective interests
• Suggest that part of underlying issue is trust
• Commitment problem: Countries have a hard
time committing to cooperative courses of
action

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Dilemmas of Cooperation in
International Relations
• If two or more states are involved in a
Prisoners Dilemma it is referred to as a
collective action problem- obstacles to
cooperation that occur when actors would
benefit from cooperation but few
incentives lead any actor to assume the
costs of such actions

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Table
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1-2 The Prisoner’s Dilemma

17. KEY TERMS
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18. LEARNING OUTCOMES
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1 Summarize the complex arena of world politics
2 Identify the nature and challenges of security—
international, economic, and human—in
international relations
3 Define the levels of analysis in the study of
international relations
4 Describe the challenges of cooperation
among the actors of international relations
5 Assess the dilemmas of cooperation illustrated
by the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Stag Hunt
scenarios

19. SUMMARY
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• Contending with the challenges of anarchy,
diversity and complexity plays a major role
in world politics
• Enormous consequences for countries and
other players as they grapple with the
dilemmas of self-interest and mutual
interest