Approaches of International Relations

Idealism And Liberalism: International Relations Theory in Brief
Overview

Liberalism (also known in American circles as idealism) is generally
considered the second great body of theory in contemporary international
politics, although technically it is the first (the first generation of
international relations scholars in England after the First World War were
predominantly what we would now call liberals). Note that this body of
theory does not necessarily bear any significant relationship to people
described as "liberals" in contemporary American politics; while some
idealists are politically liberal peace activists, the theory also technically
incorporates American neoconservatives who see the mission of the United
States as spreading democratic systems around the world.
Effectively, where realists see competition and conflict, liberals see
opportunities for cooperation. This is particularly so in their defence of
international law, economic cooperation, and the spread of democracy as
the most important mechanisms for building world peace. (There are also
further differences between realism and liberalism.)

Basic Principles

According to idealism, a state's foreign policy is not determined entirely by
the international system around it, but rather by its own internal order -
democratic, communist, dictatorial, etc. In general, liberals have observed
that the least aggressive states tend to be ones with democratic
governments and capitalistic economies -- the so-called "liberal
democracies," most of which are industrialized countries. The controversial
claim that no democracy has ever truly gone to war against another
democracy lies at the heart of the Democratic Peace Theory. Another insight
drawn from the linking of internal and external affairs is that non-state
actors, like civil society, multinational corporations, and international
organizations, also play important roles in world politics.
Reflecting its origins in the post-World War I period, liberals have argued
that the chief goal of foreign policy should be to promote world
peace (although many accept that wars can be just if world peace is the
ultimate goal). One mechanism for doing this is to promote the growth
of international organizations and international laws, which, according to
liberals, should be generally effective provided that they reflect existing
balances of power. Important liberal projects have included the promotion
of universal human rights and conflict prevention in the United Nations,
and market liberalization through the World Trade Organization. Some
branches of liberal theory insist that domestic and international reforms
must be linked, and that world peace will require democratization of
currently authoritarian states.
Liberalism does not deny that serious international conflicts occur.
However, following the neoliberal turn, theorists have generally argued that
states should and usually do concern themselves first with what economists
and game theorists call absolute gainsrather than relative gains - in other
words, they are concerned with achieving a measurable increase in their
own power and prosperity on their own terms, rather than more narrowly
with increasing their power and prosperity relative to other states
The recent rise of American neoconservatism under the late Clinton and
Bush administrations owes much to liberal idealism. Neoconservatives
argue that the United States is a unique wellspring of classical republican
liberalism, and that its special destiny is to achieve the revitalization of
American culture as well as the creation of a stable, peaceful international
order by spreading this vision of democracy to other countries, including
through military interventions in the role of "world police."
(Neoconservative interventionists have clashed with so-called
"paleoconservatives," who argue that the revitalization of American culture
should be an independent project and that foreign policy should be
essentially defensive and isolationist.)

Strengths and Weaknesses

In its idealist variant, liberalism is the first major body of international
political theory to focus explicitly on the problem of war and peace with the
goal of implementing sufficient reforms to end war and create a democratic
world peace. In its neoliberal and trade-oriented variants, liberalism offers a
powerful but still traditional body of theory that allows for the analysis of
non-state actors like corporations and social movements. The democratic
peace theory, while still unexplained in specific terms, is one of the
strongest claims to truth in all o| ivtcµvotiovoì µcìotiovo tqcoµ¢.
At the same time, critics allege that liberalism suffers from theoretical
incoherence and a Western-centric perspective. Realists argue that liberals
are naive to think that world peace is achievable, and wrong to include
corporations and international organizations as important actors in
international politics. More radical scholars argue that liberalism ignores
the frequently violent foreign policies of imperial democracies (like the
British Empire and, arguably, the current United States), as well as the
limitations of concepts like "human rights," which are merely Western rather
than truly universal.

Important Scholars

Contemporary liberal academics tend to search for their intellectual
antecedents in the European Enlightenment, when philosophers first
concerned themselves with international peace and human rights. Important
inspiration is drawn from such sources as Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace),
John Locke (Two Treatises of Civil Government), Hugo Grotius (On the Law of
War and Peace) and Emerich de Vattel (The Law of Notiovo).
Several prominent neoliberal scholars currently form the intellectual
leadership of idealism. These include Robert Keohane (After Hegemony) and
Joseph Nye (Soft Power). Neofunctionalists, focused on international unity
through international institutions, include Ernst Haas (The Uniting of
Europe).
The neoconservative movement includes influential scholars as well as non-
scholarly journalist commentators. The latter include Robert D. Kaplan (The
Coming Anarchy) and Max Boot (The Savage Wars of Peace). Neoconservative
intellectuals include Robert Kagan (Of Paradise and Power). At different
times in their careers, Samuel P. Huntington (Clash of Civilizations and Who
Are We?) and Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) both identified as
neoconservatives. Several prominent neoconservatives played a role in the
creation of the Project for the New American Century, which formed the
basis for early Bush Administration foreign policy.
Realism: International Relations Theory in Brief
Overview

Realism claims to be the oldest body of theory in the study of international
relations. Essentially concerned with the study of war and peace between
nations, realism sees a world that is inevitably and permanently divided
intonation-states, controlled by rational governments interested in
protecting their security. Realists have divided on how they believe most
governments naturally attempt to do this: so-called classical realists argue
that governments attempt to increase their power as much as possible (the
more powerful a state is, the more it can control its own destiny), while so-
called neorealists argue that states can increase their security without
necessarily being power-hungry (the safer a state is, the more it can control
its own destiny).
As with all academic theories, there is a surprising amount of variation
among the theories and assumptions put forward by both alleged and self-
identified realist scholars. Even the number of shared principles among all
realists seems to be in flux: for example, Hans Morgenthau identified six
principles, but according to Jack Donnelly, Robert Gilpin finds only three
and Randall Schweller actually lists seven. Most college-level surveys hit
upon five, and I will do the same here.

Basic Principles

The fundamental assumption of all realist theory is that the international
system (that is, the collection of independent nation-states that make up
global politics) is anarchic: there is no overarching power or government or
law that actually calls the shots. Nations make up their own rules as they go,
and are in charge of their own affairs. Realists attribute this state of affairs
to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, although this is debatable.
That anarchic system, moreover, is composed solely of nation-states, and
more specifically of state governments. Other actors, like international
organizations and multinational corporations, are assumed to play minor
and insignificant roles in global politics.
Third, all of these states are rational and are driven by the goal of survival.
To survive -- and to achieve safety, or "national security" -- is the first
objective of all countries. Usually, countries pursue this security, and
exercise their power, through military means, but sometimes they do so
through economic power as well.
Finally, realists argue that there is no morality in international politics. In
other words, states cannot allow themselves to be guided by any sense of
ethics higher than the drive to survive, and they must assume that other
states will be doing the same. Hans Morgenthau also claimed that
attempting to add morality into politics would lead to senseless ideological
wars.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Its easy and basic applicability to the most traditional of international
activities -- power politics and war -- can make realism very appealing,
especially to students looking for a relatively easy-to-apply theory.
Moreover, realism is best when engaging with powerful states (especially
superpowers like the United States and the Soviet Union) on their own
terms, seeing the world from their perspective and focusing on the conflicts
and crises that tended to occupy the attention of most of their diplomats
and security analysts during the Cold War.
Realism has many gaps, however. There is virtually no attention paid to how
the internal makeup of different states leads them to have different foreign
policies (a communist dictatorship and a liberal democracy are assumed to
have effectively the same international behaviour, for instance). Realists
also cannot explain the decline of states in the face of international
organizations and multinational corporations in the economic sphere.
Perhaps most importantly, realism has, on the face of it, little to say about
the current "war on terror," which involves states on one side but non-state
terrorist groups on the other. (Some realists might counter that the "war on
terrorism" is simply an ideological cover and that the real conflicts continue
to be between the U.S. and other governments, like those of Iran and
formerly of Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Important Authors

Most realists today argue that their discipline began with the work of
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides (The Peloponnesian War), Italian
Renaissance politician Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince), and less often
Chinese strategist Sun Tzu (The Art of War) and English political theorist
Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan). Whether these writers were genuinely realists
or modern-day scholars are simply engaged in selective historical cherry-
picking is debatable.
Either way, the modern academic field of realism was founded in the 20th
century by German-American scholar Hans J. Morgenthau (Politics Among
Nations). A second wave of realist work was initiated by Kenneth Waltz
(Man, the State, and War, and Theory of International Politics), and is
currently known as neorealism. Most realists today actually identify with
the neorealist camp, although they demonstrate a wide variety of different
assumptions and beliefs about global politics. Such scholars include John
Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics), Robert Jervis (Perception
and Misperception in International Politics), Stephen Walt (The Israel Lobby
and U.S. Foreign Policy), and Robert Gilpin (The Political Economy of
International Relations).
Another body of theory, the so-called English School of International
Relations, draws heavily upon realist theory, and some of its members, like
Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society), actually identify as realists. At the
undergraduate level the English School can usually be described as realist,
although there actually are significant (if nuanced) differences between the
two theories.


Marxism: International Relations Theory in Brief
Overview

Marxism is one of the basic theories of international relations. According to
Marxists, both realism and liberalism/idealism are simply self-serving
ideologies introduced by the economic elites to defend and justify global
inequality. Instead, Marxists argue, class is the fundamental unit of analysis
of international relations, and the international system has been
constructed by the upper classes and the wealthiest nations in order to
protect and defend their interests. Two of the most important Marxist-
derived bodies of theory in international relations are world-systems theory
(led by Immanuel Wallerstein) and dependency theory (a Latin American
school which such proponents as Andre Gunder Frank). More recent neo-
Marxist work in international relations is led by scholars such as Robert
Cox, but is classified separately as Critical Theory or neo-Gramscianism.

Basic Principles
The basic tenet of Marxism is that the world is divided not into politically
determined nations but into economically determined classes.
Consequently, politics does not supercede economics, but rather economics
trumps politics. The various Marxist theories of international relations agree
that the international state system was constructed by capitalists and
therefore serves the interests of wealthy states and corporations, which
seek to tµotc_t ovo cçtovo tqciµ ecoìtq.
The most successful IR theory derived directly from Marxism is Immanuel
Wallersten's world-systems theory. According to Wallerstein, the "First
World" and "Third World" are merely components of a larger
world systemwhich originated in 16th-century European colonialism.
Instead, these states actually make up the "core" and "periphery" of the
world system -- respectively, the central wealthy states which own and
chiefly benefit from the mechanisms of production, and the impoverished
"developing" countries which supply most of the human labour and natural
resources exploited by the rich. States which do not fit either class, but lie
somewhere in the middle of the model, are referred to as "semi-peripheral."
The core-periphery thesis of world-systems theory is based upon another
body of work, dependency theory, which argues that the basis of
international politics is the transfer of natural resources from peripheral
developing countries to core wealthy states, mostly the Western
industrialized democracies. The poor countries of the world, like the poor
classes of the world, are said to provide inexpensive human and natural
capital, while the wealthy countries' foreign policies are devoted to creating
and maintaining this system of inequality. International economic law (such
as the World Trade Organization) and other such systems are seen as means
by which this is done.
To combat these systems of inequality, traditional Marxists and dependency
theorists have argued that poor countries should adopt economic control
policies that can break them out of the prison of international economic
controls, such as import substitution (government assistance to domestic
producers and barriers to wealthy international corporations attempting to
flood the market with mass-produced imports) rather than the export-based
models usually favoured by international economic organizations such as
the World Bank and International Movctoµ¢ uuvo.
In most fields, a body of social constructivist theory known as neo-Marxism
is included within the general canon of Marxist literature. While also true in
international relations, the neo-Marxists generally identify as Critical
Theorists and as neo-Gramscians, and their ideas, while related, should be
studied separately.

Strengths and Weaknesses

World-systems theory and dependency theory, in particular, offer useful
analyses for those who perceive the world as principally and perpetually a
sphere of economic conflict between the rich and the poor. In its simplest
form, Wallerstein's theory may be viewed as an application of the core
concepts to Marxism to international relations, in which poor countries are
analogous to poor workers and wealthy Western countries are analogous to
property and factory owners within the upper classes. Moreover, the Marxist
studies of international relations easily preceded free-trade liberal scholars
in perceiving the existence of an international market system, today
dominated by liberal theorists and known |¢ tqc µovikcµ ¬¸ìo|oìi,otiov.¬
Since the end of the Cold War, theories associated with communism have
fallen into academic disrepute, seen as obsolete. More significantly,
Wallerstein's theory may be seen as both excessively concerned with the
role of economics in determining all aspects of social and political relations,
as well as excessively pessimistic, offering few means of genuine escape
from the capitalist system. (This is true of most contemporary academic
Marxist theories.)

Important Scholars

The basic Marxist canon is well known outside international relations,
beginning with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Communist Manifesto). Other
relevant sources for the study of Marxism and international relations
include the classic studies of imperialism and capitalism by Russian
Communist leader Vladimir Lenin (Imperialism andThe State and the
Revolution), and the neo-Marxist turn initiated by Italian political dissident
Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notc|ooko).
World-systems theory is principally the creation of Immanuel Wallerstein
(The Modern World-System). Wallerstein began his work in postcolonial
African politics, but during the 1970s began to unite the theories of Karl
Marx, French historian Fernand Braudel, and Latin American dependency
theorists. Associated theorists include Giovanni Arrighi (The Long Twentieth
Century). In addition to the Marxist tradition, Wallerstein draws upon the
Annales School in the French historical tradition, and particularly upon the
work of Fernand Braudel (Civilization and Xotitoìioµ).
Dependency theory is principally Latin American in its origin and its focus;
see, for example, Andre Gunder Frank (Capitalism and Underdevelopment in
Latin America). There are some similar theorists elsewhere, for example,
such as Egyptian economist Samir Amin (Imperialism and Unequal
Development). It draws its inspiration from Marxist sources as well as
economists Hans Singer and Raul Prebisch.


Constructivism: International Relations Theory in Brief
Overview

Constructivism is one of the basic theories of international relations. Its
central tenet is that most or even all important elements of international
politics are the product of specific social circumstances and historical
processes, rather than being inevitable consequences of the nature of
humans or the nature of politics. This willingness to see international
relations as socially constructed sets constructivism apart from traditional
approaches to realism and liberalism. Significant authors include Alexander
Wendt, John Ruggie, and Martha Finnemore.
The more radical branches of constructivism, involving (for example)
poststructuralist and postmodernist analysis of discourse and linguistics,
are technically constructivist but must be described separately to
appreciate their significance.

Basic Principles

The basic observation of constructivism is that human relations are guided
more by ideas than by material things. It emerged as an explicit challenge to
Kenneth Waltz's neorealism, which argued that state behaviour was
determined by the international system in which states existed and
operated. Instead, constructivists note that someone (or rather, many
people) must have constructed that system in the first place; in fact, that
system is continually being built, modified, and rebuilt as we speak.
Where realist approaches thus assumed that states' identities and interests
were fixed and relatively unproblematic, constructivists assume this is not
the case, and look for ways that how states perceive of themselves and their
actions have changed. This is not to say that an international system does
not exist or that smaller states, in particular, do not often feel pressured by
it; instead, it merely points out that international society is, in effect, what
human beings make it to be.
The constructivist challenge offers valuable insights into many of the
concepts taken for granted by conventional realist, liberal, and to a lesser
extent Marxist analysis. The concept of international anarchy, for example,
is found to be considerably more flexible than realists imagine.
Traditionally, anarchy (the lack of a single overarching power structure
defining hierarchical relationships between states) is seen by neorealists as
the cause of insecurity and conflict between states. However, this is only
one conception of the consequences of anarchy, which most states happen
to have adopted as true. Alternatively, international human society could be
organized on a cooperative basis rather than a competitive basis.

At the same time, constructivists open themselves to a range of criticisms.
Mainstream scholars frequently attack critical and social theories in general
as leading to obfuscation and incoherence, ignoring the "reality on the
ground" in favour of increasingly cluttered academic theorizing. Certain
veins of critical theory, however, go much farther than constructivism in
attempting to assert the ethical or moral validity of actual alternative
conceptions of international systems. Constructivism as such merely
asserts that present social structures are socially constructed; it does not
suggest what social constructions are preferable to others, nor does it
suggest, except in vague terms, how one might consciously alter the
continuing evolution of state identity and interest in the international
system.

Important Authors

Although Nicholas Onuf (World of Our Making) first employed the term
constructivism in the study of international relations, Alexander Wendt
(Social Theory of International Politics) is the best-known constructivist
scholar, emerging during the 1990s as a direct challenger to the ascendancy
of Kenneth Waltz's neorealism during the 1980s. Wendt first applied
constructivist theory to the problem of anarchy, as described above. Other
major constructivist scholars include John Ruggie (Constructing the World
Polity) and Martha Finnemore (National Interests in International Society).
More radical departures from constructivism are dealt with in a different
fact sheet. However, poststructuralist and linguistic and discourse analyses
also emerged from similar assumptions during the 1990s. These scholars
include Richard Ashley, Friedrich Kratochwil (Rules, Norms and Decisions),
R.B.J. Walker(Inside/Outside), and James Der Derian (Antidiplomacy).