13060193
| Question | Answer |
| agency versus. structure debate | the debate over the priorities to be accorded to agents (individuals or states) as opposed to structures in shaping social life. |
| balance of power | a dominant idea within realist and English school traditions of thought. For most classical realists, the balance of power was something that was contrived / artificial (i.e. actors had to cooperate to maintain the balance), whereas for neorealist the balance of power is akin to a natural equilibrium. For neorealists, states within the international system will automatically balance against any dominant state power in a natural equilibrium. |
| balancing | when a threatened state accepts the burden of deterring an adversary and commits substantial resources to achieving that goal. The threatened state can mobilise its own resources or join with other threatened states to form a balancing coalition against the revisionist state. |
| bandwagoning | when a weaker state joins a stronger or dominant alliance in the context of the balance of power in the international system. |
| bargaining | a branch of game theory that deals with situations in which all parties have a common interest in bargaining for a solution that improves the outcome for at least some and worsens it for none. |
| behaviouralism | a school of thought that, drawing on empiricist theory of knowledge and positivist philosophy of science, seeks to study human behaviour in reference to observable and measurable behavioural patterns. |
| bipolarity | a system in which there are only two great powers. |
| buck-passing | where threatened states try to get another state to check an aggressor while they remain on the sidelines. |
| central wars | conflicts that involve all, or almost all, the world’s great powers. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792 — 1815), the First World War (1914 — 1918), and the Second World War (1939 — 45) were all central wars. |
| 'clash of civilisations' thesis | a phrase coined by US political scientist Samuel Huntington (in 1996), who argued that the end of the Cold War had created conditions for a new form of international conflict based on ethnic and religious allegiances; civilisations were, he argued, the highest level of shared identity. In particular, Huntington focused on possible conflict between the West and Islam, a claim which was widely cited by journalists and political leaders after the 9/11 attacks on the USA. |
| compliance | compliance involves the extent to which states can be induced or encouraged to abide by international agreements. Neoliberals, in particular, believe that the ‘compliance problem’ is one of the central dilemmas of IR. They see institutions as playing a key role in monitoring and enforcing compliance. |
| defection | in neorealist and neoliberal thinking the problem of defection is a consequence of the anarchic international system. States fear that allies may not live up to their promises because there are frequently no penalties for breaking such commitments. States may also be concerned that others can ‘free-ride’; in other words, gain the advantage of a cooperative agreement without paying for any of the costs. Neorealist and neoliberal have engaged in a lively debate about whether institutions can mitigate the incentives to defect. |
| defensive realists | structural realists or neorealist who argue that systemic factors put significant limits on how much power states can gain, which works to dampen security competition. |
| democratic peace | advocates explain war and peace in the international system with reference to domestic-level variables. Their basic claim is that regime types (defined by institutional features e.g. elections, decision-making structures, and culture) shape foreign policy inclinations of national decision-makers and their interactions on the international level. Democratic peace theorists, following Kant, argue that democratic domestic institutions are conducive to producing peace on an international level, especially among democracies. |
| deterrence | persuading an opponent not to initiate a particular action because the perceived benefits are outweighed by the anticipated costs and risks. |
| discourse | the language and representations through which we describe and understand the world, and through which meanings, identities, and social relations are produced. According to social theorists who believe that social reality is constituted by and through discourse, claims to pre-discursive reality are unwarranted. Borrowing from the French philosopher Michel Foucault discourse theorist recognise that power is at work in defining the terms of debate (see also ‘knowledge and power’). Discourse is a term closely associated with post-structuralism and also post-colonialism. |
| empiricism | a theory of knowledge (an epistemology) that holds that knowledge should be grounded in empirical experience. Empiricist epistemology has been influential positivist philosophies of science and is often seen to underlie positivist theories in IR theory. |
| epistemology | a branch of philosophy that seeks to theorise how we gain knowledge about the world. One of the most influential theories of knowledge in modern philosophy has been empiricism, which has emphasised the centrality of empirical observation in obtaining and justifying knowledge (see ‘empiricism’). |
| 'explaining & understanding' | a distinction introduced into IR theory by Hollis and Smith (1990). ‘Explanatory’ theories seek to emulate natural sciences and explain general cause, while ‘understanding’ approaches aim to account for agents’ actions ‘from within’ through interpreting actor meanings, beliefs, and reasons for action. |
| foundationalism | a term used to describe the theories that believe that our knowledge can have foundations, either in reason and rationality (rationalism), systematic empirical observation (empiricism), or independent existence of reality (realism). Foundationalist theories are criticised by the so-called anti-foundationalist theories, typically associated with poststructuralist perspectives. |
| great debates | a disciplinary narrative that describes the historical development of IR scholarship. The first debate is said to have taken place between idealists and realists, the second debate between traditionalists and modernisers. The interparadigm debate in the 1970s and 1980s pitted realist, liberal, and Marxist theoretical viewpoints against each other. Finally, the debate between meta-theoretical positions, variously described as a contest between explaining and understanding, positivism and post positivism, and rationalism and reflectivism, engaged theorists from the 1980s onwards. This debate has been referred to as the ‘third debate’ by some (Lapid 1989) and as the ‘fourth debate’ by others, who see it as a debate beyond the interparadigm debate (Waver 1996). |
| hegemon & hegemony | in realist thought used to refer to an international system dominated by a hegemony that dominates the system through its military and economic might. In Gramscian and critical theory thought, hegemony refers to a situation in which socially dominant groups secure their power by getting subordinate social groups to subscribed to their ideological vision, thereby effectively consenting to their social power and making the widespread use of direct (and obviously oppressive) coercive power unnecessary. |
| hegemonic stability | in the late 1980s a number of prominent neorealist and neoliberal argued that international order can be provided by a single hegemonic power. For this to succeed, the hegemony needed to define its long-term interests in ways that were compatible with the interests of others in the system. A key part of this argument is the link between hegemonic power and the creation of regimes and institutions to maintain order. |
| hegemonic war | a war between two dominant or ‘leading’ powers (hegemons) within the international system. Many realists argue that the historical record suggests hegemony do not rise and fall peacefully. |
| incommensurability | a term associated with Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) work referring to the incomparability of theoretical positions. A term widely used, perhaps unjustifiably, in the interparadigm debate in IR to characterise the mutually exclusive nature of theoretical views of the world by realist, pluralist, and globalist approaches. |
| interdependence | interdependence involves a relationship of mutual dependence in which actions and interests are entwined. This relationship may produce unintended, undesirable, and reciprocal consequences, but participating actors also obtain important interests and benefits through their interconnection. |
| international institutions | sets of norms and rules designed by states to structure and constrain their behaviour and to facilitate cooperation. International institutions have traditionally been the focus of analysis of the neoliberal school of thought that has challenged realists’ scepticism of their significance. Increasingly, constructivism has also analysed the role of institutions in international politics. |
| international regimes | defined famously by Stephen Krasner (1983) as ‘sets of principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge’. The notion of regimes was useful in opening up the study of international institutions away from a focus on formal international organisations towards recognition of more informal regimes. |
| meta-theory | inquiry into the underlying philosophical assumptions that inform theoretical approaches. Meta-theoretical inquiry engages with philosophical questions of ontology, epistemology, and methodology. Often referred to as ‘theory about theory’. |
| methodology | methodological schools of thoughts debate how we best gain evidence about the nature of the natural and the social world. Different theoretical approaches in the social sciences have contrasting understandings of the validity and hierarchy of social science methods. Key methodological avenues in the local science include quantitative, qualitative, discursive, and historical methods. |
| monadic | in democratic peace theory the term ‘monadic’ refers to the unique character of republican states in terms of their aversion to war. Unlike the weaker claim by democratic peace theorists that liberal states have made a separate peace, advocates of the monadic version believe that republican states will always and everywhere by peace-prone. |
| multipolarity | a world in which there are three or more great powers. |
| offence-defence balance | indicates how easy or difficult it is to conquer territory or defeat a defender in battle. If the balance favours the defender, conquest is difficult and war is therefore unlikely. The reverse is the case if the balance favours the offence. |
| offensive realists | structural realists who maintain that states should attempt to gain as much power as possible, which works to intensify security competition. |
| ontology | a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of being and existence. In IR, all theorists make assumptions about the kinds of objects they conceive to exist in and the shape international politics. While many realists tend to argue that states are the key ontological units in international politics (see ‘state-centric’), constructivists, feminists, and Marxists, for example emphasise ‘social ontologies’ where the emphasis is on examining the social interaction and social relations between states or other actors (such as genders or classes). |
| paradigm | a term associated with Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) work referring to theoretical schools, or sets of principles, concerning the nature of science, that are accepted as exemplary in any given historical period. |
| positivism | a contested term in the philosophy of science and IR theory. Generally understood to refer to a philosophy of science that is found on (i) the empiricist theory of knowledge (which argues that sensory experience provides the only legitimate source of knowledge); (ii) an assumption of ‘naturalism’ (the belief in the unity of natural and social sciences); and (iii) the belief in the possibility of making fact-value distinctions (separation of normative, political, and ethical beliefs from ‘factual’ statements). |
| post-positivism | an umbrella term for a number of approaches that criticise positivist approaches to knowledge generation. Post positivists can be seen to include a heterogeneous group of theorists critical of the positivist approach to studying world politics, such as interpretive / hermeneutic theorists, post-structuralists, feminists, critical theorists, scientific / critical realists, and some, although not all, constructivists. |
| principal-agent theory | an approach to studying institutional relationships that focuses the delegation of authority from principals, who have the right to make decisions, to their agents. Authority is delegated within specified constraints, and principals can change the structure of delegation if it is not operating to their satisfaction. Neoliberal scholars apply principal-agent theory to understand the autonomy of international organisations (IOs), treating member states as the principals and the IO’s management and staff as agents. |
| Prisoner's Dilemma | one of the most influential game theory examples: in which two players try to get rewards by cooperating with or betraying the other player. In this game, one of the most influential examples in game theory, it is assumed that the only concern of each individual player (‘prisoner’) is to maximise their own advantage, with no concern for the well-being of the other player. Because of the structure of the game, no matter what the other player does, one will always get a greater pay-off by defecting. However, the rewards of mutual cooperation are greater than those of mutual defection. Since in any situation playing defect is more beneficial than cooperating, rational players will defect even though they would be better off cooperating, creating the dilemma. |
| rationalism / rationalist theory | form of theorising that utilises rational choice explanation in its explanatory framework (see also ‘rationality’ and ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’). Keohane (1988) used used this term to highlight the similarities between the neorealist and neoliberal theorists, who shared with each other the assumption of rationality and, further, tended to apply the rules of the positivist model of science in their research. Keohane contrasted rationalism with ‘reflectivism’ (see ‘reflectivism’). |
| rationality | a rational actor calculates the costs and benefits of different courses of action and chooses the course of action that provides the highest net pay-off. Rational actors also behave strategically, meaning that they take into account the likely reactions of others to their choices and how those reactions will influence their own pay-offs. The rationality of state behaviour is an important assumption in neorealist and neoliberal theories. |
| revisionist states | states looking for opportunities to use military force to alter the balance of power. |
| security dilemma | the paradox that occurs when a state seeks to improve its own security, resulting in the decreased security of other states. Providing assurances to the contrary is not effective, realists argue, given the lack of trust between actors in a self-help world. At the heart of the security dilemma is the idea that security is a relative concept: all actors cannot have more of it. |
| sovereignty | a key characteristic or a norm in the international system / society denoting the independent territorially self-standing, and self-determining qualities of states. There are many conceptions of the nature and role of sovereignty as an expression of the power and autonomy of states. Post positivist theorists, such as constructivist and poststructuralist theorists, seek to demonstrate the socially constructed nature of the assumption of sovereign states. Many theorists have also pointed to the erosion of the sovereignty of states in the context of globalisation. |
| status quo states | states satisfied enough with the balance of power that they have no interest in using military force to shift it in their favour. Status quo powers are sometimes referred to as security seekers. |
| theory | a central but contested term in natural and social sciences and in IR. In IR explanatory theorists tend to see theory as sets of statements that explain particular events, either in reference to a series of prior events or in reference to one or more casual variable. Critical theorists point point to the role of theory in not only explaining, but also in simultaneously critiquing social systems. Constitutive theory examines the way in which social structures are internally constituted or how ideas or discourses constitute social objects. Normative theory examines the plausibility of ethical arguments about what ‘ought to be’. Theory can also be seen to refer, more generally, to the frameworks of thought or knowledge through which we engage and give meaning to the world. |
| unipolarity | a world in which there is only one great power. Global hegemony is synonymous with unipolarity. |
| classical approach | alternative to behaviouralism advocated by Hedley Bull. The classical approach eschews positivist commitments to a fact / value distinct, and their expectation that hypotheses should be testable. being an interpretive mode or inquiry, with characteristics including: the inescapability of ethical considerations and a realisation that they study of world politics must engage with (and interpret) the dilemmas faced by practitioners. |
| dyadic | in democratic peace theory the term dyadic is used to signify the particular character of a relationship between a pair of actors, usually states. The presumption here is that if these actors share democratic values and institutions they will not be inclined to consider force as an instrument for resolving any conflicts of interest between them. |
| agency | the capacity for purposive action, or the exercise of power. The role of 'agents' in social life is traditionally contrasted with the role of 'structures', such as institutions or norms. The agency-structure debate refers to the debate over the priority to be accorded to agents (individuals and states) as opposed to structures in shaping social life. |
| capitalism | an historically particular form of social life in which social means of production are privately owned, and labour is commodified. Entailing a constellation of political, economic, and cultural aspects, capitalism involves a relation of class power in which the owning class controls the process of labour and appropriates its product. Marx respected the historic achievements of capitalist society, especially its enhancement of human productive powers, but was scathingly critical of the ways in which capitalism disempowered and dominated human beings, preventing them from realising the potential for freedom which its historic achievements made possible. |
| colonialism | the practice of establishing political control over a society through a process of territorial expansion and occupation. Colonial domination includes a range of direct and indirect policies that include military annexation, economic exploitation, and social and cultural engineering. |
| communitarianism | an ethical perspective that sees obligations and allegiances as defined with reference to distinct and discrete political communities, rather than with reference to the universal category of humankind (as is the case with cosmopolitanism'. Many realists have adopted (often implicitly) a communitarian position, defending the ethical primacy of the state as the definer of valid moral and political rules. |
| competition state | used by Cerny and others to refer to those states which subordinate all other policy imperatives to that of promoting the competitiveness of the national economy in a global environment. |
| dialectical understanding of history | an understanding of social life central to Marxism and critical theory that examines humans as embedded in social relations, which are themselves in process. Human are seen as historical beings, simultaneously the producers and the products of historical processes. Accordingly, politics is understood in a relatively expansive sense as struggles affecting the direction of these processes of social self-production, rather than narrowly distributive struggles over who gets what. In contrast to the liberal conception of freedom as individual choice, a dialectical view suggests that freedom involves a process of social self-determination. |
| logic of appropriateness | a term associated with March and Olsen (1989), used to describe the logic-informing actions that are taken in reference to rules and norms that define what constitutes legitimate behaviour. This term is contrasted to the 'logic of consequences'. |
| logic of communication | the validation of normative claims to truth through effective communication and / or dialogue, in which the voluntary exchange of words, ideas, and arguments leads to consensus. |
| logic of consequences | a term used to describe the logic through which rational actors come to make decisions. When acting through the logic of consequences, actors conduct themselves on the basis of a rational calculation of which action produces an outcome that maximises their interests. |
| order | a concept which both realists and English school theorists consider pivotal. For realists, order is generally considered to consist in the absence of war. While they accept that order can be achieved, for example, through balance of power or deterrence politics, given the anarchical nature of the international system, order in the eyes of realists is always precarious. For the English school, given the specific context of international anarchy, the achievement of order is the only purpose that culturally diverse, sovereign 'units' can agree upon. The institutions of international society - diplomacy, the balance of power, peace conferences, great power management, international law, were primarily designed to achieve the goal of order upon which the liberty of units depends. |
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