Realism Flashcards
What is the “Great Debate” and when did it take place?
It took place in the 1940s between inter-war idealists and a new generation of realist writers who all emphasized the ubiquity of power and the competitive nature of politics among nations. The standard account is that the realists emerged victorious.
What is the reason of state?
it is the fundamental principle of international conduct, the state’s First Law of Motion: it tells the satesman what he must do to preserve the health and strength of the State.’
What is the dual moral standard?
One moral standard for individual citizens living inside the state and a different standard of the state in its external relations with other states.
is realism completely immoral?
The argue that the state itself represent a moral force, for it is the existence of the state that creates the possibility for an ethical political community to exist domestically.
What does Hobbes mean with state-of-nature?
Men have a restless desire for power that ceases only in death. Hobbes’s postulate that men are by nature equal in the state of nature, meaning that the weakest has the capacity to kill the strongest, intensifies the competition to accumulate more power. Until a sate emerges, there is only a sate of war between all men.
What are the three core elements we identify with realism?
Statism, survival, and self-help.
What is statism?
The idea of the state as the legitimate representative of the collective will of the people. The legitimacy of the state is what enables it to exercise authority within its domestic borders. This means that sovereign state is inextricably bound up with the use of force.
What does anarchy mean?
Anarchy means that international politics takes place in an arena that has no overarching central authority above individual sovereign states. The state of anarchy motivates realists to conclude that state leaders’ first priority is to ensure the survival of their state.
Describe twentieth-century classical realism’s morgenthau’s main idea?
Morgenthau argued that human beings were hard-wired to pursue power over others and were continually looking for opportunities to increase their own power. The goal of any state was to pursue power.
Explain Morgenthau’s three basic patterns of the struggle for power among states.
1) to keep power (status quo), 2) to increase power (imperialism), and to 3) demonstrate power (prestige). They are all rooted in humankind’s lust for power.
What is meant by a balance of power?
A balance of power is essential to preserving the liberty of states. If a state’s survival is threatened by a hegemonic state or coalition of stronger states, it should join forces with other state and they should establish a formal alliance to seek to preserver their own independence by checking the power of the opposing side. Equilibrium of power.
Warsaw Pact, NATO
What was Waltz’s and neorealism’s main idea?
Waltz and neorealists argued that security competition, inter-state conflict, and the difficulties of achieving international cooperation resulted from the structure of the international system: namely, the lack of an overarching authority above sovereign states.
system not human nature.
What three elements define the international system in the mind of a neorealist?
1)organizing principles, 2) differentiation of units, and 3) distribution of capabilities.
1) Anarchy (internationally) and hierarchy (domestically)
2) Units are functionally similar.
3) Different capabilities among units (fundamental importance in understanding outcome of international politics)
Are states power maximizers according to neorealists?
and what does offensive realism argue?
Power is a means to an end, the end being security. States are security maximizers. However, offensive realism argues that states are power maximizers in that they ‘understand that the best way to ensure their survival is to be the most powerful state in the system’
What are neoclassical realists about?
They are skeptical of the notion that the distribution of power can sufficiently explain the behaviour of states, they add a number of individual- and domestic-level factors into their explanation of world politics.
Factors such as the perceptions of state leaders, state-society relationships, and state identity are important.
There is no single objective account of the distribution of power; rather, what matters is how state leaders derive an understanding of the distribution of power.
