Tag
International Relations
Entries tagged international relations.
19 entries
Constructivism in International Relations
Anarchy is what states make of it: the interests, threats, and structures of world politics are built out of shared ideas and identities, not fixed by material power alone.
10 min
ConceptDemocratic Peace Theory
The most-tested regularity in international relations: liberal democracies almost never go to war with one another, though they fight non-democracies as readily as anyone.
10 min
Primary textEssence of Decision
Why a state acted depends on which model you use to look at it: a unified rational chooser, a bundle of organizational routines, or a bargain among bureaucratic players.
10 min
TraditionFeminist International Relations
The claim that international relations theory only looks universal because it hides the women who sustain it and mistakes a masculine account of power for the whole of world politics.
12 min
TraditionLiberalism in International Relations
The claim that anarchy among states can be tamed: trade, shared republican values, and international institutions make cooperation and even peace possible where realism sees only recurring conflict.
11 min
ConceptNeoliberal Institutionalism
Self-interested states, though they answer to no world government, can still cooperate because institutions cut the costs and risks of dealing with one another.
9 min
TraditionPolitical Realism
The tradition that treats international politics as a struggle for power among states in a world with no ruler above them, where survival, not virtue, is the first law.
12 min
ConceptSecuritization
Security is not a fact about the world but a move in politics: to call something an existential threat is to claim a license for emergency action.
10 min
ConceptSoft Power
Soft power is getting others to want what you want, through the pull of your culture, values, and legitimacy, rather than through force or payment.
8 min
ConceptStructural Realism
State behavior is driven by the structure of an anarchic system and the distribution of power within it, not by human nature or the kind of regime a state has.
10 min
ConceptThe Balance of Power
States tend to align against whoever is getting too strong, because no one wants to live at the mercy of a single dominant power.
10 min
Mental modelThe Bargaining Model of War
Because war is costly, a settlement both sides prefer should almost always exist, so war is a failure of bargaining, not its natural outcome.
7 min
TraditionThe English School
States form not merely a system but a society, bound by shared institutions that produce order among them without any government above them.
12 min
ConceptThe Levels-of-Analysis Problem
The same international event can be explained at the level of the individual, the state, or the system, and choosing a level is a prior commitment that decides what will even count as a cause.
9 min
Mental modelThe Norm Life Cycle
A three-stage account of how a moral standard goes from the claim of a few activists to a rule almost no one questions: emergence, cascade, internalization.
7 min
ConceptThe Security Dilemma
Under anarchy, the steps a state takes to make itself safer can make others less safe, so they arm in reply and everyone ends up more exposed, even when no one intended harm.
8 min
ConceptThe Thucydides Trap
The idea that when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, the resulting structural stress often ends in war.
9 min
Mental modelTransnational Advocacy Networks
When a government blocks its own citizens, they route around it: appealing to allies abroad who pressure the state from outside, so the demand comes back home like a boomerang.
8 min
Mental modelTwo-Level Games
International negotiation is a game played at two tables at once: bargaining with foreign counterparts while selling any deal back home.
7 min