INTRODUCTION Neoliberalism is one of the most influential lines of thinking of International Relations. This paper aims to provide a brief historical explanation, followed by the fundamental theories of complex interdependence and hegemonic stability. The case study of General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade represents an example of neoliberalist thoughts applied to the concrete international politics. My personal point of view fills just a little part of this paper (the conclusion), since I prefer to emphasize and grant relevance to the opinion of the main neoliberalist scholars. The origins of neoliberalism and the influence of neorealism In the late 1960s, the pluralist scholars were the first ones (in International Relations literature) …show more content…
Interdependence, most simply defined, means mutual dependence. Interdependence in world politics refers to situations characterized by reciprocal effects among countries or among actors in different countries” (Keohane, Nye, 1977, p.8). Thus, with the word interdependence neoliberals meant mutual dependence between actions and interests. Firstly, interdependence increased in a variety of global issue areas thanks to technological and industrial innovations. Then, it became an unstoppable flow. Keohane and Nye, in their masterpiece “Power and Interdependence” (1977) stated the three fundamental key points of “complex interdependence” …show more content…
Since there were not anymore just interstates relations, but also relations between states and society. Which means that these channels became transgovernmental and transnational. - The absence of hierarchy among issues: the usual strong distinction between high politics (military security) and low politics became obsolete. Moreover, interdependence led to a convergence between internal and foreign politics. - Consequently, minor importance was accorded to military power, while economic interdependence and international institutions gained relevance. A sentence of the book summarizes the thought to the best: “In battle, the sword is mightier than the pen, but over the long run, pens guide swords” (Keohane and Nye, 1977,
Williams, Charles F. "War Powers: A New Chapter in a Continuing Debate." Social Education. April 2003: 128-133. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 07 May. 2014.
“Institutions are essential; they facilitate cooperation by building on common interests, hence maximizing the gains for all parties. Institutions provide a guaranteed framework of interactions; they suggest that there will be an expectation of future encounters. They facilitate cooperation by building on common interest, thus maximizing the gain for all parties.” (Mingst, 2011) This theory supports the idea that if one cooperates with the other they both will gain, but once the established trust is lost between the cooperating countries, one should do whatever is in their own economic i...
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Shiraev, Eric B., and Vladislav M. Zubok. International Relations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Silver, Larry.
Mearsheimer J. J. (2010). Structural Realism. International Relations Thoeries, Discipline and Diversity (Second Edition), p.77-94
The purpose of this essay is to inform on the similarities and differences between systemic and domestic causes of war. According to World Politics by Jeffry Frieden, David Lake, and Kenneth Schultz, systemic causes deal with states that are unitary actors and their interactions with one another. It can deal with a state’s position within international organizations and also their relationships with other states. In contract, domestic causes of war pertain specifically to what goes on internally and factors within a state that may lead to war. Wars that occur between two or more states due to systemic and domestic causes are referred to as interstate wars.
Gilpin, Robert. Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Print.
Classical realism originates from the ancient times of the Greek empires. This theory in international relations has dominated the sphere and the conception of world politics for centuries. Classical realists such as Morgenthau and Thucydides outline different factors in explaining politics at all levels and emphasize that politics is described throughout the theory of classical realism. Like every theory in international relations, classical realism has strengths and weaknesses that define its impact in the international level. In our current age of diplomacy, classical realism is not a common theory in current international politics. Although it is not as relevant as it has been in the past, there is potential for classical
However, the structure and process of international relations, since the end of World War II, has been fundamentally impacted through an immense growth of a variety of factors at multiple levels, which leads to the liberalist theoretical perspective of global complex interdependency. The complex interdependency is constructed from the liberalist theoretical perspective emphasizing interdependence between states and substate actors as the key characteristics of the international system (Ray and Kaarbo 7), which means that cooperation can be made more te...
Smith, T. General Liberalism and Social Change in a Post-WWII America, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00287217#close, November 30th 1999
Liberalism has contributed to the understanding of International Relations as an academic discipline and through organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, the League of Arab States, and others in what many consider to be a very influential manner.
Another important factor promoted globalization is called the ‘World Politics’. Foreign policymakers are facing a challenge of a fundamental change in nowadays ...
Realist perspective explains globalization in terms of the relative distribution of power (Nau 2007, 278). In their opinion, trade and economic activities thrives “only under favorable security conditions,” and those conditions rely on the relative distribution of power (Nau 2007, 279). They believe that alliances and hegemony are the two most affirmative security conditions. “’Free trade is more likely within than across political-military alliances; and …alliances have had a much stronger effect on trade in a bipolar than in to a multipolar world.’” (Nau 2007, 279) In other words, the fewer dominating states with power there are in the system, the stronger is the alliance and its effect on trade. In a multipolar world, countries cannot trust each other in trade because alliances are rarely permanent and therefore, countries might use the gains from trade to increase its military power and threaten to cause damage to the other country. Thus, realists argue that,
The study of international relations takes a wide range of theoretical approaches. Some emerge from within the discipline itself others have been imported, in whole or in part, from disciplines such as economics or sociology. Indeed, few social scientific theories have not been applied to the study of relations amongst nations. Many theories of international relations are internally and externally contested, and few scholars believe only in one or another. In spite of this diversity, several major schools of thought are discernable, differentiated principally by the variables they emphasize on military power, material interests, or ideological beliefs. International Relations thinking have evolved in stages that are marked by specific debates between groups of scholars. The first major debate is between utopian liberalism and realism, the second debate is on method, between traditional approaches and behavioralism. The third debate is between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism, and an emerging fourth debate is between established traditions and post-positivist alternatives (Jackson, 2007).
The dependency theory is a very different approach than the others. It offers great insight into a concept that is often overlooked, however, this theory risks being too narrow. It does not do a great deal to account for other types of international relationships. Power is at the center of this theory as well, and in this situation, it is beneficial to one
Baylis, Smith and Patricia Owens. 2014. The globalization of World Politics: An introduction to international relations. London. Oxford University Press.