Political Realism

2261 Words5 Pages

People’s ideas and assumptions about world politics shape and construct the theories that help explain world conflicts and events. These assumptions can be classified into various known theoretical perspectives; the most dominant is political realism. Political realism is the most common theoretical approach when it is in means of foreign policy and international issues. It is known as “realpolitik” and emphasis that the most important actor in global politics is the state, which pursues self-interests, security, and growing power (Ray and Kaarbo 3). Realists generally suggest that interstate cooperation is severely limited by each state’s need to guarantee its own security in a global condition of anarchy. Political realist view international politics as a struggle for power dominated by organized violence, “All history shows that nations active in international politics are continuously preparing for, actively involved in, or recovering from organized violence in the form of war” (Kegley 94). The downside of the political realist perspective is that their emphasis on power and self-interest is their skepticism regarding the relevance of ethical norms to relations among states. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...ous situations, possibly because these studies have attributed motive and action to the states rather than to the decision-makers within them. Thus, foreign relations and policies can truly be strengthened when people can view and truly appreciate international issue in many different perspectives, such as realist, idealist, liberalist, constructivism, feminist, world economic system analysis, etc. When people are able to see issues and solutions to problems in many different ways world peace might be reachable. Works Cited Crane, George T., and Abla Amawi. The Theoretical Evolution of International Political Economy: a Reader. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. Kegley, Charles W., and Eugene R. Wittkopf. World Politics Trend and Transformation. New York: St. Martin's, 1981. Print. Ray, James L. Global Politics. Ninth ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Print.

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