What is it? Cooperate to mitigate conflict in anarchic world. Three sub-theories:

1. Economic interdependence to discourage states from going into war which threatens prosperity. Costs of disrupting ties effectively preclude use of force. Bringing China and Russia into the relentless embrace of world capitalism is the best way to promote peace and prosperity particularly if this process creates a strong middle class in these states and reinforces pressures to democratise.
2. Spread of democracy as key to world peace because democratic states were deemed more peaceful than authoritarian ones.
3. International institutions like IMF could resolve conflicts between states and encourage states to forgo immediate gains for greater benefits of lasting cooperation. Foster trust and reciprocity.

What is it? Emphasises enduring propensity for conflict between states for survival and security. International affairs as a struggle for power among self-interested states who want to dominate because they had to preserve themselves in an anarchic world with no world govt. Use of coercive measures, threat of war, forming alliances against other states to increase their relative power.. Dominant view in CW.

Since end of CW - realism redux: States worry about the way gains from cooperation are distributed among participating states.

Offense-defense theory: War is more likely when states can conquer each other easily (weak defense). More security when defense stronger than offense, thus states chose to cooperate and acquire means to defend itself without threatening others. States merely wanted to survive. Great powers could guarantee their security by alliances.

Orthodox Marxist theory: Capitalism is the central cause of intl conflict (struggle for profits). But, history of cooperation among advanced industrial powers showed that capitalism did not always lead to conflict, and socialism did not always promote harmony.

Neomarxist "dependency" theory: Focused on relations between advanced capitalist powers and less developed states. Ruling classes of developing countries had grown rich by exploiting the poor. Solution was to overthrow elites and install revolutionary govt committed to autonomous development. But, active participation in the world economy by less developed states was possible, and also better.

New issues: Break up of multi-ethnic states can place rival ethnic groups in anarchic setting, trigger them to use force to improve its relative position (e.g. Yugoslavia). NATO expansion would jeopardise relations with Russia.

Overlap with concept of culture:

• Culture to explain why Germany and Japan has thus far eschewed more self-reliant military policies.
• Huntington's clash of civilisations - broad cultural affinities supplanting national loyalties.

Difficult for big powers to come to a consensus (a lot of things get vetoed). And it is politicised.

Engaged in 55 peacekeepings, 18 ongoing. Successful in 2 out of 3 cases. Effective in civil war where both sides may want to stop conflict but it is difficult to resolve without a third party to come in. So UN intervene, disarm rebels but stop govt from attacking rebel groups.

• But difficult for UN to organise elections and state building in host nations.

Fukuyama rejects realist theory of history not as a progression toward enlightenment and peace but as a cycle of conflict.

Fukuyama: final modern consensus on democracy and capitalism, the globalisation of Western liberalism, and the homogenisation of all human societies, driven by technology and wealth. Liberal democracy remains the only coherent political aspiration that spans different regions and cultures, but he recognises that illiberal politics and conflict would persist for some time in the developing world, which remains "stuck in history". Rejects realist theory of intl relations.

Mearsheimer: Realist who argued that there would continue to be brutal competition for power. Countries end in conflict out of desire for peace. Without a world govt to enforce rights, it is impossible to trust one another and simply striving for security drives them to dominate.

Like Fukuyama, recognises the impact of globalisation, but saw it as generating conflict rather than consensus. And like Mearsheimer, he believed soft power is power only when it rests on the foundation of hard power, but he saw the relevant concentrations of power as transnational cultural areas (8 basic civilisations).

Problem of definition: if it is stipulated that states are categorised as "democratic" only if the national legislative and executive leaders assume power in a process based on fair, competitive elections, then none of these wars will qualify as a war between democratic states.

Factor of presence of alliance ties: CW produced common interests and formal alliance ties among democratic states.

• but research reveals that statistical controls for the presence of alliance ties between states do not eliminate the relationship between democracy and peace.
• further, it would seem that if having a CW enemy is sufficient to produce peaceful relationships among states, then having as formidable enemies (powerful democratic capitalist states) should have produced solid tranquility among the socialist and autocratic states, which is not the case.

Mansfield and Snyder: states in democratic transition are very war-prone, thus eliminating the idea that fostering democracy makes the world more peaceful. They appeal to nationalism and ethnicities to get power, e.g. Iraq.

• but democratic peace idea is that democracy must be relatively firmly entrenched before it can be expected to exert a pacifying effect.
• states in transition that do get involved in conflict are still quite autocratic.
• or democratising, but surrounded by autocratic states.

Democracy will only make intl war obsolete if the world becomes uniformly democratic. And some signs that the "third wave" of democratisation has begun to recede in recent years.

• link to previous topic on third wave!

West would remain dominant for some time, but in gradual decline. West vs the rest.

Modernisation is not the same as westernisation. Foreigner's participation in Western consumer culture does not mean that they accept Western values.

Link to political violence chapter Reinforces ISIS narrative of Western aggression.

Betts: Fukuyama's solution is Huntington's problem. To avoid escalating conflict requires rejecting universalism, respecting legitimacy of non-Western cultures and refraining from intervention in the conflicts of non-Western civilisations.

Huntington anticipated how problematic the Islam world would be. US sought to defend itself against al-Qaeda, partly because Washington backs Israel (a Western outpost in a Muslim region), and partly because Bush (going against Huntington's warning against meddling) and launched invasion of Iraq, which antagonised Muslims around the world.

Balance of Power theory: when one state gets inordinate power, most realists believe that other states will ally together to balance against the big power, rather than form an alliance with the threat.

Institutions exert no independent effect. Merely reflects interests of powerful states in the system, e.g. IMF gives more votes to the state that puts in more money.

States interact through cooperation. Communication and interdependency can overcome anarchical intl relations. Conflicts will still occur if we fail to align interests; but less common in a world because we interact more.

Norms of non-violence, respect for the law and compromise.

Institutional checks and balances. More transparency and debate to prevent mistakes.

Public pays the ultimate cost and can pressure the democratic leaders to avoid war. Politicians want to get re-elected, thus people's opinions are reflected in the govt.

Membership in organisations help democracies cooperate.

Peace between democratic states was primarily due to stability during CW.