Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

IR Theory Essay 1 (Constructivism (Theory breakdown (Rather than viewing…

- - - - constructivists disagree with the realist position that anarchy inherently leads to competition and war.As one of the foremost scholars on constructivism, Alexander Wendt (1992), in his seminal article Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics, says, “self-help and power politics do not follow either logically or causally from anarchy and that if today we find ourselves in a self-help world, this is due to process, not structure. There is no “logic” of anarchy apart from the practices that create and instantiate one structure of identities and interests rather than another; structure has no existence or causal powers apart from process.” Self-help and power politics are institutions, not essential features of anarchy (394).
- - - - "states are cast as unitary actors wanting at least to survive" (Waltz)
    - - How a statesman interprets the other’s past behavior and how he projects it into the future is influenced by his understanding of the security dilemma and his ability to place himself in the other’s shoes. The dilemma will operate much more strongly if statesmen do not understand it, and do not see that their arms—sought only to secure the status quo—may alarm others and that others may arm, not because they are contemplating aggression, but because they fear attack from the first state. These two failures of empathy are linked. (Jervis)
      - Furthermore - realists discuss the effects of power balance as a cause for war. When states disagree and have relatively similar power, they do not have a shared perception of which state is the most powerful, this leads to conflict. "War itself provides the most reliable and most objective test of which nation or alliance is the most powerful" (Blainey)
    - - Without such authority, the only validity within these agreements are given by the individual states willingness to abide by the agreement. In essence, the states will always act in their own national interest regardless of international agreements, which makes cooperation very difficult to achieve due to distrust
      - The international system lacks a sovereign authority to make and enforce binding international agreements
  - - - State A and B are likely in conflict over a struggle for power and security. Locked in the security dilemma, in which each state is expanding its power for its own security, while sending out signals of aggressive intent.
- - - - Kant perpetual peace - if two states do not share the aspects of a perpetual peace, then peace will not exist between the two states
      - Doyle - Furthermore, citizens appreciate that the benefi ts of trade can be enjoyed only under conditions of peace. Thus the very existence of liberal states, such as the U.S., Japan, and our European allies, makes for peace.