What is distinct about the study of international relations from the study of politics?

Rare Events

Many aspects of international relations represent common behaviors, especially many acts of cooperation. Trade volumes between countries may vary greatly over time, but the individual commercial transactions are numerous. Other events, such as conflict behavior, are quite rare events. Militarized disputes, for example, arise infrequently. In most years, only approximately 3% of dyads in the international system will experience any such disputes and only one-tenth of those are at war. Popular statistical procedures, such as logistic regression, can sharply underestimate the probability of rare events.

Abstract

International relations is both the practice and the study of the relations of nation-states and other entities in the international system. This chapter reviews both of these. Traditionally, international relations focused primarily on state-to-state relations, but today the field focuses as well on other actors such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations (MNCs), and even individuals. Thus today these interactions and their study are often termed global politics or world politics. While international relations as a field of study originated largely within political science and remains centered there, it is also an interdisciplinary field, encompassing the study of economic, social, and cultural interactions as well. While international relations has tended to be dominated by those who term themselves realist theorists, liberal or idealist theories continue to abound, constructivism has become an important theory, and radical and critical theories of many varieties also exist. While international relations began as a field largely in the United States, today it is studied widely all over the world in different ways.

2 Origins of International Relations

International relations as a discipline was born after World War I in Europe. All the major European intellectuals pondered on the causes and consequences of the most disastrous war ever experienced. Most of them were historically oriented, and yet such authors as F. H. Hinsley, David Wight, and Edward H. Carr all argued that the notion of international society that had been long held by major European powers had been disrupted in the course of the twentieth century and that may be regarded as the basic cause of such a war (Hinsley 1986, Wight 1991, Carr 1939, Bull 1977). Yet the discipline of international relations was brought into its own by the Americans. Overcoming the idealism and isolationism that characterized the USA through the early part of the twentieth century, the country started producing works that became the classics of the international relations genre in the 1940s and 1950s. Realism and internationalism became the dominant modes of American thinking about international affairs by the 1940s. Such authors as Hans J. Morgenthau, George Liska, and Arnold Wolfers were representative authors (Morgenthau 1978, Liska 1977, Wolfers 1962). At the same time behavioral, i.e., systematic and empirical, examinations of international relations were produced the 1940s by, among others, Quincy Wright and Harold Lasswell and his associates (Wright 1942, Lasswell et al. 1980). Furthermore, area studies occupied an important place in the study of international relations most broadly defined. The study of international relations covered not only inter-state relations but also anything that took place outside the USA. All in all, Americans dominated the field of international relations studies by the 1950s (Hoffmann 1977). Most intellectual currents were represented by their writings, while the new mode of analyzing international relations in the framework of behavioral science and the new area of study called ‘area studies’ that was attached to the study of ‘international relations’ prospered in the USA. American dominance was reflected by the salience throughout the world of the US publications Foreign Affairs and World Politics; journals representing the policy-oriented establishment and the academic establishment respectively.

1 German Origins

International relations was converted into a field of historical sciences study during the first half of the nineteenth century; this means that, by then, international relation's were isolated as an investigation object, whose treatment originated its own scientific procedures, capable of evolving with relative autonomy. The conception of this research area was associated with the creativity of Leopold Von Ranke considered by many to be the founder of scientific historiography. Ranke was convinced that European civilization fermented in the states system and could achieve a universal dimension. He constructed a history of international relations based on a tripod: (a) the study of European great states' internal development; (b) the study of collective movements and the forces resulting from institutional, religious, or social experience; and (c) the analysis of foreign policies, involving the relations among states, and particularly the confrontations among great powers.

From German unification, in 1870–71, to the First World War, a deviation of German historiography from international relations took place, reducing Ranke's original European and universal scope of study, and establishing the primacy of foreign policy, which served to exhibit the ascension of Prussia during the Wilhelminic Era. This type of ‘germanocentric’ approach acquired national equivalents in other European countries, which caused history of international relations to be reduced into a diplomatic history. This new form of history of international relations preserved, within Europe and outside it, the scientific character of exploring archival documents; however, it turned apologetic by receding its arguments to those of chancelleries belonging to the countries to which historians were connected; it became, then, poor in cognitive terms, since it merely treated the apparent movement of states' behavior, and neglected the other relevant aspects of Rankean analysis.

During the same period, the study of international relations had to face imperialism, a phenomenon related to the domination, either formal or informal, direct or indirect, of European States, as well as of the United States and Japan, over other territories, especially the southern area of the planet. This fact coincided with worldwide spread of the great powers' foreign policies. Responses to the challenge of explaining imperialism came, on one side, from imperialism theories—which were neither theory nor history of international relations—and, on the other side, from diplomatic history, this one ambitiously searching scientific explanations which were, nevertheless, attached to the interests of national states. When the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 blamed the German Empire for the onset of the First World War, the fact that many historians from various countries debated the causes of the conflict and the responsibility of different states reinforced the introspective character of diplomatic history. It thus distanced itself more and more from Ranke's conceptual definition and universalist proposals.

The Nature of Conflict

IR theorists asked about the character of warfare long before those interested in domestic conflict began to ask related questions. State participation in wars, and the prominence of security functions among state responsibilities, made it logical for both IR analysts and policy makers to ask what war might look like and what military strategies would be likely to succeed. In the domestic realm, research has often treated collective violence as the abandonment of rational activity, and for years, “all” contentious politics was regarded as essentially violent. Recently, however, the search to define and explain collective repertoires in terms of both cultural patterns and social-structural realities has captured the attention of social movements theorists no less than that of IR scholars.

The 2 decades of the new millennium proved that there is much of new distinct and complicated trends, features, and patterns of conflict that needs to be analyzed and explained. “… [T]he ability to incorporate heterogeneity, interaction, and dynamism … offers distinct advantages for understanding conflict and possibilities for intervention … [and] promises to contribute to the task of responding anew to conflict resolution beyond what is currently possible in the mainstream social science” (Briggs, 2008, p. 148).

Liberalism and the Question of International War

Liberal IR theory took shape as a critique of realism’s foundation claims that states were unified rational actors striving to amass power. Some argued that states share vast and relatively stable areas of common interest, that world politics consists largely in expanding connections between societies and governments, and that both encourage peaceful relations. Koehane and Nye maintained that close ties between some states create areas of complex interdependence within which security no longer dominates international relations and states cannot use force against one another. Even within the realist tradition some writers set out to redefine national interest to incorporate an understanding for the mutual concerns that enable cooperation: trade, development, environmental conservation, and healthcare. Game theorists like Kenneth Oye argued that iterated relations moved states to value those agreements themselves and to support norms and regimes that reduced uncertainty and lowered the transaction costs of international relations.

That the structure of international relations could promote cooperative and peaceful relations also moved IR theorists increasingly to regard warfare in terms of breakdowns and crises. Decision-making theorists used psychological arguments to challenge realism’s rationality assumption. Richard Ned Lebow and Ole Holsti both argued that in times of international crisis, state leaders likely make suboptimal decisions designed more to alleviate stress than to promote national interests. Others identified domestic organizational or bureaucratic breakdowns as destabilizing influences that drove states toward war. Increasingly, those who take political structures seriously have answered Jervis’ question, “Do perceptions matter?” in the affirmative.

International Relations/Politics and Human Rights

International relations/politics has taken on the study of human rights as one of its core topics of research. Perhaps the classic theme in this field is to ask the question whether the norms of international human rights have had any effect on domestic governments (e.g., Risse et al., 1999). The answer, by and large, is often positive although usually not determinative or conclusive. An additional theme is to examine the working of the human rights movement. Here, one work that has achieved great prominence and influence is Keck and Sikkink (1998). Keck and Sikkink introduce network analysis to the study of human rights activists and work with the concept of transnational activist networks. In their view, human rights networks are “vehicles for communicative and political exchange, with the potential for mutual transformation of participants” (1998: p. 214).

International relations analyzes the strategic interaction among countries within the framework of an international system. Competing approaches stress the influence of system influences over the states or units, or, alternatively, features internal to each state in its behavior. System approaches include: realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism. They disagree on the consequences of anarchy (the absence of a supranational authority): insecurity leading to conflict for realists, cooperation if international institutions exist for, neoliberal institutionalism, and normative influences for constructivists. Unit-centered theories include culture and cognition, political institutions, and interest groups theories. Cooperation and conflict between states turn on the interaction of the domestic politics of each, refracted through culture, institutions, and interest group preferences. Culture and cognition can be sources of conflict and distorted evaluations. Some theorists of institutions believe democratic states are less likely to fight each other, while others stress interest group and cultural factors in shaping the likelihood of conflict. Some current debates include the analysis of international civil society (NGOs, transnational forces), the role of law and legalized dispute resolution mechanisms such as the WTO, globalization in economy and culture, and the formation of new entities (the European Union) and the decomposition of national units peaceably (the old USSR) and with violence (civil wars).

Power

International Relations and study of international politics in general take power as a static nonchanging element of the international system. Over the course of the latter half of the 20th century the debate between two dominant schools of thought, idealism, and realism defined what many may call power dilemma (Avruch, 2012). How can social change be possible in the face of power? Should power structures be outright rejected and denounced, or should conflict resolution practitioners and nonviolent activists learn to work within the system? It is helpful to breakdown the components of power to its pieces.

Power presumes consent; however, power projection takes different forms such as intentionality, decision-making capacity in structures and individuals, discipline, discourse, contestation in violent and nonviolent forms. Max Weber (1947) famously defines power as an extension of three forms of authority—Traditional, Charismatic, and Legal—under which politics build its legitimacy via the construction of normative, moral, and bureaucratic. Heavily inspired by Weber, Talcott Parsons (1963) describes power as political exchange that is able to leverage negative situational sanctions including violence, coercion, and force. Ralph Dahrendorf (1959) on the other hand was more concerned about the function of this political exchange as the legitimizer of the elite domination over the masses. Elite groups utilize political systems to ensure the ongoing oppression of the working classes while projecting false consciousness such as the American Dream for the average citizen.

Nonviolence is one of the most effective ways of resistance against oppressive systems of power, as Chenoweth and Stefan (2011; cf. Stephan and Chenoweth, 2008) found in their empirical study of 323 maximalist campaigns for change over 105 years. Power could be defined in various different forms. According to Robert Dahl (1989) who in his seminal book Democracy and Its Critics argues that democratic systems push accountable forms of public policy that distribute political power pluralistically across the society. Another way of conceptualizing political power is through the mobilization of bias. Schattschneider (1960) in his critique of the mid-20th-century American democracy describes seemingly democratic system as a façade to disguise the political institutions drive to keep certain issues off from the public discussion as taboos via mobilization of bias, especially in the case of left politics. Such a pervasive of public silencing is best described as non-decision-making by Bachrach and Baratz (1963). Non-decision-making is an institutionalized process of control over the public primarily perpetrated by the elite groups that control media cartels and communication systems.

Another way of understanding power is through influence on categorization of articulable and nonarticulable. Steven Lukes defined three faces of power in his 1974 book Radical Power listing influence as the third face of power along with the prior two faces of plurality and non-decision-making. Lukes (1974) discusses power as the extent to which Party A influences Party B's decision-making process. Whatever is left of Party B's autonomous domain would signify the influence and thus the power of Party A. Such control is only made possible via building a form of cultural and political control reminiscent of Antonio Gramsci's discussion on hegemony in the 1920s fascist Italy in his Prison Notebooks (1992). Marxist thinker describes how political institutions manufacture a hegemonic culture perpetrating mass dissemination of false consciousness on the working class. Nonviolence and its projection as a tool then becomes a vehicle to break the walls of false consciousness and raise awareness, bring clarity to the present oppressive social conditions, and challenge the hegemony.

Nonviolence resistance facilitates the transition from Power Over to Power To (Boulding, 1989). Kenneth Boulding defines three forms of power: threat power, economic power, and integrative power. Role of the third party, the nonviolent activist is to break the chains of control by the oppressor over the oppressed and transfer the power to the oppressed. In many ways nonviolence serves to empower the weaker party by making the truth visible not only against power but also to the oppressed. Third-party intervention may also take various nonviolent forms, most effective of which is narrative analysis and subsequent narrative mediation, where the third party engages in facilitating fact and reality checking for the oppressed about available alternatives hidden by the system (Cobb, 1993). Such nonviolent form of consciousness raising is about content conscientization. Brazilian pedagogue Paolo Freire's masterpiece Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) is about conscientization, understanding power as part of the social relationships, undoing the cultural violence perpetrated on poor children blinding them to possibilities in life. In his lifelong work with oppressed children Freire talks about the centrality of radical love to reveal and educate on radical truth that would allow for a nonviolent radical transformation of the society.

Theory Underlying Peacemaking

Notions of peacemaking arise from the application of modern social science theory to debates over the application of moral frameworks to warfare.

Contemporary international relations theories are typically divided into ‘liberal’ and ‘realist’ approaches. Realist and idealist theories are both useful in explaining international relations. Peacemaking seeks to adapt the insights of liberal theory so that it can function within the realist tradition. Rational choice theory is the underlying basis of realist theories. Such approaches see war as an inevitable tool used by states in order to strengthen their interests. Realists therefore tend to dismiss Just War theories as mere window dressing. Yet the idea that wars are commenced and ended solely for rational reasons often seems to be contradicted by the practices of ‘warmongers.’ Some protagonists clearly seek to prolong the struggle in order to inflict maximum damage on their opponents. Longstanding bitterness frequently contributes to the causes and conduct of warfare (Ripson, 2007).

The advocates of the realist analysis sought to curtail the application of morality to the affairs of nations. They analyzed the goals and strategies of armies and states in nonmoral language and focused primarily on the ways in which states furthered their own interests and their success. Yet they were ill- equipped to respond to the deep sense of moral outrage in populations who had lost territory and status through defeat.

The liberal theory of international relations seeks to apply moral language to international warfare, so that wars can be evaluated. Thus it represents a current form of a traditional ethical system, which debated the application of morality to warfare. The Just War theory in its various manifestations sought to constrain and limit warfare.

The theory of peacemaking draws to some extent on jus in bello theories that warfare should be just in its conduct and also the jus ad bellum that a war should have just causes and likelihood of success. Recent suggestions (notably by Michael Walzer) that war should also be just in the outcome (jus post bellum) would also fit with these theories. The criteria of Just War – especially the combination of jus ad bellum and jus in bello – place so many moral demands on the proponent of war that few wars seem likely to pass the test. Just War theory is thus an incentive to peacemaking. If war is a last and dubious resort, alternatives to war are both moral and practical necessities.

However, since Just War theory is a supposed guide as to when war is appropriate, it is relatively silent on the task of peacemaking. The pacifist traditions have been more aware of the value of working for peace, although only when they have been prepared to risk their traditional absolute opposition to moral compromise.

Peacemaking thus offers a discourse and more important a practice that speaks relevantly to both realists and liberal theorists. Peacemaking moreover brings the two moral responses to war – Just War theory and pacifism – into practical cooperation.