1. Liberal Theories CHAPTER THREE International Relations 9/e
Goldstein and Pevehouse
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2. The Waning of War
In recent years, a strong trend toward fewer wars has become evident.
For the world as a whole, the current period is one of the least warlike ever, with fewer and smaller wars than in the past.
World wars killed tens of millions and left whole continents in ruin.
Cold War – proxy wars killed millions and the world feared a nuclear war that could have wiped out our species.
Iraq and Sudan and wars like these kill hundreds of thousands.
We fear terrorist attacks, but we do not fear that life on the planet will be destroyed.
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3. The Waning of War
Events in the post-Cold War era continue this long-term trend toward smaller wars.
Today’s most serious conflicts consist mainly of skirmishing rather than all-out battles.
In 2008, war abated in Iraq and worsened in Afghanistan – serious fighting continued in Sudan and Sri Lanka.
Democratic Congo – small scale but brutal fighting among factions since war ended in 1999.
Today there are 13 wars in progress; down from 20 ten years ago.
Consistent trend downward.
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4. Figure 3.1
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5. Liberal Theories
Realism offers mostly dominance solutions to the collective goods problems of IR.
Alternative theoretical approaches that draw mostly on the reciprocity or identity principles are called liberal theories.
These approaches are generally more optimistic than realism about the prospects for peace.
Evolution: build up of international organizations and mutual cooperation (reciprocity) and changes in norms and public opinion (identity)
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6. Figure 3.2
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7. Kant and Peace What explains this positive trend toward peace?
Kant gave 3 answers over 200 years ago:
States could develop the organizations and rules to facilitate cooperation, specifically by forming a world federation resembling today’s United Nations (reciprocity).
Peace depends on the internal character of governments-- specifically that republics, with a legislative branch that can hold the monarch in check, will be more peaceful than autocrats (identity principle).
Trade promotes peace, relies on the presumption that trade increases wealth, cooperation, and global well-being -- all making conflict less likely in the long term because governments will not want to disrupt any process that adds to the wealth of their state.
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8. Liberal Institutionalism
Reciprocity
Kant argued that states could join a worldwide federation and respect its principles.
Remain autonomous
But forego certain short-term individual gains
Kant: International cooperation more rational option than going to war.
To realists, war is a rational option; to liberal theorists, war is an irrational deviation that results from defective reasoning and that harms the interests of warring states.
Neoliberal approach differs from earlier liberal approaches in that it concedes to realism several important assumptions:
States are unitary actors rationally pursuing their self-interests, but they say states cooperate because it is in their self-interest.
Mutual gains better than cheating or taking advantage of each other.
Claim that neorealists’ pessimism is unjustified. States cooperate MOST of the time.
Positive reciprocity
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9. Liberal Institutionalism
Prisoner’s Dilemma – illustrates the neoliberal argument that cooperation is possible.
Both actors lose when they each defect.
Dilemma resolved if they play over and over again – an accurate model of IR
Strategy of strict reciprocity after an initial cooperative move can bring about mutual cooperation in a repeated PD game.
Reciprocity and runaway hostility
Israeli relations with Palestinian militants
Many norms mediate states’ interactions
Diplomatic practices
Participation in international organizations
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10. Figure 3.3
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11. International Regimes
Set of rules, norms, and procedures around which the expectations of actors converge in a certain issue area.
Participants have similar ideas about what rules will govern their mutual participation.
Regimes can help solve collective goods problems by increasing transparency.
Conception of regime
Combines elements of realism and liberalism
Come into existence to overcome collective goods dilemmas by coordinating the behaviors of individual states.
States continue to seek their own interests, but create frameworks to coordinate their actions with those of other states if and when this is necessary to realize self-interest
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12. International Regimes
Regimes do not substitute for basic calculations of costs and benefits by states
Open up new possibilities; more favorable benefit-cost ratios.
Enforcement and survival of regimes
Rely on state power; role of hegemons; but may survive when hegemons that created them decline
Role of permanent institutions such as the UN, NATO, and the IMF
Culmination of liberal institutionalism to date is the European Union (EU)
Stable peace with strong international institutions to bind them
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13. Collective Security Concept grows out of liberal institutionalism.
Refers to the formation of a broad alliance of most major actors in an international system for the purpose of jointly opposing aggression by any actor.
Kant
League of Nations
Organization of America States, Arab League, and the African Union
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14. Collective Security
Success of collective security depends on two points:
Members must keep their alliance commitments to the group.
Enough members must agree on what constitutes aggression.
Ex: – Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait
All the great powers bore the cost of confronting Iraq
Iraq: World’s collective security system is “creaky” and not always effective, but bypassing it to take military action also holds dangers.
Concept of collective security has broadened in recent years.
Failed states – weak control over territory – implications for their neighbors and the international system
Domestic politics as international anarchy – need for intervention
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15. The Democratic Peace
IR scholars have linked democracy with a kind of foreign policy fundamentally different from that of authoritarianism.
Theory: Democracies are more peaceful than authoritarian regimes.
Not true: Democracies fight as many wars as do authoritarian states.
Democratic Peace:
What is true about democracies is that although they fight wars against authoritarian states, democracies almost never fight each other.
Trend is toward democratization in most of the world’s regions.
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16. Domestic Politics
Many liberal theoretical approaches see international outcomes as the result of processes within states rather than simply as those among states.
The actions of a state in the international arena result from individual human choices aggregated through the state’s internal structures.
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17. Bureaucracies
Different states maintain different foreign policy bureaucracies, but share some common elements:
Diplomats
Virtually all states maintain a diplomatic corps, or foreign service, of diplomats in embassies in foreign capitals
Political appointees
Career diplomats
Tension common between state leaders and foreign policy bureaucrats
Interagency tensions
Bureaucratic rivalry as an influence on foreign policy challenges the notion of states as unitary actors in the international system.
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18. Interest Groups
Coalitions of people who share a common interest in the outcome of some political issue and who organize themselves to try to influence the outcome
Lobbying
The process of talking with legislators or officials to influence their decisions on some set of issues.
Three important elements:
Ability to gain a hearing with busy officials
Ability to present cogent arguments for one’s case
Ability to trade favors in return for positive action on an issue
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19. The Military Industrial Complex
Huge interlocking network of governmental agencies, industrial corporations, and research institutes, working together to supply a nation’s military forces
Response to the growing importance of technology
Encompasses a variety of constituencies, each of which has an interest in military spending
Corporations, military officers, universities, and scientific institutes that receive military research contracts
Revolving door
Campaign contributions from the military industry
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20. Public Opinion
Range of views on foreign policy issues held by the citizens of a state
Has a greater influence on foreign policy in democracies than in authoritarian governments
Legitimacy
Propaganda
Journalists as gatekeepers
Importance of the government as a source of information
Popularity of leader and influence on support of war
Referendum
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21. Public Opinion
In democracies, public opinion generally has less effect on foreign policy than on domestic policy.
Attentive public
Foreign policy elite
Rally ’round the flag syndrome
Diversionary foreign policy
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23. Legislatures
Conduit through which interest groups and public opinion can wield influence
Presidential systems; separate elections
Legislatures play a direct role in making foreign policy
Different rules apply, however, to the use of military force
Rally ’round the flag
May challenge the president if they have power of the “purse”
Parliamentary systems; political parties are dominant
Often parliamentary executives do not need to submit treaties or policies for formal approval by the legislature.
Call elections; new executive
Legislatures play a key role in designing and implementing foreign policy.
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24. Making Foreign Policy
Foreign policies are the strategies governments use to guide their actions in the international arena.
Spell out the objectives state leaders have decided to pursue in a given relationship or situation
Foreign policy process: How policies are arrived at and implemented
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25. Making Foreign Policy Comparative foreign policy
Study of foreign policy in various states in order to discover whether similar types of societies or governments consistently have similar types of foreign policies
Focus on three characteristics: size, wealth, and extent of democratic participation in government
Political culture and history
Foreign policy outcomes result from multiple forces at various levels of analysis.
Also influenced by a state’s type of government
But the attempt to explain foreign policy in a general and theoretical way has met with limited success.
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26. Models of Decision Making
Rational model
Decision makers set goals, evaluate their relative importance, calculate the costs and benefits of each possible course of action, and then choose the one with the highest benefits and lowest costs.
Role of uncertainty
Accepting of risk versus averse to risk
Goals of different individuals may diverge, as may the goals of different state agencies
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28. Models of Decision Making
Organizational process model
Foreign policy makers generally skip the labor-intensive process of identifying goals and alternative actions, relying instead for most decisions on standardized responses or standard operating procedures (sop).
Government bargaining (bureaucratic) model
Foreign policy decisions result from the bargaining process among various government agencies with somewhat divergent interests in the outcome.
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29. Individual Decision Makers
Study of individual decision making revolves around the question of rationality.
To what extent are national leaders (or citizens) able to make rational decisions in the national interest and thus conform to the realist view of IR?
Difficulties of oversimplification
Individual decision makers have differing values and beliefs and have unique personalities
idiosyncrasies
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31. Individual Decision Makers
Beyond individual idiosyncrasies, individual decision making diverges from the rational model in at least three systematic ways:
3. Cognitive biases are systematic distortions of rational calculations based not on emotional feelings but simply on the limitations of the human brain in making choices.
Cognitive dissonance
Justification of effort
Wishful thinking
Mirror image
Projection
Historical analogies
1. Decision makers suffer from misperceptions and selective perceptions when they compile information on the likely consequences of their choices.
2. The rationality of individual cost-benefit calculations is undermined by emotions that decision makers feel while thinking about the consequences of their actions (affective bias).
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32. Individual Decision Makers
Two specific modifications of the rational model of decision making have been proposed to accommodate psychological realities.
Bounded rationality
Takes into account the costs of seeking and processing information
Optimizing
Satisficing
Prospect theory
Decision makes go through two phases: editing phase and the evaluation phase
Holds that evaluations take place by comparison with a reference point, which is often the status quo but might be some past or expected situation
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33. Group Psychology
Group dynamics can be a promoter of state interests (balance blind spots and biases of the individual) but they can also introduce new sources of irrationality into the decision-making process.
Groupthink
Refers to the tendency for groups to reach decisions without accurately assessing their consequences, because individual members tend to go along with ideas they think the others support
Groups tend to be overly optimistic about the chances of success and are thus more willing to take risks.
Iran-Contra scandal
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35. Crisis Management
Crises are foreign policy situations in which outcomes are very important and time frames are compressed.
Harder to understand and predict than normal foreign policy making.
Why?
Tremendous time constraints
Groupthink
Severe psychological stress
Important to have leaders with psychological stability
Rabin – one day nervous breakdown
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36. Crisis Management
Whether in crisis mode or normal routines, individual decision makers do not operate alone.
Decisions shaped by the government and society in which they work.
Foreign policy constrained and shaped by sub-state actors
Foreign policy: complex outcome of a complex process
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