international relations Essay

Submitted By kellerrs
Words: 1063
Pages: 5

Oct 22
Domestic politics: hierarchal institutions and law
International politics: lack of hierarchal institutions and law
--LEVITHAN--
No logic of anarchy-Hobbes
Anarchy breeds insecurity, self-help, egoism
Anarchy is what states make of it (some adapt and excel, some perish) many possibilities and factors
Ex: College is a relative anarchy (some kids excel and some fail)
Ideas have power because people talk about them (regardless of their practicality or relative truth) Hobbes is everywhere, yet is just a theory
Practices are absorbed into institutions
Waltz-why are nation states constrained and where does the constraint come from? What are the structures holding us in place?
Behind the core of what law is (which we create to eliminate violence) is violence ex: police preserving law yet using force to make sure people follow law- Hobbes central paradox
Hobbes is trying to put an end to civil war and that we share fundamentals
Conquest v. Institution: How do we establish a legitimate government?
Hobbes says neither, but fear is the only legitimate basis for sovereignty
Postponement of promise makes contract into covenant
3 forms of social contract
Passion to be reckoned with is fear (power of spirits and power of the men they offend
Oct 24 ant- transformation of “lower levels”
How do nation states form identities?
An acquisition- military invasion
Tension between institution and acquisition (birth of racial western ideas)
Fear of violent death creates legitimacy
Man/ Leviathan: God/Man
Like man, Leviathan has a soul. The soul of his being is sovereignty. This sovereignty expresses itself through rewards and punishments.
Rewards and punishments can be laws
For one to influence your behavior, norms of rationality and values must be shared
Rewards and punishments only work/function with rational people
Hobbes wants to tell us where reason comes from; cannot have a social contract with irrational people
If words aren’t strong enough, sovereignty comes into play
Passion overrides our reason
What makes us rational because we fear the right object?
Example: At what point does passion exceed reason? If I want to steal something, when does reason become defeated?
Punish excessively: nature of sovereign power
Shock and awe instill fear
Always be aware of limitations (prudence) –Hobbes
Religion vs. Superstition: a human’s need to search for causes
Sovereign power vs. ignorance- Morgenthau

Oct 29
God/Man/Madmen
Sovereignty is a quality of the political
Out of anarchy can come society-Bull realist (Westphalia Treaty)
Processes can either lead to peace or conflict-dependent upon the structures that surround the processes
Realism is reductive-reducing their interests to a sole thing
Social constructivist-changes realism from a meta-theory to using it to explain limited types of interaction
The way each nation perceives itself changes when it interacts with different nations, characteristics and interests change, therefore you cannot define a nation’s interest abstractly (defense with Iran, economic with China)
Who we identify ourselves as is a result of numerous interactions with the people who surround us, change over time, ego is dynamic
When you enter in an anarchic system, you already have baggage and it depends on what you bring to the table
Balance of power is subject to these identity changes (balance of threat)
Threats are socially constructed, not natural (realists forget this)
We act towards objects and situations according to the meaning we put with them, it’s all socially constructed
Identities are inherently relational and the basis of interest
Social constructivist is an attempt at de-deification, there isn’t anything that is bigger than us
For identities to change, it often requires an event (cold war wasn’t over until fall of the Berlin Wall)
Elias-more realistic than Hobbes, history of a nation state
Essence and representation-ontology
Psychogenic, Sociogenic