Politics & International Relations
World Politics
World politics refers to the interactions and relationships between countries on a global scale. It encompasses diplomatic negotiations, international conflicts, trade agreements, and the pursuit of national interests. The study of world politics examines the dynamics of power, governance, and cooperation among nations, as well as the impact of global events and trends on international relations.
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8 Key excerpts on "World Politics"
eBook - PDFInternational Studies
Interdisciplinary Approaches
- P. Aalto, V. Harle, S. Moisio, P. Aalto, V. Harle, S. Moisio(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
She concludes by saying: For the student of IR, although the focus will remain on the political, thereby retaining an identity that is distinct from the more diffuse interdisciplinary field of international studies, an appreciation of what other fields of study have to offer and an ability to incorporate their insights is essential (ibid., p. 140). Lawson does not attempt to specify the role and import of IS at the theoretical or conceptual level, but hints that it could lie in clarify- ing the empirical substance by cultivating links with area studies (p. 14). Her stress for IR to be centred on the ‘political’ sphere does not refer explicitly to Morgenthau’s or anyone else’s conception of politics. But at the terminological level, it is interestingly linked to the loosely emerging literature on World Politics – to which we wish to offer a wider and more accommodative alternative, while also reconnecting with the interdisciplinary roots of IR. World Politics is a term often used without much programmatic intent. 7 At its most primitive, it connotes a vague idea of ‘geopolitics’, or a great power struggle on a global scale. The journal World Politics situates itself close to the political science subfield of comparative politics. In Lawson’s usage, World Politics is deployed in a fairly typical way to refer to the political relations among a wider continuum of actors than is allowed for in the state-centric view of IR (ibid.). For R.B.J. Walker (1993), World Politics involves ‘a claim to historical and structural transformation that throw historically derived concepts and disciplinary divisions into rather serious doubt’ (p. 103). He is criti- cal of the distinction between domestic and international politics, or ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the state as he puts it.
eBook - PDF- Mathias Albert(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
With a view to historical semantics, it is to some degree arbitrary whether we call a theory a theory of World Politics or a theory of international politics. However, it is not entirely arbitrary. In this book, World Politics takes precedence because the evolution of the system of World Politics takes place in a semantic field that is characterised by the emergence and prominence of various world composite terms. In any case, such a choice is less arbitrary than reserving ‘international politics’ for a realm comprising political relations between states and ‘world 53 Interestingly, Osterhammel (2012: 416–418) distinguishes between a history of the classics, a disciplinary history (of IR), a history of discourses, a history of issue areas, and histories of globality, all of which he sees as basic types of a history of ideas of the international. I have great difficulty in seeing how a history of discourses could only be one kind of history of ideas – although the latter, of course, has a part to play in the former. On a more theoretical note, Quentin Skinner in particular has repeatedly sought to establish some kind of via media between conceptual history and the study of historical semantics (though the latter is addressed more as language and speech acts); see, for example Phillips (2013). 54 A small in-house study on the use of the terms in IR journal articles supports this point; cf. Blanco (2010). A superficial run of the terms ‘international politics’ and ‘World Politics’ through Google’s NGram Viewer (18 November 2014) covering books in English between 1800 and 2000 showed no significant discrepancy in the frequency of their usage, apart from a slightly increased prominence of ‘international politics’ in the 1880s and 1890s. The system of World Politics 131 politics’ for a realm beyond that. Other good reasons aside, this distinction has no foundation in historical semantics.
eBook - PDF- Stewart R Clegg, Mark Haugaard, Stewart R Clegg, Mark Haugaard(Authors)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
21 Reconfiguring Power in a Globalizing World P h i l i p G . C e r n y INTRODUCTION The concept of power has traditionally played a central and crucial role in the analysis of International Relations and World Politics. It has been seen as the key factor, variable, driving force or ‘currency’ in relations among states. Indeed, this role has been seen by many observers since Thucydides as the defining attribute of the international system itself. This interpretation of the role of power is said to derive from the understanding that no seriously effective level of organized, authoritative or legitimate governmental or socio-political structure exists above the level of the state that does not itself emanate from and, in the last analysis, remain responsible to autonomous, sovereign states – i.e., that there is no genuinely supranational power structure or political process in World Politics. Therefore in order to explain what happens in World Politics – as distinct from politics within states – it is necessary to privilege (a) power-seeking actions of states (taken as structurally coherent ‘unit actors’ in and of themselves: Waltz 1979) and of ‘state actors’ (actors acting through or on behalf of states) and (b) structured, ongoing relations of power between and among states, over the claims of other potential causal variables. This interpretation is usually labelled the ‘realist’ – or, in a revised version that has become widespread in academic International Relations since the 1970s, ‘neorealist’ – paradigm, derived originally from the thought of such political theorists as Machiavelli and Hobbes and central to the nineteenth century German concept of Realpolitik . In this understanding of the world, there is no agreed, overarching political forum in which individuals, economic interests and social groups can systematically and effectively express their views and pursue their goals – in other words, engage in collective action – other
eBook - PDFWar, Peace, and International Political Realism
Perspectives from The Review of Politics
- Keir A. Lieber(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- University of Notre Dame Press(Publisher)
7 International orga- nization, law, trade, and finance are studied in a political instead of a constitu- tional context. And political scientists are accorded the task of asking questions covering problems which continue to vex our society. Inasmuch as the rival- ries which occasion international tensions are now generally assumed to be 184 Kenn eth W. Thompson political in character, this movement of the political scientist to the center of international studies is rooted in the facts of the situation. Today the three- fold concern of international politics is with the forces and influences which bear on the conduct of foreign policy everywhere, the techniques, and ma- chinery by which foreign policy is executed, and both the novel institutions and traditional practices whereby the conflicts among nations are adjusted and accommodated. The fundamental and persistent forces of World Politics such as nationalism, imperialism, and the balance of power, however, have only belatedly become an appropriate subject for inquiry. The basic drives which determine the foreign policies of states, their desire for security and power, are the elemental facts with which international politics is fundamen- tally concerned. 8 International politics is the study of rivalry among nations and the conditions and institutions which ameliorate or exacerbate these relationships. Three Theories of International Political Behavior It is frequently said that one test of the independent character of a discipline or field of study is the presence in the field of theories contending for recogni- tion by those engaged in thinking and writing. It may be significant that un- derlying the study of contemporary international politics are two general the- ories of human nature and politics. Moreover, there are already the first signs of the origin of a third way of conceiving the nature of international affairs.
eBook - PDF- Fulvio Attina(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
Chapter 2 Politics as Conflict in an Asymmetric World The common view is to see an anarchic and disorganized international system in which international relations inhabit a space devoid of political organization and governmental institutions. Despite a reluctance to aban-don this conception there is, nevertheless, now a world political space in which actors of a diverse nature, endowed with different resources and abilities, and fired by different aims and strategies, are struggling to establish rules and policies. These rules and policies bind everyone in the use of global goods. So, the world can be represented and explained as if it were one single political system in which all manner of actors can seek to manage mutual problems by agreeing upon collective standards instead of individual ones. We can thus speak of an organized world political system because these actors make use of political institutions and structures to broach joint problems, and usually make their actions and relations conform to the rules and policies produced by these institu-tions and structures. The emergence of a global political system organized through a worldwide framework of governance has been a long evolutionary process. This process is continuing and constantly transforms the public space, the political arena and the structure of government of the system As explained in Chapter 4, the governmental structure of the world system consists of principles, roles, institutions, rules and practices through which representatives of actors, both states and non-territorial actors, create rules and policies with a global reach. These are normally observed, and are therefore endowed with authority.
No longer available |Learn moreThe Global Future
A Brief Introduction to World Politics
- Charles Kegley, Gregory Raymond(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 2 Theories of World Politics L E A R N I NG O B J E C T I V E S • Explain the role of theory in the analysis of World Politics. • Describe the major assumptions, causal claims, and policy prescriptions of realist, liberal, and constructivist theories of World Politics. • Discuss the radical and feminist critiques of mainstream theorizing in World Politics. • Identify the criteria that social scientists use when judging the quality of a theory. • Evaluate the prospects for applying the scientific method to the study of World Politics. There is an inescapable link between the abstract world of theory and the real world of policy. We need theories to make sense of the blizzard of information that bombards us daily. Even policymakers who are contemptuous of “ theory ” must rely on their own (often unstated) ideas about how the world works in order to decide what to do. … Everyone uses theories — whether he or she knows it or not. STEPHEN M. WALT POLITICAL SCIENTIST 25 Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. A lthough the academic study of international relations is relatively new, at-tempts to theorize about state behavior date back to antiquity. Perhaps the best example can be found in Thucydides, the Greek historian who analyzed the Peloponnesian War (431 – 404 BCE) between ancient Sparta and Athens.
eBook - PDF- Robert J. Jackson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
505. After careful analysis, Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genco concluded that the quandary in political science can, to a large extent, “be explained by the fact that, by themselves, clock-model assumptions are inappropriate for dealing with the substance of political phenomena.” Their conclusion comes from the belief that all theories must necessarily include transient and fleeting phenomena. Politics is not totally predictable, Almond and Genco maintain, because human behavior is involved – political reality “has distinctive properties which make it unamenable to the forms of explanation used in the natural sciences.” Therefore, the science of politics should not be seen as a set of methods with a pre-determined theory but instead as a “commitment to explore and attempt to understand a given segment of empirical reality.” 4 Bearing these laudatory yet cautionary remarks in mind, we outline and analyze the most important theories in international relations and their most important derivatives. While we cannot mention all of the authors associated with each topic, we attempt to provide enough understanding of the theories’ central characteristics to make them meaningful and useful in studying global politics. Moreover, it would be a mistake to assume that these theories are mutu-ally exclusive. Some focus on national interests and others on general values, but all influence foreign policy making and the study of it. Theories of global politics Two theoretical perspectives dominate the study of modern global politics: realism and liberalism. They are the central lenses or filters through which the global system is viewed by many observers. The two approaches are usually contrasted somewhat sim-plistically as being pessimistic or optimistic about human nature. Realists claim that liberal idealists are naïve in their assertions about hope for progress in history, law, philosophy, sociology, economics, or anthropology.
eBook - PDFGlobalization
Theory and Practice Second Edition
- Eleonore Kofman, Gillian Youngs, Eleonore Kofman, Gillian Youngs(Authors)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
PARTI Globalization, International Relations and Political Geography This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1 International Relations as we Enter the Twenty-first Century GILLIAN YOUNGS Globalization has become the new term for signifying dramatic changes in the nature of international relations in the latter part of the twentieth century and the dawning of the new century. It has become increas-ingly pervasive in the practices of politics, economics and culture as well as in their mediated communications. But are its meanings any clearer now that it has become so commonplace than when the first edition of this collection was published seven years ago (Kofman and Youngs, 1996)? Not necessarily. This chapter investigates how globalization might be considered to have replaced international relations as a description of not only how the world is, but also how we as individuals and collectivities of different kinds understand our place within it, and the diverse communications processes and tools intrinsically linking inner reflexive and communal symbolic aspects to concrete events and developments. Globalization signals a number of things in contrast to international relations. It emphasizes a global rather than a national context. This is not to deny national settings but to indicate that they themselves sit within a larger context, and that a notion of them as bounded separate entities is not necessarily the best conceptual priority for thinking about the world. Globalization also suggests a processual approach to world affairs: that we are dealing with realities in motion on the large scale of the globe. It is more dynamic than international relations, which identifies the relations between the defined entities of states as the key focus for assessing what is happening in the world. Globalization leaves it more open as to which relations, sited where, might be important to any particular social process.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
