International Relations — the discipline, its scope, the word

Working definition International Relations studies the interactions that cross national boundaries — political, economic, cultural, military and ecological — among sovereign states and a widening field of non-state actors.

Where the word comes from

• Jeremy Bentham coined “international” in the late 18th century, as the modern state system matured; a century earlier Richard Zouche used the Latin intergentes for the “law of nations” — now International Law.

Condition vs discipline — Quincy Wright

• Quincy Wright: IR as a condition is the actual state of affairs among nations (foreign policy, diplomacy, trade, conflict, war); IR as a discipline is the systematic, scientific study of those interactions to find patterns and anticipate developments.

International Relations vs International Politics

• International Relations — all cross-border interactions (the broader concept). International Politics — the subset centred on the struggle for power: diplomacy, war, alliances, balance of power.
• James N. Rosenau: the essence of IR is how states adjust national interests to those of others. Hans Morgenthau: international politics is the core, but economic and cultural relations also shape it. Harold and Margaret Sprout: all human behaviour crossing boundaries and affecting other nations. Padelford and Lincoln: the interaction of state policies within a changing pattern of power.

Is IR a discipline? — the status debate

• Palmer and Perkins: grew out of history and political science but lacked a well-organised structure — too fragmented to stand alone. Alfred Zimmern: a “bundle of subjects” (law, economics, political science, geography) without a unifying frame. E. H. Carr: early IR was “markedly and frankly utopian.”
• The failed League and the Second World War forced a more critical, analytical study — consolidating IR as a discipline.

Institutionalisation

• First academic chair — University of Wales (1919). Early focus: diplomatic history and legalism. Post-Second World War: a shift to analytical, scientific method and theory-building.

Phases of International Politics — Westphalia to the present

Dated from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years’ War, established state sovereignty, and founded the modern state system.

From hard-shell states to a networked world — the evolution. 1 · 1648–1919 (Westphalia to WWI · territorial integrity, non-interference · European great-power politics) → 2 · 1919–39 (Interwar · Wilson’s League & collective security · League fails · realist–idealist debate) → 3 · Cold War (Bipolar order · global superpower rivalry · nuclear & mutual deterrence) → 4 · End of Cold War (Berlin Wall (1989) · new world order · non-state actors, geo-economics) → 5 · Present (Liberal order in question · regionalism & nationalism · contested institutions).

Monroe Doctrine · James Monroe, 1823 The Western hemisphere is closed to further European colonisation; the US will not interfere in European affairs and expects Europe to stay out of the hemisphere; any attempt to control newly independent American states is a hostile act.

Detente · 1969–79 A thaw driven by the cost of the arms race, domestic strain and the Vietnam war. Markers: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968), China’s admission to the UN (1971), SALT (1972) and the Helsinki Agreement (1975).

The present world order

• Decline of the liberal order after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — state-centric geopolitics and protectionism (Crimea, Brexit).
• Rise of regionalism and nationalism — the QUAD, “America First,” Atmanirbhar Bharat.
• Contested international bodies — the Ukraine–Russia conflict exposed the limits of NATO and the UN; rising Chinese expenditure and falling US influence suggest the liberal order is waning.

Billiard Ball vs Cobweb — two images of world politics

The state as hard shell, or society as network

• Baylis and Steve Smith: territories became less relevant and domestic and international politics increasingly overlapped — the billiard-ball world was supplanted by the cobweb world.
• Drivers of the shift: globalisation opened the hard shell to flows of people, capital, information and culture; David Ricardo’s comparative advantage worked through global supply chains, moving politics from geopolitics to geo-economics; Keohane and Nye read the era through complex interdependence; Joseph Nye notes states now influence others through consent (soft power). A partial swing back to the billiard-ball image is visible as states rebuild internal capacity.

The Great Debates in IR theory

Each debate set the terms of the next. I · Realism / Idealism (Interwar · Wilson’s League vs power politics · Carr’s critique; realism prevails) → II · Traditionalism / Behaviouralism (1960s · method: science & testing (Kaplan) vs interpretation (Bull)) → III · Neorealism / Neoliberalism (Inter-paradigm · Waltz reboots realism; complex interdependence; the Neo-Neo synthesis) → IV · Rationalism / Reflectivism (Mid-1980s · positivists vs feminism, constructivism, critical theory).

• E. H. Carr (The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1939) delivered the decisive critique of pure idealism; German, Italian and Japanese aggression exposed the League’s impotence. Lucian Ashworth argues the realist–idealist gap was exaggerated; John Mearsheimer notes idealism survives in the English School.
• The reflectivists (postmodernism, feminism, constructivism, critical theory) reject positivist method; Keohane challenged them to test their claims, and the polarised debate settled into methodological pluralism.

Liberalism and the Idealist School

Liberalism stresses the potential for cooperation within anarchy; humans are rational and can shape their destiny. The liberals’ “children of light” against the realists’ “children of darkness”: war is blamed not on anarchy but on imperialism, the failure of the balance of power, or undemocratic governance — with collective security, commerce and world government as remedies.

Core assumptions of idealism Per Hoffmann, liberalism’s essence is self-restraint, moderation, compromise and peace; its pillars are institutions, interdependence and democracy. Individuals are the primary actors; state interests are dynamic (self- and other-regarding); interests are shaped by domestic and international conditions; mutual interests can sustain cooperation without a hegemon; human nature is essentially good (bad behaviour is the product of bad institutions).

• Couloumbis and Wolfe: for idealists “politics is the art of good government, not the art of the possible.” Supporters: Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Woodrow Wilson, Aldous Huxley, William Ladd, Richard Cobden, Margaret Mead.
• Peace-building: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace — republican constitutionalism, a federal contract between states); Woodrow Wilson (a rule-based institution, collective security, self-determination); Michael Doyle (democratic peace). Contemporary: the UN, security communities (Karl Deutsch, ASEAN), the SDGs, the Paris Agreement.

Intellectual precursors

• John Locke (government by consent, limited government) · Immanuel Kant (republican democracy and commerce restrain war) · Adam Smith (the invisible hand, gains from free trade) · Richard Cobden (free trade builds peace) · Norman Angell (The Great Illusion — in an interconnected world, war is economically futile) · Jeremy Bentham (utilitarianism; an early international court) · Woodrow Wilson (the Fourteen Points).

“A world full of human happiness is not beyond human power to achieve.”

Bertrand Russell

The strands of Liberalism

Liberal Institutionalism

• Institutions mitigate anarchy and enable cooperation. Woodrow Wilson: institutions convert the “jungle into a zoo.” Hedley Bull concedes institutions moved IR to an “anarchical society”; the WHO and WTO acted during the pandemic beyond single-state capacity; Nina Tannenwald on the nuclear taboo shows their preventive role. Criticism: often “toothless tigers” (Russia’s Security Council veto; the unresolved Israel–Palestine question).

Sociological Liberalism

• John Burton — the cobweb model, dense society-to-society ties. Karl Deutsch — the security community, where large-scale violence becomes unthinkable through shared values and communication (the transatlantic region, the EU, ASEAN). Track 2 and Track 3 diplomacy.

Functionalism and Neo-Functionalism

• David Mitrany — functionalism (“peace by pieces”); form follows function — cooperation works on technical tasks done better together, building institutions. The assumption that loyalties would transfer from the state to functional bodies proved unworkable given the legitimacy of the nation-state. Ernst B. Haas — neo-functionalism (“federalism by instalments”) and the spillover effect: cooperation in one area (coal and steel) leads to political integration (the EU). Criticism: rests almost solely on the European experiment; the Westphalian state has not faded; charged with Eurocentrism.

Interdependence Liberalism

• Thomas L. Friedman — the Golden Arches Theory (no two countries with McDonald’s have gone to war). Richard Rosecrance — the Trading State: power through economic means (Japan, West Germany). Criticism: trade does not guarantee peace; economic determinism.

Democratic Peace Theory

• Michael W. Doyle (from Kant), with Bruce Russett and James Lee Ray — dyadic peace (democracies do not fight each other) and monadic peace. Reasons: institutional constraints, shared norms, interdependence. Criticism: Douglas Gibler and Andrew Owsiak — peace often precedes democracy; India and Pakistan, both democracies, have fought repeatedly.

Complex Interdependence

• Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye — a descriptive theory: multiple channels; no hierarchy of issues (military security is not always primary); a minor role for military force. Criticism: struggles with rising defence budgets and open conflict (Ukraine, Iraq).

Neo-Liberalism and the Neo-Neo debate

Keohane (After Hegemony) and Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Cooperation) accept anarchy but stress cooperation; institutions reduce transaction costs and set norms.

Joseph Grieco — states ask “Who will gain more?” Mearsheimer (The False Promise of International Institutions) — institutions reflect the distribution of power. Krasner — neo-liberalism neglects capabilities. The gap narrowed into a Neo-Neo Synthesis.

The Liberal World Order

• John Ikenberry — three phases: 1.0 (after WWI, Wilson’s institutional liberalism, collapsed with WWII); 2.0 (after WWII, the US-led UN, IMF and GATT, dormant during the Cold War); 3.0 (after the Cold War, LPG reforms, peaking with the WTO in 1995).
• Ian Bremmer — the shift from the G-8 to the G-20, and a “G-Zero” world lacking central leadership.
• Robert Kagan — the order is in decline: challenged externally by dissatisfied powers (China, Russia) and internally by a crisis of self-confidence.
• Challenges: legitimacy (the US’s own breaches — the 2003 Iraq invasion, exit from the Iran deal), equity (uneven democracy; post-colonial constraints), and self-confidence. The 2008 crisis, protectionism, Brexit, “America First,” the pandemic and the Ukraine war signal a tipping point.

The Major Debates in IR Theory

• Why no winner → the constant churn of events; theories shaped by their historical context are challenged when they cannot explain new developments (terrorism, non-state actors). All paradigms remain in active use, because contemporary politics is pluralist and needs more than one theory. Scholars’ own values shape their theoretical preference, continually feeding the debates.
• The endlessness reflects the genuine complexity of global politics, not a failure of theory.

Writing this unit in the exam These concepts are tools, not verdicts — each is read differently across paradigms, and the contest is itself analytically productive. National interest, power and security remain the realist core; interdependence, institutions and collective security supply the liberal correction; constructivism shows that interests, threats and anarchy are made, not given; Marxism and the critical approaches expose whose interest the system serves. So: take the concept, set the major scholars and definitions, weigh realist, liberal, constructivist and critical readings against contemporary events — US–China rivalry, Russia–Ukraine, the Indo-Pacific, the Global South — and close with a reasoned, evidence-grounded judgement rather than a settled answer.