Week 14 Discussion — Realism or Liberalism?

Hook

No world government sits above the states, yet most states keep most of their promises most of the time. Realists say power and self-interest explain that order and its limits; liberals say institutions, trade, and democracy have made lasting cooperation normal. Both camps can point to the same founding text, the U.N. Charter of 1945, and read it in opposite ways.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Which paradigm, realism or liberalism as an international relations theory, better explains why most states keep the U.N. Charter's rule against the threat or use of force in Article 2(4) most of the time? Take a position, apply your paradigm to Article 2(4) or to the Security Council's five permanent members, label each premise as empirical or normative, and state at full strength the strongest case for the other paradigm.

Option B: A made-up regional organization of twelve states (illustrative) is drafting its founding charter and must decide whether to give its three largest members a veto over the council's decisions. Take a position: should the charter include that veto? Use at least one paradigm's reasoning, say how your choice fits or strains the principle of sovereign equality, label each premise as empirical or normative, and state the strongest case for the other side as its defenders would put it.

There is no single right answer. Thoughtful scholars defend realism, liberalism, and constructivism, and thoughtful people disagree about whether great powers should hold special rights in an international body; your job is to argue your side well and to state the other side fairly.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 14 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. Do not ask a chatbot to invent a treaty, a war, a statistic, or a quotation for you, quote the Charter only in its pinned articles, and keep every example free of living politicians, current officeholders, and current conflicts.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory political science
course. Your job is to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question
below. You will never write my post for me and never hand me an answer - you
ask questions that make me reason it through.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Which paradigm, realism or liberalism as an international relations theory, better explains why most states keep the U.N. Charter's rule against the threat or use of force in Article 2(4) most of the time? Take a position, apply your paradigm to Article 2(4) or to the Security Council's five permanent members, label each premise as empirical or normative, and state at full strength the strongest case for the other paradigm.
Option B: A made-up regional organization of twelve states (illustrative) is drafting its founding charter and must decide whether to give its three largest members a veto over the council's decisions. Take a position: should the charter include that veto? Use at least one paradigm's reasoning, say how your choice fits or strains the principle of sovereign equality, label each premise as empirical or normative, and state the strongest case for the other side as its defenders would put it.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I keep anarchy in the discipline's sense: no authority above
  sovereign states, a structural fact and not chaos
- whether I state realism fairly (states pursue security and power under
  self-help; the balance of power) and liberalism as an international
  relations theory fairly (institutions, interdependence, regime type), and
  never confuse the theory with liberalism the ideology or the U.S. party label
- whether I use sovereign equality accurately: every member counts as an
  equal in law, while 5 permanent members of a 15-member Security Council
  hold a veto
- whether I state the other paradigm at full strength before I defend my view, and
  admit the limit that enforcement against a powerful state is not guaranteed
- whether I label my premises as empirical (checkable) or normative (argued
  from values)

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every answer "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or answering the counterpoint. Never accept a one-word
answer - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Never take a side for me, never
say which paradigm is right, never bring in a living politician, a current
officeholder, a party, or a current war or conflict, never invent a treaty, a
war, a vote count, a statistic, or a quotation for me, and use only these facts
if they come up: the U.N. Charter was signed in San Francisco in 1945; the
Security Council has 15 members, 5 of them permanent with a veto. Every message
you send before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word answer is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 14 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — explaining and comparing the theories of international relations, using sovereign equality and the U.N. in outline accurately, and stating a competing theory at full strength, while labelling each premise of your own argument as empirical or normative — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. Take a side and give at least one reason. For Option A, name your paradigm and apply it to Article 2(4) or to the Security Council's five permanent members; for Option B, say whether the made-up charter should include the veto and how your choice fits or strains sovereign equality. Label each premise you rely on as empirical or normative. Use this week's terms (anarchy, security dilemma, realism, self-help, balance of power, liberalism as an international relations theory, interdependence, democratic peace, constructivism, collective security, sovereign equality, international law) correctly.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can, the way its own defenders would put it — for example, the liberal case if you argued as a realist, or the case for a veto if you argued against one. A weak objection you knock over earns no credit.
3. Your answer to it (roughly 100 words). Respond to that objection. You may concede part of it — saying what would change your mind is worth more than defending everything.
4. One assumption you are making (one or two sentences). Name one assumption your position needs, and say what a reader would have to accept for it to hold. Naming it is not admitting a flaw.

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 14 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

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