Lecture: International Relations
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 14
Opening
Picture a row of small shops that share one parking lot. There's no landlord on site, no manager, and no guard. Nobody can order the owners around. And yet, on most days, the lot works. The owners take turns with the loading space and keep the fire lane clear.
You'll meet that puzzle well beyond parking lots. A business major's future company may sell across borders under rules no single government enforces. An environmental science student may watch countries try to share a fishery. Each time, someone has to cooperate with no one in charge.
Here's where we are. Week 1 named international relations as one of the five subfields. Week 2 gave you the state and external sovereignty, a state's independence from outside control. Week 3 defined liberalism the ideology, and you'll need to keep it apart from a new liberalism in this lecture. Week 8 gave you the three-layer read, and Week 13 compared countries on a plan. In this lecture we move from politics inside countries to politics between them.
I'll take you through ten moves: what anarchy means, a spiral no one wants, three schools of thought, two kinds of pact, the United Nations, two founding texts, why states keep their word, and the debate that closes the week. Week 15 then turns to political economy.
1. Anarchy: no one above the states
Go back to the parking lot. No one can fine an owner who blocks the lane. Still, the lot runs well most of the time, because the owners have reasons to get along.
International relations starts from that same picture. Anarchy, in international relations, is the absence of any authority above sovereign states that can make rules for them and enforce those rules; a structural fact about the system, not a description of chaos. Inside your country, a court can order you to pay a debt, and the police can enforce it. Between countries, no court sits above every state with a police force behind it. That's all anarchy claims.
Most dealings between states, most of the time, are peaceful. Mail crosses borders. Ships dock in foreign ports. Treaties are kept. Everyday speech uses "anarchy" for disorder, and in this course we set that reading aside.
Pause and try this. If most dealings between states are peaceful, can the system still be called anarchic?
Hold the two meanings of the word side by side.
Here's the answer. Yes, because anarchy here means no authority above the states, and a system with no one in charge can still be orderly most of the time.
No boss is not the same as no order.
2. The security dilemma
Think of two neighbors on your street. One adds a floodlight and a camera after a break-in nearby. The other sees the camera pointed at their yard and builds a taller fence. The first reads the fence as hostile and adds a second camera. Neither one is a villain, and both feel less safe.
Herz named this pattern in a 1950 article, "Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma". The security dilemma is the spiral in which steps one state takes for its own defense look threatening to others, who arm in response, leaving every side less secure than before. It's a structural argument that needs no side to intend harm.
Here's the made-up case. Selvara and Ondrith each patrol their shared sea with 4 ships. Selvara adds 2 for defense and has 6. Ondrith sees 6 against its 4, adds 2, and has 6. Selvara adds 2 more and has 8, and Ondrith answers with 8. The sea now holds 16 ships, twice the 8 it started with.
Pause and try this. At the start the fleets were 4 and 4. At the end they're 8 and 8. Is either state safer?
Compare the two fleets, not the total.
Here's the answer. Neither is safer, because 4 against 4 and 8 against 8 are the same one-to-one balance, bought at twice the cost.
The cause is the setting, not anyone's wickedness. My shield looks like your sword.
3. Realism
Picture a shared apartment kitchen with no house rules. If you want your food to last the week, you guard your own shelf. And if one roommate starts deciding everything, the other two tend to team up.
That kitchen is the first paradigm: a broad school of thought that explains how states behave by stressing some forces over others, such as power, institutions, or ideas; a classroom model and a lens, not the last word. Realism is the paradigm that treats states as the main actors, each pursuing security and power because nothing above them guarantees their safety. Realists call that condition self-help. Their classic picture of order is the balance of power: states shift their weight and alliances to stop any one state from dominating the rest.
Realism has two strands. Classical realism is linked with Morgenthau's 1948 book, Politics Among Nations. Structural realism is linked with Waltz's 1979 book, Theory of International Politics. Both are taught in words.
Realism also has a very old proof-text. In Thucydides, Book V, in the Crawley translation of 1874, envoys from Athens argue with the people of Melos. The envoys say, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".
Pause and try this. Whose view is that line: Thucydides' own, or someone else's?
Ask who is speaking in the scene.
Here's the answer. It belongs to the Athenian envoys, as Thucydides rendered them, because a historian recording an argument isn't endorsing it.
Cite the speaker, not the author's name on the cover.
4. Liberalism as an international relations theory
Picture your town and the next town over sharing one water plant. A quarrel over a parking rule stays a quarrel, because a real fight would cost both towns their water. They also run a joint board that publishes the plant's accounts.
That's the second paradigm. Liberalism as an international relations theory is the paradigm holding that institutions, interdependence, and regime type shape how states behave, so lasting cooperation is possible even without a world government. Interdependence means states depend on one another through trade, investment, and other ties, so a conflict carries costs for both sides. Keohane and Nye made the case in Power and Interdependence, in 1977.
Its most cited finding is the democratic peace: established democracies rarely if ever go to war with one another, while they fight non-democracies at ordinary rates. It comes from Doyle in 1983 and Russett in 1993. Why it holds is still debated. Some point to shared norms. Others point to institutions that slow a decision to fight.
Pause and try this. Someone says, "The democratic peace means democracies never fight wars." What's wrong with that?
Think about who the democracies are fighting.
Here's the answer. Democracies do fight non-democracies at ordinary rates, so the finding is only about pairs of established democracies.
One more trap. This liberalism isn't the Week 3 ideology, and it isn't "liberal" in U.S. party talk.
5. Constructivism
Picture a low wooden fence between two yards. For two old friends, it's where they lean and chat. For two feuding neighbors, the same fence is a battle line. The wood is identical. What it means depends on what the neighbors believe about each other.
That's the third paradigm. Constructivism is the paradigm holding that what international structures mean is built from the ideas, identities, and norms states form as they interact, so the same anarchy can produce rivals or friends. A norm is a shared expectation about how a member of a group ought to act, which shapes behavior even when no one enforces it. The key text is Wendt's 1992 article, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It". In words, his point is that anarchy doesn't dictate self-help on its own.
Go back to Selvara and Ondrith with their 8 ships each. If they've been rivals for decades, every new ship looks like a threat. If they've trained together for decades, the same 8 ships look like help in a storm.
Pause and try this. In the friendly version, did the number of ships change, or did something else?
Look at what stayed fixed between the two stories.
Here's the answer. The ships stayed at 8 each, so what changed was the identities the two states built in interaction.
None of the three paradigms is the winner. Each is a lens.
6. Collective security versus an alliance
Think of two agreements you might sign on campus. A dorm's code of conduct applies to anyone who damages a common room, residents included. Three study groups agreeing to back each other against one rival trivia team is aimed at a named opponent.
States make both kinds. Collective security is an arrangement in which members commit to act together against any state that attacks another, including an attacker from among their own members. An alliance is a pact in which members commit to defend one another against a specified outside threat.
Two made-up pacts. The Harbor Pact binds 3 states to defend one another against Ondrith. The Concord of Seven commits all 7 members to act against any state that attacks another, members included.
Pause and try this. Which of the two pacts is collective security?
Ask whom each pact is aimed at.
Here's the answer. The Concord of Seven, because it's aimed at any aggressor, while the Harbor Pact names one threat.
A pact aimed at them is not a pact aimed at anyone.
7. The United Nations in outline
Picture a homeowners' association. Every house gets one vote at the yearly meeting. A smaller board handles emergencies, and a few households hold their board seats every year and can block any emergency decision.
The United Nations is the international organization founded by the U.N. Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945. The Charter creates 6 principal organs. In the General Assembly, every member state sits and casts one vote. The Security Council has 15 members, and 5 are permanent members: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A no vote from any one of those 5 blocks a substantive decision, even if the other 14 vote yes. The International Court of Justice is the U.N.'s principal court. And the U.N. has no standing army of its own.
Article 2(1) of the Charter reads, "The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members." Sovereign equality is the principle that every member state counts as an equal in law, whatever its size or strength. Article 2(4) commits all members to refrain from the threat or use of force against any state.
Pause and try this. The Council has 15 seats and 5 are permanent. How many are elected?
Take the permanent seats away from the total.
Here's the answer. 15 minus 5 leaves 10 elected seats, which is why the permanent five hold about a third of the Council.
8. The Universal Declaration and the three lenses
Think about a sign in your study room: "Quiet voices, please." No one fines you, yet most people lower their voices. The sign works by building an expectation.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the U.N. General Assembly in Paris in 1948 as resolution 217 A, a norm-building text that isn't backed by an army. Article 1 reads, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Article 21(3) reads, "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government".
Now run the Charter through all three lenses. The realist reads the veto sitting beside "sovereign equality": equal in law, yet 5 members hold a power the rest lack. The liberal reads a standing institution where every member meets and votes. The constructivist reads a norm that gains force each time states repeat it.
Pause and try this. Is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration an empirical claim or a normative one?
Ask whether you could check it with a measurement.
Here's the answer. It's normative, because it sets a standard people ought to honor, even though it's phrased like a fact.
Sort by kind, not by grammar.
9. Compliance without a sheriff
Picture a neighborhood tool library. You borrow a ladder and bring it back on time, with no deposit and no fee. Maybe you want the drill next month. Maybe the sign-out sheet shows who returns things late. Or maybe returning things is part of who you are.
Those three reasons match the three paradigms. International law is the rules that states accept as binding on one another, such as treaties, even though no world police force enforces them. Selvara and Ondrith sign a fishing treaty and keep it for decades. A realist points to reciprocity, keeping an agreement so that the other side keeps it too, plus reputation. A liberal points to institutions: a joint commission counts the catch and publishes it. A constructivist points to internalized norms, rules a state has come to treat as part of who it is.
Here's the limit, stated plainly. Enforcement against a powerful violator isn't guaranteed.
Pause and try this. A commission that counts the catch: which paradigm's explanation is that?
Ask whether the reason is self-interest, a body, or identity.
Here's the answer. It's the liberal explanation, because the commission is an institution that monitors compliance and makes cheating visible.
10. Realism or liberalism?
Back to the parking lot, still with no manager. One owner says it works because nobody dares push too hard. Another credits the weekly meeting and the shared calendar. A third says that, after years side by side, they think of it as shared space.
That's the closing question. Proponents of realism argue that power and security still decide the hard cases, and they point to the veto. Proponents of liberalism argue that institutions, trade, and democracy have made lasting cooperation normal. Constructivists add that both pictures depend on what states believe about one another.
Try the three-layer read on the Security Council. Design: 15 members, 5 permanent with a veto, checkable against the Charter. Practice: how often the veto has blocked action is a question for evidence, and this course pins no count. Verdict: whether the 5 should keep the veto is normative. Proponents say it keeps the great powers inside; critics say it sits uneasily with sovereign equality.
Pause and try this. "The 5 permanent members ought to keep the veto." Which layer is that claim on?
Notice the word "ought".
Here's the answer. It's on the verdict layer, because it says what ought to be, and no count of vetoes settles it.
The verdict on realism or liberalism is yours. Your reasons are what count.
Closing
Let me pull it together. Anarchy means no authority above the states, not chaos. The security dilemma is a spiral where my shield looks like your sword. Realism stresses self-help and the balance of power. Liberalism as an international relations theory stresses institutions, interdependence, and the democratic peace. Constructivism says anarchy is what states make of it. Collective security aims at anyone; an alliance names a threat. The U.N. has a one-vote Assembly, a Council of 15 with 5 vetoes, a court, and no army. The Melian line belongs to the Athenian envoys. And states mostly keep international law through reciprocity, institutions, and internalized norms, though the powerful can't be forced.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Week 15 closes the world-stage unit with political economy and global issues.
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