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| A system operating in the absence of any central government. Does not imply chaos, but in realist theory the absence of political authority. |
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| Asymmetrical globalization |
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| Describes the way in which contemporary globalization is unequally experienced across the world and among different social groups in such a way that it produces a distinctive geography of inclusion in, and exclusion from, the global system. |
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| In realist theory, refers to an equilibrium between states; historical realists regard it as the product of diplomacy (contrived balance) whereas structural realists regard the system as having a tendency towards a natural equilibrium (fortuitous balance). It is a doctrine and an arrangement whereby the power of one state (or group of states) is checked by the countervailing power of other states. |
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| A system of production in which human labour and its products are commodities that are bought and sold in the market-place. |
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| (1) the totality of all individuals and groups in a society who are not acting as participants in any government institutions, or (2) all individuals and groups who are neither participants in government nor acting in the interests of commercial companies. The two meanings are incompatible and contested. There is a third meaning: the network of social institutions and practices (economic relationships, family and kinship groups, religious, and other social affiliations) which underlie strictly political institutions. For democratic theorists the voluntary character of these associations is taken to be essential to the workings of democratic politics. |
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| Controversial idea first used by Samuel Huntington in 1993 to describe the main cultural fault-line of international conflict in a world without communism; the notion has become more popular still since 9/11. |
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| Extended worldwide conflict between communism and capitalism that is normally taken to have begun in 1947 and concluded in 1989 with the collapse of Soviet power in Europe. |
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| Refers to an arrangement where 'each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and agrees to join in a collective response to aggression' (Roberts and Kingsbury 1993: 30). It is also the foundational principle of the League of Nations: namely, that member states would take a threat or attack on one member as an assault on them all (and on international norms more generally). The League would accordingly respond in unison to such violations of international law. Appreciating that such concerted action would ensue, putative violators-the League's framers hoped-would be duly deterred from launching aggressive strikes in the first place. As the 1920s and 1930s showed, however, theory and practice diverged wildly, with League members failing to take concerted action against Japanese imperialism in Asia, and German and Italian expansionism in Europe and Africa. |
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| An approach to international politics that concerns itself with the centrality of ideas and human consciousness and stresses a holistic and idealist view of structures. As constructivists have examined world politics they have been broadly interested in how the structure constructs the actors' identities and interests, how their interactions are organized and constrained by that structure, and how their very interaction serves to either reproduce or transform that structure. |
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| American political strategy for resisting perceived Soviet expansion, first publicly espoused by an American diplomat, George Kennan, in 1947. Containment became a powerful factor in American policy towards the Soviet Union for the next forty years, and a self-image of Western policy-makers. |
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| Denoting identification with a community, culture, or idea that transcends borders or particular societies, and implies freedom from local or national conventions/limitations. In the early 21st Century, the dominant cosmopolitanism was that of globalizing capitalism, which promoted a community and culture that was informed by market economics, a concept of universal human rights, and a relatively liberal social culture. The cosmopolitanism of globalizing capitalism fostered a degree of multiculturalism, although it sought to reconcile particular cultures to a common ground of universal political and economic principles. |
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| A central plank of liberal internationalist thought, the democratic peace thesis makes two claims: first, liberal polities exhibit restraint in their relations with other liberal polities (the so-called separate peace) but are imprudent in relations with authoritarian states. The validity of the democratic peace thesis has been fiercely debated in the IR literature. |
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| Relaxation of tension between East and West; Soviet-American détente lasted from the late 1960s to the late 1970s, and was characterized by negotiations and nuclear arms control agreements. |
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| A process in which the organization of social activities is increasingly less constrained by geographical proximity and national territorial boundaries. Accelerated by the technological revolution and refers to the diminuition of influence of territorial places, distances, and boundaries over the way people collectively identify themselves or seek political recognition. This permits an expansion of global civil society but equally an expansion of global criminal or terrorist networks. |
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| Development, core ideas, and assumptions |
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| In the orthodox view, the possibility of unlimited economic growth in a free-market system. Economies would reach a 'take-off' point and thereafter wealth would trickle down to those at the bottom. Superiority of the 'Western' model and knowledge. Belief that the process would ultimately benefit everyone. Domination, exploitation of nature. In the alternative view, sufficiency. The inherent value of nature, cultural diversity, and the community-controlled commons (water, land, air, forest). Human activity in balance with nature. Self-reliance. Democratic inclusion, participation, for example, voice for marginalized groups, e.g. women, indigenous groups. Local control. |
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| A distinct type of political entity, which may or may not be a state, possessing both a home territory and foreign territories. It is a disputed concept that some have tried to apply to the United States to describe its international reach, huge capabilities, and vital global role of underwriting world order. |
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| This is a state that has collapsed and cannot provide for its citizens without substantial external support and where the government of the state has ceased to exist inside the territorial borders of the state. |
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| A political project to understand so as to change women's inequality or oppression. For some, aiming to move beyond gender, so that it no longer matters; for others, to validate women's interests, experiences, and choices; for others, to work for more equal and inclusive social relations overall. |
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| What it means to be male or female in a particular place or time; the social construction of sexual difference. |
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| Gendered division of labour (GDL) |
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| The notion of 'women's work', which everywhere includes women's primary responsibility for childcare and housework, and which designates many public and paid forms of work as 'women's' or 'men's', too. |
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| A historical process involving a fundamental shift or transformation in the spatial scale of human social organization that links distant communities and expands the reach of power relations across regions and continents. It is also something of a catch-all phrase often used to describe a single world-economy after the collapse of communism, though sometimes employed to define the growing integration of the international capitalist system in the post-war period. |
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| A system regulated by a dominant leader, or political (and/or economic) domination of a region, usually by a superpower. In realist theory, the influence a Great Power is able to establish on other states in the system; extent of influence ranges from leadership to dominance. It is also power and control exercised by a leading state over other states. |
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| Holds that ideas have important causal effect on events in international politics, and that ideas can change. Referred to by realists as utopianism since it underestimates the logic of power politics and the constraints this imposes upon political action. Idealism as a substantive theory of international relations is generally associated with the claim that it is possible to create a world of peace. But idealism as a social theory refers to the claim that the most fundamental feature of society is social consciousness. Ideas shape how we see ourselves and our interests, the knowledge that we use to categorize and understand the world, the beliefs we have of others, and the possible and impossible solutions to challenges and threats. The emphasis on ideas does not mean a neglect of material forces such as technology and geography. Instead it is to suggest that the meanings and consequences of these material forces are not given by nature but rather driven by human interpretations and understandings. Idealists seek to apply liberal thinking in domestic politics to international relations, in other words, institutionalize the rule of law. This reasoning is known as the domestic analogy. According to idealists in the early twentieth century, there were two principal requirements for a new world order. First: state leaders, intellectuals, and public opinion had to believe that progress was possible. Second: an international organization had to be created to facilitate peaceful change, disarmament, arbitration, and (where necessary) enforcement. The League of Nations was founded in 1920 but its collective security system failed to prevent the descent into world war in the 1930s. |
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| The understanding of the self in relationship to an 'other'. Identities are social and thus are always formed in relationship to others. Constructivists generally hold that identities shape interests; we cannot know what we want unless we know who we are. But because identities are social and are produced through interactions, identities can change. |
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| The practice of foreign conquest and rule in the context of global relations of hierarchy and subordination. It can lead to the establishment of an empire. |
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| Persistent and having connected sets of rules and practices that prescribe roles, constrain activity, and shape the expectations of actors. Institutions may include organizations, bureaucratic agencies, treaties and agreements, and informal practices that states accept as binding. The balance of power in the international system is an example of an institution. (Adapted from Haas, Keohane, and Levy 1993: 4-5.) |
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| A process of ever closer union between states, in a regional or international context. The process often begins with cooperation to solve technical problems, referred to by Mitrany (1943) as ramification. |
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| A condition where states (or peoples) are affected by decisions taken by others; for example, a decision to raise interest rates in the USA automatically exerts upward pressure on interest rates in other states. Interdependence can be symmetric, i.e. both sets of actors are affected equally, or it can be asymmetric, where the impact varies between actors. A condition where the actions of one state impact upon other states (can be strategic interdependence or economic). Realists equate interdependence with vulnerability. |
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| Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) |
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| An international organization in which full legal membership is officially solely open to states and the decision-making authority lies with representatives from governments. |
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| The formal rules of conduct that states acknowledge or contract between themselves. |
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| International Monetary Fund (IMF) |
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| providing extensive technical assistance and short-term flows of stabilization finance to any of those members experiencing temporarily distressed public finances. Since 1978 it has undertaken comprehensive surveillance of the economic performance of individual member states as a precursor to introducing 'corrective' programmes for those countries it deems to have followed the wrong policy course. |
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| International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) |
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| An international organization in which membership is open to transnational actors. There are many different types, with membership from 'national' NGOs, local NGOs, companies, political parties, or individual people. A few have other INGOs as members and some have mixed membership structures. |
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| The normative and the institutional pattern in the relationship between states. The elements of this might be thought to include such things as sovereignty, the forms of diplomacy, international law, the role of the great powers, and the codes circumscribing the use of force. |
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| This term is used to denote high levels of international interaction and interdependence, most commonly with regard to the world economy. The term is often used to distinguish this condition from globalization, as the latter implies that there are no longer distinct national economies in a position to interact. |
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| A religious faith developed by the Prophet Muhammad which in the contemporary period functions as a form of political identity for millions and the inspiration of what some at least now regard as the most important ideological opposition to Western modern values. |
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| According to Doyle (1997: 207), Liberalism includes the following four claims. First, all citizens are juridically equal and have equal rights to education, access to a free press, and religious toleration. Second, the legislative assembly of the state possesses only the authority invested in it by the people, whose basic rights it is not permitted to abuse. Third, a key dimension of the liberty of the individual is the right to own property including productive forces. Fourth, Liberalism contends that the most effective system of economic exchange is one that is largely market driven and not one that is subordinate to bureaucratic regulation and control either domestically or internationally. |
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| A distribution of power among a number (at least three) of major powers or 'poles'. |
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| Invoked by realists and state leaders to signify that which is most important to the state- survival being at the top of the list. |
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| A political community in which the state claims legitimacy on the grounds that it represents the nation. The nation-state would exist if nearly all the members of a single nation were organized in a single state, without any other national communities being present. Although the term is widely used, no such entities exist. |
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| Modification of the realist approach, by recognizing economic resources (in addition to military capabilities) are a basis for exercising influence and also an attempt to make realism 'more scientific' by borrowing models from economics and behavioural social science to explain international politics. |
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| Non-governmental organization (NGO) |
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| Any group of people relating to each other regularly in some formal manner and engaging in collective action, provided that the activities are non-commercial, nonviolent and are not on behalf of a government. They are often presumed to be altruistic groups or public interest groups, such as Amnesty International, Oxfam or Greenpeace, but in UN practice they may come from any sector of civil society, including trades unions and faith communities. |
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| A term widely used to mean any actor that is not a government. |
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| Specify general standards of behaviour, and identify the rights and obligations of states. So, in the case of the GATT, the basic norm is that tariffs and non-tariff barriers should be reduced and eventually eliminated. Together, norms and principles define the essential character of a regime and these cannot be changed without transforming the nature of the regime. |
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| Contemporary international and transnational relations of race, migration, ethnicity, culture, knowledge, power, and identity. |
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| The study of the interactions between European states and the societies they colonized in the modern period. |
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| In the most general sense, the ability of a political actor to achieve its goals. In the realist approach, it is assumed that possession of capabilities will result in influence, so the single word, power, is often used ambiguously to cover both. In the pluralist approach, it is assumed that political interactions can modify the translation of capabilities into influence and therefore it is important to distinguish between the two. Power is defined by most realists in terms of the important resources such as size of armed forces, gross national product, and population that a state possesses. There is the implicit belief that material resources translate into influence. Poststructuralists understand power as productive that is as referring to the constitution of subjectivity in discourse. Knowledge is interwoven with power. |
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| The theoretical approach that analyzes all international relations as the relation of states engaged in the pursuit of power. Realism cannot accommodate non-state actors within its analysis. |
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| See also international regime. These are sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations. They are social institutions that are based on agreed rules, norms, principles, and decision-making procedures. These govern the interactions of various state and nonstate actors in issue-areas such as the environment or human rights. The global market in coffee, for example, is governed by a variety of treaties, trade agreements, scientific and research protocols, market protocols, and the interests of producers, consumers, and distributors. States organize these interests and consider the practices, rules, and procedures to create a governing arrangement or regime that controls the production of coffee, monitors its distribution, and ultimately determines the price for consumers. (Adapted from Young 1997: 6.) |
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| 'A group of people which has become "integrated". By integration we mean the attainment, within a territory, of a "sense of community" and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure . . . dependable expectations of "peaceful change" among its population. By a "sense of community" we mean a belief . . . that common social problems must and can be resolved by processes of "peaceful change" ' (Karl Deutsch et al. 1957). |
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| The principle that within its territorial boundaries the state is the supreme political authority, and that outside those boundaries the state recognizes no higher political authority. |
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| The one word is used to refer to three distinct concepts: (1) In international law, a state is an entity that is recognized to exist when a government is in control of a population residing within a defined territory. It is comparable to the idea in domestic law of a company being a legal person. Such entities are seen as possessing sovereignty that is recognised by other states in the international system. (2) In the study of international politics, each state is a country. It is a community of people who interact in the same political system. (3) In philosophy and sociology, the state consists of the apparatus of government, in its broadest sense, covering the executive, the legislature, the administration, the judiciary, the armed forces, and the police. For Weber, the essential domestic feature of a state was a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. |
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| The use of illegitimate violence by sub-state groups to inspire fear, by attacking civilians and/or symbolic targets. This is done for purposes such as drawing widespread attention to a grievance, provoking a severe response, or wearing down their opponent's moral resolve, to affect political change. Determining when the use of violence is legitimate, which is based on contextual morality of the act as opposed to its effects, is the source for disagreement over what constitutes terrorism. |
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| A notion that was first used in the late 1950s to define both the underdeveloped world and the political and economic project that would help overcome underdevelopment: employed less in the post-cold war era. |
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| Any civil society actor from one country that has relations with any actor from another country or with an international organization. |
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| Treaties of Westphalia 1648 |
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| The Treaties of Osnabruck and Munster, which together form the 'Peace of Westphalia', ended the Thirty Years War and were crucial in delimiting the political rights and authority of European monarchs. Among other things, the Treaties granted monarchs rights to maintain standing armies, build fortifications, and levy taxes. |
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| A distribution of power internationally in which there is clearly only one dominant power or 'pole'. Some analysts argue that the international system became unipolar in the 1990s since there was no longer any rival to American power. |
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| World Trade Organization (WTO) |
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| Established in 1995 with headquarters in Geneva, with 153 members as of early 2010. It is a permanent institution covering services, intellectual property and investment issues as well as pure merchandise trade, and it has a disputes settlement mechanism in order to enforce its free trade agenda. |
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