Course Organization
Professor:
David Sylvan
Course Description
This course (E037) is an overview of the current world of international relations as that world is understood and studied by professional political scientists. A number of the phenomena we will be looking at have also been dealt with by scholars from other academic disciplines, but as their fetish concepts are quite different, so too will be both their definitions of those phenomena and the stories they tell about them. The aim of this course is thus to learn not only about international relations but about a way in which international relations can be understood.
In surveying the world of international relations, we will be focusing on particular phenomena and on some of the characteristic claims made about those phenomena by political scientists. The choice of phenomena and claims is in turn organized around the transactions, units, and modes of governance typical of today’s world of international relations and its immediate predecessor. That “TUG” approach is a prototheory of its own and we will develop it over the course of the semester with the aim, I hope, of getting a better sense of how international relations phenomena fit together, where our world came from, and where we might be going.
Since for the most part, we (luckily) do not have the ability to carry out experiments in international relations, we have to restrict ourselves on what has happened in the past and what (secrecy aside) we can learn about what is happening today. For this reason, it is essential not only to read on a daily basis at least one good newspaper but also to acquire some historical knowledge, particularly about the post-1945 (and, more generally, the post-1815) period. When you run across (as inevitably you will) references to past events of which you know little or nothing, look them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica or some other reputable source.
The course is designed around weekly class sessions, based on readings. Although I will from time to time succumb to the temptation to lecture you, I intend to struggle against this and to have most of the class sessions be spent in discussion. In either case, you will get very little out of the sessions if you do not prepare beforehand by doing all of the required readings in a critical (perhaps even vicious) manner. Please bring the readings to class so that we can all go over particular passages.
In addition, I will also ask you to write 5 short (2-page) memoranda, on topics announced by me in advance and in which you construct a skeletal argument about the topics. Those memoranda must be emailed to the course assistant, Nell Williams, no later than 10.00 the day of the course; they will be annotated and returned to you at the end of the class session the following week. Each memo will count for 10% of your grade; if, as I would expect, you improve over the course of the semester, I will count the later papers more than the earlier ones.
Finally, there will be a take-home test the last week of the semester. This, like the memos, is designed to get you to learn how to analyze disparate materials with precision and concision. It will count for 50% of your course grade.
Mechanics. The course readings are obtainable in three forms. The required readings which are book chapters will be assembled into a photocopy packet, available for purchase. The required and optional readings which are journal articles or dissertation chapters will be available online, either through the library’s journal portal or else posted to the course website; this also goes (in password-protected form) for the first few weeks of book chapters. The optional readings which are books or book chapters will be placed on reserve in the library as books.
My office hours are Thurs. 16.30 to 17.30 and by appointment. My office is Rigot 28; my telephone number is 022 908 59 42; my e-mail is david.sylvan@graduateinstitute.ch. Nell is in Rigot 38; her phone number is 022 908 59 51; her e-mail is nell.williams@graduateinstitute.ch; and her office hours are Tues. 16.00-17.00 and Thurs. 16.00-17.00. The course web site is: http://graduateinstitute.ch/political-science/introduction-international-relations-2009_en.html
Class Schedule and Course Syllabus
Week 1. Sep. 16.
Introduction: Governance (how not to think about it)
No required reading
Optional: Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade Boom 1500-1800” (2001) NBER Working Paper 8186.
Optional: Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics: 1763-1848 (1994), chap. 1.
Optional (very): To get a sense of what a world looks like once it has come into being from its separate predecessors): Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy 1400 to the Present (1999). Alternatively (thinner but more readable), Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (2008).
Week 2. Sep. 23
I. TUG 1815-1945. A. Transactions
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Engl. trans. 1888. Available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848-1875 (1975), chaps. 2, 3, 11.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914 (1987), chap. 2.
Larry H. Addington, The Patterns of War Since the Eighteenth Century, 2d edn. (1994), ch. 1, pt. 1; ch. 2, pts. 1-2; ch. 3, pts. 1-2; ch. 5, pts. 2-3.
Optional: Paul Bairoch, “European Trade Policy, 1815-1914,” Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 8 (1989).
Optional: David Eltis, “Free and Coerced Transatlantic Migrations: Some Comparisons,” American Historical R. 88,2 (1983): 251-80.
Week 3. Sep. 30
I. TUG 1815-1945. B. Units
Hobsbawm, Age of Capital, chaps. 5, 6.
Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, chaps. 4, 6.
Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (1981), chaps. 2, 3.
Optional: Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914 (1993), chaps. 11-14.
Week 4. Oct. 7
I. TUG 1815-1945. C. Governance
Paul W. Schroeder, “Alliances, 1815-1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management” (1976), in K. Knorr, ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems. Note: the version in the photocopy packet is a reprint in a subsequent volume of some of Schroeder’s essays.
Schroeder, “The 19th-Century International System: Changes in the Structure,” World Politics 39,1 (1986): 1-26.
Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, chap. 3.
Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003), chaps. 4, 5.
Optional: Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944), chap. 1.
Optional: Mark L. Haas, The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789-1989 (2005), chs. 2-3.
Week 5. Oct. 14
II. TUG 1945-present. A. Transactions. 1. Investment, trade, migration
Richard E. Baldwin and Philippe Martin, “Two Waves of Globalisation: Superficial Similarities, Fundamental Differences” (1999) NBER Working Paper 6904.
Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration, 3d edn (2003), chaps. 4, 6.
Bruce Cumings, “The Origins and Development of the Northeast Asian Political Economy: Industrial Sectors, Product Cycles, and Political Consequences,” International Organization 38,1 (1984): 1-40.
Optional (if you want some background on the mechanics of trade and capital flows): Joseph M. Grieco and G. John Ikenberry, State Power and World Markets: the International Political Economy (2003), chaps. 2, 3.
Optional: Charles S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (2006), chaps. 5, 6.
Optional (if you want a vivid sense of how trade and investment operate, globally, for a particular commodity): Pietra Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade (2005).
Week 6. Oct. 21
II. TUG 1945-present. A. Transactions. 2. Security communities and zones of war
Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (1998), pp. 3-9, 29-37, and also chaps. 3 (Ole Waever, “Insecurity, Security, and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community”) and 11 (Bruce Russett, “A Neo-Kantian Perspective: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations in Building Security Communities”).
Nils Petter Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset,” J. of Peace Research 39,5 (2002): 615-37. Also consult the latest version of the dataset, available as an Excel file on the CSCW website: http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/Armed-Conflict/UCDP-PRIO/Armed-Conflicts-Version-X-2009/ An article, based on the latest version and discussing wars currently being fought, is Lotta Harbom and Peter Wallensteen, “Armed Conflicts, 1946-2008,” J. of Peace Research 46,4 (2009): 577-87.
Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, “Deterrence and the Cold War,” Political Science Q. 110,2 (1995): 157-81.
Optional: P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (2003), part. 1. (On this same subject, see also Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army [2007].)
Optional: Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go To War (2005), chap. 1.
Week 7. Oct. 28
II. TUG 1945-present. B. Units. 1. Permeability
Robert D. Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42,3 (1988): 427-60.
Thomas Risse-Kappen, “Public Opinion, Domestic Structure, and Foreign Policy in Liberal Democracies,” World Politics 43,4 (1991): 479-512.
Dennis M. Foster and Glenn Palmer, “Presidents, Public Opinion, and Diversionary Behavior: The Role of Partisan Support Reconsidered,” Foreign Policy Analysis 2,3 (2006): 269-87.
Jean Garrison, “Constructing the ‘National Interest’ in U.S.-China Policy Making: How Foreign Policy Decision Groups Define and Signal Policy Choices,” Foreign Policy Analysis 3,2 (2007): 105-26.
Optional: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), chap. 1.
Optional: Philip J. Powlick, “The Sources of Public Opinion for American Foreign Policy Officials,” International Studies Q. 39 (1995): 427-51.
Optional: Benjamin O. Fordham, “Economic Interests, Party, and Ideology in Early Cold War Era U.S. Foreign Policy,” International Organization 52,2 (1998): 359-96.
Week 8. Nov. 4
Mid-semester discussion break:
The war on “violent extremism” and NATO’s intervention in Afghanistan
John Mueller, “How Dangerous are the Taliban?” Foreign Affairs, April 15, 2009.
John Mueller, “Assessing Measures to Protect the Homeland,” July 11, 2009.
Andrew Bacevich, “The War We Can’t Win,” Commonweal, August 14, 2009.
“Public Opinion in U.S. Turns Against Afghan War,” Washington Post, August 20, 2009.
Other articles to be posted.
Week 9. Nov. 11 [Note: I will be out of town on this date and so the class session will have to be rescheduled.]
II. TUG 1945-present. B. Units. 2. Bureaucracy and psychology
Paul ‘t Hart, Eric K. Stern, and Bengt Sundelius, eds., Beyond Groupthink: Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy Making (1997), chaps. 1 (‘t Hart, Stern, and Sundelius, “Foreign Policy-making at the Top: Political Group Dynamics”) and 3 (Sally Riggs Fuller and Ramon J. Aldag, “Challenging the Mindguards: Moving Small Group Analysis Beyond Groupthink”).
Charles S. Taber, “The Interpretation of Foreign Policy Events: A Cognitive Process Theory,” in D. Sylvan and J. Voss, eds., Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision-Making (1998).
Daniel W. Drezner, “Ideas, Bureaucratic Politics, and the Crafting of Foreign Policy,” American J. of Political Science 44,4 (2000): 733-49.
Stephen Benedict Dyson and Thomas Preston, “Individual Characteristics of Political Leaders and the Use of Analogy in Foreign Policy Decision Making,” Political Psychology 27,2 (2006): 265-88.
Optional: Barbara Levitt and James G. March, “Organizational Learning,” Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988): 319-40.
Optional: B. Guy Peters, “Governance: A Garbage Can Perspective” (2002) Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Political Science Series 84. Available online at: http://www.ihs.ac.at/publications/pol/wp_84.pdf
Optional: Milton Lodge and Charles S. Taber, “The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis,” Political Psychology 26,3 (2005): 455-82.
Week 10. Nov. 18
II. TUG 1945-present. C. Governance. 1. Regimes. a. Rules
(Note: see the definition by Stephen D. Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36,2 [1982]: 186 [the middle paragraph on the page]. If you prefer, you may of course read the entire article, but the point here is to focus on the definition of regimes, which is contained in that one paragraph.)
John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36,2 (1982): 379-415.
Frank Schimmelfennig, “Arms Control Regimes and the Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Realism, Institutionalism and Regime Robustness,” Cooperation and Conflict 29,2 (1994): 115-48.
Ronnie D. Lipschutz and Cathleen Fogel, “‘Regulation for the Rest of Us?’ Global Civil Society and the Privatization of Transnational Regulation,” in R. Hall and T. Biersteker, The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (2002).
James D. Morrow, “When Do States Follow the Laws of War?” American Political Science R. 101,3 (2007): 559-72.
Optional: Jack Donnelly, “International Human Rights: A Regime Analysis,” International Organization 40,3 (1986): 599-642.
Optional: Ethan A. Nadelmann, “Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society,” International Organization 44,4 (1990): 479-526.
Optional: Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (1998), chap. 1.
Optional: Kenneth W. Abbott, “International Relations Theory, International Law, and the Regime Governing Atrocities in Internal Conflicts,” American J. of International Law 93,2 (1999): 361-79.
Optional: Philip McMichael, “Sleepless Since Seattle: What is the WTO About?” R. of International Political Economy 7,3 (2000): 466-74.
Optional: Martha Finnemore and Stephen J. Toope, “Alternatives to ‘Legalization’: Richer Views of Law and Politics,” International Organization 55,3 (2001): 743-58.
Optional: Michael P. Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau, and Peter Garber, “An Essay on the Revised Bretton Woods System” (2003) NBER Working Paper 9971.
Optional: Harold James, The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire (2006), chaps. 3-4.
Week 11. Nov. 25
II. TUG 1945-present. C. Governance. 1. Regimes. b. Asymmetry
Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Decisions and Non-decisions: An Analytical Framework,” American Political Science R. 57 (1963): 632-42.
Katarina Tomaševski, Responding to Human Rights Violations 1946-1999 (2000), chaps. 1, 2, 12.
Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (2002), chaps. 1-3.
Klaus Dingwerth, “North-South Parity in Global Governance: The Affirmative Procedures of the Forest Stewardship Council,” Global Governance 14,1 (2008): 53-71.
Optional: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “Associated-Dependent Development: Theoretical and Practical Implications,” in A. Stepan, ed., Authoritarian Brazil: Origins, Policies, and Future (1973).
Optional: Ellen L. Lutz and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Human Rights Law and Practice in Latin America,” International Organization 54,3 (2000): 633-59.
Optional: Robert Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” American Political Science Review 97,3 (2003): 343-61. [Note: Pape has a more elaborated argument in his 2005 book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, chaps. 3, 4, 6, 8.]
Optional: Liza Schuster, “A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut: Deportation, Detention and Dispersal in Europe,” Social Policy and Administration 39,6 (2005): 606-21.
Optional: Lloyd Gruber, “Power Politics and the Institutionalization of International Relations,” in M. Barnett and R. Duvall, eds., Power in Global Governance (2005).
Week 12. Dec. 2
II. TUG 1945-present. C. Governance. 2. Institutions and integration. a. International
Robert W. Cox, “Labor and Hegemony,” International Organization 31,3 (1977): 385-424.
John Gerard Ruggie, “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution,” International Organization 46,3 (1992): 561-98.
Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics (2004), chaps. 1, 2, 5, 6.
Optional: Chadwick F. Alger, “United Nations Participation as a Learning Experience,” Public Opinion Q. 27,3 (1963): 411-26. Optional: also idem, “The United Nations in Historical Perspective,” in Alger, G. Lyons, and J. Trent, eds., The United Nations System: The Policies of Member States (1995).
Optional: Inis L. Claude, Jr., “Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United Nations,” International Organization 20,3 (1966): 367-79.
Optional: Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945 (1968), chap. 18.
Optional: Bruce Cronin, “The Paradox of Hegemony: America’s Ambiguous Relationship with the United Nations,” European J. of International Relations 7,1 (2001): 103-30.
Optional: John Gerard Ruggie, “Reconstituting the Global Public Domain – Issues, Actors, and Practices, European J. of International Relations 10,4 (2004): 499-531.
Optional: Corinne Graff, “Words that Bind: Case Studies in the Sociology of Multilateral Institutions” Ph.D. thesis, IUHEI (2007), introduction and chaps. 1, 7.
Week 13. Dec. 9
II. TUG 1945-present. C. Governance. 2. Institutions and integration. b. Regional and supranational
Johan Galtung, The European Community: A Superpower in the Making (1973), chaps. 2, 3, 5.
Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, “American Hegemony – Without an Enemy,” Foreign Policy 92 (1993): 5-23. Optional: Also Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (2006), chap. 5.
Michael W. Mosser, “Engineering Influence: The [Subtle] Power of Small States in the CSCE/OSCE” (2000). Available online at: http://www.bmlv.gv.at/pdf_pool/publikationen/05_small_states_07.pdf
Ian Hurd, “Myths of Membership: The Politics of Legitimation in UN Security Council Reform,” Global Governance 14,2 (2008): 199-217.
Optional: Frank Schimmelfennig, “The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union,” International Organization 55,1 (2001): 47-80.
Optional: Perry Anderson and Stuart Hall, “The Politics of the Common Market,” New Left R. 1st ser., 10 (1961). Available online (with login password) at the course web site.
Optional: Heikki Patomäki and Teivo Teivanen, “Critical Responses to Neoliberal Globalization in the Mercosur Region: Roads Towards Cosmopolitan Democracy,” R. of International Political Economy 9,1 (2002): 37-71.
Optional: Leo G. Michel, “NATO Decisionmaking: Au Revoir to the Consensus Rule?” Strategic Forum 202 (2003). Available online at: http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/SF202/SF202.pdf
Optional: Mark Beeson, “The United States and Southeast Asia: Change and Continuity in American Hegemony,” in K. Jayasuriya, ed., Asian Regional Govenance: Crisis and Change (2004). Available online at: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cache/papers/cs2/376/http:zSzzSzeprint.uq.edu.auzSzarchivezSz00000492zSz01zSzmb2003.pdf/the-united-states-and.pdf
Optional: Andrés Malamud and Philippe C. Schmitter, “The Experience of European Integration and the Potential for Integration in MERCOSUR” (2006). Available online at: http://www.usal.es/~dpublico//areacp/Doctorado0507/seminario_inv/malamud_seminario06.pdf
Week 14. Dec. 16
Take-home test
