Theories and Theorists of International Relations (E263)

Course Organization

Time & Location:
Thursday, 14:15-16:00, Rigot

Professor:
David Sylvan
Office: Rigot 28
Office hours: Wednesday 16.30 to 17.30 and by appointment
Telephone: 022 908 59 42
Email: sylvan@hei.unige.ch

Assistant:
Andrew Prosser
Office: Rigot 35
Office hours: Tuesday 16:15 - 17:30
Telephone: 022 908 59 48
Email: prosser0@hei.unige.ch

Course Description

This course is an introduction to international relations as an analytical field of research. It is intended to give students a sense of how theories are constructed and, via logical reflection and empirical research, improved upon. Secondarily, the aim is also to introduce students to some of the major theoretical developments in the field of international relations since its inception as a self-conscious scholarly discipline in the 1920s. However, it should be understood that no one course, even were there world enough and time, could survey adequately all the different theoretical debates and subfields in the discipline.

The course is divided into two substantive parts. In the first, we will look at what could be called steps toward theories of international relations: various writings in the past and more recently about international relations, intended in a certain sense to be abstract, general, and to some degree systematic. These writings cover both the so-called classical antecedents of international relations (including the once-again canonical, but in my view overrated, Thucydides) and different contemporary knowledge claims, the latter often characterized with the label “IR theory” (note the singular).¹

In the second part of the course, we turn to three major figures in the development of international relations as a scholarly discipline – Quincy Wright, Harold Lasswell, and Karl Deutsch – along with a fourth figure, Herbert Simon, whose work exercised a profound influence on the field. (To get a hint of my views on Wright, Lasswell, and Deutsch, see the encyclopedia article of mine in the photocopy packet.²) While Carlylean “great man” arguments are rightly suspect, these individuals were able to structure the discipline by laying out major theoretical and research agendas, many of which are still being pursued today. The plan is to spend a week on each of their writings, then one or two weeks apiece on follow-ups.

Those of you familiar with the history of both political science and international relations as a self-conscious scholarly discipline will note that I am assigning disproportionately high numbers of “behavioralist” readings. The reason for this, as I will discuss during the first day of class, is that however limited these works are (I could go on for great length about the limitations), they have the great virtues of being explicit, precise, and of taking a synoptic view of the theory-building process.

During each class session, we will be looking at from three to six readings, most of them self-contained journal articles or book chapters. What I want to do is to see how these readings are put together, so to speak, as theoretical claims: to take them apart, see how they tick, enumerate both their advances and their flaws, and suggest ways in which they could be improved. We will do this over and over; the aim is to build up a sense of intellectual craftsmanship which, in turn, you can call upon in other courses, in your mémoire work next year, and, I hope, for many years to come. I expect that at first, this process of theory construction will seem mysterious; but with enough practice, you will gradually develop a sense for how theories work.

To this end, it is critical for you to come to class having done the reading in advance and having jotted down a brief summary of the arguments in each text, along with some questions you have about it. Of course we will summarize those arguments, but you will gain much more from class if you are not approaching these texts for the first time. In the past, students have found it useful to establish small informal reading groups and discuss the texts among themselves; and you may wish to do this as well. You will also benefit from the course if you speak in class from time to time; in this way, you will, by articulating a position, do some of the kind of analytic work that is necessary in any case. I have made up a photocopy packet of readings which I strongly recommend you purchase; other readings are available on-line (at least if you log in from an HEI computer). It is important to bring the readings to the class sessions, so that you can follow along in the text when particular passages are referred to.

In addition, I have found that it is helpful for students to have some background in subjects relevant to theories of international relations. Rather than simply assume – wrongly, in many cases – that you have this background, I will list some classic works on which, if there is sufficient interest, I could give supplementary and nonrequired lectures.³

As assignments, I will ask you to write two analytic papers during the semester. You will also have a take-home test at the end of classes. I will indicate the dates of each of these exercises to you during the semester; you probably will be given a week to write each paper, and 48 or 72 hours to do the test. Each paper counts for a quarter of your course grade; the test counts for half.

A word about how this course differs from the other introductory one I am giving at the same time, for the students in the MIA program. That latter course is designed for students who have had little or no background in political science; it is focused on characteristic empirical phenomena and broad trends in international relations; and although there will certainly be numerous theories put forward and discussed, the emphasis will be on their ability (or failure) to account for phenomena, rather than on how to construct and extend theories. Those of you who feel that you have certain lacunae on particular phenomena of international relations may find it useful to go over the relevant readings from the MIA course between semesters or during the summer.

The assistant in the course is Andrew Prosser. His e-mail is prosser0@hei.unige.ch; his office is Rigot 35; his phone is 022 908 5948; and his office hours are Tuesdays 16.15 to 17.30. Information about the course (this syllabus, announcements, and so forth) can be found on the course web site: http://hei.unige.ch/sections/sp/courses/0607/sylvan/ theories.html

Footnotes:

1	In my view, the best single graduate-level textbook on theories of international relations (although of course its references are long out of date) is Quincy Wright, The Study of International Relations (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts 1955). His Chicago colleague, Frederick L. Schuman, wrote what I still think is the best undergraduate textbook on international relations (it was regularly revised during his lifetime): International Politics: An Introduction to the Western State System (New York and London: McGraw-Hill 1933).
2	“International Relations and Connections,” in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, vol. 2, eds. M.K. Cayton and P.W. Williams (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 2001).
3	Classical social theory: - Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology. - Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. - Georg Simmel, “Conflict,” ch. 4 of Sociology. - Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. - Marcel Mauss, The Gift. Epistemology and philosophy of social science: - Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method. - Weber, Economy and Society, pt. 1, ch. 1. - Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. - Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. - Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Course Outline and Readings

Week 1, October 26, 2006,
Intro: Theories of social phenomena

As this is the first class session, I obviously will not ask you to do readings in advance. But the argument I will lay out about the structure of theories and the nature of research is one which undergirds much of research practice in the social sciences; and thus if you read some of the more epistemologically self-conscious writings of various scholars, you will recognize the components of that argument. You might begin with the writings of one of the really great thinkers in the social and behavioral sciences, Donald T. Campbell.⁴

Footnote:

Week 2, November 2, 2006,
Steps toward theory, 1:
Conceptual distinctions and motivations

Required reading:

• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, bk. 1. The Crawley trans. is available on-line at http://www.ucalgary.ca/ ~vandersp/Courses/texts/thucydi1.html
• Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, chs. 1-14. I prefer the Bondanella and Musa trans., but Marriott’s trans. is conveniently on-line at http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/ publications/machiavelli.html

Optional reading:

• Kautilya, The Arthashastra, selections on foreign policy (the version I am making available for copying is the trans. and rearr. edn. of L.N. Rangarajan, Penguin Books India 1992: pp. 553-79).
• Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, selections on dynasties (the version I am making available for copying is the Bollingen ed. trans. by Franz Rosenthal, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1958: pp. 313-85).

Week 3, November 9, 2006,
Steps toward theory, 2:
Transcendental reasoning, trends, aggregation

Required reading:

• Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” and “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” trans. H.B. Nisbet, in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant’s Political Writings, 2nd enl. edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991). Online versions at http://www. fordham.edu/halsall/mod/kant-whatis.html (you will probably have to type in this URL and all the other Fordham ones, as cutting and pasting it sends you a level or two higher) and at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/kant/kant1.htm
• David Mitrany, “The Functional Approach to World Organization,” International Affairs 24,3 (July 1948): 350-63.
• Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley 1979), chs. 5-6.

Optional reading:

• V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, chs. 5-7 (note that the beginning of ch. 7 contains a summary of the argument to that point). Available in a reasonable translation online at http://www.fordham.edu/ halsall/mod/1916lenin imperialism.html
• Arnold Wolfers, “The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference,” World Politics 4,1 (Oct. 1951): 39-63.
• J. David Singer, “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,” World Politics 14,1 (Oct. 1961): 77-92.
• John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36,2 (Spring 1982): 379-415.
• Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,” International Organization 46,2 (Spring 1992): 391-425.
• Andrew Moravcsik, “A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization 51,4 (Autumn 1997): 513-53.

Week 4, November 16, 2006,
War, 1: Mapping the field

Required reading:

• Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1942), vol. 1: analytical table of contents, ch. 9, apps. 10, 15-6, 19-21; vol. 2: analytical table of contents, chs. 16-7, 19-20, 35-6, apps. 40-3.
  Note: this is an immense amount of reading and we will have to spread it across two class sessions. Be sure that you read the appendices, even if they seem, a priori, fatally boring; a posteriori, you will find out that they are not.

Optional reading:

• To get a sense of current data sets on war, take a look at the recent piece by Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “A Revised List of Wars Between and Within Independent States, 1816-2002,” International Interactions 30,3 (Sep. 2004): 231-62; and also at PRIO’s CSCW data set website: http://www.prio.no/page/ CSCW_research_detail/Programme_detail_CSCW/9649/ 45925.html

Week 5, November 23, 2006,
War, 2: Extensions

Required reading:

• William R. Thompson, “Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics,” International Studies Q. 45,4 (Dec. 2001): 557-86.
• Douglas M. Gibler, Toby J. Rider, and Marc L. Hutchison, “Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: Conventional Arms Races During Periods of Rivalry,” J. of Peace Research 42,4 (Mar. 2005): 131-47.
• Cameron G. Thies, “War, Rivalry, and State-Building in Latin America,” American J. of Political Science 49,3 (Jul. 2005): 451-65.

Optional reading:

• Optional, but worth working through: Sarah E. Croco and Tze Kwang Teo, “Assessing the Dyadic Approach to Interstate Conflict Processes: A.k.a. ‘Dangerous’ Dyad-Years,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 22,1 (Spring 2005): 5-18.

Week 6, November 30, 2006,
War, 3: “Democratic Peace”

Required reading:

• Bruce Russett and John O’Neal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton 2001), chs. 1-5.
• Sebastian Rosato, “The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory,” American Political Science R. 97,4 (Nov. 2003): 585-602.
• Forum on Rosato’s paper (above): American Political Science R. 99,3 (Aug. 2005): 453-72.
• Douglas A. Van Belle, “Dinosaurs and the Democratic Peace: Paleontological lessons for Avoiding the Extinction of Theory in Political Science,” International Studies Perspectives 7,3 (Aug. 2006): 287-306.

Optional reading:

• If you are willing to wade through some statistical arguments, there is an interesting symposium that came out four years ago: International Organization 55,2 (Jun. 2001): 439-507. Try and grasp the basic thrust of the critique by Green, Kim, and Yoon (“Dirty Pool”: 441-68).

Week 7, December 7, 2006
[NOTE: I will be out of town and this class will have to be rescheduled.]
Psychology and symbols, 1:
Propositions and methodologies

Required reading:

• Harold D. Lasswell, World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York and London: Whittlesey House/McGraw-Hill 1935), chs. 1-10.
  Note: the year after this book was published, Lasswell produced a version designed for a more popular audience: Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: McGraw-Hill 1936). I would prefer you to read the earlier version, and have put it in the photocopied packet. Lasswell’s argument is based in part on Freud’s theory of personality; I’ll go over the basics of this in class, but you might find it helpful to browse around a bit in case you haven’t already read Freud. A good place to start is the little essay Freud published in 1923, trans. as The Ego and the Id; see also Anna Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1937).

Optional reading:

• Harold D. Lasswell, “The Garrison State,” American J. of Sociology 46,4 (Jan. 1941): 455-68.
• Harold D. Lasswell, “The Language of Power,” “Style in the Language of Politics,” and “Why be Quantitative?” in idem, Nathan Leites et al., Language of Politics: Studies in Quantitative Semantics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1949).
• Alan Zuckerman, “The Concept ‘Political Elite’: Lessons from Mosca and Pareto,” Journal of Politics 39,2 (1977): 324-44.
• William Ascher and Barbara Hirschfelder-Ascher, “Linking Lasswell’s Political Psychology and the Policy Sciences,” Policy Sciences 37 (2004): 23-36.

Week 8, December 14, 2006,
Psychology and symbols, 2:
Toward semantics

Required reading:

• Charles S. Taber, “POLI: An Expert System Model of U.S. Foreign Policy Belief Systems,” American Political Science R. 86,4 (Dec. 1992): 888-904.
• Akan Malici and Johnna Malici, “The Operational Codes of Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung: The Last Cold Warriors?” Political Psychology 26,3 (2005): 387-412.
• Jonathan W. Keller, “Leadership Style, Regime Type, and Foreign Policy Crisis Behavior: A Contingent Monadic Peace?” International Studies Q. 49,2 (Jun. 2005): 205-31.

Optional reading:

• G. Matthew Bonham, Victor M. Sergeev, and Pavel B. Parshin, “The Limited Test Ban Agreement: Emergence of New Knowledge Structures in International Negotiation,” International Studies Q. 41,2 (June 1997): 215 40.
• Leonie Huddy et al., “Threat, Anxiety, and Support of Antiterrorism Policies,” American J. of Political Science 49,3 (2005): 593-608.
• Robert Jervis, “Understanding Beliefs,” Political Psychology 27,5 (2006): 641-63.

Week 9, December 21, 2006,
Organizations and rationality, 1:
Routines and heuristics

Required reading:

• Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior, 4th edn. (1997), chaps. 1-4.
• Charles E. Lindblom, “The Science of ‘Muddling Through,’” Public Administration R. 19,2 (1959): 79-88.
• Barbara Levitt and James G. March, “Organizational Learning,” Annual R. of Sociology 14 (1988): 319-40.
• Johan P. Olsen, “Garbage Cans, New Institutionalism, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science R. 95,1 (2001): 191-8.

Optional reading:

• Herbert A. Simon, “Theories of Decision-Making in Economics and Behavioral Science,” American Economic R. 49,3 (Jun. 1959): 253-83.
• Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press 1969), chs. 2-3.
• Herbert A. Simon, “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science,” American Political Science R. 79,2 (Jun. 1985): 293-304.

Week 10, January 11, 2007,
Organizations and rationality, 2:
Foreign policy analysis

Required reading:

• Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown 1971), chs. 3-4, plus endnotes. Note: Allison revised his book and, along with Philip Zelikow, produced a second edition in 1999. Unfortunately, much of the conceptual and theoretical bite in “Model 2” has vanished in the new edition.
• Daniel Ellsberg, “The Quagmire Myth and the Stalemate Machine,” in Papers on the War (New York: Simon & Schuster 1972).
• John D. Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1974), ch. 3. Optional: you might also be interested in reading his preface to the second paperback edition (Princeton University Press 2003), available online at: http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/cybernetic_theory _of_decision.pdf
• Stephen Majeski and David Sylvan, “How Foreign Policy Recommendations Are Put Together: A Computational Model With Empirical Applications,” International Interactions 25,4 (1999): 301-32.

Optional reading:

• David Mitchell, “Centralizing Advisory Systems: Presidential Influence and the U.S. Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process,” Foreign Policy Analysis 1,2 (Jul. 2005): 181-206).

Week 11, January 18, 2007,
Transactions, 1: Integration and control

Required reading:

• Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1957), entire.

Optional reading:

• Karl W. Deutsch, “Toward an Inventory of Basic Trends and Patterns in Comparative and International Politics,” American Political Science R. 54,1 (Mar. 1960): 34-57.
• Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control (New York: Free Press 1963), chs. 5-7, 10-11.
• Karl W. Deutsch, “National Integration: Some Concepts and Research Approaches,” Jerusalem J. of International Relations 2,4 (Summer 1977): 1-29.
• Philippe C. Schmitter, “Ernst B. Haas and the Legacy of Neofunctionalism,” J. of European Public Policy 12,2 (Apr. 2005): 255-72. Note: this is a kind of backward compliment to Deutsch.

Week 12, January 25, 2007,
Transactions, 2: Learning and evolution

Required reading:

• James P. Bennett and Hayward R. Alker, Jr., “When National Security Policies Bred Collective Insecurity: The War of the Pacific in a World Politics Simulation,” in Karl W. Deutsch et al., Problems of World Modeling: Political and Social Implications (Boston: Ballinger 1977).
• Robert Axelrod, “Evolving New Strategies: The Evolution of Strategies in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma,” in idem, The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1997).
• Benjamin E. Goldsmith, “Imitation in International Relations: Analogies, Vicarious Learning, and Foreign Policy,” International Interactions 29,3 (Jul.-Sep. 2003): 237-67.

Optional reading:

• Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books 1984), entire.
• Thomas Schmalberger and Hayward R. Alker, “A Synthetic Framework for Extensible Conflict Early Warning Information Systems,” in Hayward R. Alker, Ted Robert Gurr, and Kumar Rupesinghe, eds., Journeys Through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

Week 13, February 1, 2007,
Transactions, 3: From communities to law

Required reading:

• Anthony Clark Arend, Legal Rules and International Society (1999), chap. 3.
• Kenneth W. Abbott et al., “The Concept of Legalization,” International Organization 54,3 (Summer 2000): 401-19 (note that the references are at the end of the issue).
• Barbara Koromenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, “The Rational Design of International Institutions,” International Organization 55,4 (Autumn 2001): 761-99 (note that the references are at the end of the issue).

Optional reading:

• Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal, “Hard and Soft Law in International Governance,” International Organization 54,3 (Summer 2000): 421-56 (note that the references are at the end of the issue).
• Iris Bohnet, Bruno S. Frey, and Steffen Huck, “More Order with Less Law: On Contract Enforcement, Trust, and Crowding,” American Political Science R. 95,1 (Mar. 2001): 131-44.
• Neta C. Crawford, “A Security Regime Among Democracies: Cooperation Among Iroquois Nations,” International Organization 48,3 (Summer 1994): 345-85.
• Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), chs. 12-13.
• Raimo Väyrynen, “Stable Peace Through Security Communities? Steps Towards Theory-Building,” University of Notre Dame, Kroc Institute Occasional Paper #18:OP:3. Available online http://www.nd.edu/~krocinst/ocpapers/ op_18_3.pdf