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This book traces discussions about international relations from the middle ages up to the present times. It presents central concepts in historical context and shows how ancient ideas still affect the way we perceive world politics. It discusses medieval theologians like Augustine and Aquinas whose rules of war are still in use. It presents Renaissance humanists like Machiavelli and Bodin who developed our understanding of state sovereignty. It argues that Enlightenment philosophers like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau laid the basis for the modern analyses of International Relations (IR). Later thinkers followed up with balance-of-power models, perpetual-peace projects and theories of exploitation as well as peaceful interdependence. Classic IR theories have then been steadily refined by later thinkers – from Marx, Mackinder and Morgenthau to Waltz, Wallerstein and Wendt.
The book shows that core ideas of IR have been shaped by major events in the past and that they have often reflected the concerns of the great powers. It also shows that the most basic ideas in the field have remained remarkably constant over the centuries.
International Relations scholars. It argues that the scholarly study of International Relations distanced itself from the structural approaches of the past and instead embraced the core ideas of rejuvenated liberalism. This is evident for example in the so-called Neorealist approach which gained an enormous influence in the International Relations community during the 1980s. Although it retained the holistic view that marked structuralism, its basic logic rested on the individualistic rationalism of liberal economic theories. Neorealism was a child of its times. And it
challenger, in the form of neoliberal institutionalism. However, here again the central tenets of realist theorising – including its substantive cultural blind spots – remained unchallenged. Liberalism’s resurgence was built, partly, on its ability to engage the dominant realist paradigm through the broad acceptance of realist assumptions. Neoliberal institutionalism re-introduced a Kantian tripod – democracy, institutions and law, and economics – within neo-realism’s logic of anarchy (the assumption that there is no world government or Leviathan). Liberals did not contest
spread around the world. The economic logic of neo-liberalism affected International Relations theorizing deeply. Among other things, it provided a new, structural foundation for the Realist approach. This was the result of the work done, more than anyone, by Kenneth Waltz. This chapter discusses the structural approaches and pays special attention to the emergence of ‘structural realism’ or ‘neorealism’ during the 1970s. Part IV of the book – ‘A future history of International Relations’ – discusses the end of the Cold War and reviews some of the scholarly
intervention matters. Steve Saiderman and Stephen Dyson have both emphasised the practical importance of Game of Thrones in communicating IR theory – and principally realism and neo-realism to audiences less inclined to sit and read the work of Hobbes and Machiavelli. 45 When teaching international students who have not previously come across Waltz and Mearsheimer, Dyson has suggested throwing out the textbooks and turning on Game of Thrones . Likewise, Clapton and Shepherd argue that there are important ‘lessons from Westeros’, as students and viewers ‘learn about
plot, would be refracted through the prisms of Italian neo-realism and humanist cinema; it becomes a very different thing, however, when approached with the eye of the bicycle movie fan for handlebar and saddle design ( Figure 17 ). 17 Neo-realist classic or masterpiece of humanist cinema – or ‘bicycling movie’? Vittorio de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) In both of these online lists there is evidence of properly communal engagement, as theorised by Altman, rather than the idiosyncratic endeavours of one or two people. The first selection
‘the reality effect’: at one end of the spectrum, the fantastical Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz (1939); at the other, teeming city streets that have been exploited throughout cinema history (from brief ‘actuality’ films made in France by the Lumière brothers during the 1890s, through Italian neo-realism of the 1940s and early 1950s, to instances of modern Latin American cinema such as Amores perros (2000) and City of God (2002)). 2 Interplanetary space as setting: Sandra Bullock in Gravity (2013) Whether expansive or narrow
States as the focus of research activity and high-school and university curricula. Older examples include Soviet montage, German Expressionism, Italian neo-realism, postwar Japanese film and the French New Wave; newer equivalents might be the rich cinemas of Iran or Brazil. Such signs of cinematic cosmopolitanism should be welcomed, but only up to a point. In the first instance, these gestures beyond Hollywood clearly represent only a start in compiling a much-needed atlas of world film production: vast areas of the globe remain relatively unmapped, at least by
free markets. Also, few readers drew the implication from his observation that democratization tends to occur in waves – that democratic gains in one period are regularly followed by losses and retreats a few years later. The implication was that the democratic peace was not permanent but an unstable condition, vulnerable to backlash. Democratic peace theory The democratic peace thesis represented a direct challenge to Neorealism. Structure mattered most, argued the Neorealists; domestic politics cannot explain international interaction. No, responded advocates