CHAPTER ONE

Understanding International Relations

 CONCEPTUALIZING NATIONALISM,
NATIONS AND STATES
 Nationalism is a theory of the best political order that is an anti-
Immoralist theory that seeks to establish a world of free independent
nations.
 Nationalism is the sense of political self that makes people feel
patriotic about their country, connected to a “we-group” which
different from “they-groups”.
 Nationalism is a belief that a group of people with common identity
(usually marked by a shared culture, history ) has a right to form an
independent state and govern itself free of external intervention.
 It is an Ideology based on the premise that individual’s
loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other
individual or group interests.
 Nationalism is the most influential force in international
affairs.
 It has caused the outbreak of revolutions and wars across
the globe.
 The American war of Independence 1776
 The French revolution (1789)

 The Congress of Vienna (1815)-self-determination

 Revolutions of 1848 (series of republican revolts against

European monarchies, beginning in Sicily and spreading to

France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. )
 Nationalism is the idea that membership of the nation
provides the overriding focus of political identity and loyalty
which intern-demands national self-determination.
 Nationalism is a complex and deeply contested political
phenomenon.
 Nationalism is the belief that the nation should be, the most
basic principle of political organization.
 Nationalism has contributed to the outbreak of revolutions
and wars across the world.
 Nationalism has also caused:-

 the birth of new states.

 the disintegration of empires

 The redrawing of borders

 Reshape the existing regimes, as well as to strengthen

them.
 The Triumph of Nationalism could be the coming of
Nation-state as the key actors and legitimate in the world
politics.
 Nationalism associated with both the quest for National
independence and a projects of imperial expansion.
 Fore instance, some society or territory can be claimed by
competing nationalist.
 In this case, Turkish Nationalist claim Kurds in Turkey as
Turkish a view that Kurdish Nationalist reject.
 Nation:- is a cultural and historical concept describing a
group of people who identify with one an other on the basis
of a shared history, culture, language and myth.
 Also, nation is a politically organized body of people under
a single government.
 A nation is a people who:-

A. Demographic and cultural similarities.

B. Possess of a feeling of community(mutually identify as a

group distinct from other groups).
C. Want to control themselves politically.
 Thus, at the end of the 18thc state came to be
radically transformed.
 The state was combined with a nation forming

nation state with d/t goals & organizations.

 The combing idea of a nation with that of state is

Nation-State.
 Therefore, ideally nation –state is one in which

virtually all of a nation is united with in a

boundaries of its own state.
 Nation-state can be defined as autonomous

geopolitical entities inhabited by citizens sharing

the same language , history and ethnicity.
 Furthermore, state is a territorially occupied by one of the basic
administrative districts of nation.
 State are the units of government that exercise legal authority over
specific territory and the people in it and that recognize no
legitimate external higher authority.
 States are the most power full of all political actors.

 State can be defined as an independent political unit that

occupying:-
 Sovereignty.

 Territory.

 Population.

 Recognition.

 government.
 The difference
 Nation is intangible, it exist because its member think it
does.
 A state ( country) is tangible institution.

 For example, Americans, for one are a nation; the

institutional vehicle of their self-governance is their state,
the United State.
 The easiest form of state building occurs when a strong
sense of cultural and political identity exists among people;
and the formation of the nation precedes that of the state.
 Example; Germans existed as a cultural people long before,
the establishment of Germany in 1860’s and 1870’s.
UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
 International relations means diplomatic strategic relations
of the state.
 The characteristic focus of IRs is on issues of War and
peace, conflict and cooperation.
 Others see IRs cross-border, transactions of all kinds of;

 Political

 Economic and

 Social

 Any attempt to define a field of study is bound to be

somewhat arbitrary and this is particularly true when one
comes to international relations.
 Thus, IRs is an integral aspect of our everyday lives.
 First, the study of international relations (a term used by
Jeremy Bentham in 1798) was seen largely as a branch of
the study of law, philosophy or history.
 Today, it describes a range of interactions between people,
groups, firms, associations, parties, nations or states and
between governmental and non-governmental organizations.
 So, IRs is the study of the relationship and interactions
between the countries.
 It also, studies the activities and policies of national
government, international organizations, non-governmental
organizations and Multi-national corporations.
 For instance, interactions like hosting Olympics or awarding
a film Oscar are very public.
 But lacking any significant international political agenda.

 However, the activities could have direct or indirect

implications for political relations between groups, states or
inter-national organizations.
 Additional, events like international conflict, inter-national
conferences on global warming and international crime play
a fundamental part in the study of international relations.
 Participation in international relations or politics is also
inescapable.
 on the other way, there are legal, political and social
differences between domestic and international politics.
 Domestic law is obeyed courts enforce sanctions.

 But there is no common enforcement in international law.

 Recent experience taught us that matters that were purely

domestic and has no great relevance internationally can
feature very prominently on the international political
agenda.
 Example, the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS)
 avian flu= Mexico

 Bird flu =China

 Ebola virus= DR Congo.

 Corona Virus or COVID-19 =China

 These are domestic incidents, but can become international

and can lead to foreign policy changes and commitments.
 Studying international relations helps each one of us to
understand events and perhaps to make a difference.
 Some come to study international relations because of an
interest in world events, but gradually they come:
 To recognize that to understand their own state or region,
 To understand particular events and issues they have to
move beyond a journalistic notion of current events.
 There is a need to analyze current events, to examine the
why, where, what and when, but also to understand the
factors that led to a particular outcome and the nature of the
consequences.
 Studying international relations provides the necessary tools
to analyze events, and to gain a deeper comprehension of
some of the problems that policy-makers confront and to
understand the reasoning behind their actions.
 Scholars and practitioners in international relations use
concepts and theories to make their study more manageable.
 This, however, was complicated due to the emergence of
major philosophical disputes about the fundamental nature
of international relations:
The Hobbesian versus the Lockean state of nature in

the seventeenth century; and

The Realist versus Idealist debate of the first part of

the twentieth century.

 Hobbes, interpreted the state of society to be: ‘continual
fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
 Locke, suggest sociability was the strongest bond between
men –men were equal, sociable and free; but they were not
licentious because they were governed by the laws of nature.
 International politics is pre-eminently concerned with the art
of achieving group ends against the opposition of other
groups.
 But this is limited by the will and ability of other groups

to impose their demands. International politics involves

the delicate adjustment of power to power.
 International politics is also about maintaining international
order.
 In the anarchic world.

 Highly interdependence system.

 Continually expanding organizations (eg.

Governmental, nongovernmental organizations).

 Continuing growth of governmental and international

services.
THE NATURE AND EVOLUTION OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
 The rise of the sovereign state in medieval Europe consisted
of a complicated pattern of overlapping jurisdictions and
loyalties.
 In medieval Europe there were two institutions with
pretensions to power over the continent as a whole:
The Catholic Church, and

The Empire (had none of its political power).

THE NATURE AND EVOLUTION OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
 The rise of the sovereign state in medieval Europe consisted
of a complicated pattern of overlapping jurisdictions and
loyalties.
 In medieval Europe there were two institutions with
pretensions to power over the continent as a whole:
The Catholic Church, and

The Empire (had none of its political power)

 •Thestate emerged as a political entitylocated at an intermediate level between the local and the universal.

From the 14thC. •They set themselves in opposition to popes and emperors on the universal level, and to feudal lords, peasants

onwards
and assorted other rulers on the local level.

•This is how the state came to make itselfindependent and self-governing.

Between 1309 •TheFrencheven forced the pope to move to Avignon, in southern France.
•In England, meanwhile, the king repealed the pope’s right to levy taxes on the people.

and 1377

During the
•With theReformation,thenotion of a unified Europe broke down completely as the Church began to
split apart.
•The followers of Martin Luther (1483–1546), and John Calvin, (1509–1564) had formed their own
religious denominations which did not take orders from Rome.

16
•The new churches aligned themselves with the new states.
thc •All over northern Europe, the new ‘Protestant’ churches became state-run and church lands became
property of the state.
 • In this climate, increasingly self-assertive states
were not only picking fights with universal
institutions but also with local ones.
• In order to establish themselves securely in their
new positions of power, the kings rejected the
traditional claims of all local authorities.

•This led to extended wars in next to all European countries. Peasants rose up in protest against taxes and the burdens imposed by repeated
In the 1520s wars.
•There were massive peasant revolts in Germany with hundreds of thousands of participants and almost as many victims.

In the later part of the 16thC •There were major peasant uprisings in Sweden, Croatia, England and Switzerland.
 century, the nobility rose up in defense of its
traditional rights and in rebellion against the
encroachments of the king.
From the 16th centuryonwards • States established the rudiments of an
administrative system and raised armies, both in
order to fight their own peasants and in order to
defend themselves against other states.

• The early modern state was more than anything

an institutional machinery designed to develop
and extract resources from society.
• In return for their taxes, the state provided
ordinary people with defense and a rudimentary
system of justice.
• If they refused to pay up, state officials had
various unpleasant ways to make them suffer.

• The European states emerged in the midst of

struggle and strife, and struggle and strife have
continued to characterize their existence.
• The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 (it was no
longer the competing claims of local and
universal authorities that had to be combated
 which state, if any, would take over from the
universal institutions of the Middle Ages.
• The main protagonists were two Catholic
states, France and Austria, but Sweden – a
Protestant country – intervened on France’s
side and in the end no dominant power
emerged.
• The Treaty of Westphalia, 1648, which
concluded the 30 years of warfare, has come to
symbolize the new way of organizing
international politics.

• International politics was a matter of relations

between states and no other political units.
• All states were sovereign, meaning that they
laid claims to the exclusive right to rule their
own territories and to act, in relation to other
states, as they themselves saw fit.
• All states were formally equal, and they had the
same rights and obligations.
• Taken together, the states interacted with each
other in a system in which there was no
 Once these states had made themselves independent from the pope and
the emperor, they soon discovered that their relations had become
vastly more complicated.
 In order to avoid misunderstandings and unnecessary conflicts, the
different rulers began dispatching ambassadors to each other’s
courts.
 This diplomatic network provided a means of gathering information,
of spying, but also a way of keeping in touch with one another, of
carrying out negotiations and concluding deals.
 The practices of diplomacy soon expanded to include a number of
mutually advantageous provisions: the embassies were given
extraterritorial rights and legal immunity; diplomatic dispatches
were regarded as inviolable, and ambassadors had the right to worship
the god of their choice.
 Most of what happened in Europe before the nineteenth century was of
great concern to the Europeans but of only marginal relevance to
people elsewhere.

 Europe certainly had a significant impact on the Americas, North and

South. However, it had far less impact on Asia and relations with
Africa were largely restricted to a few trading ports.
 In the 19thc.
•Relations between Europe and the rest of the world wereirrevocably transformed.
•The reason is above all to be found in economic changes taking place in Europe itself(industrial revolution)

•European countries joined thescramble for colonies.

Towards the end of the 19 c.

th •Colonial possessions becamea symbol of ‘great power’status, and the new European nation-states often proved themselves to be
very aggressive colonizers.

• The colonized peoples hadno nation-statesand

enjoyedno self-determination.
• It was instead through the process ofliberating
themselves from the colonizers that the
European models were copied.
• Once they finally made themselves
independent, they had their respective territories
and fortified borders; their own capitals, armies,
ACTORS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
 Actors refer to participants in international relations, who have a great
influence on the international relationships.
 Also, actors in world politics can be defined as a person or entities
with the capacities of an impact on international relations.
 Actors have the following features:

(a) They should have overall capacity to decide on their purposes and
interests.
(b) They should also have the capability to mobilize necessary
resources to achieve these purposes and interests and be passionate
about appealing for global cooperation.
(c) Their actions should be significant enough to influence the state-to-
state relations or the behavior of other non-state actors in the global
system.
 Thus, there are two actors in international relations
A. state actors
B. Non-state actors.
A. state actors
 States are the principal actors on the world stages.

 state is the central to the study of international relations.

 state play a leading role in the international system.

 All states have their own capitals, armies, foreign ministries,

flags and national anthems.
 Also states act in relation to other states, declaring war,
concluding a peace, negotiating a treaty, and many other
things.
 Therefore, states are independent ultimately of any external
authority.
 B. Non-State Actors
 Non-state actors are non-sovereign entities that exercise
significant economic, political or social power and influence
at national and in some cases international level.
 Some of non- sate actors are :-

A. International Governmental Organizations (IGOs).

 The members are from two or more countries

 Its activities transcend national boundaries.

 Prominent examples of IGOs are:

 (UN), (NATO), (IMF), (AU)….. Etc.

 International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOS)
 These organizations are transnational and draw membership
from individuals and private associations located in several
countries.
 Example, International Committee of the Red Cross.
 Multinational Corporations (MNCs)
 MNCs are business organizations that extend, Ownership
Management Production and sales activities into several or
more countries.
 Some of these corporations are:-
 General Motors (GM), SHEEL, AGIP, Coca Cola
Microsoft .
 Moreover, there are individual actors, public actors and
 Levels of Analysis in International Relations
 Levels of analysis are a way of looking at the international
system.
 It is an instrument that help us to examination international
relation in international system.
 Level of Analysis can be categorized as:-

 Individual level

 Group level

 State and

 System level
The individual level Analysis
 IRs can be analyzed from the perspective of individuals.

 The analysis would looked at the behaviors, motivations,

beliefs and orientation of the individual in affecting
international phenomenon.
 There could psychology and emotions behind people’s
actions, decisions.
The group level Analysis
 Focusing on groups and the way they influence national
decision-making on an issue.
 Political parties, voters, Social movement groups and others.
 The state level Analysis
 The main focus of state level analysis is the state.

 It argues that the course of IRS is mostly a sum of the

actions and reactions of individual states.
 The nature of the international system is influenced by the
behaviour of states.
 State is a point of reference for other types of actors.

 A state-level require careful consideration of what kinds of

states we are looking at their geographical position, their
historical ties and experiences and their economic standing.
 The system level Analysis
 System level Analysis consider the global system as the
structure within which states cooperate, compete and
confront each other over issues of national interest.
 A system-level study would need to consider global linkages
that go beyond single interactions between states.
 It would need to look the balance of power between states
and how that determines what happens in global politics.
 This includes developments that are even outside the
immediate control of any particular state or group of states,
such as the global economy, transnational terrorism or the
internet.
 The Structure of International System
1. Unipolar
 one state with the greatest political, economic, cultural and
military power and has the ability to totally control other
states.
2. Bipolar
 The dominant power full state and less powerful states join
either sides through alliance and counter alliance formations.
3. multi-polar
 It usually reflects various equally powerful states competing
for power. In this system it is possible to bring change
without gaining or losing power in this system.
 Basic elements characterize the new international
system
1. Power
 Power is the currency of international politics.

 In the international system, power determines the relative

influence of actors and shapes the structure of the
international system.
 For instance, Hans Morgenthau, argues that International
politics, like all other politics, is a struggle for power.
 2. Anarchy
 In relations between states Anarchy refers to the absence of
shared institutions with the right to enforce common rules.
 An anarchical world is everyone looks after themselves and
no one looks after the system as a whole.
 Thus, states had to rely on their own resources.

 Also state form alliances through which the power of one

alliance of states could be balanced against the power of
another alliance.
 3. Sovereignty
 Sovereignty, is the basic concept in IR.

 It is expression of:-

1. a state’s ultimate authority within its territorial entity

(internal sovereignty)
2. The state’s involvement in the international community
(external sovereignty).
 State is autonomy in foreign policy and
independence/freedom in its domestic affairs.
 THEORIES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Idealism/Liberalism
 Liberalism in IR was referred to as a ‘utopian’ theory.
 Liberalism believe that human beings as naturally good and
peace and harmony between nations is not only achievable,
but desirable.
 Immanuel Kant developed the idea in the late 18thc that
states, shared liberal values have no reason for going to war
against one another.
 Kant ideas have developed in to democratic peace theory.
 Democratic peace theory believes that democratic states do
not go to war with each other.
 From 1919 -1930 the discipline was dominated by liberal
internationalism.
 liberal internationalism, as Scott Burchill points out, the
prospects for the elimination of war lay:-
 preference for democracy over aristocracy,

 free trade over autarky, and

 collective security over the balance of power system.

 The two interrelated ideas that emerge from Kant’s
reflections on a perpetual peace and basically formed liberal
institutionalism are:
 democratic governance and

 institutionalized law-governed relations of cooperation

between states
 The two formative pillars of liberal internationalism:-

 democracy and

 free trade, required the creation of IRs w/h would promote

collectivist goals in place of the conflictual relations w/h
formed the basis of balance-of-power thinking.
 Therefore, according to Kant peace can be achieved through
three steps
1. Human rationality:- rational individuals have moral values
create peaceful society and thus peaceful world.
2. Constitutional based Republic:-as all individuals are
rational, they will bear the coast of war. Thus they prevent
their leaders from going to war. Respecting each other
rights and freedom
3. Spreading human rationality, free trade and republicanism
world wide; perpetual peace.
 KEY ASSUMPTIONS OF LIBERALISM
 Human beings are rational  States are not the only important
and moral creatures actors in world politics.
 Trade and interdependency  Non-state actors are important
make war more less likely. entities in IR that cannot be ignored.
 International law helps to  They reject the idea that the agenda
promote order and fosters of international politics is dominated
rule governed behavior primarily by military-security issues.
among state
 Democracy is inherently
peacefully particularly in
reducing the likelihood of
war between democratic
state.
 NEO-LIBERALISM
 Neoliberalism developed in the 1970s and 1980s somewhat
parallel to neorealism.
 Neoliberals agree with neo-realists that competition among
sovereign states in an anarchical world system causes
conflict
 Neoliberals contend that the system is not nearly an
anarchical as neo-realists claim.
 According to neoliberals, the system is marked by complex
interdependence.
 This mean that countries are tied together through trade and
many other economic, social, and other exchanges that both
increase cooperation and limit conflict.
 Complex interdependence also promotes
the use of international law and the creation of stronger
international organizations to deal with the expanding ties
among countries.
 The spread of IL and IOs reduce anarchy and, therefore,
conflict in the system.
 Neoliberalism argues that international institutions facilitate
international cooperation.
 THE KEY ASSUMPTION OF NEO-LIBERALISM
 States are key actors, but not  The greatest obstacle to cooperation
the only significant actors. is non-compliance and cheating by
 States are rational or states.
instrumental actors, always  Neo-liberal institutional perspective
seeking to maximize their is more relevant in issue areas where
interests in all issue areas. states have mutual interests like
 In a competitive trade.
environment, states seek to  Most states believe that all states will
maximize absolute gains benefit from an open trade system.
through cooperation.
 As rational actors, states
prefer cooperation.
 REALISM
 Realism as the school of thought center on the assumption
that the international system is ‘anarchic’.
 In this context domestic society is ruled by a single system
of government.
 The international system of states lacks such system and
ultimately ineffectual in the regulation of relations between
states.
 Conflict is an inevitable and continual feature of inter-
national relations.
 The realist school puts the concept of power at the center of
all the behaviors of the nation-state.
 Hans Morgenthau, put an assumption that international
politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.
 For Morgenthau, human nature was at the base of
international relations.
 Hobbes described human beings as living in an order-less
‘state of nature’ that he perceived as a war of all against all.
 The idea of state of nature is the ideas of life with out
government , with out state or law.
 To remedy the situations social contract’ was required
between a ruler and the people of a state to maintain relative
order.
 Thus, the core concern of both realism and liberalism is the
balance of power between conflict and cooperation in state
relations.
 Realism=balance of power

 Liberalism = cooperation's

 More of Realist said Egoism + Anarchy =power politics.

 Generally, the roots of realism further back to thinkers such
as:-
1. Thucydides= Peloponnesian War

2. Machiavelli= the prince

3. Sun Tzu = the art of war

4. Thomas Hobbes= leviathan

 closer to our time E.H.Carr.

 Example, In The History of the Peloponnesian War he

argued that ‘The strong do what they will (want), and the
weak suffer what they must’.
THE KEY ASSUMPTION OF CLASSICAL REALISM
 Pessimistic view of human  international relations are necessarily
nature conflictual and that international
 Human nature is bad, conflict are ultimately resolved by
characterized by selfishness war.
and greedy  Global politics is structured by
 Politics is the domination of distribution of power ( capabilities )
human activities structured among states.
by power coercion.  The balance of power is the principal
 State prioritized self-interest means of ensuring stability and
and survival and ordered avoiding war.
security above all else  Ethical considerations are
 State operate in a context of irrelevance to the conduct of foreign
anarchy and thus rely on self policy.
help.
 NEO-REALISM/ STRUCTURAL REALISM
 Kenneth Waltz’s ‘Man, the State and War’ (1959) and his
later ‘Theory of International Politics’ (1979) define the
concept of a neo-realist agenda.
 Waltz focuses on the international system and seeks to
provide a structuralist account of its dynamics and the
constraints it imposes on state behavior.
 Waltz’s focus is on the structure of international system and
its consequence for IRs.
 This approach concerns that international politics is
basically a struggle for power but challenge the view that
this is a result of human nature.
 For Waltz, international system is anarchical and hence
perpetually threatening and conflictual.
 Also, Waltz claim that the structure of the international
system is the main factor in shaping the behavior of the
state.
 Structural realists accept many assumptions of traditional
realism.
 The anarchic ordering principle of the international structure
is decentralized meaning there is no formal central authority
every sovereign state is formally equal in this system.
 Like classical realism, balance of power is a core principle
of neo-realism.
 The core assumption of Neo-realism
 States and other actors interact in anarchic environment

 The structure of the system is a major determinant of actor

behavior
 the ordering principle of the system is anarchic not
hierarchical
 The absence of central authority lead to self help system

 State compete for survival through the means of security and

military power.
 The difference between realism and liberalism
1. view human nature.
 Bad for realism

 Good for liberalism

 2. The international system/ the world

 War and conflict for realists

 Cooperative for liberalists

 3. Liberals share an optimistic view of IR, world order can

be improved with peace and replacing war.
 4. Realists share pessimistic view of IR, war and conflict is
common.
 STRUCTURALISM/MARXISM
 Marxism is an ideology and argues that, capitalist society is
divided into two contradictory classes.
1. Bourgeoisie= the business class or rich class

2. The proletariat= the working class or the poor class.

 The proletariats are exploited by Bourgeoisie and also
control their wages.
 Marx believed that the more powerful classes would oppress
the less powerful, leading to some form of class warfare
eventually, as the less powerful rise
up against the established order and try to gain power for
themselves.
 At an international level, Marxism sees relations between
countries as similarly characterized by class struggle, with
the richer oppressing the poorer, and the poorer struggling to
gain power.
 Concentrated on the inequalities that exist within the
international system, inequalities of wealth between the rich
‘North’ or the ‘First World’ and the poor ‘South’ or the
‘Third World’.
 The structuralist paradigm focused on dependency,
exploitation and the international division of labor which
relegated the vast majority of the global population to the
extremes of poverty.
 Most states were not free. Instead they were subjugated by
the political, ideological and social consequences of
economic forces.
NEO-MARXISM/ STRUCTURALISM
 Another strand(element) of Marxism.
 It pays more attention on the international system of
capitalism.
 Karl Marx concentrate more on class conflict within country.

 while neo-Marxists concentrate on global class conflict.

 For neo-Marxists the global economy has always divided

in to a core (the ‗haves‘) and a periphery (the ‗have-nots‘).
 Core =more advanced economic activities take place and
wealth is concentrated.
 Periphery= less advanced economic activities are located
and wealth is scarce.
 Overtime particular country economies may move from
periphery to core or vice versa.
 Even after political independence the core countries
continue to dominate and exploit them through neo-
colonialism.
 The south produces= low cost=low profit primer
products=like = agricultural products and row materials.
 These help EDCs production of high-priced, high profit
manufactured good, which are sold to the LDCs.
 For this reason, economic structuralist say, neocolonialism
(neo-imperialism) which operates without colonies.
 CONSTRUCTIVISM
 Alexander Wendt, a prominent constructivist theory.
 view that realities are socially constructed.

 It accept the international system lack of centrality

authority.
 It do not believe that the anarchic conditions of the
international system force state to take certain action.
 Anarchy’ is what state make of it.

 The essence of international relations exists in the

interactions between people.
 states do not interact; it is agents of those states, such as
politicians and diplomats, who interact.
 If anarchy is what state make of it, different states can perceive it
differently and anarchy can even change over time.
 Also, constructivist argue that the most important aspects of IR is
social, not material.
 International system does not exists on its own.
 It exists only as an intersubjective awareness among people.
 In this sense the system is constituted by ideas not by material
 Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism are material theory, they focus on
material powers such as military powers and economic capitalism.
 So, constructivists argued that international system is constituted by
ideas not material power.
 International system is a human invention, not material kind, purely
intellectual and ideational kind.
 CRITICAL THEORIES
 It is described as neo-Marxism.
 It was developed by small groups of German scholars(1920’s and
1930’s).
 They provide a voice to individuals who have frequently been
marginalized, particularly women and those from the Global South.
 They seek to expose the global domination of the rich North over the
poor South.
 Critical theorists, take a Marxist angle often argue that the
internationalization of the state as principle of IRs has led ordinary
people around the globe becoming divided and alienated, instead of
recognizing what they all have in common as a global proletariat.
 For this to change the legitimacy of the state must be
questioned and ultimately dissolved.
 In this case emancipation from the state in some form is
often part of the wider critical agenda.
 Post-colonialism differs from Marxism by focusing on the
inequality between nations or regions, as opposed to classes.
 Post-colonialism trace back to the cold war period as much
activities in IRs centered on decolonization and cancel the
ambition to the legacies of European imperialism.
 This implies politics is not limited to one region or area it is
important to include the voice of individual from other parts
of the world.
 Realists believe that IOs appear to be successful when they are
working in the interests of powerful states. Unless the equation
may changed.
 To the contrast, liberals would argue that without the UN,
international relations would likely be even more chaotic.
 However, Marxists argue that any international body,
including the UN , works to promote the interests of the
business class.
 UN is dominated by imperial power.

 UN composed of who are protagonists(leading role) capitalism

that Marxism opposed.
 According to Marxist doctrine Imperialism is the highest stage
of capitalism.
 Therefore, UN is not an organization that offers any hope of
real emancipation for citizens.
 The Assumption of Critical Theory
 From the above we can suggest the following assumptions common to varieties of
Critical Theory:
1. ‘Human nature’ is not fixed or essential, but shaped by the social conditions that
exist at any
period in time.
2. These conditions, and therefore world politics, are themselves shaped by historical
struggles
between different social forces.
3. Individual people (subjects) can be grouped into identifiable collectivities which might
in turn
be said to have concrete interests.
4. Despite differences – for example, race, ethnicity, gender, class – all human beings
share an
interest in achieving emancipation. Critical Theory is, thus, universalist in character.
5. There are different types of knowledge. Traditional, positivist science is interested in
‘problemsolving’ knowledge. Critical Theory is interested in knowledge that will lead to
emancipation.
6. Core to emancipation is the achievement of dialogue in which those communicating
take each
other seriously and do not tryo impose their argument on the back of their more powerful
status
MODERNISM AND POST MODERNISM THEORY
 Modernism  Post-Modernism
 it is thought, character, or  the core contend, reality is created by
practice. the way that we think and by our
discourse about our world.
 It is associated with cultural
movements, far-reaching  Post-modernists seek to deconstruct
changes to Western society . the discourse of world politics.
 In practice modernists often
 E.g. when we speak of national interest
the meaning that most people give to
appreciated the fallibility of
that concept is nationally selfish in
science .
terms of gaining increasing and
 Scholarship generates keeping wealth, military might and
objective truths. status.
 science is value free.  Post-modernist rejects such meaning
because they contend, there is no such
thing as an objective national interest.
 Post modernism provide about
 The End

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