INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
This
course is an introduction to the study of international relations. It has three principal goals:
1. To introduce several major theoretical
approaches to world politics.
2. To explore important problems in world
politics from the past, the present, and the future.
3. To teach students to think and argue
critically about issues in international relations.
I
will begin the course by defining exactly what the study of international
relations is about. I will explore some
of the traditional problems that shaped the contemporary field of international
politics and look at some of the tools and concepts that we use to study
it. I will then discuss several major
theoretical approaches to international relations. In the second half of the course, I apply
these approaches to a number of historical and contemporary issues. The cases include the development of European
states and their relations in the 18th and 19th
centuries, World War I and the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War,
the “American decade” in international political economy, détente and the end
of the Cold War, the effects of technological change, globalization, and US
prosperity on international politics during the 1990s, and finally the
still-unnamed war or series of wars that began on
Events,
patterns, and structures in the world force us to evaluate and to rethink our
understandings of how international politics works. The objective of this course is to develop
that knowledge, and use it to ask more precisely defined and smarter questions
about how international politics is likely to work in the coming decade(s).
The readings for this course
complement the lectures; neither can substitute effectively for the other. You will learn the most from this class if
you do the reading on each topic before coming to lecture. Because it is important for you to assimilate
from the reading not just facts but concepts, ideas, and arguments, it would be
a big mistake to put off reading until
the end of the semester.
These
texts are available in the bookstore:
Hedley Bull, THE ANARCHICAL SOCIETY
Alexander George and Gordon Craig,
FORCE AND STATECRAFT
The
other readings are available for purchase in a Xerox package, at COPY CENTRAL
on Bancroft.
There
will typically be two lectures a week, and one discussion section.
LOGISTICS
Registration
for this class: PLEASE READ CAREFULLY. If you are currently registered for the
class and wish to remain so, you MUST attend your first assigned discussion
section. Students who do not attend may be dropped. If you are not now registered and would like
to add the class, you need to do two things:
put yourself on the Tele-Bears waiting list, and go to a discussion
section that you would be able to attend regularly if you were enrolled. Ask the T.A. to place your name on the
waiting list. During the second and
third weeks of class, we will accept as many students from the waiting list as
we can to bring the course up to its maximum enrollment. If we are able to get a larger room and more
TA’s, the maximum enrollment may be expanded.
We will let you know as soon as we know!
Discussion Sections: Discussion sections are important and they
can also be fun. Sometimes, the Teaching
Assistants will present new material; sometimes they will clarify ideas from
the lectures and from the readings; they will always be ready to take
questions. The key to making the most
out of a discussion section is to do what you can't really do effectively in a
lecture hall: participate. The Teaching
Assistants for this class are excellent, and you should take the initiative to
make the discussion sections excellent as well.
Office Hours: We will announce office hours for the
professor and the T.A.s as well as the location of the T.A.'s offices during
the first week of class. We will provide
a handout during the second week with all the T.A.'s offices and hours, and we
encourage you to talk with T.A.s other than your own, if you wish. Prof. Weber's office is at BRIE,
Grading: Grading for this course will be based on two
exams (a midterm and a final) as well as on participation and writing
assignments in section. The midterm and
section work will together count for 1/2 the grade, and the final will count
for 1/2. Check the final examination
schedule now! We will not excuse
students from the final exam because of time conflicts. We will not grant incompletes for this
reason.
A
final note: The study of international
relations can be difficult and confusing at times. But it is challenging intellectually and
extremely rewarding, as well as exciting and fun. This course covers a large set of issues that
are critically important to each of our lives.
It is worth devoting very serious effort to trying to understand them
better.
PART I: INTRODUCTION
Schwartz and
Kaplan, “The Coming
Anarchy”
Weber, “Shocks, Cycles,
and Drivers”
International Relations and
Social Science Theory
Bull, Chapter 1.
EH Carr, The Twenty
Year’s Crisis, Chapters 1 and 2.
Gould, Wonderful Life
pp. 277-291.
Hawthorn, "Explanation,
Understanding and Theory"
Giddens, The
Consequences of Modernity, Chapter 1.
States, Power, and World Politics
Craig and George,
Chapters 1 and 2.
Blainey,
"Power, Culprits, and Arms"
Friedman, “Microchip
Immune Deficiency”
Wolfers, Discord and
Collaboration, Chapter 7.
Bull, Chapter 2.
PART II: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Levels of Analysis and Systemic
Arguments
Spanier, "Levels of
Analysis"
Bull, Chapter 3
Smith, "Modern
Realism in Context"
Carr, "Peaceful
Change" (Chapter 13 of Twenty
YearsCrisis)
Cox, "Production,
the State, and Change in World Order"
Ohmae, "The Rise of
The
Driving Forces of State Behavior
Z, "To the Stalin
Mausoleum"
Schumpeter, Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy Chapters
11-13
Russett, Grasping the
Democratic Peace Chapters 1 and 2.
Mueller, Retreat from
Doomsday, pp. 7-12 and 251-257
Zakaria, “The Rise of
Illiberal Democracy”
Bull, Chapter 11.
Janus, Groupthink Chapters 1 and 2
("Why So Many Miscalculations?" and “A Perfect Failure")
Part III: THE ISSUES OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Security Issues: War and Peace
Craig and George,
Chapters 12-17.
Bull, Chapters 6 and 7.
Wohlstetter, from
Blainey, “The Myth of
Pearl Harbors”
Schelling, “The
Diplomacy of Violence”
Economic Issues: Poverty and Prosperity
Viner, "Power vs.
Plenty"
Rosecrance, “The Trading
World”.
Gunder Frank, “The
Development of Underdevelopment”
Borrus, Weber, and
Zysman, "Mercantilism and Global Security"
Hirschman, National
Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade, Chapters 1 and 2.
World Bank, “Is International Integration an
Ethical Issues
Bull, Chapter 4.
Rieff, “The Precarious
Triumph of Human Rights”
Klusmeyer and Suhrke,
“Comprehending Evil: Challenges for Law
and Policy”
Harris and Siplon,
“International Obligation and HIV/Aids”
PART IV: HISTORICAL CASES
World War I and the Great
Depression
Kennedy, "The First
World War and the International Power System"
Kindleberger, "An
Explanation of the 1929 Depression"
World War II and Bipolarity
Kennan, "Sources of
Soviet Conduct"
Yergin, “The End of the
Peace”
Schlesinger,
"Origins of the Cold War"
The American “Century” in the
Cold War
Wohlstetter, “The
Delicate Balance of Terror”
Gilpin, “The Bretton
Woods System” and “The Dollar and American Hegemony”
Hunt, “Crises in US Foreign
Policy,” selections.
Kahn and Mann, “Game Theory”
Weber, "Cooperation
and Interdependence”
Ambrose, “Kennedy and
the New Frontiers”
Kissinger, "The
Soviet Riddle"
The Diffusion of Power
Kennedy, "Relative
Decline"
Gaddis, "How the
Cold War Might End"
Gilpin, "American
Policy in the Post-Reagan Era"
Omestad, “Selling Off
Fallows, “Containing
Where Do We Go Now? The Future(s) of World Politics
Kristoff, "The Rise
of
Weber, “International
Organizations and the Pursuit of Justice”, and comment by
Zacher
Bresser-Pereira, “Beyond
Conflicting Powers’ Politics”
Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “The
Advent of Netwar (Revisited)”
Perry-Barlow, “A Declaration
of the
Powers, “Bystanders to Genocide”, at
www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/09/power.htm
Go back and re-read
Giddens piece from the second week of class
PLUS:
we will be picking out a few short pieces over the course of the
semester to provoke thoughts at the end of the semester. We’ll distribute these either on paper or
electronically depending on how they are available.