Lecture notes, September 1
Last meeting I did little more than name the 'Big 3' families of influential theories of international relations. There are other theories which don't fit well within the Big 3: some of these we shall present later; others we leave to more advanced courses. The Big 3 are named Liberalism, (political) Realism, and Marxism.
I said also that a theory is simply a (logically) connected set of claims. The claims can be of the sort 'how the world works' -- claims of explanation or understanding -- and claims of the sort 'how the world should work' -- claims of what should be true of the world and claims of 'how to do it', that is, how to influence the world.
(1) One claim which is important to contemporary Liberal theory (and rather troublesome to most Realist theories) is: "Democratic states never make war on one another." People call this the "democratic peace hypothesis" or something similar. This claim utilizes three abstract concepts, democracy, state, and war. This claim has no bearing upon war-making by non-democratic states, or on war between democratic and non-democratic states. For instance, if the U.S. attacks Iraq (called preventive war, in the Realist literature), that would not invalidate the claim because Iraq is not democratic.
There exists a somewhat different claim along the same lines: "Since WW2, democratic states have never engaged in violent conflict (resulting in death) with another democratic state." This claim is stronger ion one sense, since it includes low levels of violence. But it is weaker in another sense because it applies only to the last 57 years. Is there an exception? Perhaps a "Cod war" between Britain and Iceland, in which three Icelanders died, although the circumstances are ambiguous. (For instance, one slipped from his patrol boat and drowned while the boat was cutting the nets of a British trawler.)
There are at least two wars which challenge this claim. The first is the U.S. civil war. Proponents of the claim count it because (they say) although the U.S. (North) was democratic, the Confederate States of America (South) was not a state. They support the second half of that claim by noting that no foreign government (state) accorded diplomatic recognition to the South as a state. Should we count the North (which included states (oops, provinces) in which slavery was not illegal) as democratic? Should we count the South as a non-state: its government controlled territory, collected taxes, etc., and furthermore was elected (though slaves could not participate, of course)?
The second challenge (which I think is a true exception) is the Boer War: Britain vs. the Orange Free State and Transvaal. Proponents of the claim say that the Boer states were not democratic. This is a complex matter which hinges upon the powers of the the Boer President Kruger.
(2) Consider this claim: "States in which there is a McDonalds franchise never make war on one another." Should we take it seriously?
(3) Consider a third claim, again espoused by Liberal theorists. (I paraphrase from the article which presented this research.) "From 1815 to 1900, states which initiated warfare generally achieved the majority of their pre-war objectives. Since 1900 the reverse has been true."
This claim is somewhat more complex: it asserts that different patterns governed a relationship depending upon date. Why? One seeks other claims to make sense of the date 1900. Nothing extraordinary happened that year! Taken by itself the claim is little more than a curiosity. But, if it can be connected to other claims, especially one justifying the date 1900, it might be more important. In fact, if it can be connected with other claims -- some which support it and others which draw inferences from it -- we would gain a theory of war as an instrument of state policy.
Note also that this claim is a matter of "more or less." The strength of the correlation (a number which ranges between 0 -- no relationship -- and 1.0 -- perfect relationship] between war initiation and obtaining war objectives matters very much. Suppose that this correlation were .51 in the earlier period but .49 in the later. Would we then think that this claim is significant?
We conduct research in efforts to support or to undermine claims of the type listed above. To perform this research we must carefully translate the abstract concepts in which the claim is expressed into operations to enable us to find instances of those concepts in the 'real world.' Some people call this "operationalizing" an abstract concept. For instance, how do we identify "war"? One group of researchers chose this "operational" definition: conflict between at least two sovereign states which caused at least 500 deaths in battle. Why 500? Well, perhaps using 501 or 550 would not make much difference. But why not 5 or 50,000?
The third claim confronts us with concepts which are quite hard to "operationalize." In particular, how do we learn the "pre-war objectives" of a state? (Can we in fact say that a state -- inanimate complex organization -- possesses any objectives? Maybe we can learn the objectives of the leader(s) of the state. There are problems here, too: there may be several leaders, and they may disagree; reliable records may be incomplete or nonexistent; the objectives themselves may be vague or incomplete; etc. Further, it is hard to measure "realization" of objectives. When do we make this judgment: 1 year after the end of the war, 5 years after, 100 years after?
So: First we must look carefully at the details of the research undertaken to support or undermine a claim. Second, we should look carefully at the justifications offered by theorists for the claim itself: why is it important? why should we expend time and energy deciding if it is true? The answers usually revolve around how connected the claim is to other claims, that is, how central it is to a theory of international relations.
MoM
What are people like? What is "human nature" (if such exists)? Your answer to these questions likely strongly influences your beliefs about international affairs. I use MoM to mean "model of person". Originally, it stood for "Model of Man." In the past, women's involvement in international relations was largely overlooked, unless the woman was a ruler (e.g., Catherine the Great of Russia, Elizabeth I of England, Scotland and Ireland) or unless the woman clearly exerted influence over a male ruler. (Some women were both: Catherine had her husband the Tsar deposed and, possibly, murdered.)
Marxists, Liberals and Realists each champion a different MoM.
For Marxists and Liberals the MoM is critical because, as we shall learn, it helps to support many other claims which they make. For Realists, too, it's important, but they can tolerate a wider range of MoMs without contradiction to their other claims. At the moment, just which claims each selects to construct its MoM is less important than the fact that each needs one!
Why should a MoM be important? People act. They act for reasons. Often, they act intentionally; that is, they seek particular results from their actions. This is true of you as it is of Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, and of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II . If something recognizable as "human nature" imposes similarities upon the relation between reasons and actions for all people, surely that must affect international relations. But we also know that people differ, that a persuasive reason to Putin might not influence Wojtyla at all.
Theorists of international relations have generally chosen very simple MoMs. Psychologists and evolutionary biologists probably think that these MoMs are simplistic. (I do.) But they may yet be useful. You can decide.
For the present consider these counterfactual 'worlds':
(1) All leaders share the personality and 'nature' of Adolf Hitler.
(2) All leaders share the personality and 'nature' of Mother Theresa.
(3) All leaders share the personality and 'nature' of Bill Gates.
(4) All leaders share the personality and 'nature' of Whoopi Goldberg.
(5) There are only four leaders in the world, Hitler, Mother Theresa, Gates and Goldberg: how they interact shapes international relations.
Wouldn't these worlds look quite different? Thus the importance of MoMs.