(Part 3) Top products from r/IRstudies

Hi there!

I think it's great that you're pursuing a master in IPE and want to get a better understanding of IR theory given how closely the two interact. Now, I am only an undergraduate so I may stumble here and there while giving you a rundown on International Relations, so others feel free to chime in or correct me where I'm wrong.

The Main Schools of International Relations theory:
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The major schools of thought are Realism, Liberalism, and Idealism/Constructivism. Heres a diagram to give a simple break down of the three.



Theories: | Realism (Classical & Structural) | Liberalism | Idealism (Constructivism)
---|---|----|----
Core Beliefs: | Self-interested states compete for power and security | Spread of democracy, global economic ties, and international organizations will strengthen peace | International politics is shaped by persuasive ideas, collective values, culture, and social identities
Key Actors in IR | States, which behave similarly regardless of their type of government | States, International Institutions, and Commercial Interests | Promoters of new ideas, transnational activist networks, and nongovernmental organizations
Main Instruments | Military power and state diplomacy | International Institutions and global commerce | Ideas and values
Theory's weaknesses | Doesn't account for progress and change in international relations or understanding that legitimacy can be a source of military power | Fails to understand that democratic regimes survive only if they safeguard military power and security; some liberals forget that transitions to democracy are sometimes violent | Does not explain which power structures and social conditions allow for changes in values
Founders & Thinkers | Hans Morgenthau; Kenneth Waltz; John Mearsheimer | Adam Smith; Immanuel Kant; Robert Keohane | Alexander Wendt; John Ruggie; Martha Finnemore
Doers | Otto von Bismarck; Henry Kissinger | Woodrow Wilson; Kofi Annan | Mahatma Gandhi; Osama bin Laden; Antiglobalization movement; Karl Marx
^^Adopted ^^from: ^^Essential ^^Readings ^^In ^^World ^^Politics ^^6th ^^Edition

After understanding these theories, it is important to note that no theory trumps one another. Some theories may provide a great explanation for one particular event, but do a poor job explaining another. I recommend reading Jack Snyder's One World, Rival Theories (Where I got my chart from) and Stephen Walt's One World, Many Theories to acquire a better understanding of this concept.


Next, it is important to understand that we live in an anarchic world, meaning there is no higher power overseeing every actors' decisions. The United Nations is the closest thing to an overseer, but is still limited and does not fully meet the required role. As a result, states are forced to look out for themselves because hypothetically, any ally today could be an enemy tomorrow.


The Levels of Analysis:
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There are three different levels of analysis for International Relations. First, there is an analysis of the individual and the role they play in their collective body. This includes things like cultural identity and human behavior. Second, there is state-level analysis which focuses on nationalism, militaries, industrial complexes, and variance between states' size, ethnic groups, ect.. Lastly, there is system-level analysis which focuses on concepts like balance of power, anarchy, zero-sum, and even how states are grouped and labeled (e.g. The Allies or The Axis of Evil)


Quick List of Other IR Aspects:
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It's past my bedtime, but here's a quick list of miscellaneous things that also contribute to understanding IR.

• State Sovereignty
  
• Power dynamics
  
• Roles of State & Non-state actors
  
• Causes of conflict (deep, intermediate, precipitating)
  
• International Trade (Organizations, Agreements, ect.)
  
• Geography's Role (Terrain, Resources, climate)
  
  
  
  
  As previously stated, if you'd like I can elaborate further on any topic. However, it is late and I must be getting off to bed. Others, feel free to chime in on something or correct me. Nevertheless, I hope you found this helpful.

There are three books I'd like to add as suggestions:

• Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen. 285 pages, 5 hour and a half read without pauses.
  
  
• The Dictator's Handbook, by Bruce B. de Mesquita and Alistair Smith. 300 pages, 5 hour read without pauses.
  
  
• Making Globalization Work, by Joseph Stiglitz. 5 hour, fifteen minute read without pauses.
  
  For reference, the site I used says World Order by Henry Kissinger, the book we read previously, takes 6 hours to read. So these books a bit shorter.
  
  Development as Freedom:
  
  This book proposes a relatively new theory for public policy based on free agency. Amartya Sen's thesis is that the objective of governing and developing a country is to provide freedom to its citizens. He does a pretty good analysis of how a country works policy-wise and he makes a proposal to reach this free agency goal. I think this book would broaden perspectives on how to view a government's labor, on what development is, and what it should be.
  
  The Dictator's Handbook:
  
  In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith decompose multiple historical situations both in governing and in private enterprises in order to define the universal dynamics of power. It is a great book and it explains, with sufficient evidence, what a leader needs to capture and retain power in any system imaginable by redefining how we view government systems.
  
  Making Globalization Work:
  
  I have read a bit of the previous books, but only a single chapter of this one, so instead I'm going to quote a review on amazon:
  
  > Three years ago, I was a little freshman economics student at a small college. My World Politics professor assigned me this book to read halfway through the semester, and I am quite happy that I read it. Stiglitz is blessed with both brains and writing ability, something that too many economists do not have [...] Stiglitz does an exceptional job of summarizing much of the baggage that international policy makers carry from their past mistakes.
  
  >The largest criticism that people have of the book is that much of what he says has been said by other people. This is true. But those other people can't write and aren't remotely as accessible as Stiglitz is. If you're looking for a good jump-in, read this book.
  
  

>Make note, I'm just a high schooler. I don't have any significant experience in academic IR studies, and I get most of my information from books, magazines, and journals. To be honest, I'm a little fuzzy on theory


I was the same in high school, trying to self-teach. If you have the opportunity to take a college intro-IR course it clears up sooo much. If you did it like me, you are teaching yourself out of order and context, and in a way that biases strongly towards some things and not others. Anyway, if you can't take an organized class, try to pick up a book on theory and that starts at the basics. I haven't read it yet, but if you like Realism then The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is supposedly excellent. Likewise, The End of History is the go-to Liberal book. Haven't read that either yet, so someone correct me if I'm way off-base with these recommendations. There's also Constructivism as the new thing, but I'm not really familiar with it. Anyways, getting theories down more helps a ton, it definitely changed my views on whether or not certain wars were good/bad ideas. But from your post you seem to have a good grasp on things, so IDK if this advice will help that much.


(^ this isn't related to your question, I just thought it might be helpful)


Anyways your question is basically Liberal Vs Realist it seems. A liberal of the Neoconservative (Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, ect.) branch would say Saddam violated the liberal order first, and now the newly democratic Iraq has removed the threat. Iraq will join the other democracies and only attack dictators til there are none left and we have world peace. (this is really dumbed down, but you get the point)



Other less militaristic liberals (the Clintons, Woodrow Wilson especially) would say that that was an expected occasional break-down in the liberal order, and that liberal institutions for the most part prevent this sort of thing from happening more often, as it would if there was no UN or WTO ect. In their eyes, if Bush were ever put to international court and tried then it would be proof of the liberal order's success. The liberal order includes international free trade, which liberals say makes war unprofitable, and so they say, unlikely.


Realists (George HW Bush, Nixon, Kissinger) would agree with your middle paragraph, that the 'global order' is a manifestation of American hegemony, and that liberal institutions are set up to maximally benefit the USA, which is why other powers become revisionists; Iran/China/Russia does not feel it benefits from a US-led order (the WTO, World Bank, ect), and wants to set up an new order that maximizes their own power instead.


So its depends on who you ask, there is no real consensus here. For what its worth, I think you are dead on about the 'liberal order' really being the 'American order', and like you said, its mostly been a good thing.

> and how much they differ across cultural lines,

not sure about the cultural lines aspect but 100% behind being better able to identify epistemological + ontological assumptions. Great work by Patrick Jackson on this which basically summarizes most of the approaches to inquiry used in IR (and through a pretty nifty typology): Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations - http://www.amazon.com/The-Conduct-Inquiry-International-Relations/dp/0415776279

I think this is important, but I think it's also misleading in several ways. Kissinger was never a 3rd image structural realist. Like most Classical Realists he was driven more by historical interpretation than by social science theorizing. Most classical realists have ontologically heterogeneous arguments that span all three of Waltz's levels of analysis.

I do find it misleading for the author to imply that Kissinger 1) had a significant change of heart, and 2) that he was somehow (even if implicitly) influenced by Wendt or Katzenstein.

Finally, I think it's worth pointing toward scholarship like Barkin's Realist Constructivism that argues that the two schools are not mutually exclusive. Further, constructivists like Richard Ned Lebow have looked at some classical realists – Thucydides, Clausewitz, Morgenthau – in an appreciative light.

Slaughter wrote a very concise summary of the main IR theories.
Simply look-up and read the main articles referenced in that text/of the authors, and you'll have a solid entry into the theoretical backbone to IR.

With regard to textbooks: I read The Globalization of World Politics before I started my studies and felt it was quite accessible as it split up the main theories, mid-range theories, as well as different issue-areas into nice digestible chunks in a very accessible manner.

If you enjoyed the Slaughter summary and want to truly dig into the academic side of it all: Theories of International Relations was my favourite IR textbook. I got to admit that quite some of our class thought it was at parts too dense, but that is exactly what I was looking for. Given that you will be doing IR for at least three years, this book should come in useful more than just once.

The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria is always a good place to start for some of this stuff. Also, a unique look at globalization and democratization (or at least, the profusion of knowledge from democratic systems to non-democratic ones) can be found in critiques of the World Bank or of the trade policies of large bodies such as the EU and the US.

Also, I love that a person going by gingerballz asks questions regarding IR. This is why reddit rulz.

Currently I have on order "Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History" by Robert D. Kaplan. It is under 400 pages. It was recommended to me today by a friend when discussing past issues with the Balkans in preparing for next week's UN Security Council meeting dealing with Kosovo Independence. https://www.amazon.com/Balkan-Ghosts-Journey-Through-History/dp/0312424930

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order – by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. 352 pages (audiobook available, though I'm unsure of length).

>A must-read for the new American president and all who are concerned by the state of the world and the prospect of things getting worse. Richard Haass takes the reader galloping through the last four centuries of history to explain how we got to where we are, and then offers an insightful and strategically coherent approach to coping with and managing the challenges before us. Practical and provocative: a book that sets the policy table.

–Robert M. Gates, former United States Secretary of Defense

>This is a thought-provoking book that suggests the new foreign policy 2.0 requires more global engagement.

–The Huffington Post

>A valuable primer on foreign policy: a primer that concerned citizens of all political persuasions -- not to mention the president and his advisers -- could benefit from reading.

–The New York Times

Man, the State, and War by Kenneth Waltz.

Even though Waltz is a realist [or a founder of "neorealism"], this books gives you a good idea about the three levels of analysis that basically inform all theoretical thought in IR.

My personal opinion on Kissinger's Diplomacy is that it is a little slow and roams a lot. It could have been a lot shorter and more informative.

Edit: Clarity.

I posted this over in the Hillary Clinton sub. I don't expect anyone over there will appreciate because it's a rather loud echo chamber...

The thing is that Trump is not completely wrong (although he would have been a bit more correct about the currency manipulation a few years ago). The Japanese, South Korea, Taiwanese... and now the Chinese got rich protecting their own markets/currencies and selling to markets in North American and Europe (they did it by applying variations on what's called the 'developmental state" model). You could buy a South Korea car in the US long before you could buy an American car in South Korea. Their explicit national policy was to prioritize their growth over and above any "free market" considerations. In other words, they ignored the rules of free trade when it suited them. This is in fact not free or fair, and the costs of these policies are often borne by a concentrated unlucky few (even though everyone else benefits).

There is a fairly established literature on the politics surrounding trade, if anyone is interested. (I always tell people to start here and here to get in the proper analytical mindset). Notice that that NYT article never really quoted political economists, but only economists? That because the math of economics pretends the political consequences of trade do not exist. Trade absolutely needs to be accompanied by a generous welfare state to compensate the losers and keep them invested in the process. And when it no longer benefits a country, they abandon it.

more to the (IR) point. People need to get it out of their heads that trade is universally good. Trade is no more universally good than alliances are universally good. You can talk all you want about Pareto frontiers, but the truth of it is that trade that deprives you of an industrial base weakens your defense capability and is therefore bad on that metric.

1. Book: Kissinger: The Idealist, 1923-1968. By Niall Ferguson. Penguin Press
   Review: https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21669596-americas-greatest-modern-diplomat-was-also-one-its-great-thinkers-ideas-man
   Reason: Get to know him better, especially early years. The demanding intellect needed to find solutions to problems of extreme complexity. Make your own mind up. See review.
   
   
2. Essay: "Moralism and Realism in Political Theory" by Bernard Williams, Princeton University Press, 2006
   Reason: Bernard Williams was a brilliant philosopher concerned with ethics. The essay gives his classic touch and analysis into the difference between realism (facts) and the moralism in political theory - which may be a basis for the counterpoint you are looking for.
   
   
3. Essay: "Donald Trump’s New World Order" by Niall Ferguson, written November 2016. Refers to Kissinger's latest book 'World Order' https://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-order/
   Reason: It gets to your interest in how to make sense of what is going on today
   
   
4. Book: "A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order" by Richard Hass.
   Reason: A student of Kissinger if you like, but as a realist, sees and tries to explain how 'winter is coming.'
   
   
5. Book: "Crowds and Power" by Elias Canetti
   https://www.amazon.com/Crowds-Power-Elias-Canetti/dp/0374518203
   Reason: Masterpiece. Good riposte to David Hume's question "Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers." He also said that 'force is on the side of the governed.' That would be the real counterpoint to a world Kissinger was working with but did not create.
   
   
6. These books about power I think are key because more than relationships between governments or nation states - is the problem of concentrated power - and it being left into the hands of people with little more than a certain sinister confidence and little real care for other human beings. Bona fide public servants are extremely rare.
   
   
7. What in IR literature is referred to as a 'monopoly on violence' that is the legitimate use of force by government per Hobbes, I would say these days is fast becoming a 'monopoly on anarchy.'
   
   
8. As for your aim in understanding relationships between countries, I would worry more about Mark Zuckerberg, who is practically the Cardinal Richelieu of the Internet. Dangerous. Richelieu said 'deception is the knowledge of kings' while Zuckerberg calls his users in very 21st century language 'dumb f****'. A policy for his billion people plus kingdom that is carved in stone to this day.
   
   
9. The closest counter point to Kissinger's 'Diplomacy' today literally may be someone like Ron Paul and his books and ideas. The closest practitioner of both statecraft and of real moral decision-making maybe Angela Merkel. Keep digging and hopefully some of these musings prove helpful.
   
   
10. Finally, there is a new theatre of war: where it remains to be seen if and how diplomacy is even possible. Cyber warfare. That remains perhaps the growing and future defining pivot on which will rest the relationships between countries. And it really does seem like no one is running the show. That's why Kissinger was right, not to put on rose tinted glasses, in his philosophy (from his first thesis to his last book), but to understand and develop concepts such as deals and restraint and straight forward brokerage. Who do highly militarized, economically dysfunctional, tweetocratic and exceptional-ist Westphalian sovereign nation states answer to? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers? At an international level, there is anarchy, and all there is left is Diplomacy with the only thing that matters in the end but yet still sells for so little: integrity.
    
    
    

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0393927091/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

It's in the third edition, but the $4 first edition is just fine.

Here's the citation you're looking for.

Auto-correct strikes again! The author's last name is "Tansey". Also apparently the latest version is written with another author. Here's is the Amazon link: Politics: The Basics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0415841429/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_jdluxb7ZK6711

Check out Bare Branches by Valerie Hudson

Basic theory is by either cultural beliefs (India) or state policy (China) the preference for male children over females leads to a unnaturally unbalanced population, and on the whole this makes their foreign policy more aggressive and prone to conflict.

The obvious example that comes to mind is Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

Another excellent book is Michael Mazarr's Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity.

You may also be interested in some of the Islamic perspectives:

• Adnan Musallam's From Secularism to Jihad: Seyyed Qutb and the Foundation of Radical Islamism.
  
  
• Farhang Rajaee's Islamism and Modernism: the Changing Discourse in Iran.