| Term | Definition |
|---|
| game theory | a branch of mathematics concerned with predicting bargaining outcomes |
| cost-benefit analysis | a calculation of the costs incurred by a possible action and the benefits it is likely to bring |
| national interest | the interests of a state overall (as opposed to particular parties) |
| arms race | a reciprocal process in which 2 or more states build up military capabilities in response to eachother |
| rational actors | actors conceived of as single entities that can "think" about their actions coherently, make choices, identify their interests, & rank the interests in terms of priority |
| compellence | the use of force to make another actor take some action |
| deterrence | the threat to punish another actor if it takes a certain negative action |
| nonaligned movement | a movement of 3rd world states, led by India and Yugoslavia, that attempted to stand a part from the US-Soviet rivalry during Cold War |
| Warsaw Pact | Soviet led Eastern European military alliance, founded in 1955 & disbanded in 1991, opposed the NATO alliance |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | US led military alliance, formed in 1994 with mainly western european members to oppose & deter Soviet power |
| burden sharing | the distribution of the costs of an alliance among members; conflicts that may arise over such distribution |
| alliance cohesion | the ease with which the members hold together an alliance; tends to be high when national interests converge & when cooperation among allies become institutionalized |
| hegemonic stability | hegemony provides stability similar to a central government by reducing anarchy, deterring aggression, promoting free trade, & providing a currency that can be used as a world standard |
| hegemony | the holding by one state of a preponderance of power in the internatl system, so that if can single-handedly dominate the rules & arrangements by which internatl politics & economic relations are conducted |
| multipolar system | an international system with typically 5 or 6 centers of power that are not grouped into alliances |
| prisoner's dilemma | a situation modeled by game theory in which rational actors pursuing their individual interests all achieve worse outcomes than they could have by working together |
| proxy wars | wars in the 3rd world-often civil wars in which the US & Soviet Union jockeyed for position by supplying & advising opposing factions |
| summit meeting | a meeting between heads of state, often referring to leaders of great powers, as in Cold War superpower summits between the US & Soviet Union or today's meetings of the Group of 8 on economic coordination |
| containment | a policy adopted in the late 1940s by which the US sought to halt the global expansion of Soviet influence on several levels-military, political, ideology, & economic |
| League of Nations | an organization established after WW1 & a forerunner of today's UN; it achieved certain humanitarian & other successes but was weakened by the absence of US membership & by its own lack of effectiveness in ensuring collective security |
| North-South gap | the disparity in resources (income, wealth, power) between the industrialized rich countries of the West & the poorer countries of Africa & the ME |
| globalization | the increasing integration of the world in terms of communications, culture, & economy; may also refer to changing subjective experiences of space & time accompanying this process |
| nongovernmental organization | a transnational group or entity that interacts with states, multinational corporations, other NGOs, & intergovernmental organizations (Catholic Church, Green Peace) |
| state | an inhabited territorial entity controlled by government that exercises sovereignty on its territory |
| reciprocity | rewarding behavior that contributes to the group & punishing behavior that pursues self-interest at the expense of the group |
| dominance advantage | like a government, it forces members of a group to contribute to the common good |
| dominance disadvantage | stability comes at a cost of constant oppression of, & resentment by, the lower-ranking members in the status hierachy |
| dominance "status hierarchy" | a power hierarchy in which those at the top control those below |
| collective goods problem | how to provide something that benefits all members of a group regardless of what each member contributes to it |
| international relations | concerns the relationships among the world's government |
| identity | a principle for solving collective goods by changing participants' preferences based on their shared sense of belonging to a community |
| issue areas | distinct spheres of international activity within which policy makers of various states face conflicts & sometimes achieve cooperation |
| conflict and cooperation | the types of actions that states take toward each other through time |
| international security | a subfield of IR that focuses on questions of war and peace |
| international political economy | the study of the politics of trade, monetary, & other economic relations among nations, & their connection to other transnational forces |
| international system | the set of relationships among the world's states structured by certain rules & patterns of interaction |
| nation-states | states whose population share a sense of national identity, usually including a language & culture |
| non-state actors | actors other than state government's that operate either below the level of the state or across state borders |
| intergovernmental organization | an organization whose members are state governments |
| realism | theory in terms of power, competition, self-interest, individuals turn to animalistic behavior in absence of government |
| power | the ability to get another actor to do what it would not otherwise have done |
| idealism | see international system as one based on a community of states that have potential to work together to overcome mutual problems, must flow from morality |
| soft power | if a state's values become widely shared among other states, it will easily influence others |
| relative power | ratio of the power that 2 states can bring to bear against each other |
| geopolitics | the use of geography as an element of power |
| norms | shared expectations about what behavior is considered proper |
| sovereignty | the government has the right, in principle, to do whatever it wants in its own territory |
| balance of power | the general concept of one or more states' power being used to balance that of another state or group of states |
| bandwagoning | smaller states join forces with larger states to gain power |
| great power | states that can be defeated militarily only by another great power (US, Germany, Russia) |
| middle powers | rank somewhat below the great powers in terms of their influence on world affairs (Canada, Italy, Spain) |
| neorealism | explains patterns of international events in terms of the system structure rather than in terms of the internal makeup of individual states |
| polarity | refers to number of independent power centers in system |
| power transition theory | the largest wars result from challenges to the top position in the status hierarchy, when a rising power is surpassing the most powerful state |
| statecraft | the art of managing state affairs & effectively maneuvering in a world of power politics among sovereign states |
| power strategies | plans actors use to develop & deploy power capabilities to achieve their goals |
| unitary actor assumption | the actor exercising power is a single entity that can "think" about its actions coherently & make choices |
| international regime | a set of rules, norms, and procedures around which the expectations of the actors converge in a certain issue area, improves collective goods problem |
| collective security | the formation of a broad alliance of most major actors in an international system for the purpose of jointly opposing aggression by any actor |
| democratic peace | democracies almost never fight each other - trade creates interdependence |
| interest groups | coalitions of people who share a common interest in the outcome of some political issue and who organize themselves to try to influence the outcome |
| lobbying | the process of talking with legislators or officials to influence their decisions on some set of issues |
| military-industrial complex | a huge interlocking network of governmental agencies, industrial corporations, and research institutions, working together to supply a nation's military forces |
| public opinion | range of views on foreign policy issues held by citizens of a state |
| attentive public | the minority of the population that stays informed about international issues |
| foreign policy process | how policies are arrived and implemented |
| comparative foreign policy | study of foreign policy in various states in order to discover whether similar types of societies/governments consistently have similar types of foreign policies |
| government bargaining model | foreign policy decisions result from the bargaining process among various government agencies with somewhat divergent interests in the outcome |
| prospect theory | an alternative explanation of decisions made under risk or uncertainty |
| groupthink | tendency for groups to reach decisions without accurately assessing their consequences, because individual members tend to go along with ideas they think the others support |
| security dilemma | a situation in which actions states take to ensure their own security (such as deploying more military forces) are perceived as threats to the security of other states |
| fluid alliances | alliances that shift as national interests change |
| formal alliances | alliances established between states through a written treaty, concerning a common threat and related issues of internatl security, and that endure across a range of lives and period of time |
| difference feminism | values the unique contributions of women as women, believes gender differences are not just socially constructed & that views women inherently less warlike than men |
| Liberal feminism | emphasizes gender equality & views the "essential" differences in men's & women's abilities/perspectives as trivial or nonexistent |
| postmodern feminism | an effort to combine postmodernist & feminist perspectives with the aim of uncovering the hidden influences of gender in IR & showing how arbitrary the construction of gender role is |
| postmodernism | an approach that denies the existence of a single fixed reality, & pays special attention to texts & discourses-that is, how people talk and write about a subject |
| Marxism | power dominate classes oppress the power sub-ordinate classes by denying them access to surplus they create; includes both communism & other approaches |
| constructivism | movement in IR theory that examines how changing international norms & actors' identities help shape the content of state interests |
| liberalism | possibility of cooperation to realize common gains |
| neoliberal | stresses the importance of international institutions in reducing the inherent conflict that realists assume in an international system; the reasoning is based on the core liberal idea that seeking long-term mutual gains if often more rational than maximizing individual short-term gains |
| critical theory | addresses how to overcome "exclusion" & seeks to understand the underlying conditions in which emancipation is possible |
| anarchy | a term that implies not complete chaos but the lack of a central government that can enforce rules |
| arms race | reciprocal process in which two or more states build up military capabilities in response to each other |
| counterinsurgency | effort to combat guerillas, often including programs to "win the hearts & minds" of rural populations so they stop sheltering guerillas |
| ethnic cleansing | forced displacement of an ethnic group from a particular territory, accompanied by massacres & other human rights violations; it has occurred after the breakup of multinational states |
| genocide | an intentional & systematic attempt to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or part. confimed a crime under international law by UN Genocide Convention |
| home country | state where a multinational corporation has its headquarters |
| host country | state in which a foreign multinational corporation operates |
| information screens | the subconscious or unconscious filters through which people put the information coming in about the world around them |
| just wars | category in international law & political theory that defines when wars can be justly started & how they can be justly fought |
| limited war | military actions that seek objectives short of surrender & occupation of the enemy |
| mercantilism | economic theory & a political ideology opposed to free trade; it shares with realism the belief that each state must protect its own interests without seeking mutual gains through international organizations |
| misperceptions | mistaken processing of the available information about a decision; one of several ways-along with affective & cognitive bias-in which individual decision making diverges from the rational model |
| optimizing | picking the very best option; contrasts with satisficing, or finding a satisfactory but less than best solution to a problem. The model of "bounded rationality" postulates that decision makers generally "satisfice" rather than optimize |
| positive peace | peace that resolves the underlying reasons for war; not just a cease fire but a transformation of relationships, including elimination or reduction of economic exploitation & political oppression |
| security community | a situation in which low expectations of interstate violence permit a high degree of political cooperation-as for example, among NATO members |
| total war | warfare by one state waged to conquer & occupy another |
| proliferation | the spread of weapons of mass destruction into the hands of more actors |
| refugees | people fleeing their countries to find refuge from war, natural disaster, or political persecution. International law distinguishes them from migrants |
| structural violence | structure of social relations that kills & harms many more people each year than do war & other forms of direct political violence by poverty, hunger, & oppression |
| logic of consequences | "What will happen to me if I behave this way?" |
| logic of appropriateness | "How should I behave in this situation?" |
Combine with other sets
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