| Term | Definition |
|---|
| state | an organized political entity with a permanent populations, a well defined territory and a government. |
| politics | the exercise of influences by competing individuals and groups to affect the allocation of values and distribution of resources; to political scientist Harold Lasswell the process that determines "who gets what, when, how and why"; mixture of continuity and change |
| system | a set of interconnected parts that function as a unitary whole. In world politics, the part consist primarily of states, corporations, and other organizations that interact in the global arena. |
| Non-state Actors | all transnational active groups other that states, such as international organizations whose members are states (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations(NGOs) whose members are individuals and private groups from more than one state. |
| Schematic Reasoning | the process by which new information is interpreted by comparing it to generic concepts store in memory about certain stereotypical situations, sequences of events, and characters |
| Attribution Bias | the tendency to emphasize situational factors when explaining one's own behavior while stressing dispositional factors when explaining the same behavior in others. |
| Congitive Dissonance | the psychological tendency to deny or rationalize away discrepancies between one's preexisting beliefs and new information |
| Mirror Image Theory | The tendency of people in competitive interaction to perceive each other similarly- to see an adversary the same way as the adversary see them (Russia and the US- Cold War) |
| Individual Level of Analysis | an analytical approach to the study of world politics that emphasizes the psychological factors that motivate people who make foreign policy decisions on behalf of states and other global actors. |
| State Level of Analysis | an analytical approach to the study of world politics that emphasizes how the internal attributes of states influence their foreign policy behavior. |
| Systematic Level of Analysis | An analytical approach to the study of world politics that emphasizes the impact of international structures and processes on the behavior of global actors. |
| Nationalism | the belief that political loyalty lies with a body of people who are ethnicity, linguistic, or cultural affinity and perceive themselves to be members of the same group |
| Containment | a term coined by U.S. policy maker George Kennan for deterring expansion by the Soviet Union, which as since been used to describe a strategy aimed at preventing a state from sing force to increase its territory or sphere of influence. |
| Theory | set of interrelated propositions that explains and observed regularity |
| Realist Theory | the nation state as the most important actor on world stage because it answers to no higher political authority. State sovereignty. Goal- is to achieve as much military power as possible as to avoid competition(best defense is a good offense) |
| Power | the ability to make someone continue a course of actions, change what he or she is doing, or refrain from acting |
| Self Help | the principle that in anarchy actors must rely on themselves |
| Relative Gain | a measure of how much one side in an agreement benefits in comparison with the other's side |
| Liberal Theory | - Liberal Theory: core belief in reason and the possibility of progress. View the individuals as the seat of moral value and assert that human beings should be treated as end rather than means. Ethical principle over pursuit of power. Free Trade. International Institutions. (League of Nations) |
| Zero Sum Game | situation in which what one side wins, the other side loses. |
| Collective Security | a security regime based on the principle that an act of aggression by any state will be met by a collective response from the rest |
| Transnational Relations | interactions across state boundaries that involve at least one actor that is not the agent of a government or intergovernmental organization |
| Complex Interdependency | a model of world politics based on the assumptions that states are not the only important actors, security is not the dominant national goal. And military force is not the only significant instrument of foreign policy. |
| International Regime | a set of principles norms and rules governing behavior within a specified issue area. |
| Low Politics | the category of global issues related to the economic, social, and environmental aspects of relations between governments and people |
| High Politics | the category of global issues related to military and security aspects of relations between governments and people |
| Consequentionalism | an approach to evaluate moral choices on the basis of the results of the action taken. (Realists) |
| Contructivist Theory | : focuses on the impact of ideas. Socially constructed world politics. Individuals and Non governmental organizations share ideas. (doesn't explain change in world politics) |
| Norms | generalized standards of behavior the embody collective expectations about appropriate conduct |
| Good Theory Qualities | 5 factors: Clarity. Parsimony. Explanatory Power. Prescriptive Richness. Falsifiability. |
Combine with other sets
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