Critical Review:
Compare and contrast different approaches to the study of international politics. This means that you will review the key features of some of the theories of International Relations. There are different ways to understand the world we live in, and different theoretical approaches provide different ways of identifying and exploring the subject matter of international politics.
The first four weeks of class will have presented you with various pictures of the state- as an autonomous entity, as a collection of interests, as a series of processes, as an organized crime syndicate, as a protector of populations and so on. Each of these pictures has told you something about the idea of power- power as an interest in an anarchical system, and power as a cooperative or collective understanding of how the world is.
This assignment ask you to answer the following question and to defend your answer in the context of the course readings to date:
Is the international system a system governed primarily by anarchy or primarily by law and cooperation?
You can also explore the limitations to this question and go beyond the binary.
Answer should be 3 pages double-spaced. You must think very carefully about what elements/arguments you deem to be important. Do not just throw anything and everything in your paper. You have to choose what you think are most important points. Your answer does not have to be comprehensive but rather coherent.
Review different theories learned in class (take two different approaches and try and assess it and explain how it relates to power)
- No additional research, only course material needed.
Textbooks:
· Global Politics: A new introduction (2nd editionby Edkins and Zehfuss Chapter 11
Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss chapter 11
Introduction to International Relations (6th edition) by Robert Jackson and Georg Sorensen
Readings did so far: Please refer to the following for the approaches for the paper
· Jackson & Sorensen Chapter 1
· Edkins and Zehfuss Chapter 11
· Jackson & Sorensen Chapter 3