THEORIES OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

• REALISM

Realism suggests that states should and do look out for their own interests first. Realism
presumes that states are out for themselves first and foremost. The world is therefore a
dangerous place; a state has look out for No. 1 and prepare for the worst. When George W.
Bush convinced the U.S. Congress that he should send in U.S. soldiers into Iraq in 2003 and take
out Saddam Hussein, this was realism in action.

Realism suggests that international relations is driven by competition between states, and
states therefore do and should try to further their own interests. What matters, then, is how
much economic and especially military power a state has. When your neighbor misbehaves,
you can’t call the police.

Classical realists say this is just human nature. People, by nature, are at some level greedy and
insecure and behave accordingly. So even if you’re not greedy and insecure, you have to
behave that way, because that’s the game. Structural realists say it’s more about how the world
is organized—an anarchic system creates the Hobbesian state of nature, referring to the 16th
century English philosopher who justified the existence of the state by comparing it to a
somewhat hypothetical “state of nature,” a war of all against all. So states should seek peace,
but prepare for war.

This tends to make national security look like a zero-sum game: Anything I do to make myself
more secure tends to make you feel less secure, and vice versa. A realist might counter that a
balance of power between states in fact preserves the peace, by raising the cost of any
aggression to an unacceptable level.

Realists argue that war, at some point, is inevitable. Anarchy persists, and it isn’t going away
anytime soon.

PROPOSITIONS OF REALISM

1. The world is made up of states. They are the most important actors of world politics.

They are the supreme authority.

2. World politics is esentially a struggle among interested states for survival, security and

power and relative capabilities.

3. Every state has an obligation to promote it' s national interests associated with the
 acquisition of power to enhance self preservation and maximize power and security.

4. States are not equal in terms of power. Powerful or stronger states dominate powerless

or weaker states.

5. There is insecurity and lawlessness in international system due to absence of higher

regulatory authority to curb conflict and wars in the international system by which

states can protect themselves and resolve their disputes.

6. Each state is responsible for maintaining it's own survival and national security since

conflict and struggle for power cannot be controlled.

7. Sufficient military capabilities and arms to defeat potential enemies, to exercise

influence over others and to maintain their own preservations, economic growth

determine the power of state.

8. International organizations have no enforcement power and impact over the actions of

state and the nature of world politics.

• LIBERALISM

Liberalism suggests in fact states can peacefully co-exist, and that states aren’t always on the
brink of war. Liberal scholars point to the fact that despite the persistence of armed conflict,
most nations are not at war most of the time. Most people around the world don’t get up and
start chanting “Death to America!” and trying to figure out who they can bomb today.
Liberalism argues that relations between nations are not always a zero-sum game. A zero-sum
game is one in which any gain by one player is automatically a loss by another player. My gains
in security, for example, don’t make you worse off, and your gains in anything don’t make me
worse off. Liberal theory also points to the fact that despite the condition of anarchy in the
world, most nations are not at war, most of the time. So the idea that international relations
must be conducted as though one were always under the threat of attack isn’t necessarily
indicative of reality.

There are different flavors of liberalism. Liberal institutionalism puts some faith in the ability of
global institutions to eventually coax people into getting along as opposed to going to war. Use
of the United Nations, for example, as a forum for mediating and settling dispute, will
eventually promote a respect for the rule of international law in a way that parallels respect for
the law common in advanced democracies. Liberal commercialism sees the advance of global
commerce as making less likely. War isn’t actually very profitable for most people, and it really
isn’t good for the economy.

Liberal internationalism trades on the idea that democracies are less likely to make war than
are dictatorships, if only because people can say no, either in legislatures or in elections.
Consider that public protest in the U.S. helped end U.S. involvement in Vietnam—that kind of
thing doesn’t always happen in non-democratic states.Although it can. Argentina’s
misadventures in Las Malvenas—the Falkland Islands—led to protests that brought down a
longstanding military dictatorship and restored democracy to the nation in 1982. Together,
these three are sometimes called the Kantian triangle, after the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant (1724–1804), who outlined them in a 1795 essay,Perpetual Peace.

The liberal argument that states can learn to get along is somewhat supported by the work of
Robert AxelrodRobert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books, 2006.,
who used an actual experiment involving a lot of players and the prisoner’s dilemma game to
show how people and perhaps states could learn to cooperate. The prisoner’s dilemma is a
fairly simple game that is useful for understanding various parts of human behavior. In this
game, you have two players, both prisoners. Each player has two choices: Defect to the
authorities and rat out the other player in exchange for a reduced sentence, or cooperate with
the other player and go free. If the players each defect they get 1 point apiece; if they
cooperate they get 3 points apiece. If, however, one player cooperates and the other defects,
the defector gets 5 points and the cooperator gets zero. Given that set of constraints, in a
realist world, both players defect and score only 1 point each. The best result would be for both
to cooperate, go free, and generate the most points between them. In the Axelrod experiment,
the game was iterated or repeated, so that in a round-robin featuring dozens of players, each
player played the other player multiple times. The players were all notable game theorists, and
each devised a particular strategy in an attempt to win the game. What Axelrod found was the
player in his experiment who used a strategy called “tit-for-tat” won. Tit-for-tat simply began by
cooperating, and then did whatever the other player did last time in the next round. In a
repeated game, which certainly describes relations between states, players eventually learned
to cooperate. Axelrod cites real world examples of where this kind of behavior occurred, such
as the German and Allied soldiers in the trenches of World War I, who basically agreed at
various times not to shoot each other, or to shell incoming shipments of food. As the soldiers
came to understand that they would be facing each other for some time, refraining from killing
each other meant that they all got to live.
PROPOSITIONS OF LIBERALISM

1. Nation-states are main actors but not the sole actors in international relations, other

actor includes international institutes, global cooperation.

2. Cooperation among nation-states is essential for a peaceful international system.

3. World politics is a struggle for consensus and mutual benefits rather than a struggle for

power.

4. Various actors interact with each other, agree some common rules, norms, and

recognize their common interests. Their greater independence, communication,

interaction and democratic values promote greater co-operation which, in turn brings

peace, security and justice in the world.

5. Conflict reduction practices and norms in any state can also be used when dealing with

international disputes.

6. Modes of bringing peace and collective benefit in the world are democracy, free trade

and global institutions.

• CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism is another and also interesting way of looking at international relations. It may
tell us more about why things are happening the way they do, but somewhat less about what
we should do about it. Constructivism argues that culture, social structures and human
institutional frameworks matter. Constructivism relies in part on the theory of the social
construction of reality, which says that whatever reality is perceived to be, for the most part
people have invented it.Of course, if the theory were entirely true, then the very idea of the
social construction of reality would also be socially constructed, and therefore potentially
untrue. To the extent that reality is socially constructed, people can make choices. Hence the
constructivist argument is, in part, that while the world system is indeed a form of anarchy, that
does not demand a realist response to foreign policy. People can choose to otherwise. So
constructivists might argue that the end of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union
was at least in part a decision by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to change his thinking. He
attempted then to ratchet down tensions with the U.S., and to liberalize Soviet society.Bova,
2012, p. 26. The fact that the Soviet Union promptly disintegrated doesn’t change that.

PROPOSITIONS OF CONSTRUCTIVISM

1. The international system is a set of ideas, thoughts and beliefs are arranged by people in

the past.

2. Social world is a world of human consciousness that is thoughts, beliefs, ideas and

understanding among human and groups of human being. Therefore, these influences

world politics.

3. Constructivist view that national identity, national interest and behavior of actors such

as individuals and states are socially defined and socially constructed.

4. State functions in social environment because society gives meaning to many core

concepts such as anarchy, power, national interest and security dilemma.

5. Sovereignty of states is the most important institution in international society.

Constructivists view state sovereignty as a changing phenomenon.

6. Global institutions are the norm setters and creators. They socialize states to accept

new norms, values and beliefs in the international system. Thus, they serve as an agent

of social construction which has independent effect on international relations.

7. It holds that actors other than states matter in the world affairs. However, they are

influenced by who they are and how they percieve themselves and others.

8. Constructivism in general focuses on three key ideas: Interest, Ideas and Norms.

REFERENCES:

>https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book
%3A_An_Introduction_to_Politics_(Sell)/09%3A_International_Relations/9.02%3A_Theories_of
_International_Relations
> https://youtu.be/nkYzGNH9YoQ