Models Of International Politics Research Articles

Interview with Professor Kalevi Holsti: Brief Reflections on the Discipline of International Relations and World Problems

The long-run trend in the decline of interstate war is notable. Once a common feature of all civilizations and geographical areas, the world since 1945 has featured a very low probability that two or more states would resolve their conflicting interests by armed conflict. The probability that in any given year war between states will occur has declined to less than one percent. This pattern contrasts with the prevalence of domestic violence since 1945. Wars within states have made up the vast majority of armed conflicts, but our models of International Politics have little to say about them. But the benign International situation of the post Cold War era has begun to crumble. The Russian attack on the Ukraine, tensions over Taiwan, the lapse of arms control agreements, the arms build-up of China and India are indicators of increased dangers and greater probabilities of armed conflicts between states. Cyber wars, as between Israel and Iran, have also appeared. The certainties of the Cold War era have been replaced by uncertainties and higher risks.

Studying Leaders and Military Conflict

This article introduces the special feature “Leaders, Crisis Behavior, and International Conflict.” Individual leaders play a central role in world politics. Yet, for the last several decades, international relations scholarship has downplayed or ignored leaders, focusing instead on system-wide variables and domestic political institutions. A new wave of research, however, has helped to reintroduce the leader-level back into models of international politics. The papers that constitute this special feature represent some of the cutting-edge work in this area. This introductory paper traces the evolution of research on leaders in international relations and provides a conceptual framework that highlights different approaches to the study of leaders. It also distills several key themes that emerge from the papers, in addition to offering directions for future research.

Extraction, Allocation, and the Rise and Decline of States

Using realist models of international politics that deemphasize the two-level security game that states play, most analyses of hegemonic decline argue that decline is caused by the differential growth of power between hegemons and challenging states. The authors argue that decline is affected highly by states' resource extraction and allocation decisions, and that the international and domestic consequences of these decisions must be analyzed. A model of how states respond to external and internal security threats is outlined and analyzed via computer simulation. The authors find that states are likely to decline if they overemphasize increasing capabilities to deter threats instead of allocating resources to reduce opponents' willingness to attack. In addition, a more “dovish” allocation strategy can be very effective against internal threats. Thus the decline of hegemons and rise of challengers is determined as much by strategies as by constraints posed by the system structure.

The Necrologists of International Relations

AbstractTwo contemporary streams of thought in international relations offer significant theoretical challenges to the field and to the way it has been organized since the time of Rousseau. New power cycle theories propose that the etiology of war resides in different growth rates among the major powers. Hegemonic wars are a recurrent consequence of the states system. The literature suggests that the patterns of the past are likely to be repeated in future; hence, the only solution to the problem of war is the transcendence of the states system. The second body of literature proposes that growing interdependence is bringing profound structural changes that are already leading to the demise of the nation state and to the transformation of the states system. The essay critically examines these theories and outlines reasons why both are empirically and logically deficient. These bodies of literature also illustrate how even among rigorous quantitative analysts, normative concerns animate research. Finally, the author suggests why the search for a theory or model of international politics is doomed to failure, and why a healthy field will be characterized by intellectual pluralism.

Dependency Theory and the Soviet-East European Hierarchical Regional System: Initial Tests

Throughout the post-World War II period, the prevailing paradigm of international politics among Western scholars has assumed that the major task confronting the decisionmakers of all states is achieving security in an anarchic state system. It follows from this assumption that relations between relatively equal superpowers constitute, in Arnold Wolfers's phrase, “the relationship of major tension” in the postwar world. In the 1970s, however, there has been a revival among Western scholars of an alternative perspective on world politics: the theory of economic imperialism, or, as it is usually labeled in the 1970s, “dependency theory.” It is a perspective which focuses on unequal relations between states. In that perspective, “the basic model of international politics [is] the imperialist system that was centered upon states of unequal economic development,“ where “the relationship of major tension was between the developed and underdeveloped economies.“

Transnational Politics: Toward a Theory of Multinational Politics

The concept of “international politics” which is central to a large sector of political science, indeed its label, is increasingly being called into question. Those processes which can no longer be clearly assigned either tostatesor—as suggested by the model of “inter-national politics”—to the areabetweenstates are gaining in importance in international affairs. Some examples of these processes are the direct horizontal transactions between societal actors of different nation-states, transactions which bypass the institutions of government but strongly affect their margin of maneuver; the various forms of mutual penetration of formally separate entities; and the growing activities of a number of nonstate actors. Many theories which are connected with the model of international politics, above all that of sovereignty but also subordinate constructs such as the doctrine of separation of powers, should likewise be called into question.

Security and a Transnational System: The Case of Nuclear Energy

In any discussion of transnational relations the nuclear energy field can best be studied within the framework of the statecentered model of international politics. Although in most fields private activities precede governmental regulation (which follows in response to social and other considerations), the opposite is true in the nuclear energy field. Because the first development of nuclear energy so intimately involved national security, government immediately assumed a preeminent role. This role is now being modified—but still only slightly—by nascent private undertakings of an occasionally transnational nature. Nevertheless, there is already sufficient evidence of growing transnational trends to make an exploration eminently worthwhile in the context of this volume.

The Patterns of International Politics and of International Law

The principal aim of this paper is to relate the normative structure of international law to the underlying patterns of political behavior that have characterized the modern state system. The political constraint upon the normative structure of the law is only one of many; there are also economic, social, and ethical constraints, among others. Nonetheless, it provides many insights into the changing substantive content of the law and also illustrates the way in which theory helps to provide an understanding of subject matter.A systematic study of the structure of the international society has been attempted elsewhere by one of the authors. Two different models of international systems delineated there have particular relevance to the present topic. These are the “balance of power” system, a model of the international politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the “loose bipolar” system, a model of present-day international politics. The two models, though no doubt less complex than the actual patterns of action, suffice to demonstrate important differences in system structure and behavior that can be related to normative standards.