Th, 6:30-9:10 POLS 580T
Office Hours: Fall 2006
Zulauf 103; 753 7042,
dunger@niu.edu
Theories of International Relations
This course provides a selective survey of the literature
and concepts in the international relations field. It aims to prepare students for more advanced
study and research, as well as the candidacy examination (for doctoral
students.) The course should help
students become able to participate in policy and scholarly discussions on
international relations issues with fellow professionals.
Assigned and recommended readings will be available from the
library’s e-reserves.
Students may want to become familiar with the department’s
webpage which has curricular information, course syllabi, as well as useful
information about possible careers and other matters.
NIU abides by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
that mandates reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities. If you have a disability, contact me early in
the semester so that I can help to address your needs. You will to register with the Center for
Access-Ability Resources (CAAR) on campus on the 4th floor of the University
Health Services building (753-1303.)
Requirements:
-Contributions to class discussions (30%)
-Assigned class presentation (eight minutes each; 20%)
(one presentation of class
reading(s); one effort to explain or interpret contemporary developments in light
of theoretical frameworks introduced in class)
-Hard copy of final take-home exam due in Political Science
Department by 4 p.m., Tuesday December
12th (50%)
Presentations of readings should very briefly review and
assess the author(s)’s arguments, the appropriateness
of the analytical approaches employed, and should place the readings in their
theoretical context.
Schedule of meetings and readings
August 31, Overview of the course and international
relations theory
September 7, History and international relations theory
-Marcus Fischer, “Feudal Europe, 800-1300: Communal
Discourse and Conflictual Practices,” International
Organization, 46, Spring 1992, pp.426-66
-E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’
Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, 2nd
edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1954) pp.1-21
-Joao M. de Almeida, “Challenging Realism by Returning to
History: The British Committee’s Contribution to IR 40 Years On,” International
Relations, 17:3, 2003
-Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, The
Republican Legacy in International Thought (
-Alex J. Bellamy, “Introduction,” in A.J. Bellamy, ed.
International Society and its Critics (
Recommended readings:
-Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital
and
-Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (Columbia University
Press, 1977) pp.3-76
-Paul Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neorealist
Thought,” International Security, 19:1, Summer 1994,
pp.108-48
September 14, Classical realism (class meeting to be
rescheduled)
-Thucydides, “The Melian
Dialogue,” in Richard Betts, Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes
of War and Peace (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1994) pp.66-71
-Laurie Johnson Bagby, “The Use
and Abuse of Thucydides,” International Organization, 48, Winter
1994, pp.131-53
-Michael Doyle, “Thucydidean
Realism,” Review of International Studies, 16, July 1990, pp.223-237
-Michael Williams, “Hobbes and International Relations: A
Reconsideration,” International Organization, 50:2, Spring
1996, pp.213-36
Recommended readings:
-Peter J. Ahrensdorf, “Thucydides:
Realistic Critique of Realism,” Polity, 30:2, Winter
1997, pp.231-
-Daniel Harst, “Thucydides and
Neo-Realism,” International Studies Quarterly, 33, March 1989, pp.3-28
-Steven Forde, “International
Realism and the Science of Politics: Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Neorealism,” International Studies Quarterly, 39:2, June
1995, pp.141-60
September 21, Levels of analysis in international relations
theory
-Andrew Linklater, The
Transformation of Political Community (Polity Press, 1998) pp.14-45
-J. David Singer, “The Level of Analysis Problem in
International Relations,” in G. John Ikenberry, ed.,
American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays (1989), pp.67-78
-Alexander Wendt, “The Agent-Structure Problem in
International Relations Theory,” International Organization, 41, Summer 1987, pp.335-70
-Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (Columbia University
Press, 1965) pp.3-15, 42-79
-Barry Buzan,
From International to World Society?
English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization (
September 28, Realism: variations on a theme
-Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics
(Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley, 1979) 79-128
-John G. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy
of Great Power Politics (W.W. Norton and Co., 2001) pp.14-22, 29-54
-Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among
Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace 4th edition (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1967) pp.3-14, 25-29, 161-71
-Jeffry Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, “Is Anbody Still a
Realist?” International Security, 24, February 1999
-Richard Ned Lebow, “The Long
Peace, the End of the Cold War, and the Failure of Realism,” International
Organization, 48:2, Spring 1994, pp.249-77
Recommended readings:
-Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under
the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, January 1978, pp.167-214
-Randall Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?”
Security Studies, 3, pp.90-121
October 5, Liberalism and the Democratic Peace
-Mark Zacher and Richard Matthew,
“Liberal International Theory: Common Threads, Divergent Strands,” in Charles Kegley, ed., Controversies in International Relations
Theory (St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp.107-50
-Michael Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven Miller, eds.,
Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999)
>Russett pp.337-50, Layne
pp.157-201, Spiro pp.351-54,
-Michael Doyle, “Liberalism and World Politics,” American
Political Science Review, 80, 1986, pp.1151-69
Recommended readings:
-Michael Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven Miller, eds.,
Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999)
>Doyle
pp.3-57, Russett pp.58-81, Oren pp.263-73
-Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World
Order (
October 12, Neo-liberal institutionalism
-Robert Powell, “Absolute and Relative Gains in
International Relations Theory,” American Political ScienceReview,
85:4, 1991, pp.1303-20
-Robert Powell, “Anarchy in International Relations Theory:
the Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate,” International
Organization, 48:2, Spring 1994, pp.313-44
-Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie, “International Organization: A State of the Art on
the Art of the State,” International Organization,
-Robert Jackson, Classical and Modern Thought on International
Relations (Palgrave, 2005) pp.1-16
Recommended readings:
-Robert Jervis, “Realism, Neoliberalism,
and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate,” International Security, Summer 1999
-John Mearsheimer, “The False
Promise of International Institutions,” International Organization, 19:3,
Winter 1994/1995. Responses, Summer 1995, pp.39-93
October 19, Constructivism
-John Gerard Ruggie, “What Makes
the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist
Challenge,” International Organization 52:4, Autumn
1998, pp.855-85
-Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy is What States Make of It,”
International Organization, 46, Spring 1992,
pp.391-426
-Yosef Lapid,
“The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International theory in a
Post-Positivist Era,” International Studies Quarterly, 33, 1989, pp.235-54
-Jacinta O’Hagan, “The Question of Culture,” in Bellamy, ed.
International Society, pp.209-28
Recommended readings:
-Jack L. Snyder, “Anarchy and Culture: Insights from the
Anthropology of War,” International Organization, 56:1, Winter
2002
-Jeffrey Checkel, “The Constuctivist Turn in International Relations Theory,”
World Politics, January 1998, pp.324-48
-Jim George, “Realist ‘Ethics’, International Relations, and
Post-modernism: Thinking Beyond the Egoism-Anarchy
Thematic,” Millennium, 24:2, Summer 1995, pp.195-223
-James Lee Ray, “The Abolition of Slavery and the End of
International War,” International Organization, 43, 1989, pp.405-39
October 26, Rationalist approaches
-Robert Powell, “Bargaining Theory and International
Conflict,” American Review of Political Science, 5, 2002, pp.1-30
-James Fearon, “Rationalist
Explanations for War,” International Organization, 49:3, Summer
1995, pp.379-414
-Stephen Walt, “Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Rational Choice and Security Studies,”
International Security, Spring 1999
>commentaries
and responses in International Security, Fall 1999
Recommended readings:
-Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner, The
Limits of International Law (
November 2, Class, gender, networks: alternative lenses for
understanding international politics
-Thomas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, “The socialization of international human rights
norms into domestic practices: introduction,” in Thomas Risse, , and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. The Power of Human Rights (
-Richard M. Price, “Transnational Civil Society and Advocacy
in World Politics,” World Politics, 55:4, July 2003
-Michael Gordon, “Domestic Conflict and the Origins of World
War I: the British and German Cases,” Journal of Modern History, 1974,
pp.191-226
Recommended readings:
-Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense
Intellectuals,” Signs, 12:4, 1987, pp.687-718
-J. Ann Tickner, “You Just Don’t
Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and
IR Theorists,” International Studies Quarterly, 41, December, pp.611-32
-Martha Finnemore and Stephen Toope, “Alternatives to ‘Legalization’: Richer Views of Law
and Politics, International Organization, 55, 2001, pp.743-58
November 9, Applied analysis: East Asian security
-Mel Gurtov, “American crusades,”
Confronting the Bush Doctrine (Routledge 2003)
pp.1-38
-Amitav Acharya,
“Will
-David C. Kang, “Hierarchy, Balancing, and Empirical Puzzles
in Asian International Relations,” International Security, 28:3, Winter
2003/2004
-Peter J. Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, “
-
Novermber 16, International
Political Economy
-John Gerard Ruggie,
“International Regimes, Transactions and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the
Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization, 36, 1982, pp.379-415
-Dani Rodrik,
Has Globalization Gone Too Far? (Washington, D.C.: Institute of International
Economics, 1997) pp.1-10, 69-85
-Layna Mosley, Global Capital and
National Governments (
-Richard Falk, “(Re)Imagining the
Governance of Globalization,” in Bellamy, International Society, pp.195-208
-Barry Buzan, From International
to World Society, pp.27-62, 245-49
November 30,
-The White House, The National Security Strategy of the
-William Wohlforth, “The Stability
of a Unipolar World,” International Security, 24:1, Summer 1999
-Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar
Moment Revisited,” The National Interest, Winter 2002,2003
-Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire (Metropolitan
Books, 2004) pp.1-37
-Robert Kagan, “Power and
Weakness,” Policy Review, 113, June/July 2002, pp.3-28
-Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for
Recommended readings:
-Emmanuel Todd, After the Empire (
-Charles Krauthammer, “Democratic Realism: An American
Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World,” 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture, www.aei.org/news/newsID.19912
-Niall Ferguson, Colossus (Penguin, 2004) pp.286-302
-Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice
(Basic Books) pp.213-30
December 7, Rethinking Sovereignty
-Tony Smith, “In Defense of Intervention,” Foreign Affairs,
73, 1994, pp.34-46
-Francis Fukuyama, “Nation-Building 101,” The Atlantic
Monthly, January 20, 2004
-P.Q. Hirst, “Another Century of
Conflict? War and the International System in the 21st Century,” International
Relations, 16:3, 2002, pp.327-42
-International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (
-Robert Jackson, The Global
Covenant (
-Richard Devetak, “Violence,
Order, and Terror,” in Bellamy, International Society and its Critics,
pp.242-46
Recommended readings:
-Audrey Kurth Cronin, “Rethinking
Sovereignty in the Age of Terror,” Survival, 44:2, Summer
2002, pp.119-39
-Mark Zacher, “The Territorial
Integrity Norm,” International Organization, 55:2, Spring
2001, pp.215-50
-Francis Fukuyama,
-Joel Krieger, Globalization and State Power (Pearson
Longman, 2005) pp.114-33
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