Introduction to International Relations

(PSIR 2221)

Demeke A. (PhD)
Addis Ababa University Department of Political
Science and International Relations
2024
Introduction to International Relations
(IR)-PSIR 2221
• Department: Political Science and International Relations
• The Course has Eight Chapters
• Chapter one- Meaning, Definitions and Conceptual
Understanding of International Relations
• Chapter two: Evolution of International Relations: Past and
Present
• Chapter three: State Actors in International Relations
• Chapter Four: None State Actors
• Chapter Five: Theories of International Relations
• Chapter Six: Levels of Analysis and Foreign Policy
• Chapter Seven: Instruments of Foreign Policy
• Chapter Eight: Some basic Issues in IR
 Chapter One: Meaning, Definitions and
Conceptual Understanding of International
Relations
• Complexity in definition and conceptual understanding of IR
• International relations is a vague and widely used term with
two main meanings.
• The first meaning of term pertains to interactions among states
and between states and state based actors across state
boundaries.
• In this sense, the term can be compared with another widely
used term: international politics.
• However, international relations is wider than international
politics. Thus, the second term is included in the first.
• Indeed, international politics is usually seen as one of the most
important sub-fields of international relations.
 Definition and Conceptual
understanding
• This first meaning of the term ‘international’ relations was
coined by Jeremy Bentham-it makes it first appearance in his
1789 book Principles of Morals and Legislation.
I. Traditional/ Euro Centric/state Centric
Perspective/conservative/ Narrow Perspective
• Study of war and diplomatic, economic relations among states
• Defined etymologically, the name International relations
(Inter-national-Relations) simply connotes relations between
sovereign territorial units.
• International relations can be defined as political activities
and other kinds and aspects of interactions among two or
more states.
• Study of cross border transactions of all type between
sovereign states
 Definition and Conceptual
understanding
II. Modern Liberal view/Broader Perspective-As a situation,
international relations (ir) in its lower case describes the state
of interaction between two or more actors in separate
national boundaries.
Put differently, it describes the relationships that take place by
members of the international community.
• These include all or any aspects of their relationship such as
war, conflict, dispute, separation, belligerency, settlement,
pact, treaties, cooperation, conferences, and
organization.(Political and non political/legal)
• As a separate field of study/autonomous discipline-Upper
Case IR is the subject that deals with the lower case ir.
What does it mean?
 Definition and Conceptual understanding
• The academic field of International Relations is a branch of
political science that is concerned with the study of
relations between states, the foreign policy of nation-
states, and the mechanisms and institutions (such as
international organizations, inter-governmental
organizations, international and national non-governmental
organizations and multinational corporations) through
which states interact.
• The study of international relations involves many subjects
such as international and regional peace and security,
international organizations, nuclear proliferation,
globalization, human rights, economic development,
intervention, international financial relations, and
international trade relations.
 Conclusion of definitional part
• Since its inception, international relations has been
defined in many ways.
• Writers differ greatly upon the definition of the subject.
• It appears quite natural, as Stanley Hoffman says, "How
could one agree once and for all upon the definition of a
field whose scope is in constant flux, indeed, a field
whose fluctuation is one of its principal characteristics”.
• As such, international relations cannot be defined in any
generally one acceptable way.
• Generally we can reduce all definitions of IR into two
major categories: traditional/state centric or Euro-centric
and modern or liberal definitions and views of IR.
Growth of International Relations as a
Separate Field of study/discipline
• Ir as a practice-predates the Westphalia era
• IR as an academic discipline is only 104 years old
• Nonetheless, IR as a course of study has been
studied for hundreds of thousands of years, as
part of other disciplines such as Psychology,
Anthropology, Sociology, Economics, Diplomatic
History, Philosophy, Law and Political Studies.
• Matters of war, peace and diplomacy and the like,
which are central to the study of IR were dealt
with by these disciplines
 Growth of International Relations as a
Separate Field of study/discipline
• For instance, the major works of renowned scholars like Thucydides,
Sun Tzu, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes and Clausewitz were
espousing the principles of political realism in the context of uses of
power within and outside the state were laying the foundation for a
popular and distinct school of thought today in IR study.
• The First World War largely affected international politics, economy
and social status of the countries.
• The destruction was enormous.

• It became a priority to research on the war and its causes to avoid such
destructions in future.
• The trauma of the First World War made people demand a better
understanding of foreign relations and drew people’s attention to the
growing importance of international relations as an academic
discipline.
 Growth of International Relations as a
Separate Field of study/discipline
• As a result, in 1919, a department of international politics was
established in the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
followed by the establishment of the department of International
Relations in early 1920s in the London School of Economics.
• But others argue that IR as a separate discipline was established as
a Woodrow Wilson chair of International Relations in 1919 at the
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom.
• Whichever might be true, as an academic discipline, International
Relations initially focused on the study of political and diplomatic
relations and then later commercial relations among sovereign
states.
• Thereafter, International Relations were started to be popular
among European as well as American universities and then it
started to be taught in Scandinavian countries
Growth of International Relations as a Separate
Field of study/discipline
• Alfred Zimmern was the first holder of this chair.
• C.K. Webster and E.H. Carr were among the early scholars
of this discipline.
• This subject was offered in European and American
Universities from the 1920s.
• Simultaneously at several other places, chairs of
International Relations were established such as in Hebrew
University, Jerusalem (1929), Oxford University (1930), the
London
• Generally,
• American-Foreign policy project and place of maturity
• European-Traditional and birth place of IR
 International Relations and International
Politics: Are They the Same?
• International Relations encompasses a broad area in
that it examines the entire international system.
• Think of International Politics, then, as a component
within that broad spectrum.
• Therefore, it is a much narrower subject area.
• The term International Politics is used synonymously
with the terms ‘world politics’ or ‘global politics’.
• The definitions for each of these terms are often not
helpful and tend to confuse a person even more.
• International Politics deals with the practical realities of
a state’s interaction with another state or several other
states.
 International Relations and International
Politics: Are They the Same?
• Some differences we find, here:
1) Scope: International Relations encompasses a broad spectrum of the
international arena while International Politics is only a component of
International Relations and, therefore, much narrower.
2) Issue: International Relations concerns the relations or foreign affairs of
nations. International Politics deals only with the political relations of
states and focuses on how states collectively respond to the emerging
global issues. Thus, IR includes every aspect of relations between states.
political relations, economic relations, cultural relations, military-
technical cooperation, and more. Whereas International Politics which
also refers as Global Politics is just one of the aspect we discuss in IR.
3) Method of study and enquiry: IR descriptive while politics is more of
analytical. The academic study of international relations has been
traditionally dominated by positivist inquiry-it seeks a descriptive and
objective understanding of our global world and the forces and relations
that shape the international context. Positive statements, in this sense,
are contrasted with normative statements: the former are statements
that describe what is, whereas the latter are statements that directions
for what ought to be.
 International Relations and International
Politics: Are They the Same?
4) Objective: politics and Power/conflict and IR
and harmonization, institutionalization,
stabilization, regularization….peace/cooperation

• Though IR as a discipline is supposed to fairly

mixes study of conflict and cooperation
among actor, the study of IR is heavily
dominated by conflict studies than
cooperation. Why is it?
 Whose Discipline is it?: Contested
Inclusiveness of IR
• Does the discipline of International Relations (IR) truly
reflect the global society we live in today?
• Some writers argue that the discipline of International
Relations (IR) does not reflect the voices, experiences,
knowledge claims, and contributions of the vast majority of
the societies and states in the world, and often marginalizes
those outside the core countries of the West.
• With IR scholars around the world seeking to find their own
voices and reexamining their own traditions, our challenge
now is to chart a course toward a truly inclusive discipline,
recognizing its multiple and diverse foundations.
• Stanley Hoffmann (1977: 41) famously described the field
as an “American social science.” That no longer holds in a
physical or geographic sense.
 Whose Discipline is it?: Contested
Inclusiveness of IR
• Over the past decades, IR schools, departments, institutes, and
conventions have mushroomed around the world.
• But the discipline still needs to overcome a central challenge related to
its British and North American roots.

• In elaborating how biased the discipline is, other writers contest that
even if in teaching and research, there has been a great deal of
interaction between Western and non-Western scholars and
institutions, but it is the universities, scholars, and publishing outlets
in the West that dominate and set the agenda.
• IR scholarship has tended to view the non-Western world as being of
interest mainly to area specialists, and hence a place for “cameras,”
rather than of “thinkers” (Shea 1997), for fieldwork and theory-
testing, rather than for discovery of new ideas and approaches.
 Whose Discipline is it?: Contested Inclusiveness
of IR
• In light of this, let me pose a few questions:
1. As some scholars describe the Cold War era as a period of long
peace in IR, why do they view the Cold War as a “long peace”?
Because the hundreds of conflicts and millions of lives lost in the
battle deaths during the Cold War took place outside Europe, in the
so-called Third World? Why do mainstream IR theorists and writers
ignore colonial wars, or extra systemic conflicts, in assessing war
and peace in the international system, especially in constructing the
Democratic Peace theory? Taking these wars into consideration
would challenge claims about the pacific nature of Western liberal
democracies.
2. When considering the ideas that have shaped IR thinking, why do
mainstream IR scholars make so much of Thucydides, Machiavelli,
Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, but not Ashoka, Kautilya, Sun Tzu, Ibn
Khaldun, Jawaharlal Nehru, Raul Prebisch, Franz Fanon, and many
others from the developing world (Acharya and Buzan 2010)?
Whose Discipline is it?: Contested Inclusiveness
of IR
• Some writers view this increasing tendency of neglecting a
number of issues and developments in the third world by
mainstream IR scholars as ethnocentrism and exclusion in
IR.
• Despite its growing popularity, IR’s dominant narratives,
theories, and methods fail to correspond to the increasingly
global distribution of its subjects.
• Distinctions between the “West” and the “Rest” blur in
material terms, but not in the way that we study, publish,
and discuss IR.
• Centers of learning remain clustered in the developed
West. Overcoming this disjuncture presents a central
challenge for our discipline.
 Who should take the blame for its
biasness?
1. I do not mean to imply that this particular
underdevelopment of IR stems entirely from Western
intellectual neocolonialism.
2. Much responsibility lies with the economic and
political circumstances in the developing world.
Conditions such as scarce resources, political
interference, and lack of freedom of expression have
also stunted the development of IR as a global
discipline.
3. But the international studies community also bear
responsibility for this state of affairs (Tickner 2003;
Acharya and Buzan 2007, 2010; Tickner and Waever
2009).
 International Politics and Domestic
Politics (Similarities and Dissimilarities)
• Similarities:
1. Politics or Domestic politics and International Politics are closely
related and interdependent areas. Both have autonomous spheres but
at the same time important linkages between the two are present.
2. Basically the two have a similar nature. Struggle for power
characterizes both.
3. Power characterizes both Domestic Politics and International Politics.
In both, power is a means as well as an end.
4. Both have similar variables. Nations as international actors are similar
to groups as political actors in Politics. Conflict of national interests
among nations is the condition of International Politics and conflict of
interests among groups is a condition of Politics.
5. Both use the instrument of coercion for accomplishing their declared
objectives.
6. Both involve struggle for power and continuous conflict-resolution.
Hence there are several similarities between Politics and International
Politics.
International Politics and Domestic Politics
(Similarities and Dissimilarities)
• Dissimilarities:
1) Non-Sovereign Actors of Domestic Politics and
Sovereign Actors of International Politics:
• In the sphere of domestic politics, groups are the
actors. Groups act and interact within the
environment of the state. These are non-
sovereign actors. In International Politics
sovereign-nation-states are the main actors. Since
the actors are sovereign, no law or rule, except
the one which is voluntarily accepted and
followed by nations, applies to their behaviours.
 International Politics and Domestic Politics
(Similarities and Dissimilarities)
2. Difference in respect of the Role of Force:
• In the sphere of domestic politics, role of force is limited. Power is used
only in certain circumstances. It is the ultimate means of conflict-
resolution. As against it, the role of power/force in international
relations is direct, more frequent and more intense. Nations do not
hesitate to impose their interests and decisions upon others by means
of power, even by the use of military power.
• Disputes and disagreements are more widespread in International
Politics than in domestic politics.
• But civil wars and internal violence really fall within the sphere of
domestic politics but wars, aggressions, interventions, coercive
interferences, and reprisals form part of international relations.
• In fact, in international relations the means which nations can use for
exercising power over other nations are more coercive in nature than
the means available to groups in politics.
• Due to this domestic politics is more volatile and conflictual than
international politics.
International Politics and Domestic Politics
(Similarities and Dissimilarities)
3. Municipal vs. International law
• The basis of domestic politics is the municipal
law and constitution of the state followed by
other types of laws like proclamations,
regulations, rules, orders, decrees and the like.
• As against it, the legal basis of International
Politics is International Law, which is not a
definite and strong law.
International Politics and Domestic Politics
(Similarities and Dissimilarities)
4. Enforceability of Laws
• Since municipal law is definite and authoritative, relations
and interactions in the sphere of domestic politics are quite
set, organized and constitutional.
• Struggle for power in a state is governed by several set
laws, rules and regulations.
• The reverse is true of International Politics. Nations do not
hesitate to twist, use and even violate rules of international
law for satisfying their respective interests and goals.
Municipal law enforcement is backed by coercive
institutions like police, defense force and court systems, but
international law does not have strong and reliable rule
enforcement mechanisms.
International Politics and Domestic Politics
(Similarities and Dissimilarities)
5. Presence of formal government vs. absence of formal
government:
• Political interactions within every state are always
conditioned by the policies and power of a duly constituted
and legitimate government.
• The sphere of International Relations lacks the presence of
formal government.
• The United Nations and several other international
agencies and associations are there but these are only
organizations of sovereign nation-states and their role in
respect of regulating relations among nations is quite
limited.
• The UNO cannot be described as a world government. It is
only an international organization.
International Politics and Domestic Politics
(Similarities and Dissimilarities)
6. Boundaries of the Two:
• Politics is always limited to the environment of the
state as such it can be described as politics within a
state. As against this, however, International Politics is
politics among nations and the nature of international
environment is indefinite and highly dynamic.
• It operates in the global environment. In domestic
politics authority is organized hierarchically, creating
accountability responsibility and boss-subordinate
relations.
• In International system, authority is organized
horizontally because of the sovereign equality of the
states. Therefore, the defining feature of international
relations is anarchy.
 Global IR as an alternative to Pro-West
IR: Redefining IR as Global IR
• A group of scholars addressed the question: “why is there no non-
Western IR theory?” (Acharya and Buzan 2007)
• First, it is argued that the main theories of IR are too deeply rooted in,
and beholden to, the history, intellectual traditions, and agency claims
of the West. They accord little more than a marginal place to those of
the non-Western world.
• Second, it explored the reasons for the underdevelopment of IR
theories outside of the West, which include cultural, political, and
institutional factors when viewed against the “hegemonic” status of
established IR theories.
• Third, the project identified some of the possible sources of non-
Western IR theory, including but not limited to indigenous history and
culture, the ideas of nationalist leaders, distinctive local and regional
interaction patterns, and the writings of scholars of distinction
working on different regions and on world affairs more generally.
The End of Chapter
One