Theories Of World Politics Part 1:- Realism

Theories Of world Politics -1: Realism

Realists have a different view of world Politics and like liberals, claim a long tradition. However, it is highly contested whether realists can actually claim a lineage all the way back to ancient Greece or whether realism is an invented intellectual tradition for cold war American foreign policy needs.

 Either way, there are many variants of something called ‘realism’. But in general, for realists , the main actors on the world stage are states, which are legally sovereign actors. Sovereignty means that there is no actor above the state that can compel it to act in specific ways. According to this view, other actors such as multinational corporations or international organizations have to work within the framework of inter - state relations. As for what propels states to act as they do, realists see human nature as centrally important, and they view human nature as rather selfish. 

As a result, world politics represents a struggle for power among states, with each trying to maximize its national interest. Such order as exists in world politics is the result of the workings of a mechanism known as the balance of power, whereby states act so as to prevent any one state from dominating . Thus, world politics is all about bargaining and alliances, with diplomacy a key mechanism for balancing various national interests. But, finally the most important tool available for implementing states’ foreign policies is military force. 

Ultimately, since there is no sovereign body above the states that make up the international political system. World Politics is a self-help system in which states must rely on their own military resources to achieve their ends. Often these ends can be achieved through cooperation, but the potential for conflict is ever present.

Since the 1970s and 1980s, an important variant of realism has developed, known as neorealism. This approach  stresses the importance of the structure of the international system in affecting the behavior of all states. Thus, during the cold war two main powers dominated the international system, and this gave rise to certain rules of behavior; now that the cold war has ended, the structure of world politics is said to be moving towards multipolarity (after a phase of unipolarity), which for neorealists will involve very different rules of the game.