Summary on Realism and Liberalism

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Realism and Liberalism Classic Prisoner’s Dilemma: A summary • Two people, A and B, are suspects. If both deny the crime, both go free. If A denies the crime but B confesses, A gets 25 years in prison while B goes free (and vice versa). If both confess to the crime, both get 10 years in prison. Security Dilemma: A summary • Both strength and weakness in national security may be provocative to other nation-states. • Basically, the self-help attempts of states to look after their security needs tend, regardless of intention, to create rising insecurity for other states as each interprets its own measures as defensive and the measures of others as potentially threatening. Realism Fundamental principles: • Statism: Nation-states are the main actors in international politics. As such it is a state-centric theory of international relations. This contrasts with liberal international relations theories which accommodate roles for non-state actors and international institutions. • Survival: The international system is governed by anarchy, meaning that there is no central authority. Therefore, international politics is a struggle for power (the ability to influence) between self-interested states, and the primary concern of all states is survival. • Self-help: No other states can be relied upon to help guarantee the state's survival. Key assumptions: • Nation-states (sovereign states) are unitary (powers of separate constituents are vested in a central body), rational, geographically based actors. • The international system is anarchic with no authority above capable of regulating interactions between states as [realists believe that] no true authoritative world government exists. • NGOs such as the United Nations are thus not accredited with significant influence or credibility from a realist perspective. • Sovereign
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