Book•
Theory of International Politics
01 Jan 1979-
About: The article was published on 1979-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 7932 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Global politics & International relations.
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03 Jan 1995
TL;DR: Rasler and Thompson as discussed by the authors explored the rise and fall as well as the relative decline of major world powers over the past five hundred years, and examined how these processes have set the stage for the outbreak of global war.
Abstract: In The Great Powers and Global Struggle Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson focus on two themes. They explore the rise and fall as well as the relative decline of major world powers over the past five hundred years, and they examine how these processes have set the stage for the outbreak of global war. Their interdisciplinary approach encompasses political science, economics, sociology, geography, and history. The most significant wars occur when regional leaders - historically in Western Europe - challenge global leaders. By studying the wars of Napoleon, Louis XIV, Philip II and the Italian/Indian Ocean wars of the sixteenth century through World Wars I and II to the present, the authors challenge the long-held idea that prosperity leads to over-consumption and underinvestment and thus decline - a theory, traceable to ancient times, that remains the principal explanation for global decline today. Arguments about global structural change and its implications abound, but rarely is the abstract translated into concrete historical terms with emphases on specific actors and empirical documentation. Rasler and Thompson reinterpret the past five hundred years of major-power warfare and provide extensive tests of the eighteen generalizations critical to their argument. They conclude that those who argue that global war and repositioning are no longer a concern among the major powers lack critical understanding of the behavior that contributes to such conflict.
102 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a simple model of an international system is presented as an n-person non-cooperative game in extensive form, and the stability of both constant-sum and non-constant-sum systems is examined.
Abstract: The theory of games is used to investigate several controversial issues in the literature on the balance of power. A simple model of an international system is presented as an n-person noncooperative game in extensive form, and the stability of both constant-sum and nonconstant-sum systems is examined. It is shown not only that constant-sum systems with any number of actors from two through five can be stable, but also that stability is actually promoted by conflict of interest. Contrary to much of the literature, however, there is a well-defined sense in which the most stable system is one with three actors. In each type of system, there is at least one distribution of power that leads not only to system stability but also to peace. Some of these peaceful distributions are more stable than others, and these more stable distributions are shown to be characterized by inequality rather than by equality of power. It is possible to distinguish between a bipolar and a multipolar type of stable distribution, the properties of each of which resemble, to some degree, assertions made about them in the literature. Finally, contrary to much of the recent literature on international cooperation, an increase in the ability of states to make binding agreements may actually diminish the stability of international systems.
102 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an elaborated but qualified defense of the conventional wisdom that Westphalia is the origin of modern international relations is presented, and a description of the historical causal pathways running from ideas to political interest is given.
Abstract: The Protestant Reformation was a crucial spring of modern international relations. Had it lever occurred, a system of sovereign states would not have arrived, at least not in the form or at he time that it did at the Peace of Westphalia. This is the counterfactual the author seeks to sustain. He first advances an elaborated but qualified defense of the conventional wisdom that Westphalia is the origin of modern international relations. He then accounts for how Protestant deas exerted influence through transforming identities and exercising social power. Structural heories, emphasizing changes in material power, are skeptical of this account. The author roots lis empirical defense of ideas in the strong correlation between Reformation crises and polities' interests in Westphalia. A description of the historical causal pathways running from ideas to political interest then follows. Germany and France are brought as cases to illustrate two of these pathways. Finally, the author shows the evidentiary weakness of alternative structural material explanations.
102 citations
TL;DR: The Skytte Prize for International Relations as mentioned in this paper was won by the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World, which is a critique of a conventional view of international relations that was more common 35 years ago than now.
Abstract: World politics has never been a democratic realm. Now, with interdependence and globalization prompting demands for global governance, the lack of global democracy has become an important public issue. Yet the domestic analogy is unhelpful since the conditions for electoral democracy, much less participatory democracy, do not exist on a global level. Rather than abandoning democratic principles, we should rethink our ambitions. First, we should emphasize, in our normative as well as our positive work, the role played by information in facilitating international cooperation and democratic discourse. Second, we should define feasible objectives such as limiting potential abuses of power, rather than aspiring to participatory democracy and then despairing of its impossibility. Third, we should focus as much on the powerful entities that are the core of the problem, including multinational firms and states, as on multilateral organizations, which often are the focus of criticism. Finally, we need to think about how to design a pluralistic accountability system for world politics that relies on a variety of types of accountability: supervisory, fiscal, legal, market, peer and reputational. A challenge for contemporary political science is to design such a system, which could promote both democratic values and effective international cooperation. Much of the work for which you honour me with the Skytte Prize derives from my critique of a conventional view of the study of international relations that was more common 35 years ago than now. In this perspective, world politics is essentially a matter of interstate competition, which breaks out occasionally in warfare. The role of students of world politics, in this view, is to understand the causes of war and the conditions of peace. Without denying the importance of this subject, I have sought to redefine the study of world politics by broadening its scope. I have sought to analyse transnational relations and interdependence, and to explore the conditions under which institutionalized or legalized cooperation takes place among states. I have also investigated the implications of such cooperation for outcomes that we care about, ranging from the maintenance of alliances, to security against terrorism to environmental protection. The most comprehensive statement of my perspective on world politics is in my 1984 book, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World
102 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: In this article, the past as prologue is used as a prologue for a discussion of Germany, the use of force and the power of strategic culture in the German military.
Abstract: Introduction - The past as prologue 1. On strategic culture 2. Stunde Null and the the construction of West German strategic culture 3. Germany and The use of force I - adjusting to life after the Cold War 4. The momentum of change, Germany and the use of force II - from Afghanistan to Iraq 5. Redesigning the Bundeswehr 6. The endurance of conscription Conclusions - Germany, the use of force and the power of strategic culture Bibliography
102 citations
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5,295 citations
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge, proven either by the power of the intellect or by the evidence of the senses as discussed by the authors. But the notion of proven knowledge was questioned by the sceptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics.
Abstract: For centuries knowledge meant proven knowledge — proven either by the power of the intellect or by the evidence of the senses. Wisdom and intellectual integrity demanded that one must desist from unproven utterances and minimize, even in thought, the gap between speculation and established knowledge. The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the sceptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics. Einstein’s results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge. But few realize that with this the whole classical structure of intellectual values falls in ruins and has to be replaced: one cannot simply water down the ideal of proven truth - as some logical empiricists do — to the ideal of’probable truth’1 or — as some sociologists of knowledge do — to ‘truth by [changing] consensus’.2
4,969 citations
4,163 citations
17 Feb 1966
TL;DR: This book contains the collected and unified material necessary for the presentation of such branches of modern cybernetics as the theory of electronic digital computers, Theory of discrete automata, theory of discrete self-organizing systems, automation of thought processes, theoryof image recognition, etc.
Abstract: : This book contains the collected and unified material necessary for the presentation of such branches of modern cybernetics as the theory of electronic digital computers, theory of discrete automata, theory of discrete self-organizing systems, automation of thought processes, theory of image recognition, etc. Discussions are given of the fundamentals of the theory of boolean functions, algorithm theory, principles of the design of electronic digital computers and universal algorithmical languages, fundamentals of perceptron theory, some theoretical questions of the theory of self-organizing systems. Many fundamental results in mathematical logic and algorithm theory are presented in summary form, without detailed proofs, and in some cases without any proof. The book is intended for a broad audience of mathematicians and scientists of many specialties who wish to acquaint themselves with the problems of modern cybernetics.
2,922 citations