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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.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A slightly different version of this essay will appear in Daniel Kaufman, David Clark, and Kevin Sheehan, eds., The Future of U.S. National Strategy.
Abstract: A slightly different version of this essay will appear in Daniel Kaufman, David Clark, and Kevin Sheehan, eds., The Future of U.S. National Strategy. Some portions draw upon my ”Two Cheers for Containment: Probable Allied Responses to U.S. Isolationism,” in Ted Galen Carpenter, ed., Collective Defense or Strategic Independence? Alternative Strategies for the Future (Lexington Books, 1989). I would like to thank Richard Betts, Ivo Daalder, Charles Glaser, Robert Johnson, Deborah Welch Larson, John Mearsheimer, Warner Schilling, Jack Snyder, and Kenneth Waltz for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially grateful to Stephen Van Evera, whose work on this subject has shaped my thinking considerably, and to the MacArthur Foundation and Princeton’s Center of International Studies for financial support. Stephen M . Walt

87 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The editors of the special issue as mentioned in this paper expressed a degree of disquiet at the current state of International Relations theory, but the situation is both better and worse than they suggest, and there is a pressing need for 'critical problem-solving' theory, that is, theory that relates directly to real-world problems but approaches them from the perspective of the underdog.
Abstract: The editors of the special issue, in their call for papers for this special issue, expressed a degree of disquiet at the current state of International Relations theory, but the situation is both better and worse than they suggest. On the one hand, in some areas of the discipline, there has been real progress over the last decade. The producers of liberal and realist International Relations theory may not have the kind of standing in the social/human sciences as the 'Grand Theorists' identified by Quentin Skinner in his seminal mid-1980s' collection, but they have a great deal to say about how the world works, and the world would have been a better place over the last decade or so if more notice had been taken of what they did say. On the other hand, the range of late modern theorists who brought some of Skinner's Grand Theorists into the reckoning in the 1980s have, in the main, failed to deliver on the promises made in that decade. The state of International Relations theory in this neck of the woods is indeed a cause for concern; there is a pressing need for 'critical problem-solving' theory, that is, theory that relates directly to real-world problems but approaches them from the perspective of the underdog.

87 citations


Cites background from "Theory of International Politics"

  • ...; and (b) however important Waltz’s work is to us, it is at best vaguely recognized within Political Science in general, and pretty much unknown in the broader field of the human sciences (Waltz, 1979)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors conceptualize presidential foreign policy making as a five-stage process and argue that the degree to which presidents are responsive to public opinion varies with fluctuations in public attentiveness, concluding that at stages in which public interest is high, presidents are more likely to incorporate mass preferences into their decision making than during stages of public quiescence.
Abstract: Do presidents incorporate the preferences of the public into their foreign policy decisions? Previous scholarship has begun to sketch out the sources of variation in the policy–public opinion linkage, but we still lack a clear understanding of the factors that increase or decrease presidential responsiveness. To better explore the relationship, we conceptualize presidential foreign policy making as a five-stage process—problem representation, option generation, policy selection, implementation, and policy review—arguing that the degree to which presidents are responsive to public opinion varies with fluctuations in public attentiveness. At stages in which public interest is high, presidents are more likely to incorporate mass preferences into their decision making than during stages of public quiescence. The key finding in our analysis of 34 foreign policy cases is that the public's “issue-attention cycle” varies systematically across foreign policy crises and noncrises. Examining these cycles of attention allows us to make predictions about the conditions under which public opinion is most likely to influence decision making.

86 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article argued that the border crisis was the product of complex domestic power struggles in both countries, the boundary itself acting as a material and discursive site where elites struggled for the power to inscribe conflicting gendered, nationalistic visions of geopolitical identity.

86 citations


Cites background from "Theory of International Politics"

  • ...This has been an important debate within international relations (Ashley, 1987, 1989; Waltz, 1979, 1996)....

    [...]

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The authors developed a realist theory of threat assessment to fill the gap and illustrate it with reference to the British experience between the two world wars, arguing that prior to World War I Britain balanced against the rising power (or threat) of Wilhelmine Germany in the form of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, the Triple Entente, and the naval arms buildup.
Abstract: How do states perceive international threats? Which domestic actors are the most important in threat definition? What happens when domestic actors and interests disagree on the nature of threats? As we state in chapter 1, these are central questions to the neoclassical realist agenda and require a theory of the state to answer. In this chapter I will develop a neoclassical realist theory of threat assessment to fill this gap and illustrate it with reference to the British experience between the two world wars. Neorealist theories are theories of international outcomes. They highlight the role of polarity and international structure, black box the state, and focus on shifts in aggregate military power or threat. Debates include whether bipolar or multipolar distributions of power are more war-prone; whether anarchy encourages states to maximize relative power or security; whether equal or unequal distributions of power contribute to war; and the prevalence of buck-passing or balancing against threats. Proponents of balance of power theory and balance of threat theory would argue that prior to World War I Britain balanced against the rising power (or threat) of Wilhelmine Germany in the form of the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, the Triple Entente, and the naval arms buildup. Granted, prior to 1914, balancing may not have happened in an optimal fashion. Balance of power theory and balance of threat theory, at least in their current forms, predict a general tendency toward balancing and do not expect an efficient or quick balancing process under all circumstances.

86 citations

References
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Book ChapterDOI
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

ReportDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI

2,873 citations