Realism

About: Realism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10799 publications have been published within this topic receiving 175785 citations.

Postclassical realism and Japanese security policy

Abstract: The recent domestic constructivist studies characterize Japanese security policy as a serious anomaly to realism and a crucial case vindicating their approach to the larger study of world politics. The present paper challenges this view. It advances a postclassical realist interpretation of Japan's core security policy in the past quarter century. Japan's military doctrine expressed in the 1976 National Defense Program Outline (NDPO) is consistent with postclassical realism's predictions, as opposed to neorealism's predictions, which focus on the dynamics of the regional security dilemma and the question of financial burden resulting from military build-up. In addition, postclassical realism offers a more compelling theoretical guide for understanding Japan's core security policy than defensive realism or mercantile realism. This paper backs up its argument with the empirical evidence that Takuya Kubo, the author of the NDPO, himself intentionally based the NDPO on a postclassical realist line of thinking.

Fear in International Politics: Two Positions

Abstract: There are two—and only two—fundamental positions on how to cope with the fear that is derived from the uncertainty over others’ intentions in international relations (IR) literature. Because these two positions cannot be deduced from other bedrock assumptions within the different IR approaches, the two positions should be taken as an additional bedrock assumption. The first position, held by offensive realism, insists that states should assume the worst over others’ intentions, thus essentially eliminating the uncertainty about others’ intentions. The second position, held by a more diverse bunch of non-offensive realism theories, insists that states should not always assume the worst over others’ intentions and that states can and should take measures to reduce uncertainty about each others intentions and thus fear. These two different assumptions are quintessential for the logic of the different theoretical approaches and underpin some of the fundamental differences between offensive realism on the one side and non-offensive realism theories on the other side. Making the two positions explicit helps us understand IR theories and makes dialogues among non-offensive realism theories possible.

Freudian roots of political realism: the importance of Sigmund Freud to Hans J. Morgenthau's theory of international power politics

Abstract: The article unveils the intellectual indebtedness of Hans J. Morgenthau's realist theory of international power politics to Freudian meta- and group psychology. It examines an unpublished Morgentha...

Socialist Realism in Pravda: Read All about It!

Abstract: The adoption of "socialist realism" by the first All Union Congress of Soviet Writers (17 August-I September 1934) was a seminal event in Russian cultural history on a par with Peter's embassy to the west or Catherine's Instruction to her legislative commission. Henceforth literature and the arts lost some of their public identification with civil society and gained a formal place in the official culture of the Soviet era and in the overbearing discourse of leading newspapers such as Pravda. Writers and artists had to accept the metamorphosis of public discourse itself, as editors and journalists plunged into a kind of hyperreality in the face of the disjunction between the promises and results of stalinist policies. Those who lived through this crisis in public perception and experienced its outcome imbued "socialist realism" with its poignant contemporary meanings. "Socialist realism" was both less and more than a literary tradition: less because the meanings of the phrase depended so heavily on extra-literary commentaries, and more because these commentaries were always part of a larger system of authoritative discourse. Scholars often stress aesthetic or political dimensions of socialist realism, e.g. art's function in state policy and links between political and cultural actors, or the interplay of art and tradition. Among those who look to politics, Igor Golomstock underscores art's role in transforming "dry ideology into the fuel of images and myths intended for general consumption" and Evgenii Dobrenko depicts the literary "representation of power" (vlast').2 Others accent censorship and political interventions, including Stalin's.3 Alternatively, some stress com-