International relations

While international politics has been analyzed since antiquity, it did not become a discrete field until 1919, when it was first offered as an undergraduate major by Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent rise of globalization in the late 20th century have presaged new theories and evaluations of the rapidly changing international system.

[citation needed] The establishment of modern sovereign states as fundamental political units traces back to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 in Europe.

The French Revolution contributed the idea that it was the citizenry of a state, defined as the nation, that were sovereign, rather than a monarch or noble class.

An alternative model of the nation-state was developed in reaction to the French republican concept by the Germans and others, who instead of giving the citizenry sovereignty, kept the princes and nobility, but defined nation-statehood in ethnic-linguistic terms, establishing the rarely if ever fulfilled ideal that all people speaking one language should belong to one state only.

The particular European system supposing the sovereign equality of states was exported to the Americas, Africa, and Asia via colonialism and the "standards of civilization".

[24] In 1927, the London School of Economics' department of international relations was founded at the behest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Philip Noel-Baker: this was the first institute to offer a wide range of degrees in the field.

[26][27] This was soon followed by the establishment of the Committee on International Relations (CIR) at the University of Chicago, where the first research graduate degree was conferred in 1928.

[35] Critical scholarship in international relations has explored the relationship between the institutionalization of IR as an academic discipline and the demands of national governments.

Robert Vitalis [ar]'s book White World Order, Black Power Politics details the historical imbrication of IR in the projects of colonial administration and imperialism,[36] while other scholars have traced the emergence of international relations in relation to the consolidation of newly independent nation-states within the non-West, such as Brazil and India.

In settings such as these, the realist framework carries great interpretative insights in explaining how the military and economic power struggles of states lead to larger armed conflicts.

It believes also, then, in the possibility of distinguishing in politics between truth and opinion—between what is true objectively and rationally, supported by evidence and illuminated by reason, and what is only a subjective judgment, divorced from the facts as they are and informed by prejudice and wishful thinking.

Rather, liberal theory assumes that states are institutionally constrained by the power of international organisations, and mutually dependent on one another through economic and diplomatic ties.

Institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the International Court of Justice are taken to, over time, have developed power and influence to shape the foreign policies of individual states.

Furthermore, the existence of the globalised world economy makes continuous military power struggle irrational, as states are dependent on participation in the global trade system to ensure their own survival.

Early adherents include Woodrow Wilson and Norman Angell, who argued that states mutually gained from cooperation and that war was so destructive as to be essentially futile.

A new version of "idealism" that focused on human rights as the basis of the legitimacy of international law was advanced by Hans Köchler.

The constructivist framework rests on the fundamental assumption that the international system is built on social constructs; such as ideas, norms, and identities.

The constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt, in a 1992 article in International Organization, noted in response to realism that "anarchy is what states make of it".

Prominent constructivist IR scholars include Michael Barnett, Martha Finnemore, Ted Hopf, Peter Katzenstein, Kathryn Sikkink, and Alexander Wendt.

Marxist theories of IR reject the realist/liberal view of state conflict or cooperation; instead focusing on the economic and material aspects.

Early critical theorists were associated with the Frankfurt School, which followed Marx's concern with the conditions that allow for social change and the establishment of rational institutions.

Modern-day proponents such as Andrew Linklater, Robert W. Cox, and Ken Booth focus on the need for human emancipation from the nation-state.

Further linked in with Marxist theories is dependency theory and the core–periphery model, which argue that developed countries, in their pursuit of power, appropriate developing states through international banking, security and trade agreements and unions on a formal level, and do so through the interaction of political and financial advisors, missionaries, relief aid workers, and MNCs on the informal level, in order to integrate them into the capitalist system, strategically appropriating undervalued natural resources and labor hours and fostering economic and political dependence.

Theorists have focused particularly on humanitarian intervention, and are subdivided between solidarists, who tend to advocate it more, and pluralists, who place greater value in order and sovereignty.

Core or vital interests constitute the things which a country is willing to defend or expand with conflict such as territory, ideology (religious, political, economic), or its citizens.

After the Cold War, and the dissolution of the ideologically homogeneous Eastern Bloc still gave rise to others such as the South-South Cooperation movement.

The concept arose from bipolarity during the Cold War, with the international system dominated by the conflict between two superpowers, and has been applied retrospectively by theorists.

However, China's strategic force unable of projecting power beyond its region and its nuclear arsenal of 250 warheads (compared to 7,315+ of the United States[60]) mean that the unipolarity will persist in the policy-relevant future.

Revisionist states seek to fundamentally change the rules and practices of international relations, feeling disadvantaged by the status quo.