Guide for International Relations

Exam Questions

The two questions in International Relations will be based on the courses offered in the previous year. But they will center on two main sets of issues.

One question will be on conflict: how the balance of power, national interests, international law, and international organizations deal with armed conflict, violence, trade wars, and other forms of global tension.
The second question will be on the international organizations, assessing the effectiveness of international financial, political, and other organizations on world problems.

Practice Questions

State sovereignty, anarchy, and bipolar versus multi-polar power bases are some of the key concepts used by international relations scholars to assess the nature of the international community and the ways in which it responds to global problems. Using one contemporary global problem—such as immigration, human rights, climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, or the economic meltdown—explain what you regard as two inherent weaknesses of the international community and how much you think international organizations have made up for them in responding to this problem.
Realists and idealists have long-standing and often sharply contrasting notions of the causes of conflict. Describe two ways in which realists and idealists differ. Then, apply those two ways to explain external responses to a recent case of conflict, such as in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israeli-Palestine, or a historical conflict such as in the Vietnam War. In other words, discuss realists' and idealists' overall explanation of the ways in which the world (or major powers, like the United States and China) have responded, and how they differ.

Main Issues and Key Readings

IR theory and theoretical paradigms

Conceptual frameworks of understanding—called paradigms—have developed to explain international relations, often based on an underlying set of values, interests, and world realities.

Overview of IR theory

Art, Robert and Robert Jervis. 2011. International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues. 10th ed. New York: Longman.
Krasner, Stephen. 1999. "Sovereignty and its Discontents" in Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy,” Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Walt, Stephen, "International Relations: One World, Many Theories," Foreign Policy, Spring 1998.
Liberal Theories of International Relations (Writings of Hugo Grotius, Michael Doyle, Woodrow Wilson, Hedley Bull, and Robert Keohane) in Williams, Phil, et al, eds., Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations.
Sterling-Folker, Jennifer, Making Sense of International Relations Theory.
The Structure of the International System: Introduction and Essays by Waltz, Deutch and Singer, Kaplan, Rosenau, Keohane, Nye, and Mansbach et al, in Williams et al.
Holsti, Oli. "Models of International Relations: Realist and Neoliberal Perspectives on Conflict and Cooperation" (from Kegley and Wittkopf, The Global Agenda, 1998).
Classic Paradigms in the Study of War: Essays by Von Clausewitz, Waltz, Morgenthau, Organski, Claude, Bunn (in Williams et al).
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War and the Melian Debate, selection.

Realism and Neorealism

Writings of Thomas Hobbes, E.H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz) in Williams, Phil, et al, eds., Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations.
Legro, Jeffrey W. and Andrew Moravcsik. 1999. "Is Anybody Still a Realist?" in International Security, 24(2).
Morgenthau, Hans. 1973. "A Realist Theory of International Politics" in Politics Among Nations. 5th ed. New York, NY: Alfred Knopf.
Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. "Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power" in Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishers.

Liberalism and Neoliberalism

Doyle, Michael W. 2006. "Liberalism and World Politics," in American Political Science Review, 80 (2).
Jervis, Robert. 1999. "Realism, Neoliberalism, and Cooperation: Understanding the Debate," in International Security, 24(1).
Keohane, Robert. 1986. Neorealism and Its Critics, New York: Columbia University Press.
Keohane, Robert and Joseph Nye. 1977. "Realism and Complex Interdependence," in Power and Independence, New York: Longman.

Constructivism and Critical Theories

Finnemore, Martha and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change," in International Organization, 52(4).
Tickner, J. Ann. 1997. "You Just Don't Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists," in International Studies Quarterly, 41(4).
Wendt, Alexander. 1992. :Anarchy is What States Make of It," in International Organization, 46(2).
Wiener, Antje. 2006. "Constructivist Approaches in International Relations Theory: Puzzles and Promises" (pdf), in Webpapers on Constitutionalism & Governance beyond the State, No. 5.

International Structure and Organization

Structure and Functions—Balance of Power, Cooperation, etc.

Martin, Lisa, and Beth Simmons, eds. 2001 International Institutions: An International Organization Reader, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

The United Nations and Other International Organizations—Roles, Effectiveness, and Politics

Weiss, Thomas G. and David P. Forsythe, et al. 2009. The United Nations and Changing World Politics, 6th ed, Westview Press: Boulder, CO.
Finnemore, Martha and Michael Barnett. 2004. Chapters 1 and 2 in Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics, Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY.
Mearsheimer, John J. 1994–1995. "The False Promise of International Institutions," in International Security, 19(3).
Rittberger, Volker, Bernhard Zangl and Andreas Kruck. 2011. International Organization, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

International Law

Background, Functions, Applicability, Importance, Weaknesses

Abbott Kenneth, and Robert Keohane, et.al. 2000. "The Concept of Legalization," in International Organization, 54(3).
Chayes, Abram and Antonia Handler Chayes. 1993. "On Compliance," in International Organization, 47(2).
Evans, Malcolm. 2010. International Law, 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rochester, J. Martin. 2006. Between Peril and Promise: The Politics of International Law, Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.

Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention

Bellamy, Alex J. and Paul D. Williams. 2011. "The New Politics of Protection? Côte d'Ivoire, Libya and the Responsibility to Protect," in International Affairs, 87(4).
Donnelly, Jack. 2003. Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lauren, Paul Gorden. 2003. The Evolution of Human Rights: Visions Seen, 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Risse, Thomas, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1999. Chapters 1 and 8 in The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2001. The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (pdf). Synopsis; Chs.1–6.

International Economics

International Financial Institutions: The Bretton Woods System (the World Bank, the IMF, etc.), Their Policies, and the Impacts on Different Countries' Economies

Chorev, Nitsan and Sarah Babb. 2009. "The Crisis of Neoliberalism and the Future of International Institutions: A Comparison of the IMF and the WTO," in Theory and Society, 38(5).
Spero, Joan E. and Jeffrey A. Hart. 2009. Chapters 1–3, 6 and 7 in The Politics of International Economics Relations, 7th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2009.

The Politics of World Trade and Economic Relations

Joseph Stiglitz. 2003. Globalization and its Discontents, New York: W.W. Norton and Company
Bhagwati, Jagdish. 2004. In Defense of Globalization, New York: Oxford University Press
Simmons, Beth A. and Zachary Elkins. 2004. "The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy," American Political Science Review, 98 (1).
Gourevitch, Peter. 1978. "The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics," in International Organization, 32 (4).

Foreign Policy

The History, Formation, Impact, and Changes in U.S. and Other Countries' Foreign Policies

Carlsnaes, Walter. 1992. "The Agency-Structure Problem in Foreign Policy Analysis," in International S Studies Quarterly, 36(3).
Fearon, James. 1994. "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes," in American Political Science Review, 88(3).
Jentleson, Bruce. 2007. American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century, New York: W.W .Norton & Company.
Ruggie, John Gerard. 1997. "The Past as Prologue?: Interests, Identity, and American Foreign Policy," in International Security, 21(4).

Armed Conflict

Inter-state War, Civil War, Arms Proliferation, Violence, Conflict Prevention

Brown, Michael E. and Owen R. Cote,Jr., et al. 1998. Theories of War and Peace: An International Security Reader, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jervis, Robert. 1978. "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma," in World Politics, 30(2).
Kupchan, Charles A. 2010. How Friends Become Enemies: The Sources of Stable Peace, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kaldor, Mary. 1999. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Evangelista, Matthew, Elisabeth Prügl, and Elizabeth Kier. 2003. "Symposium on War and Gender," in Perspectives on Politics, 1(2).