The course aims to introduce the key assumptions of the international relations theory as a part of social science and as an analytic tool, focusing on the problems of war and peace, foreign policy decision-making, etc. The course combines historic approach and analysis of the modern political problems. The historic part shows the evolution of the international relations theory from being a part of political philosophy to its emergence as a special branch of political science, which is essential to understand the key ideas of the IR science. The lectures also include broad outline of the modern concepts and debates in the context of the contemporary political problems, such as rise of China and other emerging powers, threat of terrorism, US-Russia confrontation, etc. The lectures of the two outstanding Russian scholars and political analysts – Timofey Bordachev and Dmitry Suslov - cover such fields as the problems of international security and conflict resolution, international economic relations, foreign policy decision-making, global governance, the role of power in the IR.
State actors 4
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From the course by National Research University Higher School of Economics
Understanding International Relations Theory
18 оценки
National Research University Higher School of Economics
18 оценки
From the lesson
Actors in international relations
The module focuses on the one of the key theoretical problems in the IR science: who is actor of international politics? While some theories assumes that only states have enough capabilities ti be considered as actors if IR, some concepts assume that even an individual can play an important role. The module introduces the students to these important debates.
Meet the Instructors
Timofei BordachevAssociate professor
Department of international relations
Dmitrii SuslovSenior Lecturer
Department of international relations, HSE
[SOUND] Now let's talk about the liberal perspective and
the liberal approach to states.
How do liberals view states?
Liberals, unlike realists, pay more attention to non-state actors.
They do recognize them as full fledged autonomous players, powerful enough to
seriously transcend states, state policies and impact international relations.
However, of course,
realize they do acknowledge the leading role of states, but they simply
pay more attention to the non-state actors in comparison to realists.
What is the peculiarity of the liberal approach to states?
Since liberalism generally focuses on globalization and
the role of non-state actors, liberal emphasize and
analyze the change of state sovereignty in the post-Cold War and globalized world.
So whereas realists, they analyze, let's say, continuity
of state sovereignty, liberals emphasize change and transition,
transformation of state sovereignty in the post-Cold War and globalized world.
And according to liberals, states can simply no longer fulfill
their sovereign functions on their own, in comparison to the previous time,
in conditions of globalization and conditions of global interdependence.
And thus states have to share authority.
They have to share authority with international organizations on the one
hand, and non-state actors on the other hand.
Why do they do this?
Why do states share authority?
Why do they delegate something to the other actors,
something that they used to do themselves in the past?
Because of globalization.
Because according to realists, in a globalized environment,
states cannot do a series of vital things,
cannot implement a series of vital functions, which are central for
state survival, development, and sovereignty, actually.
For instance, states cannot control ideas in a globalized world.
Arab Spring was a very manifest example of the failure of states to control ideas,
to control the idea of change and transformation.
The governments of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Bashar al-Assad in Syria,
or Muammar Gaddafi in Libya would love to prevent the spread of ideas
into their countries, but in conditions of social media, it is impossible to do this.
Thus, states can no longer fully control their domestic affairs.
Look at the issue of Russia meddling into the US elections, so
the alleged Russia meddling into the US elections in 2016.
Social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Google,
were accused and are accused by American Congress,
by the US Congress, and the US media, for
allowing Russia to play a role in American domestic politics and
to have an impact on the US domestic affairs.
So it means that states in these globalized conditions can no longer ensure
their domestic affairs.
Secondly, according to realists,
states can no longer ensure their external security.
And the reason for that is global security interdependence, manifest,
for instance, with the existence of transnational terrorism.
States, indeed,
cannot be fully secure if there is a powerful terrorist organizations.
This is why Islamic State posed such an enormous threat
to Russia and the United States,
despite of the distance between the Islamic State and the other countries.
Transnational terrorist organizations, they do not recognize borders, and
states cannot be fully secure as long as such organizations exist.
Third, states can not ensure internal security, again, because of
transnational threats and challenges, which are the feature of globalization.
How can, for instance, a state ensure internal security with transnational
organized crime, with the drug traffic?
And in Russia, we are severely challenged, for instance,
by the drug traffic from Afghanistan, which is located far beyond
the Russian territory, but nevertheless creates lots of criminality,
drug, and instability problems inside the country.
And the only way is to manage it across borders.
And finally, states can no longer ensure their economic development in conditions
of globalization, because of the existence of globalized financial markets,
globalized energy, and global economy, as such.
We can add to that, for instance, global climate change, and
its impact on the development of states.
States cannot ensure their economic development in conditions
of climate change, for instance, if their territory turns into desert or
turns into ocean, right?
And states cannot manage this problem on their own.
It requires global governance.
So ensuring economic development, ensuring internal security,
ensuring external security and managing domestic affairs,
are the central obligations of any sovereign states.
And states simply cannot fulfill these central obligations.
Thus, according to liberals, states, in order to manage them,
they delegate authority to international organizations and
non-state actors, thus empowering them.
And as a result, sovereignty of states changes.
And this is the essence of liberal approach towards states.
According to liberals, state sovereignty in globalized environment is first and
foremost relative.
Not absolute, as the realists claim, but
relative, relative to the ability of states to do what?
To produce public goods, to fulfill their sovereign obligations.
And their sovereign obligations is basically the production of public goods,
such as security, management of domestic politics, development,
welfare of the people, and so on and so forth.
States are sovereign as long as fulfill responsibility vis-a-vis the people.
And in order to fulfill this responsibility,
they have to share their authority with international organizations,
with other states and with non-state actors.
Secondly, according to liberalism, state sovereignty is
no longer understood as full independence of states in their foreign policies.
Again, a complete contrast to the realist approach.
For realists, the more independent a state is in its foreign policy,
the more sovereign it is.
For liberals it is not necessary.
On the contrary, this relation is the opposite.
For state to be able to fulfill its obligations, to
provide public goods to its people, state has to participate in global governance.
States can ensure their economic development, their internal security and
safety, their external security, only if they cooperate with the other states,
with international organizations, and
non-state actors on management of transnational threats and challenges.
And actually this state cooperation with the others, and
with international organizations and non-state actors on management of
transnational challenges is called global governance.
So states, the scale of states' participation in global governance,
responsibility of a state in terms of participation of global governance,
determines state sovereignty.
And the more responsible the state is, the more sovereign it is,
according to this liberal approach.
And finally, state sovereignty is no longer a border
which separates internal affairs from foreign affairs.
For realism, sovereignty is the unpenetratable border between
the internal and external, and the only discourse among
states can be only about foreign policy and foreign affairs.
For liberals, this is no longer the case.
And liberals actually emphasize and claim that discussion of internal affairs
of states have already become a norm of contemporary international relations.
Indeed, look at the agenda of what states are talking about at BRICS summits,
at G7 summits, even at the United Nations Security Council or in the Normandy Forum.
They talk about internal reforms in Ukraine.
They talk about internal management of Syria.
They talk about other internal problems.
So internal politics of sovereign states is already the agenda
of international relations, and this is reflected by liberalism.
On the basis of this change of the approach of sovereignty,
liberal school of international relations and practice has tried to elaborate
some new rules to overcome state sovereignty, including militarily.
And these new rules and practices to overcome state sovereignty
are humanitarian intervention concept, which was quite popular in the 1990s.
According to which international community, international society,
can intervene and violate sovereignty of state,
if there is a vast, large scale of violation of human rights.
And in 2000,
there was a concept created called Responsibility to Protect, or R to P.
According to which, again, international community have a right and
even responsibility to intervene and violate state sovereignty,
if the state fails to fulfill its obligations vis-a-vis it's people.
Fails to provide public goods to its people, above all security.
Of course these two both concepts of violating state sovereignty, or
penetrating state sovereignty, they have not become legal.
None of them are put into the treaty, international law.
But nevertheless,
they have impacted the practice of international relations very, very much.
[SOUND]
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