Introduction to International Politics

Author: Li Shaojun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: International Politics is a discipline that explores, elaborates, and explains theories and paradigms related to international issues. As a textbook on International Politics, this book introduces the basic concepts and theoretical systems of the discipline, examines the essential manifestations of international relations, analyzes the main manifestations of contemporary global problems, and discusses China's future development and opportunities through a comparison of Chinese and Western civilizations. This book combines research on China with research on the world, and integrates theoretical studies with research on practical issues, presenting a comprehensive and systematic overview of the achievements in International Politics research. It helps students grasp and understand the general and key aspects of the discipline. In the revision of this book, the author made significant changes to some chapters on International Politics theory. In Chapter , major revisions were made to Section 3 on the research methods of International Politics. In this section, the content of "An Overview of Methodology" was added, explaining the research methods of International Relations at three levels: philosophical, disciplinary, and specific methods. At the philosophical level, it introduces the different ontologies (ontology) and epistemologies (epistemology) of researchers, explaining categories such as materialism (materialism) and idealism (idealism), explanatory (explanatory) theories and constitutive (constitutive) theories, holism (holism) and individualism (individualism), etc. At the disciplinary level, it introduces the debate between traditionalism (traditionalism) and behavioralism (behavioralism), explaining different paradigms such as positivism (positivism), rationalism (rationalism), reflectivism (reflectivism), and constructivism (constructivism). At the level of specific methods, it introduces practical methods such as inductive and deductive methods, analytical and synthetic methods, qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, comparative analysis methods, literature analysis methods, case analysis methods, and historical analysis methods. The author made these revisions in the hope of providing some inspiration for scholars studying International Relations. In Chapter , the main revision was a re-elaboration of the new developments in realism since the 1990s. In the edition, although offensive realism (offensive realism), defensive realism (defensive realism), and neoclassical realism (neoclassical realism) were introduced, the relationships between them were not clearly explained, and some inaccurate statements were included. According to the author's new understanding, new realism and neoclassical realism, as well as offensive realism and defensive realism, are two pairs of concepts that intersect with each other. That is, both new realism and neoclassical realism include theories that tend toward offensive realism and defensive realism. Conversely, both offensive realists and defensive realists may exhibit different tendencies toward new realism or neoclassical realism. As a structural theory, new realism seeks to explain international outcomes, while neoclassical realism seeks to explain why different states respond differently to systemic pressures. For example, comparing the theories of Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer shows that both, as structural theories, emphasize the decisive role of anarchy, and compared to classical realism, which emphasizes human nature, both are "new" realism, but their conclusions are entirely different. Waltz aims for security, emphasizing that states should pursue moderate power, showing a "defensive" tendency, while Mearsheimer aims for power, displaying a typical "offensive" stance. To provide a clearer comparison of realism, the revised edition also summarizes and generalizes the differences in key issues among the different branches of realism, making the historical development of the realism school clearer than the edition. Additionally, this chapter also re-elaborates critical theory and postmodernism theory and adds an introduction to the British School. Regarding Chapter , the edition of this book only involved one aspect of power interactions in the international system, while the revised edition emphasizes that the structure formed by the interactions of international actors includes multiple dimensions, at least manifested in three aspects: the world order resulting from power politics, institutional cooperation resulting from interdependence, and the "intersubjective world" (intersubjective world) resulting from idea construction. Taking the United States' military action against Iraq as an example, the United States' response to the international system has both aspects of using hegemony to act preemptively (reflecting the characteristics of power politics) and seeking UN resolutions and action legitimacy (reflecting the constraints of international institutions), as well as changing its own image and seeking recognition from countries around the world, especially Islamic countries (reflecting idea construction). The strong anti-American sentiment the United States encountered in Iraq is precisely the difficulty the United States faced in the "intersubjective world." To illustrate the other two attributes of the international system, the new version moved the content on "cooperation" from Chapter to Chapter and supplemented the content on "idea interaction." The original title of Chapter was "Power and World Order," which was revised to "International System." The original title of Chapter was "International Conflict and Cooperation," which was revised to "International Conflict and War" after the content adjustment. In addition to these major revisions, there were also some smaller changes. For example, in Chapter , the description of international actors was supplemented with content on "ethnic groups," "international political movements," "political parties," "religious movements and organizations," and "individuals." In Chapter , the description of international security was supplemented with content on "national interests" and "non-traditional security." In Chapter , the description of diplomacy was supplemented with content on "public diplomacy." At the technical level, the new revision updates the data in some chapters, adjusts the discussion questions and reading lists in some chapters, and deletes the reference URLs marked with an asterisk ().