1. World Politics
• What is World politics and why do we
study it?
Kelly Walker
Global Systems
Tallwood High School
2. Terms:
• Theory: a logically consistent set of
statements that explains a
phenomenon of interest.
• Political Scientists analyze events
and develop criteria for understanding
the conditions as to why they occur.
• Why did this happen?
Political science hat
3. The Framework
• A way of thinking about world politics that will build theories that
shed light on events.
• Interests: What actors want to achieve through political action;
their preferences over the outcomes that might result from their
political choices.
Business have an interest in maximizing profits
• Interactions: The ways in which the choices of two or more actors
combine to produce political outcomes.
War is the product of an interaction
• Institution: a set of rules, known and shared by the community, that
structure political interactions in particular ways.
United Nations
4. Interactions
• Two broad types of interactions:
1.Bargaining: situations in which two or more
actors try to divide something they both want-
states bargain over territory
2.Cooperation: actors have common interests and
need to act together in order to achieve their
interests. Governments that want to stop one
country from invading another may collectively
set sanctions on the aggressor.
5. Levels of Analysis
• Interactions at 3 levels
1.International Level (UN, WTO)
2.Domestic Level (subnational actors,
politicians, business and labor
groups)
3.Transnational Level (MNC’s, terrorist
organizations)
6. Realism, Liberalism, and
Constructivism
• Realism: States are dominant actor and world politics is
characterized by anarchy- War a permanent condition as
states always wag war when it is in their interest to do
so.
• Liberalism: No single interest dominates and wealth is a
common goal. Optimistic about cooperation in the world.
Progress is possible.
• Constructivism: Many types of actors are important
and actors’ interests are influenced by culture, identity,
and prevailing ideas. Similar to liberals, except they do
not believe in material sources of interest. Nonmaterial
factors such as ideas, culture, and norms are important.
Transformers.
8. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
9. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
10. Cooperation Through History
• 1800s: Relative peace and prosperity
• Early–mid-1900s: Wars, depression
• Late 1900s: Economic globalization
• 2000s: Still unknown
11. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
12. The Mercantilist Era,
1492–1815
Explorers and
traders discover
the “New World”
• Mercantilism: the use of military power
to enrich imperial governments
• Height of mercantilism was from the
16th to 18th Centuries.
• Favor the mother country over both
colonies and competing empires
• Key mechanisms
• - State monopolies (Spanish
mines, Hudson’s Bay Company)
• - Controls on colonial trade
14. The Mercantilist Era,
1492–1815
• The British imposed mercantilist policies on their colonies in North
America. For example, the tobacco being loaded onto these ships in
the Virginia Colony could be exported only to Britain, where the
American producers received a lower price for their crops than they
would on world markets.
• Sought goods to satisfy empire: for example, tea, cocoa, rubber,
gold, and silver.
15. The Mercantilist Era,
1492–1815
Controls on Trade: An Example
- Britain restricted Virginia’s commerce.
- Virginia Colony could sell tobacco only to Britain
The British paid Virginia Colony about 49% less for its tobacco than
growers could have earned on world markets, and paid rice planters
of South Carolina less than half what they could have gotten on world
markets.
Britain’s colonies could buy goods only from Britain.
Net effect:
- Lower price for tobacco and rice (leading to
underproduction)
- Higher price for manufactured goods
- Unfavorable terms of trade for colonies
16. The Mercantilist Era,
1492–1815
• The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648
–The Peace of WestphaliaThe Thirty Years’ War
–
- Rising imperial competitors emerged
– - Between 1618 and 1648, the French and Dutch battled Spain
– - Sealed the decline of Spain
– The Peace of Westphalia
• Effects
• - Stabilized borders
• - Helped resolve religious conflicts
• - Beginning of the modern system of states; pledge of
noninterference
17. Sovereignty
• Establishing sovereignty
• - Sovereignty refers to the expectation that states have legal and
political supremacy within their boundaries, and control over their own
policies and political processes such as the maintenance of domestic order
and provision of governance.
• In practice, intervention still occurs; for example, when the U.S. government
demanded that Saddam Hussein step down from power in Iraq. Sovereignty
is presumed but not always respected. This topic will come up again when
we talk about humanitarian intervention, and when we consider the U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• Early understandings of sovereignty emphasized ethical obligations, and
later understandings emphasize:
• 1. territorial integrity,
• 2. border inviolability
• 3. supremacy of the state
• 4. the “sovereign” as supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction
19. • Interests
– Security through power
– Control of markets and resources
• Interactions
– Zero-sum bargaining among states
• Institutions
– Few international institutions beyond the norm of
sovereignty
The Mercantilist Era,
1492–1815
20. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
21. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
• “The Hundred Years’ Peace”
• Sources of Cooperation
26. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
• Interests
– Economic wealth through trade and investment
• Interactions
– Informal diplomacy; state cooperation in security and
economic affairs
• Institutions
– British hegemony and the Concert of Europe
27. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
28. The Thirty Years’ Crisis,
1914–1945
• Europe divides into two camps
• Central Powers
• Allied Powers
33. The Thirty Years’ Crisis,
1914–1945
• The Great Depression of 1929
• Countries turn inward
34. The Thirty Years’ Crisis,
1914–1945
• World War II
• Axis Powers
• Allied Powers
35. The Thirty Years’ Crisis,
1914–1945
• Interests
– Security through alliances, expansion, and economic
self-sufficiency
• Interactions
– World Wars I and II
• Institutions
– The League of Nations
36. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
37. The Cold War, 1945–1990
Map 1.4:
The Cold
War and Its
Alliances,
1980
38. The Cold War, 1945–1990
• The Eastern Bloc: Command
Economy, centralized government
with few civil liberties
• The Western Bloc: Free enterprise
economy, democracies, protect civil
liberties
39. The Cold War, 1945–1990
• Conflicts, crises, and coups
• Rise of the Third World
• NATO forms to combat USSR
hegemony (Warsaw Pact)
• Bretton Woods: lowered trade
barriers among member states
40. The Cold War, 1945–1990
• GATT- General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (WTO)
• IMF-US $ tied to gold and all other
currencies were tied to the $- Go US
• World Bank-Fostered development in
developing nations.
• Created an integrated international
economy = Peace
41. The Cold War, 1945–1990
• Warsaw Pact- military alliance formed
by the USSR to include its satellite
states
• Comecon-(Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance) Economic
alliance formed by the USSR and its
satellite states
42. The Cold War, 1945–1990
• Interests
– Superpowers and allies sought to maximize global
influence
– All countries sought gains in wealth
• Interactions
– Bipolar structure turned more pluralistic
– Coercive diplomacy slowly yielded to bargaining
– Brinkmanship- Berlin Airlift/ Cuban Missile Crisis
– Decolonization
• Institutions
– U.S.-supported institutions survived
– Soviet institutions lacked legitimacy
43. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
45. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
• Collapse of the USSR
• Cooperation
Economic Developments
• Regional Trade Agreements
• EU grows=Euro
• Free Trade Agreements NAFTA
46. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
Diplomatic Challenges
•Ethnic and regional conflict
•Non-state actors
•Transnational issues (environment,
human trafficking, narcoterrorism)
•Who is the enemy????
47. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
• Interests
– States increasingly focus on wealth gains through
trade and investment
– Rise of non-state actors with diverse goals
• Interactions
– “Complex interdependence”
– Weak states often bargain with global institutions
• Institutions
– UN and global financial and trade institutions
– NGOs participate
48. What Shaped Our World?
1. Cooperation Through History
2. The Mercantilist Era, 1492–1815
3. The Pax Britannica, 1815–1914
4. The Thirty Years’ Crisis, 1914–1945
5. The Cold War, 1945–1990
6. Post–Cold War, 1991–Present
7. Future Trends and Challenges
49. Future Trends and Challenges
1.Predominance of the United States
2.Globalization
50. Future Trends and Challenges
• US political Challenges in the 21st
century
• Military, political and ethnic conflicts
• Environmental costs
• Nuclear proliferation
• Financial crises
• Power shifts
Historical Perspectives
Cooperation through history has fluctuated over the past 200 years.
Puzzle: Why have some eras been relatively peaceful and prosperous, whereas others have been filled with violent conflict?
How can interests, interactions, and institutions help us account for this variation over time?
For example, between 1815 and 1914, states cooperated and realized an entire century of relative peace and prosperity. Despite periodic wars and recessions, Western Europe’s economy grew eightfold in that hundred-year period. Yet beginning in 1914, World War I ushered in thirty years of economic devastation, violent great-power conflict, and mass slaughter that touched every corner of the globe.
Did nuclear stalemate keep the peace between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War?
How has the globalization of the world economy affected countries’ interests and interactions? Is globalization more likely to foster cooperation or to intensify competition?
The 2000s brought power shifts; the rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China; international volatility, as seen in the Arab Spring; and enormous financial crises.
What do these changes imply for cooperation and conflict?
How to explain the variation in peace and prosperity over time?
Spanish invaders in Tenochtitlán, 1520.
The “world” as a meaningful unit emerged after 1492.
The Age of Discovery: explorers such as Columbus (Spain) and Henry the Navigator (Portugal) traveled the world.
Spain and Portugal were the first to expand outward and to establish colonies abroad.
The image shows Spanish invaders in 1520 in Tenochtitlan, the site of modern-day Mexico City.
The population of this Aztec capital was 200,000, about ten times larger than Madrid, the capital of Spain.
Military technology, transportation (ships), and disease (e.g., blankets with smallpox) made conquest possible.
England, France, and the Netherlands followed.
These great powers competed to establish colonies, secure trade routes, and gain wealth.
Wealth and military power were mutually reinforcing.
Competition led the great powers to establish colonial empires in the New World, Africa, and Asia.
By 1700, western European powers controlled much of the world.
Mercantilism: the use of military power to enrich imperial governments
Height of mercantilism was from the 16th to 18th Centuries.
Favor the mother country over both colonies and competing empires
Key mechanisms
- State monopolies (Spanish mines, Hudson’s Bay Company)
- Controls on colonial trade
The Thirty Years’ War
- Rising imperial competitors emerged
- Between 1618 and 1648, the French and Dutch battled Spain
- Sealed the decline of Spain
The Peace of Westphalia
Effects
- Stabilized borders
- Helped resolve religious conflicts
- Beginning of the modern system of states; pledge of noninterference
Establishing sovereignty
- Sovereignty refers to the expectation that states have legal and political supremacy within their boundaries, and control over their own policies and political processes such as the maintenance of domestic order and provision of governance.
- The idea of sovereignty has deep theoretical roots and can be found as early as Socrates and Hobbes. These political philosophical notions of sovereignty were ethics-based, assuming that whoever exercises power within a state’s jurisdictions should encourage moral behavior on the part of their subjects. In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes sets forth his social contract theory, and argues that in order to overcome the “nasty, brutish” state of nature, people must submit to the will of a sovereign who will compel them to do good.
Later understandings of sovereignty are slightly less moralistic, and emphasize the following:
- territorial integrity and border inviolability
- the supremacy of the state as a decision-maker (not a non-state actor, such as a church or corporation)
- the rule of law within the state’s jurisdiction
In practice, intervention still occurs; for example, when the U.S. government demanded that Saddam Hussein step down from power in Iraq. Sovereignty is presumed but not always respected. This topic will come up again when we talk about humanitarian intervention, and when we consider the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Early understandings of sovereignty emphasized ethical obligations, and later understandings emphasize:
1. territorial integrity,
2. border inviolability
3. supremacy of the state
4. the “sovereign” as supreme lawmaking authority within its jurisdiction
The Peace of Westphalia did not end colonial competition.
The defeat of Spain launched a 150-year conflict between England and its allies, and France and its allies.
1660s
- The British surpass Dutch in trade and maritime power
- Anglo-French Rivalry
Seven Years’ War (1756-63; also called the French and Indian War)
Britain defeats France for dominance in New World
Late 1700s, during French Revolution
France challenges Britain in the Napoleonic Wars (1804-15)
Britain emerges as hegemon
The Pax Britannica
- The Hundred Years’ Peace (1815-1914)
- Greater links among economies and governments
- Relations less belligerent
Sources of cooperation
- Convergence of interests
- British hegemony and predominance
Figure 1.1: GDP per Capita, 1500-2008*
*1990 International Geary-Khamis dollars, internationally comparable dollars of 1990. Source: Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics (Paris: OECD, 2004); 2008 data from www.ggdc.net/ Maddison/ (accessed 12/6/2011).
Mercantilism was costly.
Britain’s Industrial Revolution
- Rise of industrial and merchant class
- Mercantilism seen as harmful
- New desire for free trade
Exchange replaces mercantilism
-1880s trade liberalization boom
- Transportation and communications expand
The Gold Standard
-Gold becomes major monetary system
-Promised exchange at preestablished rate
- Integrates finance
- Investment and immigration increase
This promotes stability and predictability for long-term planning, trade, and investment, thus initiating the first era of globalization.
Map 1.1 The Colonial Empires, 1914
After 1870, European countries, Japan, and the United States dramatically expanded their colonial possessions. By 1914, almost all of Asia and Africa had been taken over by the colonial powers. In the poorer regions of the world, only Latin America, China, and a handful of countries in Africa and Asia remained independent.
After 1870, European countries, Japan, and the United States dramatically expanded their colonial possessions. By 1914, almost all of Asia and Africa were taken over by the colonial powers. In the poorer regions of the world, only Latin America, China, and a handful of countries in Africa and Asia remained independent.
Under Institutions: British hegemony as shown through the gold standard, free-trade agreements, and economic security
Rigid alliances, changes in power (destabilizing power shifts in the late 1800s), and crisis caused Europe-wide war.
Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire
- Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empires weakening
- Unification and rise of Germany (Germany on the rise had largest population and economy in Europe by 1900)
Allies: Britain, France, Russia, Japan, the United States
- Russian Empire weakening
- United States and Japan on the rise
Map 1.2: Europe 1914
World War I
- Central powers arrayed against the rest of Europe: two hostile camps
- Costly, long, and bloody
- Defensive war of attrition
- Decided by late U.S. entry (1917) and inability of German submarines to cut off British supplies
- Central Powers defeated
- Russian Revolution; Soviet Union formed
- Marked the end of a century of peace and prosperity for much of Europe and North America
Map 1.3: Europe after World War I, 1920
Collapse of Empires
New states replaced Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires
For an excellent treatment of this period, read E. H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939
The Treaty of Versailles
- Punishes Germany as aggressor in World War I
- Germany is humiliated, losing status and territory
- Reparations and debt cripple the German economy
- Hyperinflation renders the Deutschmark currency virtually worthless
After World War I ended, the major economies of Europe and North America remained unsettled, and continuing tensions prevented cooperation on economic issues. Germany suffered hyperinflation that made its currency, the Deutschmark, virtually worthless. Here children play with bundles of useless Deutschmarks in the street.
Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
Discussion topics
- the harsh peace of Versailles
- hyperinflation
-bankrupted middle class in Germany
- politics increasingly polarized
- economic nationalism
- Fascism and National Socialism
- remilitarization
- conquest
Eric Larsen’s In the Garden of Beasts is a fascinating book about Germany and the rise of Hitler.
The Great Depression of 1929 left no one unscathed.
Some effects
- U.S. industrial production drops by half
- One-third of labor force unemployed in Germany
- Free trade ends; volume of world trade drops 67 percent between 1929 and 1933
Countries turn inward
- The rise of fascism and imperialism: Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese conquest of Asia
- Tensions rise
- The United States does not join the League of Nations, and fails to exercise leadership
World War II
- Instability and military buildup
- Defiant Germany invades Poland and starts the war
Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan
Allied Powers: the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union
War fought on European and Pacific fronts
Outcome: The United States and the Soviet Union emerge as superpowers at end of war
Under Institutions: Global cooperation collapsed in 1914. The League of Nations attempted to resolve conflict, albeit without U.S. participation.
Map 1.4: The Cold War and its Alliances, 1980
The Eastern Bloc: USSR, Eastern Europe
Institutions
- Military: Warsaw Pact
-Economic: Comecon
The Western Bloc: The United States, Western Europe, Latin America
Institutions
- Military: NATO, OAS, SEATO
-Economic: Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF, World Bank, GATT)
Conflicts, crises, and coups
- Proxy wars: pro-Soviet vs. pro-U.S. forces (for example, Africa and Central America in the 1970s and 1980s)
- The Cuban Missile Crisis
- Coups (Pinochet in Chile 1973, Arbenz in Guatemala 1954)
Rise of the Third World
- Decolonization; many newly independent states
- Soviet anticolonialism appealing to many
- Nonaligned Movement (refusal to take sides in Cold War)
Cold War phases
- Intense competition, 1945 to mid-1960s
- Détente, mid-1960s to 1979
- Renewed tensions, 1979 to 1991
Interactions: Began with strict bipolar structure that turned more pluralistic with the rise of the Third World.
Institutions: U.S.-supported institutions such as the United Nations and Bretton Woods, survived the period; Soviet institutions such as Comecon and the Warsaw Pact lacked legitimacy.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 provided a powerful symbol of the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Berlin Wall divided West Berlin from communist East Berlin.
Peter Turnley/Corbis
Collapse of the USSR
- Soviet economy lags behind West
- Glasnost and Perestroika decease state control
- Afghanistan pullout in 1989
- Soviet Union becomes 15 separate states; Eastern Europeans hold elections
Cooperation in the 1991 Gulf War
- Increased role of the United Nations
- Increased global economic integration
- World Trade Organization
- Multiple financial crises
- Rise of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa)
Interests: States increasingly focus on wealth gains through trade and investment, although security concerns continue
Interactions: Actors at different levels of analysis negotiate across many issues of concern (“complex interdependence”).
Institutions: The United Nations and global financial and trade institutions assume greater roles in a complex world. The WTO replaces GATT. NGOs participate in global governance.
