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Introduction: Foundations of International Relations

Study

Summary

The introduction presents Bueno de Mesquita's approach to world politics. In short, this is not an ordinary introductory textbook. This is a textbook with an opinion: Principles argues that world politics is best understood through the strategic perspective and best studied by applying the strategic perspective, which is grounded in game theoretic analysis.

The main actors according to the strategic perspective are the leaders. Leaders seek to remain in office and choose policies that serve the purpose of their political survival. A leader's interests and the state's interests are not necessarily the same. Policies with long-term benefits for a nation, but not for its leader, are unlikely to be chosen.

Leaders pursue their goal under domestic and international constraints. Domestic politics are central to understanding international politics. This is contrary to the unitary actor assumption, which some of the competing approaches (neorealism and neoliberalism) hold.

When making policy choices, leaders weigh the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action, as well as the likelihood of failure and success, and choose the policy that maximizes their expected utility.

The introductory chapter presents the main categories of problems in international relations (coordination, distribution, monitoring, and sanctioning). It argues that policy choices are shaped by power, preferences, and perceptions.

The chapter briefly reviews alternative approaches to studying international relations (neorealism, liberalism, and constructivism) and highlights the main differences between them and the strategic perspective.

Study Questions

1. What is international relations? Why do we study it?
   



2. Why does Principles argue that leaders are the key actors in international relations? What is the book's argument against seeing states as the central actors?
   



3. From your own knowledge of history or current events, identify an example of a state's power affecting its preferences, a state's preferences affecting its power, or a state's preferences affecting its perceptions.
   



4. From your knowledge of history, think about examples of coordination, distribution, monitoring, and sanctioning approaches. How would the different approaches to international relations (neorealism, liberalism, constructivism, and the strategic approach) analyze those problems? How would their analyses differ? What do the different approaches focus on when they address these issues?