The study of international politics is about why and how states cooperate for mutual gain or compete against each other. This can happen on local, regional or global levels and includes not just governments but a wide range of non-state actors like Amnesty International, the World Bank or multinational corporations as well as military alliances such as NATO or security organisations such as the UN. Our students explore how and why these bodies are able to achieve their objectives by taking courses in diplomacy, economics, geography, history and political science as well as learning about the different levels of analysis for understanding international politics, from the global down to the individual state.
The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War between Catholic and Protestant states in Western Europe, established our modern international system. Since that time, states have been the primary actors in international politics. Realism argues that states act as they do on the basis of their unique national characteristics and do not project a unified set of interests into an international arena.
Liberalism, on the other hand, posits that states are basically good and tend toward cooperation. It argues that states can achieve their goals through non-violent means and by building a global community of countries that share democratic values. Democratic peace theory argues that democracies are less likely to go to war, because they externalize their norms and only fight for just causes.
Institutionalism shares the basic assumptions of realism (states are self-interested, the international environment is anarchic and no one knows what other states will do) but adds to liberal theory in that it agrees that cooperation is possible in the face of competition by using game theory to show how mutually beneficial interactions can be achieved. In contrast, constructivist theory argues that the anarchic international system is a product of the social construction of ideas and identities among the various political actors.