The discipline of international relations mailny emphasizes on the international politics..For example, domestic policies like Singaporean politics, American politics and German politics etc are concerned about how are national institutions regulated and how are the processes of policy-making ( lawmaking and conducting elections) are operated locally. In contrast, international relations plays an important role in the formulation of foreign policies that are adopted by one state in order to deal with the other. It mainly focuses on diplomatic ways of dealing with other states through which the security of national interests can be mutually ensured and differences can be solved by making peaceful agreements among states. In addition, IR encloses a lot of more disciplines i.e. International Law, Diplomacy, History and Economics; that is why it is known to be an interdisciplinary field. While the scope of the subdivisions of political science is much restricted and is more vigorous in certain areas.
Whereas some scholars might not think it a good idea to study varios fields at a time, IR is advantageous in covering a range of different activities worldwide that plays part in making it attractive to scholars and foreign policy makers. Presently, issues related to globalization, trade, terrorism, climate changes and technologies are debated and analyzed cautiously within the domain of international relations. Moreover, IR is considered to be a preferably more practical pursuit because the experts and scholars can share their openions and develop theories regarding foreign policies. However, debates between two inconsistent theories is still blurry and have not yet been developed properly. For this reason, IR is considered to be abandoned and non-scientific.
Nevertheless, intellectuals are trying to develop a more vivid notion of how the world politics operates. So, IR has its own negative as well as positive exclusivity among the sub-divisions of political science. To explain the differences between domestic policies and foreign policies of the states, it is important to look deep into the levels of analysis of IR. There are four main levels i.e. domestic, interstate and global levels.
Domestic and interstate levels can discriminate the intra and interstate politics whereas the state level is related to the government institutions and political organizations that determines the types of government and deals with the policies concerning different sort of issues. Dictatorship and democracy are known to be the examples of how the states act different from each other. However, on interstate level, interactions among states like trade and peace negotiations are examined thoroughly. Realism Realism is not specified to a particular idea.
Instead, its idea depends upon the context of philosophical, educational and literary realism. In IR, realism is a theoratical and methodological framework focused on explaining and analyzing world politics and events of international political system. Realism is an intellectual belief that highlights the utilization of power by different states (realpolitik and power politics) in international political realm. Realism backdates 1200 years of ancient time of Sun Tuz and Thucydides when power was believed to be basic means of survival.
Thucydides is considered to be the pioneer of realism in political philosophy. One of his famous sayings about power was “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept”. This argument explains that human beings try to ensure their survival certainty. Therefore, states also try to challange each othsr to gain some political and economic benefits. Some major arguments by the realists are as follows: – states are central actors.
Regardless of the fact that a variety of international and non-governmental organizations survive as powerful as the EU, no states gives up its autonomy and freedom. Brexit is a recent example of states pursuing maximum interest and power irrespective of the other advantages it gets from regional cooperation. – In international political system, there’s no centeral authority above states. Although, states have their central governments to enforce laws and held accountability.
However, some scholars disagree with this idea and think there should b a central government over all the states developed according to the internationally accepted set of rules, so that the peace and security of all the nations would be ensured and a sense of harmony would be confirmed. As a response to this idea, realist theories claim that the world would never be able to achieve ultimate peace and stability; not even after developing an international central authority. Hence, states may be able to achieve maximum stability and preserve their interests by developing patterns of prudent choices and decisions. – Survival is an essential interest of all the nations.
They have their pre-established military to deal with threats. Liberalism Liberalism claims that power is not everything. It states that nations should build relations based on reciprocity instead of power. The structure of international relations has evolved till time through mutual cooperation not through power. Liberal school of thought claims that it is distinct from other theories of IR because it focuses upon the other features of states like cultural beliefs, identity and norms instead of the forceful means of sorting a matter among states. Immanuel Kant advocated three solutions for achieving peace and cooperation.
First, establishment of liberal institutionalism based on reciprocity helps emerging mutual cooperation. World Trade Organization, United Nations, European Union and International Monetary Fund are some of the most successful examples of this idea. Second, A state’s attitude towards the other during an ongoing dispute and the way it reacts to a situation ia based on what type of government it is. Third, trade doesn’t benifit only in terms of peace but it also plays a major role in the production of global wealth and promotes well being of all the states instead of one. Here, with trade, economic interdependence also increases that liberalists believe is positive but for realists, it is not. The difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism is that classical realists reject the concept of realpolitik and say that states are powerful and cooperation can be prompted instead of conflict; whereas, neorealism agree with some of the assumptions realists build.
Liberalism seems to be a bit more idealistic. An example of how states resist and survive sovereignty is UK leaving EU. Moreover, anti-dumping duty is apparently applied to third world even though that WTO claims to promote free trade. Though liberalism claims to explain and understand the affairs of world politics more precisely, realism still holds to be stronger and at a better position in foreign affairs in at least the current century.
