Only by the internal, domestic politics of states can one understand how they behave in International Relations

Résumé du document

Theories in international relations are built in order to understand the international anarchy, according to Grieco. Scholars are interested in analyzing struggles between states, as well military as economic one. So this topic is actually the study of states' behavior in the world, and relationships between them. Three theories are dominating the international relations' study. In both of them, the state is seen as a rational actor, which is trying to get benefits from its actions. But these theories do not agree on the question of the importance of internal and domestic politics.

For the state-society approach, internal politics are sufficient to understand the international relations, whereas institutionalists are more focused on the international institutions, or realists on the balance of powers. In this essay, we will wonder about the role of the domestic politics in the way of thinking international relations. We will firstly explain why some consider that they are sufficient, and we will show after that there are other variables which cannot be forgotten.

Extraits

[...] It would be because of the pressure of some interest's groups, such as farmers, that the states make their decisions. For him, the world “preferences” is linked with the fact that the state is only a representative of the society's actors, and the state would only act to defend their interests. The example of the De Gaulle's behavior during the crisis of the Common Agricultural Policy (is very interesting: the French State caused a European crisis just to defend the interests of the French agricultural lobby. [...]

[...] So, saying that one can understand the international relations only thanks to the internal politics is at least disputable, because other variables have to be looked at. Bibliography Andrew Moravcsik Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics International Organization, Vol No (1997) pp. 513-553 Immanuel Kant, in Toward Perpetual Peace and other Writings, edited by Kleingeld, translated Colclasure (Yale UP, 2006), pp72-85 J.M. Grieco Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation in International Organization 42:3, pp. 485-507 J.M. Grieco and G.J. Ikenberry State Power and World Markets: The International Political Economy, (Norton, 2003), pp. [...]

[...] Kant explained that the political regime of a nation is very important to understand the behavior of a state on the international scene. A democracy would be less warlike than an authoritarian regime, because people are voting for people who decide of the foreign policy, and as rational actors wouldn't chose representatives who could send them to war. To go further, it would mean that the institutions of a country, its political system, could explain the behavior of a country. [...]

[...] What is pushing the states into war is defined only by this will of survival, or of hegemony, according to the offensive realists. Mearsheimer is even mainly interested in relations between great powers, and not on the behavior of little states, or only as adjustment variables. Actually, the institutionalist theory is not different so far from the realism about the definition of what allows understanding the International Relations. Institutionalism, as Grieco underlines it, accepts most of the realist theory's claims, and that particularly in its newest versions. [...]

[...] The realism and the institutionalism, as the state-society approach, see states as rational and egoist actors, but scholars of these movements don't think that the best way of understanding states' behavior is looking inside them. For the realists, states are always lead by one thing, the will of survival. As H. Morgenthau emphasizes it: seems ( . ) that history shows conclusively that the struggle for power and the desire for power as the dominating motive force in the minds of statesmen and nations have been present everywhere at all times, regardless of economic system, for of government, etc.”. [...]