Internationale Beziehungen und Europäische Integration an der Universität Konstanz

It seeks to understand, how the people and countries of the world get along 

Important for most definitions: states are crucial but not only actors and inter-relationship between states

- Conflict processes

- Foreign policy analysis

- International political economy

- Regional integration/ international organisation/ law

1. Image: Man/ Woman

2. Image State

3. Image: System (war)

Actors are basic units of IR analysis

Political actions determined by their interests

- Interests are preferences over outcomes, that could result from political action.

Categories:

1. Power/ Security (stressed mostly by Realism)

2. Economic or material welfare (stressed mostly by Liberalism)

3. Ideological goal (stressed mostly by Constructivism and Idealism)

- Interactions are ways, in which choices of two or more actors combine to produce political outcomes

- Strategic interaction is a sort of interaction, in which one actor's strategy is determined by their anticipation of the other actors strategy

Assumptions: 

1. Actors behave rational

2. Actors take assumed action of other actors into account

1. Cooperation 

= two or more actors adopt a policy, that benefits at least one of them, while not making others worse off, compared to the Status Quo 

2. Bargaining 

= actors must choose between outcomes, that could make one of them better off than the other

1. Coordination 

= Interaction, where all actors benefit from making the same choices (Rechtsfahrgebot); there is no incentive to not comply

2. Collaboration 

= Actors gain from cooperation, but still have a unilateral interest incentive to defect (Prisoners Dilemma)

• Number and relative size of actors (smaller numbers of actors can cooperate more easily)
• Repeatetd interactions with the same partners & possibility of reciprocal punishment
• Linkage between issues of cooperation
• Availiability of information on compliance/ non-compliance of other actors

• Power: The more power an actor has, the more he is expected to gain from bargaining.
• Reversion outcome
  = outcome in case no bargaining solution is reached. 
• Coercion: Threat or imposition of costs on other actors in order to change their behaviour
• Outside options: Alternatives to bargaining with a specific actor.
• Agenda-setting power: Power which comes with a “first move” and helps an actor to secure a more favourable bargaining outcome.

Institutions are sets of rules, known and shared by the community, that structure political interactions in specific ways.

Institutions are the results of a set of cooperations and bargaining processes --> winners of these processes set the rules 

• No "world government" --> international anarchy
• Institutions can't enforce behaviour but they can facilitate cooperation, making self-enforcement easier for members, by
  • setting standards of behaviour
  • verifying compliance
  • reducing the costs of joint decision-making
  • resolving dispute