Please note: At your instructor's discretion,
there may be minor alterations to the reading
assignments listed below. One of the major advantages to
providing you with an on-line readings archive is that
timely articles can be added or substituted when
appropriate. Opening documents downloaded from this
website will require that your computer have
Acrobat Reader . You will also need the
class-specific password to open individual files.
Unit 1. Understanding and predicting state
behavior in the modern state system
Some handy resources for the unit:
WEEK 1
January 6 (M)—What will you learn in this course?
- Sometime during the
first week of the course, please review the resources
listed above, so you know where to find
important information during the term. Then, complete
these assignments for Wednesday:
The texbook and InQuizitive
test registration cards are available at the bookstore.
Ebooks with a registration code for the InQuizitive system
can also be rented directly online at the publisher's
website, providing instant access to both resources for
under $50. See: https://digital.wwnorton.com/essir9.
At the same website, you can purchase a registration code
for the InQuisitive system if you are using a used
textbook this semester.
If you are waiting for your
book to arrive, this same website will let you set up a
trial subscription to access the book and quizzes at no
cost for a couple of weeks.
As you register or sign in to take a quiz, you may be prompted for a
unique or student id; with the way I have adjusted the
settings, you should leave this field blank and just continue to
register.
When you register, you
MUST enter a "student set" code for me to see your
quiz work; if you do not enter a code or enter
the wrong one, I will not have access to your quiz
results
Your student
set/code is:
881084.
-
Once you are registered to take quizzes, take a quick look at this
website to see how your InQuizitive chapter tests
are graded: https://wwnorton.knowledgeowl.com/help/inquizitive-students-grading.
One of the big pluses to using this online quiz system
is that you can still do well on a quiz where you have
missed some questions as long as you answer additional
items.
Jan 8 (W)—What is the study of
"International Relations" about?
- Ahead of this
class, take
your first InQuizitive quiz: https://digital.wwnorton.com/168310.
This is an easy-peasy but graded assignment to
make sure that you understand the basics of how to use
InQuizitive. Let me know if you have any problems with
the set up.
Important: Unless you are
given other instructions, quizzes need to be completed
within three days of the date where they are listed in the
schedule. In this case, you need to have this quiz
completed by no later than Friday.
- Ahead of class, look
at your weekly schedule and determine when you are
typically going to study for this class on an ongoing
basis. You will make things a lot easier on
yourself if you use three strategies:
(1) Keep up with the homework
readings as they are assigned. Each class meeting's
reading load is manageable; trying to complete more than a
week of homework reading at a time is going to be a big
challenge that I would like you to avoid.
(2) Know what you are looking
for in each reading by frequently reviewing the unit study
guide.
(3) Summarize readings as you
complete them and either take reading notes or use a
highlighting system so that you don't need to re-read
entire documents ahead of exams and paper assignments. You
will save yourself much time and energy if you do nothing
more than highlight a small portion of what you are
reading, including each article's main arguments and
examples of supporting evidence.
- Ahead of class, take
a look at the draft study guide for the first course
unit, which is in the PPT/Assignments file. The
first versions of the study guides are draft documents
because the course always changes from one year to the
next, as new political events take place and I replace
some of the readings. I typically will revise the study
guides modestly a couple of time during each unit, but
for the most part, the final versions of these guides
will look much like what you have available from the
start of each unit. You will have the final version of
each unit's study guide at least a week ahead of the
test.
January 10 (F)—Getting started with some basic
concepts
-
Read pages 2-10 (up to "Actors and
Influence") of this scanned chapter (OCR-enabled),
which is from the introduction to a textbook that is
much more detail orientated than the one you will be
reading most of this term). This reading provides
definitions and examples for several of the key
concepts scholars use to think about and predict state
behavior. IR--at its core--is about understanding why
countries do what they do so that behaviors can be
predicted and collective problems addressed. After
reading these pages, you should be able to to explain
three principles that help to explain state behavior.
Remember, the
password to open locked PDF files for this class
is: icecream
-
Next, read only the first section of "Tools of State
Craft" in Chapter 5 (Statecraft) of your Mingst
textbook. The assigned reading ends where the chapter
begins to discuss "Models of Foreign Policy Decision
Making." Think about how the tools that are described
fit into the three strategies that states use to get
what they want as discussed by Pevehouse and Goldstein
in the reading you just completed. The various tools
of statecraft can be grouped into four types of
power--hard, soft, sticky, and sharp--which will be
the focus of the next two reading assignments.
-
Take this
InQuizitive test: https://digital.wwnorton.com/258001.
This is a truncated version of the Chapter 5
quiz--don't take the full one. This quiz only has 11
questions. Remember to keep answering questions--even
if you have seen them before--until you have earned an
A on the quiz and feel confident that you understand
the material. For all of the textbook quizzes you CAN
use your book while taking them.
WEEK 2
Jan. 13 (M)—More
set of key concepts
-
Walter Russell Mead, "America's
Sticky Power" (Foreign Policy, 2004, 6pp).
Important to note before you read this article:
Mead uses the terms "sharp" and "hard" power
interchangeably, but his article compares what we will
be calling "hard" (that is blunt force), "sticky,"
(economic) and "soft" (cultural and diplomatic) power.
After Mead wrote this article, IR specialists
re-purposed the term "sharp power" (you will read
about what we now call "sharp power" in the next
article). Sharp power refers a state's efforts to
change another state's behavior by manipulating public
opinion or political, social, and economic
institutions within a target society.
-
Jill Kastner and William C.
Wohlforth. "A Measure Short of War: The Return of
Great-Power Subversion" (Foreign
Policy, 2021, 10pp). The article uses the term
"subversion" to refer to what most political
scientists now call "sharp" power. The reason why I
assigned this particular article is because most
recent writing on soft power focuses on Chinese,
Iranian, and Russian efforts to manipulate foreign
institutions and populations without acknowledging
that a long-standing practice by the US, as well.
Jan. 15 (W) and 17 (F)—What
is “the modern state system"? When and why did it
develop?
-
As a reminder before you
start the readings in this class, it is always a good
idea to review the set of focus questions that is in
the PPTs/Assignments folder (link on the course
homepage), so you know in advance what you need to
read with care.
-
For Wednesday; Watch
Jon Green's "Modern Revolution" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Zdmd4J7T. This
video does a nice job of placing the development of
the modern state into the broader context of the
social, economic, and political revolutions that
accompanied the unification of the world's regions and
economy starting in the 1400s. Watch the whole video
(13 min or so), and pay special attention starting at
9min:50sec and forward, which offers a brief
explanation for why the industrial revolution and a
Western-orientated, state-centered international
system consolidated in the West despite the fact that
China was more advanced than Western Europe and
elsewhere in numerous ways.
-
Also for Wednesday; start to read "The Emergence of the Modern
State System" (32pp). The main
reason this reading is assigned is so that you can be
familiar with why and how the international state
system initially emerged and when its most important
contemporary characteristics were added. For this class,
read only the first
part of the chapter, focusing on the various
historical "revolutions" that led to the modern
state system.
WEEK 3
Jan. 20 (M)— Martin Luther King
Day (no class today, but please review the materials
below in addition to your reading for
Wednesday)
-
"Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in
his own words" (Democracy Now, 2011).
Listen to Dr. King's words from about 3min 20 sec.
into the video roughly through 20min 20sec. The clip
of interest starts with, "After 1954, they watched us
conspire," and ends with, "Every society must now
develop an overriding loyalty to making as a whole in
order to preserve the best in their individual
societies."
To place King's words into
the larger context of his time, quickly read through the
show's entire transcript of "Beyond Vietnam," which is
available on the website (the first of two speeches
featured on the show), which can be accessed from a link
once the video is started. Your listening and reading
should focus on Dr. King's views on the use of US force to
achieve our ends (his comments are from 1967 on the
Vietnam War, so you should critically consider how
applicable his concerns are to US policy today). What
specific concerns does King have about the role of the US
in global politics, our motivations in foreign policy, and
how we use our power? Why does he think the US should lead
a "revolution in values," and what values does he think
should be most emphasized in the global system?
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