INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Unit 1. Understanding and predicting state behavior in the modern state system

Some handy resources for the unit:

• The course syllabus. The syllabus discusses AI usage and academic integrity policies--you must read the entire syllabus at the start of the class. Review these policies and ahead of each quiz/test/paper until you firmly understand them.
  

• A handout on how your class participation grade will be assigned

• A handout explaining how grades on test questions and in-class essays are assigned

• A handout on how your papers will be graded

• A handout on citation expectations for papers

• The High Point University Honor Code. Please carefully read the section on academic integrity.

WEEK 1
August 17 (M)—What will you learn in this course?

• 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:
  

• If you haven't seen it yet, HPU requires faculty to show students this security-related presentation on the first day of classes: https://highpoint.canto.com/b/H7QQU  (Video length is 6:45.) The presentation addresses active shooter training.
  

• Make sure you have access to the the textbook for this course. You also will need a subscription to Norton Publishing's InQuizitive package for this textbook.
  
  There are at least five ways to get access to the textbook and required testing program:

• (1) Hard copies of the texbook and InQuizitive test registration cards should be available at the bookstore. Most students choose to rent electronic access for the semester because doing so is quite a lot less expensive even when used versions of the current textbook are available.
  

• (2) If you choose to rent an electronic copy of the textbook through the bookstore, you will access the textbook and locate your Inquizitive registration code through the Yuzo application, which is described here:
  https://highpoint.bncollege.com/digital-learning-faqs
  Your professor is not familiar with how Yuzo works; if you have issues, contact the bookstore directly.
  

• (3) Alternatively, ebooks with a registration code for the InQuizitive system can also be rented directly online at Norton's publishing website, providing instant access to both the textbook and InQuizitive for about $50. See:
  https://digital.wwnorton.com/essir10.
  If you rent your textbook this way, you will just log-in at the publisher's website each time you access the materials. If you have rented your book this way and have access issues, you will need to contact Norton directly.
  

• (4) If you have purchased your textbook elsewhere (make sure to get the correct edition!), you can purchase a registration code for just the InQuisitive system at the publisher's website: See: https://digital.wwnorton.com/essir10.

• (5) If you still are waiting for your book to arrive, the publisher's website will let you set up a trial subscription to access the book and quizzes at no cost for a couple of weeks.

• Correctly activate your subscription to InQuizitive (quiz scores will make up a significant portion of your course grade, and you have to register correctly for me to see your quiz results). Here is a link to a set of instructions on how you register yourself to take InQuizitive quizzes: https://wwnorton.knowledgeowl.com/help/inquizitive-students-getting-started. 
  

• 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.
  

August 19 (W)—What is the study of "International Relations" about?

• Ahead of this class, take your first InQuizitive quiz:
  https://digital.wwnorton.com/362943. 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. To assist students in tracking their assignments, I have posted this same assignment in BlackBoard, too. That assignment lists the same link as the one above.
  

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 9 (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). As a reminder, most pdf readings will be require a password. The password to open readings is:
  icecream
  
  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.
  

• 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. 

• After you have read the assigned parts of Chapter 5, take this InQuizitive test: https://digital.wwnorton.com/362935.
  As a reminder, access the assigned textbook chapters by following the links in the schedule. This is a truncated version of the Chapter 5 quiz--follow the link, and 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 and reading quizzes you CAN use your book while taking them.
  
  With the InQuizitive tests, once you start them, you need to finish the quiz; there's no way to save work. If something comes up that stops you from finishing the work, you can send me a note to have me reset the quiz. Also, you should know that I can see which questions you have missed and how many items you are answering (please do the reading and put in your best effort rather than randomly guessing on lots of items).
  

WEEK 2

August 25 (M), 27 (W), Aug. 29 (F), and Monday, Sept. 1—Core concepts, continued

Read for Wednesday

• 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.

For Friday and Monday, listen only to the indicated parts of the MLK speech (And you may want to print out the transcript for future reference):

• "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. Listen to Dr. King’s words from approximately 3 minutes and 20 seconds into the video through about 20 minutes and 20 seconds. The clip of interest begins with, “After 1954, they watched us conspire,” and ends with, “Every society must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies."

• David E. Sanger, et al. "Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality’" The New York Times (January 2026, 3pp). The brief article synthesizes an interview President Trump gave after removing the leader of Venezuela without US Congressional or UN Security Council approval.

  The primary reason you are being asked to listen to/read these two assignment is that they represent opposite ends of American thinking about which forms of power should be used in U.S. foreign policy and for what purposes that power should be applied. To place Dr. King’s argument in historical context, you should also quickly skim the full transcript of his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” which is available on the program’s website. The transcript can be accessed through a link that appears once the video begins. As you read and listen, focus especially on Dr. King’s views regarding the use of U.S. force to achieve nationalist goals. Because King's remarks were delivered in 1967 in the context of the Vietnam War, you should critically assess how applicable King’s concerns are to U.S. foreign policy today. What specific criticisms does he raise about the role of the United States in global politics, its motivations in foreign policy, and its use of power? Why does he call for the United States to lead a “revolution in values,” and which values does he believe should be prioritized in the international system? Finally, to what extent do American foreign policy values appear to be changing under the current US presidential administration, which--if any--of King’s recommendations and moral appeals might still be relevant to contemporary global events?

WEEK 3
Aug. 31 (M), Sept. 2 (W) and 4 (F)

Ahead of class on Monday:

• After you have completed the material above, please complete the quiz that is in BlackBoard. Usually, quizzes are multiple choice exercises that you do as you are reading. However, this time, I'd like you to provide a paragraph reflecting on what you are covering.

On Wednesday, we will finish up the discussion of the different types of power used in international relations, To keep the daily reading load manageable, start the material on the modern state system:

• 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.
  

• Start to read "The Emergence of the Modern State System" (Shimko, 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" and global war in Europe that led to emergence the modern state system.

As you start to read Shimko's chapter, complete the first 10 items on this assignment's reading quiz, which is posted in BlackBoard. Instructors cannot link directly to a quiz, so you will need to log-in to BlackBoard to open the quiz. The test is not timed, so  when you have read what you need to answer the first ten questions, hit the button to "Save and Close" the quiz, so that you can return to it once you are ready to to start the second block of reading later in the week.

Important note: For the reading quizzes in BlackBoard (versus InQuizitive), any grade of 85% or higher will be recorded as an A, and you will need to answer at least 75% of the items correctly to earn a B. If you answer at least 50% of the items correctly you will earn a D. For BlackBoard quizzes only, C grades are not given. You may retake each BlackBoard quiz multiple times to improve your score, if you would like. This should be unnecessary if you complete the quizzes as you go, since the quiz items appear in the same order as the answers are covered in the reading. Quiz grades will post automatically, and only your highest attempt will be recorded.

Again, the quiz grades are VERY low stakes. Skipping through the reading from quiz item to quiz item without reading will likely result in test grades are that much lower than your quiz grades--and the tests count over 10x as much toward your final grade. The highly detailed information you are asked about on the reading quizzes is not material you are expected to memorize and retain long term. The reading quizzes are meant to serve mainly as an attention check; I am using them to help you stay focused as you read and remember some examples that you can use later on test essays. For the most part, the BlackBoard homework quiz items are more specific than anything I would require you to know on an exam, and any key facts or definitions that appear on unit tests will have been covered in your study guides and class PPTs.

Sept. 4 (F)—What is “the modern state system"? When and why did it develop?

• Read the remainder of "The Emergence of the Modern State System". 

• Finish the readings quiz in BlackBoard for Shimko's chapter.
  

Note that the highly detailed information you are asked about on the reading quizzes is not material you are expected to memorize and retain long term. The reading quizzes are meant to serve mainly as an attention check; I am using them to help you stay focused as you read and remember some examples that you can use later on test essays. For the most part, the BlackBoard homework quiz items are more specific than anything I would require you to know on an exam, and any key facts or definitions that appear on unit tests will have been covered in your study guides and class PPTs.

Looking ahead (planning information):

Monday, September, 21: This is the date for which your first exam is tentatively scheduled (this will be the test date unless something unlikely like instructor illness, weather, or something comparable interferes). You will want to make sure to review the study guide well ahead of this day to help you prepare for the exam. It is in the PPT/handouts file. Any final edits to that guide will be made by the Friday before the exam. As you prepare for the test, you also should review the handout explaining how grades on test questions and in-class essays are assigned.

Right ahead of the exam, you will need take a quiz to verify that Honorlock is working on your computer; if you have had issues, see IT for assistance. If HonorLock is not working for you during the exam, you will need to complete the exam on paper. If you would prefer a paper exam, please let me know in advance.