INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

COMPREHENSIVE EXAM

Fall 2011

Minor

ANSWER THREE QUESTIONS FROM THE FOLLOWING LIST. YOU MAY NOT ANSWER MORE THAN TWO QUESTIONS FROM ANY ONE SECTION. YOU HAVE EIGHT HOURS TO COMPLETE THIS SECTION OF THE EXAM.

PART A: THEORY AND METHODS

1) Most IR scholars are probably committed to the view that it is the collectivity of social scientists, rather than individuals, which determines the truth or falsity of knowledge claims about world politics; call it the “3rd person standard” for authoritative knowledge. This makes sense with knowledge claims about aggregate level phenomena (“structure,” say), but what about claims that depend upon attributions of intentional states (interests, beliefs, and so on) to particular people or groups? If those people are still alive, do they have any special, 1st person authority to say what their intentional states were that could overrule a 3rd person social scientific claim? For example, if you were Henry Kissinger and an enterprising young IR scholar came along with a theory about US interests in Vietnam that differed substantially from your own view, do you have any special say vis-à-vis that theory, or are US interests at that time something for the community of scholars to decide? In short, who ultimately owns this knowledge – observers or the participants—and either way, should IR scholars’ assumptions about actors’ motivations and beliefs defer, to those “who were there”? Does the situation change appreciably for cases where the subjects of our theories are no longer alive, as in the origins of WWI?

2) Although Schmitt’s view of the sovereign as “he who decides the exception” seems to suggest that leaders have an almost unlimited agency, a skeptic might plausibly argue that almost all leaders are deeply embedded in material and normative structures, internally and externally, that significantly constrain their creativity and freedom of action. After carefully defining what you mean by agency (and why), how much agency do modern sovereigns really have (focusing here on the foreign policy domain), and what does it look like? What are the greatest structural constraints today on sovereigns’ agency, and are these constraints likely to become greater or lesser in the future? In short, does the quality of foreign policy leadership “matter,” and why or why not?

3) Political science is now abuzz with the need for “multi-method” research designs. Why? Is there anything inherently superior to having more than one methodological approach to answer a question? Are there domains of questions, perhaps, that should lend themselves to particular combinations of methods, or just one single best method? Are there any methodological approaches that are inherently incompatible – for example, ethnography and formal models or experiments? Why or why not?

4) IR scholars talk a lot these days about “process tracing” as a research method. What is process tracing and what are its supposed advantages as a method relative to the alternatives? What are some questions that have been answered effectively by using process tracing or related techniques? Finally, what are the limits of process tracing, either inherent or as practiced by IR scholars?

5) Most observers agree that the United States is in relative decline and, as a result, the current international order is in transition. On the other side of this transition, what sort of order might emerge? What are the possibilities, and what variables and circumstances will shape outcomes? For this question, drawing on and exemplifying relevant bodies of theory, identify the logic of THREE alternative futures and the sorts of mechanisms and pathways that might facilitate or inhibit their emergence. While the reordering of global politics might actually be a blend of alternative logics, the point of this exercise is to isolate ideal types so as to identify the various moving parts that are at work.

6) This fall, the Palestinian Authority is seeking formal international recognition of its sovereignty: membership in the UN General Assembly. Since even if this effort succeeds it will not change the distribution of power on the ground, from a realist perspective it might seem that the effort is a distracting and pointless exercise. And yet, judging from the uproar among policymakers, diplomats, and commentators on all sides, the bid seems to “matter” a great deal. What do you make of this apparent disjunction between one of our best theories and the Palestinian bid for recognition of their sovereignty, and why? Discuss in light of relevant theory.

PART B: APPLIED SUBFIELDS

7) Almost everyone agrees that states comply with international law almost all the time. However, scholars disagree over how to interpret these high rates of compliance. What does compliance behavior tell us-and not tell us-about how and to what extent international law matters for international politics? What evidence, in addition to compliance behavior, would be useful for helping us address this question?

8) Can war be reduced to a bargaining problem? What are the strengths and limitations of this approach?

9) Scholars and analysts have argued, especially since the end of the Cold War, that transnational networks of domestic actors are changing the broad contours of international relations. The basic condition of world politics, we are told, is less and less one of sovereign states and increasingly one of interconnected societies, groups, corporations and activists seeking to implement change outside of governmental channels. The supposedly Twitter-fueled Arab Spring is often cited as an exemplar of this fundamental shift. In your opinion, is this a valid argument? What evidence leads you to your conclusion?

10) Under what conditions is economic statecraft (as opposed to military coercion or diplomacy) most likely to be used and most likely to be effective?

11) There is a lot of talk among Americans these days about a new Wilsonianism in Washington and the importance of morals concerns. At the same time, it seems almost no one outside the US takes the proposition that the US is motivated by moral concerns very seriously. They see this as just eyewash for nationalistic Americans who are attracted to a feel-good cover-story. Meantime, American realists like Mearsheimer and Walt attribute U.S. policy to neither morality nor U.S. strategic interests. For them it is driven by the interests of a U.S. ally. Why is there such huge variation in the interpretation of what makes the United States act as it does in world affairs and what does this imply for theory building? What is your favorite interpretation of the motivating forces behind U.S. policy and why does it convince you?

12) Perception is a popular concept. It qualifies most realist theories that emphasize power and/or threat and is central in rational choice modeling. As we introduce the idea of perception both the empirical difficulty of identifying what perceptions are and the multiplicity of possible perceptions confound analyses. What are the best ways to deal with these problems? Show how the concept of perception might be used to explain US-European relations, US-Chinese relations, Korean-Japanese relations, and Iranian-US relations.

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