Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy

In international politics today, soft power is favoured over hard power and hence, I would even argue that international law is a necessary tool in foreign policy. To better facilitate the discourse, I would like to establish certain perimeters. In this paper, soft power is defined as “the ability to get what you want by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals” (Nye, 2003) while hard power is defined as “the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and military might to make others follow your will” (Nye, 2003). Hence, soft power concentrates on building positive relations with other states, whereas hard power can be said to be more antagonistic and hardhanded, which is counter to what international law stands for. In this sense, international law supports the expansion of soft power more than that of hard power.

Power Politics: The Framework Provided Understanding contemporary world politics is by no means an easy feat. To merely begin the process, one must first have an ample knowledge of historical as well as modern trends in international relations, the issues at hand both now and in the past and major events that affect the field. Several groups and styles of thinking have developed throughout the centuries to make attempts at comprehending world politics and most successfully carrying out international relations. One of these styles of thinking is often called power politics and can be referred to as realpolitik or realism. This school of thought focuses on ways in which power affects the international arena by assessing how states influence each other as the most important actors in world politics.

The strength being the ability to broaden or narrow our focus on world events giving us freedom of action. Freedom of action can make us unpredictable, which is clearly an advantage over our enemies. The weakness in this test is the same; ambiguity can cause political problems home and abroad. At home it is hard to get public support for a foreign policy that has shifting views of national interest, and abroad other countries will find it difficult to deal with an ally who cannot specify its rules of engagement.

The Two-Level Game According to Hagan (1995), the politics of international relations can be understood as a two-level game. At the national level, local groups pursue their interest by compelling the government to adopt favorable policies, whereas officials seek power by establishing alliances among these groups. At the international level, the national government endeavors to satisfy domestic requirements at the same time it attempts to lessen the adve... ... middle of paper ... ...onal security and economic prosperity, they are also keen at protecting their political power. The meaning of national interest can vary from one state to another. Nevertheless, national interest is inevitably at the core of domestic and international policies.

Proponents of Neo-Classical Realism contend that it is relative power in particular which determines a state’s foreign policy . These relative power concerns then indirectly effect domestic (dependent) variables which in turn influence the decision making process. From a theoretical standpoint, Neo-Classical Realism is balanced between pure systemic theories, and those which prioritise Units. It is both an extension and response to Waltzian neorealism; particularly in the acceptance of the primacy of systemic variables, whilst adding domestic level variables. In particular, opening up the ‘black box’ of the state whilst maintaining the importance of systemic pressures gives Neo-Classical Realism a much wider context of motivations and variables from which to explain state behaviour, and consequently overcome the limitation of classical realism which makes no claim to explain specific events or foreign policy .

Although states are still the ultimate power source, it is important to accept the fact that the idea of sovereignty is changing with globalism. - However, for more than the majority of the weaker states, they are under the influence of these strong states - domestic policies are very important to consider in order to see the big picture In the 16th and 17th century, the idea of a sovereign state focused on establishing legitimacy of a single domestic authority (O’Neil and Rogowski 68). The government was expected to have a total control over its domestic affairs. Therefore, it was expected that no state had the “right to intervene in the internal affairs of another” (O’Neil and Rogowski 69). The original establishment of the idea of state and sovereignty developed over the concept of a government having an overarching political power over its territory.

The concept of power is central to the study of international politics. International politics has been defined in terms of influencing major nations in the world to advance the purpose of a nation against the opposition of other nations. Thus, it is rather not surprising that power, either by means of influence or control, has been a dominant concept that is intertwined in discussion when it comes to the study of international politics. Before getting into the fundamental nature of power in international relations, it is needed to consider just what power is. Power in the study of international politics can be derived in several ways as a goal of states or individual; as a measure of influence or control over actors, events, outcomes, and international affairs; as reflecting triumph in conflict and obtaining security; as control over capabilities and resources.

Although I believe the administration of the experiment established a working and plausible hypothesis, there are simply too many external factors to credit their findings as fact, as opposed to socio-political theory. In the future, Mansfield and Pevehouse should include numerous other factors and control groups to better support their empirical findings. Of those, strategic-security factors should be used as a control group and the spurious linkage of transitioning state-actors should be studied in the context of whether the United States had control and/or manipulated an otherwise non-democratic actor, its regime type, and its IO membership status.

However, to what extent norms actually influence decision-making is the true test to the relevance of constructivist arguments. Are norms and ideas affecting state interests in any real ways? I will argue that the human rights norm does not have a meaningful impact on policy, while admitting that it does indeed exist in some form. And, in order for it to be significant, it must be internalized beyond the system level. Realism is not only the pervasive approach in international relations literature but is accurate in describing and anticipating state actions.

Protect the homeland, to deter and defeat attacks on the United States and to support civil authorities in mitigating the effects of potential attacks and natural disasters. 2. Build security globally, in order to preserve regional stability, deter adversaries, support allies and partners, and cooperate with others ... ... middle of paper ... ...also important weapons in the conduct of regular warfare. There are pros and cons to preparation for either regular or irregular warfare, but when using the national strategic objectives as criteria, preparation for regular warfare is more critical to national strategic objectives than preparation for irregular warfare. The downside to this approach is that politicians must be selective in the irregular conflicts in which they decide to enter.