ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ I - Deneme Sınavı - 10

The founding members of the British Committee were:

Regime theory is a theory for explaining and understanding the international cooperation intending the coordination and harmonization of interest among nations. In fact, international cooperation which means mutual harmonization of policies benefitting to all sides are widely seen in world politics. On the other hand, states in fact would hesitate to form regime in the field of their sovereignty, because regime would limit the sovereign rights of states in those areas in favor of international inspection and sharing their powers with other states. In particular, states would not be willing to share their power about legitimate use of power for internal issues. So they don’t prefer to establish common regimes in these domestic issues if they do not perceive a real threat to their rights inside the country. The correct answer is C.

Stein, in terms of broader meaning, defined the concept as comprising all international relations and all international interactions for a certain topic. For example, international monetary regime is just seen as international relations relating to money. “At one extreme, regimes are defined so broadly as to constitute either all international relations or all international interactions within a given issue area. In this sense, an international monetary regime is nothing more than all international relations involving Money.” Therefore, regime, at least for simple meaning, refers to rules of game (game of international politics). In broader meaning, it comprises all international institutions and regulations and formal aspect of all state behaviors. The correct answer is B.

The British Committee met for the first time in 1959 and then worked well into the mid-1980s. Initially the Committee met 3 times a year and discussed the selected issues over a week. In time we see other scholars participate in the meetings of the Committee and also scholars who were inspired by the workings of the Committee such as R.J. Vincent, M. Donelan, J. Mayall, A. James, G. Gong, to name but a few. Martin Wight and Hedley Bull have come to be recognized as the most prominent scholars among the authors of the English School. 

The British Committee worked in the way that members prepared and distributed draft papers among themselves and then they discussed them over a week. The first publication of the Committee came out in 1966, titled Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, edited by Butterfield and Wight. In addition to Butterfield and Wight, the book included contributions by other members of the Committee such as Bull, Howard and MacKinnon. The penultimate work that came out of the working of the Committee was published in 1984, titled The Expansion of International Society, edited by Bull and Watson. In-between, we see various works, either collective or individually authored, by members of the Committee or authors inspired by the works of the Committee. It is fair to say that the British Committee thus led to the formation of a body of works, which we now consider as the output of the English School of International Relations.

When one examines the composition and the working of the British Committee, some of the premises and arguments of the English School can be discerned. The Committee was composed of scholars coming from different disciplines, not just those coming from the discipline of IR.

Although the British Committee was founded by an initial American funding, it has been a prevalent view in the literature of IR that the English School was somewhat posed against the dominance of American approaches to the study of international relations, especially American Social Science approaches, i.e. the Behaviouralist School, arguing that international relations can be studied with the use of the methods and techniques of the basic sciences.

According to Young, regimes are social institutions and structures created to regulate the behaviors of states for a certain phenomenon. Like all other social institutions, they are supposed to influence and regulate the behaviors of states. In a system of sovereign states, one of the basic functions of regimes is to encourage the states for cooperation in a certain subject. The purpose of regimes is to form a frame for facilitating the solution of problems through treaties. Regimes are not only making the cooperation easier in the short run, but also in the long run, providing an environment of cooperation for promoting relations. International regime, in the first stance, is understood to regulate the areas out of sovereign rights of states. However, regimes do not intend to unify all cultural, social and political beliefs of all countries unless these have international negative consequences. The correct answer is A.

a positive definition of the English School can be made out of or within the British tradition. There may be identified four bastions from which the arguments of the English School are derived;

1. The empirical or historical tradition in epistemology, which could be traced back to Hume. Instead of rationalist explanations or abstract formulations
as seen in Continental Europe and the United States, the British tradition generally relied on empirical analysis and historical explanation.

2. The cautiousness and refrain from the extremes and the pursuit of a middle
way. Within the British tradition, one cannot find the salience of rigid and radical positions; instead, an effort to accommodate the extremes is highlighted.

3. The imperial and national tradition in which the diversity, rather than unity, was given prominence. Unlike the British tradition, the French, for example, emphasized the unity.

4. The diplomatic tradition. This tradition involved that the diplomacy must be given a chance until the last hour and resort to the use of force must be the ultimate choice.

International regimes may be formed in every field of subjects of international relations starting from security issues to environmental issues, and might comprise all international regulations and common standards, such as regimes related to seas, outer spaces, straits and rivers and other waterways as well as economic, financial and commercial subjects or even about diplomatic behaviors. For example, regime of straits, regime of rivers and waterways, international trade regime, international payment regime and international environmental regime exist and are often used to explain the rules governing those areas.

In fact, the concept of regime would cause the question of the limits of state sovereignty. Because states in many subjects would face some limitations of international regimes which constrain their sovereign rights, they are blurred to determine the subjects either domestic or global in character. For example, use of waters, use of natural resources, protection of wild life, animal rights, prevention of environmental pollution are the subjects that states are not willing to share their authority. The correct answer is D.

International society has been the core concept of English School so that it has been well-explained compared to the two other concepts of international system and world society. International society is defined by four components: common interests, common rules, common values and common institutions.

In some fields, states would be eager to create regimes to prevent the anarchy and uncertainty, and establish an order and maintain security. Like social contract law of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, states through surrendering some parts of their sovereignty have had to consent to establish global governance.

International regimes reduce uncertainties and provide a reference for which behaviors are false or right. In other words, regimes facilitate the identification of violations of rules in social, political and security related fields. Moreover, they also reduce the cost of common effort for those responding to such violations. According to Krasner, regimes make it easier to reach an agreement for parties, since it increases the communication among sides and influence the quality and quantity of knowledge in a positive manner. In terms of the need for a hegemonic power, there are different views. While realists believe having a hegemon is essential for cooperation, liberals think that this cooperation would be persisting even after hegemony ended through institutions. The choice which includes the correct aims is E.

The international system conception of the School is very much similar to the system conception found in Realist or Neo-Realist schools as both of them consider system in terms of an interdependence relationship and both of them take the sovereign nation states as the primary members.

With the conception of international society, English School significantly differs from the Realist approaches.

English School and Constructivist School too have similarities and differences. They both strive to show the social bases of international relations and for both of them society is constructed with norms and institutions.

Unlike the Marxist conception of history, the English School does not have a material and structural understanding of history as the English School scholars entertain a volitional/ voluntaristic and cultural/civilizational conception of history.

Contrary to the critical theorists, the English School’s concern for humanity does not implicate the transcendence of the existing states and cultural identities.

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single global community.

It can be stated that in certain conditions, states would not need to form a regime to coordinate their cooperation or eliminate the conflicts:

The correct answer is E.

In the late 1980s, paradigmatic uncertainty was increasingly debated among IR scholars. For example, Ferguson and Mansbach noted that from past to present, in the history of IR theory, value and normative preferences became primary issues.

Realists insist that a hegemonic power is necessary for enforcing states to cooperate and that this cooperation may not continue in post hegemonic era, liberals focus that this cooperation would be persisting even after hegemony ended through institutions. The correct answer is B.

According to Hobbes, good or bad are relative concepts and consequently there is no absolute good and absolute bad. There are no sensible and objective criteria to divide the good and bad; in contrast, it depends subjectively to the individuals themselves.

Keohane adopts the significant role of hegemony for establishing and creating the international regimes. Howver, Keohane opposed the argument that international regimes and cooperation would not be created or continued in post hegemonic era. Keohane, in his study, argues that cooperation would be possible even in the lack of a hegemonic power in case there are international regimes that assist to establish cooperation. In other words, “regimes are examples of cooperative behavior, and facilitate cooperation, but cooperation can take place in the absence of established regimes.

While realists insist that a hegemonic power is necessary for enforcing states to cooperate and that this cooperation may not continue in post hegemonic era, liberals focus that this cooperation would be persisting even after hegemony ended through institutions. This is why cooperation, according to Keohane, should be thought with institutions in the post hegemonic era. The correct answer is A.

Moral universalism (also called moral objectivism) is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for “all similarly situated individuals”, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing feature. Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism.

Social contract theory depends on the assumption that the individuals might voluntarily bind themselves to the certain principles.

It is well known that model of prisoner’s dilemma explains why the states escape from cooperation. Therefore, while the realist approach based on prisoner’s dilemma emphasizes that possible risks and uncertainties might cause to escape/refrain from cooperation, free rider approach also argues that the existence of some countries trying to employ the collective action without paying any cost might restrict the cooperation of states.

Realists who are adopting the assumptions of uncertainty and prisoner’s dilemma assume that these mutual suspicion and non-confidence of states would feed and sustain the process. Therefore, international regimes would eliminate these uncertainties and feed the confidence instead of non-confidence.

Moreover, conditioned cooperation (if game is reiterated, players would be encouraged to cooperate in order to escape from the probable cost) in the model of prisoner’s dilemma might be effective to encourage states to establish regimes. Meetings frequently done between states to boost the cooperation would be main imperative for realization of conditioned cooperation in prisoner’s dilemma.

The correct answer is C.