Sheriff Folarin
9 min
International Relations (IR) is a broad, multidisciplinary field that studies the relationships between humans, states, and non-state actors beyond national borders. As a discipline, it bridges history, political science, economics, and sociology to analyze the fundamental tension between cooperation and conflict. The study of IR is generally divided into three conceptual lenses: IR as a course of study, IR as a factual situation of international interaction, and IR as a principle or foreign policy of a state.
Scholars generally analyze international affairs through three primary schools of thought:
To navigate the complexity of international events, researchers employ different levels of analysis, each providing a unique perspective on why actors behave as they do:
Sam: Let’s compare those schools. What’s the central disagreement a listener should carry through the discussion?
Alex: Whether order rests mainly on moral and legal commitments, calculations of power, or institutions built around mutual dependence. Start with idealism: an approach emphasizing morality, law, and international organization. In the chapter’s account, conflict isn’t an unavoidable destiny.
Sam: How does that become more than a hope that countries will behave well?
Alex: Folarin points to Woodrow Wilson’s proposals after the First World War. He presents Wilson’s fourteen-point agenda as a pathway toward international organization and legal order. The idea is that sustained efforts, education, and law can support peace.
Sam: Realism starts from a less reassuring view. What does it see as the main force behind international action?
Alex: Realism emphasizes power, security, and national interests. In this account, states pursue their own goals amid competing claims on scarce resources. Their interests collide, and national security becomes the overriding concern.
Sam: The chapter calls that environment anarchic. Does anarchy here mean constant violence, or something more specific?
Alex: It means there’s no central world authority maintaining order. The chapter connects that absence to pressures toward conflict. Realists therefore interpret alliances through practical advantage and security, rather than assuming they express shared moral commitments.
Sam: So an alliance doesn’t settle the disagreement. An idealist and a realist might observe cooperation but explain its basis differently.
Alex: And liberalism offers another account. It emphasizes mutual dependence, institutions, democracy, and commerce. Folarin presents it as combining elements of the other approaches: recognizing conflicting interests while arguing that organized cooperation and enforceable agreements can restrain disorder.
Sam: Those are competing explanations, not findings from a test conducted here. How does the chapter help a researcher decide where to look for causes?
Alex: That brings us to levels of analysis: where an explanation locates the causes of international events. The chapter’s main categories are individuals, states, and the international system. Think of them as different starting points, not different names for the same explanation.
Sam: What does changing that starting point do in practice? Give us an example that makes the distinction tangible.
Alex: At the individual level, the chapter points to leaders’ beliefs, ambitions, and judgments. It uses Hitler’s ambitions and the Second World War as an example. At the state level, it considers countries’ actions and inaction, including failure to intervene during the Rwandan Holocaust.
Sam: That second example broadens what counts as something to explain. A government’s failure to act can shape events, just as its intervention can.
Alex: At the international level, the explanation shifts again. The chapter describes a theory in which the absence of central authority pressures states to seek power for self-preservation. Here, the structure of the system explains behavior, rather than a particular leader’s character.
Sam: Couldn’t those explanations interact? A leader makes decisions within a state, and that state faces pressures from outside.
Alex: Folarin warns against combining levels, saying it can make an analysis unwieldy and its conclusions confusing. That is his methodological recommendation. The excerpt doesn’t compare combined explanations against single-level explanations, so it doesn’t demonstrate that combining them necessarily fails.
Sam: That also raises the evidence question. How much support does this chapter provide for the theories it introduces?
Alex: It offers definitions, citations, and historical illustrations, not a dataset or a measured comparison. There’s no sample size or effect estimate to evaluate. My judgment is that it supports orientation, not a verdict about which theory predicts events best.
Sam: Let’s finish the map with action. Once a government has objectives, how does the chapter distinguish those objectives from the means of pursuing them?
Alex: National interest means a state’s strategic goals. Foreign policy is the set of objectives guiding its external relationships. Diplomacy is the conduct of those relationships, often through professional representatives seeking advantage or mutually acceptable solutions.
Sam: Those terms often get used almost interchangeably. Here, the useful distinction is between what a state wants and how it acts.
Alex: The chapter then groups instruments of state policy into political, economic, military, and cultural means. For example, tariffs are duties on traded goods that governments can adjust to encourage or frustrate another state. A blockade instead uses military action to cut off communication and supplies.
Sam: Who should read the full document, and where should they begin?
Alex: Researchers new to international relations, especially those borrowing its concepts for interdisciplinary work. Start with Concept of International Relations, then compare the levels of analysis. Read Basic Concepts in IR to separate goals, policies, and instruments. Treat it as a glossary and conceptual map, not an empirical contest between theories.
Sam: And what should everyone else remember when they encounter an explanation of international events?
Alex: Ask where the explanation puts the cause: in a person, a state, or the system. That choice changes the story you’re being asked to accept.
Sam: Keep that question with you as you read.