Political Theories

• Cultural hegemony


  The domination of a culturally diverse society by a ruling class who manipulate the culture of the society so that their imposed ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm
• Steven Luke's Faces of Power


  • Decision Making
  • Agenda Setting
  • Thought control
• Decision Making


  Power can involve the ability to influence the making of decisions
• Agenda Setting


  Capacity to shape the political agenda
• Thought control


  Controlling people's thoughts through manipulation therefore shaping their preferences and their preferences
• Defensive realism


  Developed by Kenneth Waltz, anarchical structure of the international system encourages states to maintain moderate and reserved policies to attain security
• Defensive realism


  • China Military modernisation program
• Gellner's theory of nationalism


  A sociological condition that is the result of modernisation moving from a agrarian to industrial society
• Hard power


  The ability of one actor to influence another through coercion
• Hard power


  • Includes violence, threats, economic sanctions
• Ideological power


  Power that allows one to influence people's wishes and thoughts, even making them want things opposed to their own self-interest
• Ideological power


  • Causing women to support a patriarchal society
• Offensive realism


  (John Mearsheimer) the anarchic nature of the international system is responsible for aggressive state behavior in international politics
• Great powers will always seek to achieve hegemony, behaving aggressively when they believe they enjoy a power advantage over their rivals
• Idealism


  Idealists are understood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike realists, who focus on the world as it presently is
• Idealism


  • Woodrow Wilson in establishing the League of Nations
• Positivism


  Laws and their operation derive validity from the fact of having been enacted by authority or of deriving logically from existing decisions, rather than from any moral considerations (e.g. that a rule is unjust). Contrast with 'universalism.'
• Relativism


  Belief that different things are 'true' or 'right' for different people or at different times
• Relativism


  • Death Penalty in Singapore
  • Treatment of LGBT individuals in Uganda
• Universalism


  A universal feature or characteristic - something that everyone has or should have access to in equal parts
• Core


  Describes countries which focus on higher skill, and capital-intensive production, while the rest of the world focuses on low-skill, labor-intensive production and extraction of raw materials.
• Dependency theory (a.k.a. World Systems Theory)

  • There exists a world economic system in which some countries benefit whilst others are exploited
  • Core countries exploit semi-periphery and periphery countries and use their competitive advantage to maintain their economic superiority and to make the poorer states dependent upon them.
  • Resources flow from a "periphery" of poor and underdeveloped states to a "core" of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former.
• Hierarchy of needs


  Motivational theory in psychology comprising a five tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid.
• Kuznet's Curve


  A hypothesised relationship between economic development and environmental quality, which argues that there are negative environmental impacts of industrialization, but there is a turning point in which these developed economies become less negatively environmentally impactful
• Lorenz Curve


  A graphical representation of wealth distribution as shown by the gini coefficient
• Malthusian trap


  For most of human history, income was largely stagnant because technological advances and discoveries only resulted in more people, rather than improvements in the standard of living.
• Modernisation theory


  Modernisation refers to a model of a progressive transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional.' to a 'modern' society
• Neoliberalism


  Advocates for trade and economic liberalisation, the privatisation of markets and reduced government intervention
• Shock Doctrine


  Neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in some developed countries because of a deliberate strategy of exploiting crises to push through controversial exploitative policies while citizens are too emotionally and physically distracted by disasters or upheavals to mount an effective resistance
• Allport's Scale


  A measure of the manifestation of prejudice in a society
• Democratic peace theory


  • The belief that democracy itself promotes peace
  • Within democratic states there is a fairer distribution of resources and wealth as well as balance of power. This reduces potential factors of conflict as well as promotes dispute resolution through democratic peaceful means.
• Five Stages of Conflict

  • Latent
  • Perceived
  • Felt
  • Manifest
  • Conflict Aftermath
• Latent


  Underlying sources of conflict are present
• Perceived


  Recognition of the conflict
• Felt


  Conflict is personalised
• Manifest


  Manifests in overt or covert actions
• Conflict Aftermath


  May occur if conflict is not adequately addressed
• Hegemonic stability theory


  When power distribution forms unipolarity, the absolute power of the hegemon makes conflict less likely causing stability and peace
• Just War Theory


  • Right authority
  • Just cause
  • Probability of success
  • Proportionality
  • Last resort
  • Just Cause
• Ramsbottom and Woodhouse model of conflict dynamics


  The stages of escalation and de-escalation of conflict