Power is pervasive; it belongs to no-one. Its main medium of control is surveillance. Bentham’s Panopticon is, on the whole, a suitable analogy for Michel Foucault’s conception of power. It encompasses the essence of Foucault’s work on power, though it does not represent it in its entirety.
A social contract implies an agreement by the people on the rules and laws by which they are governed. The state of nature is the starting point for most social contract theories, an abstract idea considering what human life would look like without a government or a form of organized society. The system Rousseau sees as the solution to overcome society, which has corrupted mankind, is both vague and unalterable.
The critique of positivism is fundamentally epistemological. Each side makes compelling arguments showing the strength of their position.
The convergence of neo-realism and neo-liberalism is self-evident from the fact that scholars of the two great schools, in addition to sharing a set of fundamental assumptions, ended up having the same central theme of reflection: how to assess, in a situation of anarchy, the effects that international structure have on the behaviour of states.
Pluralist arguments that human rights can be properly respected through the state system are more convincing than cosmopolitan claims because they recognise the diversity of cultures and national systems which exist in the world.
There has been much debate on how to interpret Hobbes; especially whether he is to be understood as a materialist utilitarian, deducing his theory from an egoistic psychology and explaining obligation through rational calculation of self-interest, or whether, he is in fact, more of a Kantian deontologist adhering to the tradition of natural law. This essay argues against the latter position.
Despite the fact that people always talk about the need for peace, the world is instead filled with fear and constant security threats. Since the First World War many theorists and political scientists have tried to come up with a solution on how to create a peaceful international environment but with no real achievement. This leads to a natural conclusion that there are certain obstacles that prevent cooperation between states
The theory of the balance of power, where the distribution of power is equally shared amongst the appropriate entities, is a concept crucial to the study of International Relations and of war. When studied in relation to the 19th century, we can see that it is a major part of both contemporary and modern literature, thinking and politics
The difference between counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency is simple: counter-terrorism focuses more narrowly on combating the tactics and strategy of terrorism and those who employ it, while counter-insurgency is a broader category of responses to political violence carried out by minority groups, both terroristic and otherwise.
Wæver claims that security is indivisible, that security on the European level equates to security on the state level. Therefore the state-level definition of security must be similar, if not the same, as the European-level definition. This mitigates the validity of his concepts. Europe may not yet be a true, or complete, referent object because state interests have to be satisfied to keep Spaceship Europe in orbit
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