Realism is a broad paradigm in which it is a view of international politics that stresses its competitive and conflictual side. Realists often trace their intellectual roots to Thucydides classic account of Peloponnesian war in the fifth century B.C. At their core realists’ theories have a pragmatic approach to international relations describing the world as it is not as it ought to be. Realist believe that power is the currency of international politics. Great powers, the main actors in the realist’ account pay careful attention to how much economic and military power they have relative to each other. Realism depicts international affairs as a struggle for power among self-interested states.
There are two dominant strands of realism in twentieth …show more content…
They include;
1. The concept of anarchy and the balance of power; all realist either classical or structural there exists in an international system a state of anarchy wherein each sovereign states act independently and without a centralized authority. Anarchy is also the outcomes of both classical realist and structural …show more content…
Morgenthau who was inspired by Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes was a leading proponent in classical realism, whereby in his work ‘Politics among nations’ 1948 he formulated an idea of political realism. He rooted his theory in struggle for power which he related to human nature. He further stated that the first political realism makes this point clear, ‘politics’ like society is general, whereby its governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature Morgenthau ‘1956’.
Structural realist, Kenneth Waltz book on Theory of International Politics, 1979, argues that it’s because of structure of the international system that causes the states to behave in a certain way and that human nature have little to do with it. He defines a structure as being non-hierarchic in which the states would carry out essentially the same functions as one another in order to survive. A system’s structure is also defined by the principle in which it’s organized, then the differentiation of units and finally by the distribution of power across
There are two dominant strands of realism in twentieth …show more content…
They include;
1. The concept of anarchy and the balance of power; all realist either classical or structural there exists in an international system a state of anarchy wherein each sovereign states act independently and without a centralized authority. Anarchy is also the outcomes of both classical realist and structural …show more content…
Morgenthau who was inspired by Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes was a leading proponent in classical realism, whereby in his work ‘Politics among nations’ 1948 he formulated an idea of political realism. He rooted his theory in struggle for power which he related to human nature. He further stated that the first political realism makes this point clear, ‘politics’ like society is general, whereby its governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature Morgenthau ‘1956’.
Structural realist, Kenneth Waltz book on Theory of International Politics, 1979, argues that it’s because of structure of the international system that causes the states to behave in a certain way and that human nature have little to do with it. He defines a structure as being non-hierarchic in which the states would carry out essentially the same functions as one another in order to survive. A system’s structure is also defined by the principle in which it’s organized, then the differentiation of units and finally by the distribution of power across