Week 12

3. While some might see international relations theories as competing, Walt (the first reading) sees the theories as converging. Thus, he concludes that they might be best seen as belonging in one conceptual t____ [don't include the initial ‘t’ in your answer].
4. The international system is said to have no sovereign government to manage it. This condition of ___ forces states to worry about both relative and absolute gains sought by other states.
6. ___ was the dominant theoretical tradition thought the Cold War. It depicts international affairs as a struggle for power among self-interested states.
7. According to Wendt, constructivists can explain why 500 ___ [which country?] nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than five North Korean nuclear weapons.
9. Democratic ___ theory, liberal scholars argue, explains why democracies rarely fight each other.
10. One article assigned this week argued that the defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s ____.

1. ___ theorists tend to focus on the impact of ideas. They regard interests and identities of states as malleable products of specific historical processes.
2. According to Wendt, both he and John Mearshimer agree that the logic behind explanations for why states engage in war or peace has two elements: structure and ___.
5. Steven Walt (the first reading) argued that, regarding ideas about international affairs, everyone uses t___ [don’t include the initial ‘t’ – the word is plural] whether she knows it or not, and that disagreements on policy usually rest on more fundamental disagreements about the basic forces that shape international outcomes.
8. The Athenian historian Thucydides argued that it was the “rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made ___ inevitable.”