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Unit 1: What is ‘international’ about international relations?

  • Sovereignty
  • Anarchy
  • Proximate vs. underlying causes
    • Proximate cause
      • Answers the question: “Why did this happen the way it did?”
      • This is focus of historic research
    • Underlying cause
      • Answers the question: “Why was this asking to happen?”
      • Focus of political science research
  • The Strategic World

Unit 2: Conflict versus cooperation

  • Overview
    • How can individually rational behavior lead to collectively irrational outcomes?
    • Can the shadow of the future induce two states to play nice with one another?
    • What is the future is never ending?
  • Prisoner’s Dilemma
  • The Cult of the Offensive
  • Tariffs and the Barriers to Free Trade
  • Arms Races
  • The Shadow of the Future
  • Grim Trigger
  • Benevolent Cooperation

Unit 3: Rationalist explanation for war

  • The Rationality of War
  • The Unitary Actor Assumption
  • War’s Inefficiency Puzzle
  • The Algebraic Bargaining Model of War
  • War’s Bargaining Range
  • Crisis Bargaining
  • Preventive War
  • Information Problems and Incentives to Misrepresent
  • Issue Indivisibility
  • Preemptive War
  • Understanding War
  • Militarized Interstate Disputes
  • Correlates of War and the Long Peace

Unit 4: International trade

  • Absolute Advantage
  • Comparative Advantage
  • Trade Rivalry
  • Resolving Trade Disputes
  • The Relative Gains Problem

Unit 5: The Democratic Peace Theory

  • What Is the Democratic Peace?
  • Explaining the Democratic Peace
  • Correlation versus Causation
  • The McDonald’s Peace Theory
  • Economic Interdependence
  • The Rise of China

Unit 6: Principal-Agent Problems and Leader-Based Explanations

  • What Are Principal-Agent Problems?
  • Diversionary War
  • Gambling for Resurrection
  • Democratic Accountability
  • Leader Retirement
  • Peace through Instability and Fighting for Survival
  • Bargaining and Leaders
  • Pandering (to Ohio and Florida)
  • Leaders, Uncertainty, and Tenure

Unit 7: Economic Sanctions

  • Economic Sanctions Basics
  • Selecting on the Dependent Variable
  • Selection Problems
  • The TIES Database
  • Costly Signaling
  • Sanctions and Leaders

Unit 8: The United Nations

  • Background and the United Nations Security Council
  • Veto Power on the United Nations Security Council
  • Insincere Voting, Outside Options, Libya, and Syria
  • Bribery on the Security Council
  • The Rally ‘Round the Flag Effect
  • Ideology in the United Nations General Assembly

Unit 9: Public Goods Provision

  • What Is a Public Good?
  • Monitoring Institutions
  • Collective Action Problems
  • Hegemonic Provision of Public Goods
  • Issue Linkage

Unit 10: Nuclear Weapons

  • Who Has Nuclear Weapons
  • Mutually Assured Destruction
  • Is War Obsolete?
  • The Stability-Instability Paradox
  • Nuclear Pessimism
  • Leveraging Nuclear Strength
  • Bargaining over Nuclear Weapons
  • Iran’s Nuclear Program
  • Covert Nuclear Programs
  • The Iraq War: A Rational Mistake?

Unit 11: Terrorism, Insurgency, and Intervention

  • Are Terrorists Rational?
  • Why Suicide Terrorism?
  • The Definition of Terrorism
  • Spoiling the Peace
  • Should We Ignore Terrorists?
  • Where Does Terrorism Fester?
  • Commitment Problems
  • Exploitation and Civil War Settlements
  • The Critical Barrier to Civil War Settlement