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Introduction to Global Politics
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Introduction to Global Politics
In this course, Professor Indrajit Roy (University of York) provides an introduction to key trends and theories within the study of global politics. In the first module, we outline some important themes and concepts in the field, particularly relating to power and its changing distributions between states. The second module then examines the highly influential arguments made by realist international relations scholars. In the third module, we look at liberalism and how the liberal international order has shaped global politics since the Second World War. In the fourth and fifth modules, we think about the more critical perspectives of Marxist, dependency, and postcolonial theorists on the global order as resulting from colonial and capitalist exploitation of the Global South. The sixth module provides an account of constructivist theory, which emphasises how subjective perceptions and identities shape states’ behaviour in the international sphere. We conclude with a seventh module applying the theoretical perspectives discussed across the course to understand how the rise of China will affect global politics.
Introduction to Global Politics
In this module, we think about some of the key themes and concepts within the study of global politics. We focus on: (i) the distribution of the global population by continent of origin and primary language; (ii) why the concept of power is central to the study of global politics, and the different forms of power states might exercise; (iii) some of the key areas of contemporary scholarship on global politics; (iv) changes in the global distribution of power between states from the rise of the Mongols, through European colonialism and the Cold War, to the present emergence of China as a superpower; (v) the importance of theory in helping to frame and understand global politics.
Hi everyone.
00:00:06I'm Indrajit Roy,
00:00:07professor in global development politics at the University of
00:00:08York.
00:00:11In today's lecture,
00:00:12I want to introduce you to the topic of global politics.
00:00:14Over the next one hour, we'll cover three topics.
00:00:18First, what is global politics all about?
00:00:21Second, what are some of the theoretical approaches to
00:00:25studying global politics?
00:00:29And third, how might we apply these frameworks to understand our
00:00:31transforming world?
00:00:35So what is global politics all about?
00:00:37In one sentence, we could say it is about studying the politics of our world.
00:00:42Let's look at the two words in the title, global and politics.
00:00:47Global refers to, of course, our world, our planet,
00:00:53and everything in it,
00:00:57including the eight billion people who inhabit it.
00:00:58If you thought of the globe as a town of hundred people,
00:01:02sixty would be Asian, twenty Chinese and twenty
00:01:06Indian, eighteen would be African,
00:01:09thirteen people would be from the Americas,
00:01:12both north and south, and nine people would be European.
00:01:15Only five would speak English.
00:01:19That's as many as who would speak Arabic.
00:01:22One less than the six who would speak Spanish and less than
00:01:25half the numbers who would speak Mandarin Chinese.
00:01:29Four would speak Hindi and three each would speak Bangla and Portuguese.
00:01:33Two each would speak Russian and Japanese.
00:01:38Fifty eight people would speak other languages.
00:01:41So do remember that global is an extremely diverse place.
00:01:45Now let's take politics.
00:01:52What does politics mean?
00:01:54Put simply politics is the study of who gets what, when and how.
00:01:57More elaborately,
00:02:02politics is understood as a process that shapes the use of
00:02:03power, But what is power?
00:02:07In a basic sense, power is about forcing someone to do
00:02:11what you want them to do, what is sometimes called domination.
00:02:16Power can mean ensuring that no one opposes you, meaning
00:02:20you set the agenda.
00:02:25Power is also about getting people to willingly do your
00:02:27bidding, what is sometimes called influence.
00:02:30Extending this, you could say that power is about influencing
00:02:34others so that they begin to think like you do
00:02:38and do what you would like them to do even without you telling
00:02:42them to do so.
00:02:46Power can be used through different resources such as
00:02:48military might, through money, or through ideas.
00:02:52Analyzing the various ways in which power is used to shape
00:02:56who gets what and when and how is the study of politics.
00:03:00Global politics then is the study of how power is used
00:03:07at the global level.
00:03:11Some scholars who study global politics study the ways in
00:03:13which different countries exercise power over others.
00:03:17Why do countries fight? Why do they work together?
00:03:21What changes relations between them?
00:03:24Others look at the distribution of resources between countries
00:03:27and examine why some countries are more powerful than others.
00:03:31Why some countries have larger militaries than others?
00:03:36Why are some countries richer than others?
00:03:39And yet other scholars consider the role of ideas and how
00:03:42ideas are used to maintain or challenge power.
00:03:46Many scholars who study global politics are increasingly
00:03:51expanding the scope of their studies beyond countries to
00:03:54analyze global institutions.
00:03:57Some look at the United Nations or the World Bank or other such
00:04:00institutions that include but are not limited to the
00:04:04governments of different countries.
00:04:07Others look at transnational entities such as multinational
00:04:10corporations, MNCs,
00:04:13terrorist networks, and drug cartels to study how these use
00:04:16power at global, national, and local levels.
00:04:20Many others study the flows of people, of ideas, and of
00:04:24technology across countries to influence
00:04:28what's going on around the world.
00:04:31Finally, you also have scholars focusing on subnational entities such as
00:04:34trade unions, social movements,
00:04:39and conflicting parties in a civil war to analyze their
00:04:41impacts on national and global processes.
00:04:45As a field of study,
00:04:49global politics is often associated with the academic
00:04:51discipline of international relations,
00:04:54which emerged in Britain, continental Europe,
00:04:57and the United States of America about a century ago.
00:04:59But of course, the study of global politics dates back millennia,
00:05:03arguably since the dawn of human settlements.
00:05:08Trade relations, pilgrimages, the quest for adventure, wars,
00:05:12and the search for decent lives have meant that people and
00:05:17their societies have interacted with each other for thousands of years.
00:05:20The rise of civilizations in Mesopotamia,
00:05:26the Indus Valley, China, Egypt,
00:05:29and Greece were all based on quite sophisticated social
00:05:32systems that regularly interacted with each other.
00:05:35By the thirteenth century,
00:05:39the Mongols had established the world's largest land based
00:05:40empire ever.
00:05:44Over the next few centuries,
00:05:46the world saw many more empires that included the king,
00:05:48the Ottoman, the Mughal, the Aztec, the Inca,
00:05:52and the Ashanti among others.
00:05:55Each of these empires had well structured patterns of
00:05:59interactions with each other as well as other powers.
00:06:02Colonialism
00:06:06spurred by the expansion first of the Spanish and the
00:06:08Portuguese and then of the Dutch, the
00:06:10British, the French, and the Russians,
00:06:13followed by that of the Germans, the Japanese,
00:06:16and the Italians ruptured some of these interactions,
00:06:18but also compelled others as colonies in Asia, Africa,
00:06:22and Latin America were forced into core periphery relations,
00:06:26a term we'll come back to later,
00:06:30between the colonizers and the colonized.
00:06:32The ravages of two world wars in the twentieth century and
00:06:36the spate of decolonization in their aftermath
00:06:39left us with a world that was concerned with building order amidst anarchy.
00:06:43And do remember these two terms, order and anarchy.
00:06:48We'll come back to them later in this module.
00:06:51For much of the rest of the century,
00:06:54Europe remained divided into the US led western block and
00:06:57the USSR led eastern block,
00:07:01while most of the world remained non aligned.
00:07:03The collapse of the USSR led to a unipolar moment when the
00:07:07United States of America established as a dominant power
00:07:11for a couple of decades.
00:07:15However, this dominance has been severely diminished since the
00:07:17two thousand and eight financial crisis,
00:07:21which paved the way for China, India,
00:07:23and other countries to emerge as powerful actors on the world stage.
00:07:25How can we begin to make sense of these changes in global politics?
00:07:31One approach is to describe everything that has ever happened.
00:07:36That is interesting and can be very entertaining,
00:07:40but it risks deluding us with details about various
00:07:44things without really helping us understand why what's going
00:07:49on is going on and what to expect.
00:07:53So theories offer a way to frame cause and effect.
00:07:57A good theory explains how variables are related to
00:08:01each other instead of being random items in an incoherent cosmos.
00:08:05That said, it is important to recognize that every theory is falsifiable
00:08:11and has limitations.
00:08:16So subscribing to a theory should not lead to blind adherence.
00:08:18
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Roy, I. (2024, September 30). Introduction to Global Politics - Introduction to Global Politics [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/introduction-to-global-politics/realism-and-power-transition
MLA style
Roy, I. "Introduction to Global Politics – Introduction to Global Politics." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 30 Sep 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/introduction-to-global-politics/realism-and-power-transition