Individual or Sub-unit Level Concepts
The level beneath the unit (state) level can be useful both for explaining factors in international relations that other theories fail to explain, and for moving away from a state-centric view of international relations.
- Psychological factors in international relations – Evaluating psychological factors in international relations comes from the understanding that a state is not a "black box" as proposed by Realism, and that there may be other influences on foreign policy decisions. Examining the role of personalities in the decision making process can have some explanatory power, as can the role of misperception between various actors. A prominent application of sub-unit level psychological factors in international relations is the concept of Groupthink, another is the propensity of policymakers to think in terms of analogies.
- Bureaucratic politics – Looks at the role of the bureaucracy in decision making, and sees decisions as a result of bureaucratic in-fighting, and as having been shaped by various constraints.
- Religious, ethnic, and secessionist groups – Viewing these aspects of the sub-unit level has explanatory power with regards to ethnic conflicts, religious wars, transnational diaspora (diaspora politics) and other actors which do not consider themselves to fit with the defined state boundaries. This is particularly useful in the context of the pre-modern world of weak states.
- Science, technology and international relations – How science and technology impact the global health, business, environment, technology, and development.
- International political economy, and economic factors in international relations.
- International political culturology – Looks at how culture and cultural variables impact in international relations.
Read more about this topic: International Relations
Famous quotes containing the words individual, level and/or concepts:
“Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“... when you do get a job everybody says, “Well, they wanted a black woman,” which necessarily puts you on a level where you have to prove yourself above being a woman and being black.... Now, I would say, in certain situations, it helped me simply because I was mildly attractive, not because I was black or a woman. That gets you more mileage than anything else.... God help you if you’re not an attractive woman.”
—Theresa Brown (b. 1957)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)