Talk:Neorealism (international relations)

Most Europeans, I suspect, associate Neorealism with a period of post-war cinema, especially Italian cinema. A good reference is Peter Bondanella's Italian cinema: from neorealism to the present (2004). Continuum Press. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.42.29.155 (talk) 11:49, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Why was Salvadore Allende's Chile not considered democratic? xcuref1endx 14:28 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The overthrow of the Allende government by the CIA is indeed often given as an example to show the weakness of the democratic peace theory, because although the action does not qualify as as war (conflict between two militaries resulting in significant number of battle deaths) as it was clearly a hostile action. The example is used to show the arbitrary and selective nature of the DPT Ebethron (talk) 22:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Expansion request
Way tooo short article. A few questions it should answer to: -- Nabla 17:01, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Apparently neorealism is not a cinema only movement, it also included (at least) literature. What else?
 * Major authors are...
 * Relevant work is...
 * Influenced by... / Influenced...
 * NeoRealism is this mean New Realism??


 * Agreed, this is a very underdeveloped article for such an influential research paradigm. --Treemother199 05:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Do not believe that Barry Buzan should be given the verdict "neorealism"!

Article Overhaul
This article needs a lot of work. Neorealism is the dominant research paradigm in international relations theory, at least within US academia, and deserves a much fuller treatment. I propose the following format for organizing a more complete article:

I.  History (development of the research paradigm) II. Neorealist Theory:
 * Science and International Relations Theory (a la Waltz's Theory of Int'l Politics, chapters 1-3)
 * Structural Theory (containing two logics: ordering principle (anarchy) and distribution of power (polarity) & major conclusions, e.g., balance of power) (Waltz, Theory of Int'l Politics)
 * Offense Defense Theory (Van Evera)
 * Balance of Threat Theory (Walt)
 * Offensive versus Defensive Realism (Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics)

III. Criticisms:
 * Philosophy of Science critiques (e.g., Vasquez)
 * Alternative Research Paradigm critiques (e.g., democratic peace theory, Wendt's Anarchy is what states make of it, etc.)

IV. Prominent Authors and Major Works

Does this seem like a reasonable approach? Thoughts? --Treemother199 05:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Go for it. The article needs it badly.  Just remember to cite your sources.&mdash;Perceval 02:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Editing this page
This page clearly needs some work. In addition to lacking a lot of information there are also factual in-accuracies. For instance, the article implies that Waltz says states behave rationally, this is not the case. For Waltz states can, and sometimes do, behave irrationally but they are selected out of the system. The international system functions much like a microeconomic model, rewarding and punishing actors that step out of equilibrium.

Another important change is adding more sections to break up the large block of text in the middle of the article. This would greatly enhance readability without adding any more information or requiring time consuming research. A simple bibliography is also a necessity.

I will try to make a few of these changes over the next few days. I have never edited a wiki before so if anyone has any advice/criticism please let me know.

Cptneutrino 19:43, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Criticism section is vague
"These contradictory hypotheses increase the probability that at least one passes an empirical test, thus the whole neorealist research program showing signs of degeneration."

-For one, is this even a grammatically correct sentence? I am pretty sure it's not. Even if so, it is very vague. I think someone better able to communicate the ideas behind these philosophy-of-science type criticisms should re-write this section. I merely point to the last sentence as representative of the entire section. Structural realism is probably the dominant school of thought in the academic field of International Relations, and the Criticism section of the wikipedia article certainly deserves better treatment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.193.120.135 (talk) 01:33, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the criticism section - which is essentially a summary of a single 14 page article by a single author- should be removed entirely pending a radical overhaul of the type discussed above. It's poorly written and places far too much emphasis on this one highly technical line of criticism (thus distracting novice readers from thinking about any of the more obvious criticisms of neorealism) and as such is doing more harm than good as things stand now.

I also tidied a couple of things (eg. the claim that a unipolar system is the same as a hegemony, which implies that America is a de facto global hegemon). Apologies if I step on any toes, but the article does need a lot of work and for now I just want to plug a few holes.

Grieco
I undid the deletion of Joseph Grieco from the list of notable neorealists. I did a quick search and it didn't look like there had been any article about him that was deleted, and Grieco is a big name in IR theory. So I figured it would be best to keep him as a requested article. Let me know if I'm wrong. Maethordaer (talk) 20:44, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Criticisms of democratic peace theory
The article states "Neorealists answer this challenge by arguing that democratic peace theorists tend to pick and choose the definition of democracy to get the wanted empirical result[bias]. For example, Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Dominican Republic of Juan Bosch, or Chile of Salvador Allende are not considered to be democratic or the conflicts do not qualify as wars according to these theorists."

Now, I cannot speak of the other two regimes but certainly for Germany under Wilhelm II I think most would find the idea that it was democratic to be unreal! If there are no objections I think this example should be removed. Tklink (talk) 22:06, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Realism in international relations - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 19:21, 3 June 2012 (UTC)