Compare And Contrast Realism And Liberalism
“When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better.” William of Ockham (Rowe, 2010)
The theories that this essay will look at are realism and liberalism. These two theories are well-known for their disputatious nature in regards to their main ideologies in relation to politics, specifically the role of the state, power, human nature and how that affects the aforementioned. With the assorted arguments about both theories has built a conflict amongst scholars which some scholars believe that realism has dominated International Relations (IR) theory at least since WW2 while the other IR scholars stated that ‘liberal’ thinking is, in fact, the central theoretical stream of the discipline
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Some people might think that only world government can solve this problem. Others think that adequate order, short of world government can be provided by international organizations and agreement. But most realists think that IR cannot escape from a state of anarchy and it is necessary, therefore, to accept the inevitability of war and pursue the necessary preparations for conflict will continue to be dangerous as a result. Anarchy thus leads to a situation in which power has the overriding role in shaping interstate …show more content…
Realism has much to say on the concept of power in international relations. Traditionally, realists have seen military capability as the essence of power, for fairly obvious reasons. The capacity to act military gives states the ability to repel attacks against themselves, and therefore to ensure their security. Or it enables them to launch attacks against others for specific ends. From this that the potential for military capability, and hence power was depends on a number of factors such as size of population, abundance of natural resources, as well as geographical factors and the type of government of a given
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