International Relations Theory And The Theories Of Liberalism And Europeanisation

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This literature review looks into the literature of international relations theory and the theories of Europeanisation. The first section deals with the field of international relations where realism and liberalism are presented. These theories have been selected as they are the grand theories of the field and stand in opposition to one another. The second section looks into the theories of Europeanisation. First the concept of Europeanisation is defined followed by a discussion of how the concept can be applied to third countries. The section ends with a discussion of how Europeanisation and globalisation differ.

International Relations Theory
Realism came about in the 1930s as it became apparent that the already established approach to international relation, liberalism, was not able to explain the developments of international relations (Jackson & Sørensen 2010a: 39). One of the significant scholars within classical realism is Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980). In his classical work “Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace” (1967) he establishes the principles of realism which covers: the importance of human behaviour; the importance of power as an interest, which is defined in the terms of power, and is the most important factor when it comes to international relations. This shows the difference between realism and other approaches. Another one of Morgenthau 's principles is that the interests of a state can change and the state does not have to act

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