International Relations - POSC 292 Resource Guide

In this program, the treatise that gave birth to modern political theory is examined in depth, both from a historical perspective and in the context of Machiavelli's own turbulent life. As a diplomat and city official, Machiavelli witnessed firsthand and was eventually caught up in the power struggles and intrigues of 16th-century Florence.

Compares 5 books on international relations.

Efforts to regulate both the lawfulness of commencing hostilities (ius ad bellum) and the manner in which war, once commenced, could be fought (ius in bello, or humanitarian law) are as old as war itself Leon Friedman (1972) reports that “as early as the Egyptian and Sumerian wars of the second millennium BC, there were rules defining the circumstances under which war might be initiated” and that “among the Hittites of the fourteenth century BC, a formal exchange of letters and demands generally preceded hostilities.”

Machiavelli's best-known work, Il principe [the prince] (1532), describes the means by which a prince may gain and maintain his power.

A critical attitude that seeks to go to the root of things – to search out and challenge the principles that underpin institutions.

A concept that is used in a variety of ways in political theory.Sometimes the word is used in place of materialism. A realist is someone who accepts that the world is external to our ideas, and we can measure the truth of our ideas as reflections of, or reconstructions of, this external reality.

This dictionary of diplomacy explains terms such as bilateralism, diplomatic protection, privileges and immunities, protocol, and reciprocity. Include profiles of key agencies, such as the Council of Europe, European Union, International Monetary Fund.

Born in Sydney, where he studied at the University. He went to Oxford University in 1953. He became a lecturer in international relations at the London School of Economics in 1955.

Gellner held the William Wyse Chair in Social Anthropology at Cambridge University 1984–93, was president of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1991–4, and subsequendy headed the Centre for the Study of Nationalism, Central European University, Prague. A good lecturer but scintillating improviser, he was in demand to speak all over the world. A prolific writer, his output, always maturing, changing, and distinctive, showed no signs of lessening before his death. Yet, in spite of the dominating position he reached in his profession, his work remains profoundly controversial.

He has been increasingly preoccupied with the question of globalisation (he delivered the BBC’s Reith Lectures on the latter in 2000). In the 1990s he published a stream of books dealing with the question of modernity, personal relationships, and the ‘third way’ – an attempt to renew social democracy in a manner that moves beyond the traditional positions of ‘left’ and ‘right’.

Diplomat and historian, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Educated at Princeton (1925 BA) and at the Berlin Seminary for Oriental Languages (1930), he served as US foreign service officer (1926–53) in Geneva, Hamburg, Berlin, Estonia, Latvia, Moscow, Vienna, Prague, Lisbon, and London. He also served as US ambassador to the USSR (1952) and Yugoslavia (1961–3), and in 1956 became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Russian, b: 10 April (22 N.S.) 1870 Simbirsk. d: 21 January 1924, Gorki, near Moscow. Cat: Marxist. Educ: Simbirsk gymnasium, 1879–87; briefly attended University of Kazan’ in 1887 until his expulsion and exile; graduated in Law as an external student of the University of St Petersburg in 1891. Infls: Influenced by Marx, Engels, A.I. Herzen, N.G.Chernyshevsky, Plekhanov and Bukharin.

US statesman and 28th president (1913–21), born in Staunton, Virginia, USA. The son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, gaining his PhD with the first of his major books on American government, Congressional Government (1885).