International Relations

Core Principles of IR
IR revolves around one key problem: How can a group—such as two or more countries—serve its collective interests
when doing so requires its members to forgo their individual interests? For example, every country has an interest in
stopping global warming, a goal that can be achieved only by many countries acting together. Yet each country also has
an individual interest in burning fossil fuels to keep its economy going. Similarly, all members of a military alliance
benefit from the strength of the alliance, but each member separately has an interest in minimizing its own
contributions in troops and money. Individual nations can advance their own short-term interests by seizing territory
militarily, cheating on trade agreements, and refusing to contribute to international efforts such as peacekeeping or
vaccination campaigns. But if all nations acted this way, they would find themselves worse off, in a chaotic and vicious
environment where mutual gains from cooperating on issues of security and trade would disappear.

We will refer to the general case as the collective goods problem, that is, the problem of how to provide something that
benefits all members of a group regardless of what each member contributes to it.

In general, collective goods are easier to provide in small groups than in large ones. In a small group, the cheating (or
free riding) of one member is harder to conceal, has a greater impact on the overall collective good, and is easier to
punish. The advantage of small groups helps explain the importance of the great power system in international security
affairs and of the G20 (Group of Twenty) industrialized countries in economic matters.

The collective goods problem occurs in all groups and societies, but is particularly acute in international affairs because
each nation is sovereign, with no central authority such as a world government to enforce on individual nations the
necessary measures to provide for the common good. By contrast, in domestic politics within countries, a government
can force individuals to contribute in ways that do not serve their individual self-interest, such as by paying taxes or
paying to install antipollution equipment on vehicles and factories. If individuals do not comply, the government can
punish them.

Three basic principles—which we call dominance, reciprocity, and identity—offer possible solutions to the core problem
of getting individuals to cooperate for the common good without a central authority to make them do so .These three
principles are fundamental across the social sciences and recur in such disciplines as the study of animal societies, child
development, social psychology, anthropology, and economics, as well as political science. To explain each principle, we
will apply the three principles to a small-scale human example and an IR example.

Dominance:
The principle of dominance solves the collective goods problem by establishing a power hierarchy in
which those at the top control those below—a bit like a government but without an actual government.

In international relations, the principle of dominance underlies the great power system, in which a
handful of countries dictate the rules for all the others. Sometimes a so called hegemon or superpower stands atop the
great powers as the dominant nation. The UN Security Council, in which the world’s five strongest military powers hold a
veto, reflects the dominance principle.

Staying on top of a status hierarchy does not depend on strength alone, though it helps. Rather, the top
actor may be the one most adept at forming and maintaining alliances among the group’s more capable members.
Dominance is complex, and not just a matter of brute force.
The advantage of the dominance solution to the collective goods problem is that, like a government, it forces members
of a group to contribute to the common good. It also minimizes open conflict within the group.

However, the disadvantage is that this stability comes at a cost of constant oppression of, and resentment by, the lower-
ranking members in the status hierarchy.

Also, conflicts over position in the hierarchy can occasionally harm the group’s stability and well-being, such as when
challenges to the top position lead to serious fights.

In the case of international relations, the great power system and the hegemony of a superpower can provide relative
peace and stability for decades on end but then can break down into costly wars among the great powers.

Reciprocity:
The principle of reciprocity solves the collective goods problem by rewarding behavior that contributes to the
group and punishing behavior that pursues self interest at the expense of the group. Reciprocity is very easy to
understand and can be “enforced” without any central authority, making it a robust way to get individuals to cooperate
for the common good. But reciprocity operates in both the positive realm (“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”)
and the negative (“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”).

A disadvantage of reciprocity as a solution to the collective goods problem is that it can lead to a downward spiral as
each side punishes what it believes to be negative acts by the other. Psychologically, most people overestimate their
own good intentions and underestimate the value of the actions of their opponents or rivals. To avoid tit-for-tat
escalations of conflict, one or both parties must act generously to get the relationship moving in a good direction.

In international relations, reciprocity forms the basis of most of the norms (habits; expectations) and institutions in the
international system. Many central arrangements in IR, such as World Trade Organization agreements, explicitly
recognize reciprocity as the linchpin (backbone) of cooperation. For instance, if one country opens its markets to
another’s goods, the other opens its markets in return. On the negative side, reciprocity fuels arms races as each side
responds to the other’s buildup of weapons. But it also allows arms control agreements and other step-by-step conflict-
resolution measures, as two sides match each other’s actions in backing away from the brink of war.

Identity:
A third potential solution to the collective goods problem lies in the identities of participants as members of a
community.

Although the dominance and reciprocity principles act on the idea of achieving individual self-interest (by taking what
you can, or by mutually beneficial arrangements), the identity principle does not rely on self-interest. On the contrary,
members of an identity community care about the interests of others in that community enough to sacrifice their own
interests to benefit others.

The roots of this principle lie in the family, the extended family, and the kinship group. But this potential is not limited to
the close family; it can be generalized to any identity community that one feels a part of. As members of a family care
about each other, so do members of an ethnic group, a gender group, a nation, or the world’s scientists. In each case,
individual members will accept solutions to collective goods problems that do not give them the best deal as individuals,
because the benefi ts are “all in the family,” so to speak. A biologist retiring at a rich American university may give away
lab equipment to a biologist in a poor country because they share an identity as scientists. A European Jew may give
money to Israel because of a shared Jewish identity, or a computer scientist from India may return home to work for
lower pay after receiving training in Canada, in order to help the community he or she cares about.

In IR, identity communities play important roles in overcoming difficult collective goods problems, including the issue of
who contributes to development assistance, world health, and UN peacekeeping missions. The relatively large foreign
aid contributions of Scandinavian countries, or the high Canadian participation in peacekeeping, cannot be explained
well by self-interest, but arise from these countries’ self-defined identities as members of the international community.
Even in military forces and diplomacy (where dominance and reciprocity, respectively, rule the day), the shared
identities of military professionals and of diplomats—each with shared traditions and expectations—can take the edge
off conf icts. And military alliances also mix identity politics with raw self interest, as shown by the unusual strength of
the U.S.-British alliance, which shared interests alone cannot explain as well as shared identity does.

Non state actors, such as nongovernmental organizations or terrorist networks, also rely on identity politics to a great
extent. The increasing roles of these actors—feminist organizations, churches, jihadists, and multinational corporations,
for example—have brought the identity principle to greater prominence in IR theory in recent years.