Interaction between states in the absence of a sovereign above them.
12 topics · 12 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Charter of the United Nations
United Nations · 1945
Founds a permanent international organisation on the principle of collective security, binding members to settle disputes peacefully and outlawing…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
On the Manner of Negotiating with Princes
François de Callières · 1716
Argues that successful negotiation rests on patience, honesty and understanding the other side's real interests rather than deception and bluster,…
+2 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Graham T. Allison · 1969
Foreign policy decisions are better explained by organisational routines and bureaucratic bargaining among agencies than by a single rational actor…
+6 more at this level
12 works
United Nations
Founds a permanent international organisation on the principle of collective security, binding members to settle disputes peacefully and outlawing the use of force except in self-defence or with Security Council authorisation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Stephen McGlinchey, Rosie Walters & Christian Scheinpflug
Surveys realism, liberalism, constructivism and their critics side by side, arguing no single paradigm explains state behaviour and the choice between them is itself a theoretical commitment.
link checked 17 Sept 2026François de Callières
Argues that successful negotiation rests on patience, honesty and understanding the other side's real interests rather than deception and bluster, laying out what became the professional ethic of modern diplomacy.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026David Hume
Traces the practice of states combining against a dangerously powerful rival back to antiquity, arguing balancing is a recurring response to concentration of power rather than a modern invention of Enlightenment statecraft.
about 7 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026Commission on Global Governance
Argues an interdependent world needs cooperative management without a world government, proposing UN reform and a broadened notion of security and governance that includes non-state actors.
Graham T. Allison
Foreign policy decisions are better explained by organisational routines and bureaucratic bargaining among agencies than by a single rational actor weighing the national interest.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert Jervis
Whether anarchy forces conflict or allows cooperation depends on whether offence or defence has the advantage and whether the two are distinguishable, which is a variable of technology and geography rather than a constant of the system.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Stephen M. Walt
States ally against the state that poses the greatest overall threat, not simply the strongest state, because aggregate power is only one of several ingredients — proximity, offensive capability and perceived intentions matter as much.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Alexander Wendt
Anarchy has no fixed logic of its own; self-help and power politics are institutions built through repeated interaction, so a system of states could construct trust as easily as it constructs suspicion.
link checked 17 Sept 2026John J. Mearsheimer
Argues international institutions have only marginal independent effect on state behaviour because they are created and sustained by the relative-power calculations of the states that matter, directly rebutting liberal institutionalist claims.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert O. Keohane & Lisa L. Martin
Rebuts realist critiques by arguing institutions shape state interests and lower the costs of cooperation even under anarchy, and that the empirical record of institutions built after 1945 supports this over the realist prediction of their irrelevance.
link checked 17 Sept 2026William C. Wohlforth
Argues unipolarity is unusually peaceful and durable because a single dominant power removes the incentive for other great powers to balance against each other, contradicting predictions that a unipolar order would be short-lived.
link checked 17 Sept 2026