Overview
The sequence opens by comparing realism, liberalism and constructivism as explanations of world politics. Each tradition makes different assumptions about political actors and the constraints they face. It also locates the sources of continuity and change in different places. Those choices determine which evidence matters and which outcomes require explanation.
Wendt’s argument that anarchy has no single behavioral logic anchors the constructivist section. Mearsheimer’s critique of the liberal international order then gives students a contemporary dispute through which to compare the theories. A disciplined comparison asks what each theory explains and which evidence supports it. It also identifies what the theory leaves out and why another account may remain defensible.
Questions guiding the lecture
- What assumptions distinguish realism, liberalism, and constructivism?
- How does each tradition explain power, institutions, cooperation, and conflict?
- What follows if interests and identities are produced through interaction rather than fixed in advance?
- How well do the theories explain pressure on the liberal international order, Sino-U.S. competition, and Russia's war against Ukraine?
Lecture map
Realism starts from anarchy and self-help, then distinguishes relative power across its classical, structural and later variants.
Liberalism turns to interdependence and democratic constraints. It examines how institutions can enable absolute gains and sustain an international order.
Constructivism treats interests and identities as socially formed. Wendt's account shows how norms and interaction give anarchy its meaning.
Contemporary cases provide a common test. Reading each case through the three theories identifies their mechanisms and blind spots.
Readings
Heywood, Andrew, and Ben Whitham. 2023. Global Politics, 3rd ed., Chapter 3, “Traditional Theories of Global Politics.”
Establishes the shared conceptual map of realism, liberalism and constructivism, including the questions on which they disagree.
Wendt, Alexander. 1992. “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics.” International Organization 46(2): 391–425.
The constructivist anchor. Read for the argument that self-help and power politics are institutions produced through practice, not automatic consequences of anarchy.
Mearsheimer, John J. 2019. “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order.” International Security 43(4): 7–50.
An applied realist critique of liberal hegemony and a concrete text on which the three traditions can be compared.
Recommended and lecture-specific extensions
The syllabus recommends Mark Carney's January 2026 Davos address, Mearsheimer's “The Inevitable Rivalry,” Nicolas Guilhot on the history of realism, and Paul Poast's teaching thread on offensive realism and Ukraine. The lecture's broader bibliography distinguishes foundational texts from contemporary applications.
Classroom study
Randomized survey experiment
Framing U.S.–China cooperation
The study asks whether a rivalry-oriented, Hobbesian brief or a cooperation-oriented, Lockean brief changes expectations about U.S.–China cooperation.
Qualtrics assigned participants to one of the two analyst briefs or to a control that received no brief. All participants then answered five items on 1–5 scales. Two items were reverse-coded before the responses were combined into a Cooperation Perception Score.
The treatments introduced different claims and examples, so the exercise tests each brief as a whole. It does not isolate a single word or estimate a framing effect that generalizes beyond the class.
This public companion documents the instrument and its teaching purpose. It does not reproduce student responses or claim that the realized classroom comparison established a framing effect. See Classroom studies for the cross-lecture design record.
Takeaways
- Realism explains how anarchy and uncertainty make power and security persistent concerns, but its variants disagree about how much power states seek.
- Liberal theories show how trade and democratic constraints can alter incentives. Institutions may also support cooperation without eliminating conflict.
- Constructivism asks how interaction, norms, and identity produce the interests that other theories often take as given.
- Theories are selective tools. A strong analysis states what a framework explains, what evidence supports it, and what the framework misses.
Course record checked against the 2025–2026 syllabus and the lecture slides, speaker notes and reading guide. The fielded Qualtrics instrument and analysis workflow were used to verify the classroom study.