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Global Comparative Theories

Realism: states, anarchy and the balance of power

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  • Component 3

Overview

Recall questions on states as the key actors, international anarchy and self-help, the security dilemma, the balance of power, and the criticisms made of realism.

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Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What is the difference between classical realism and structural realism?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What is realism as a theory of international relations?

    Model answer

    The view that global politics is a competition for power and security between sovereign states, driven by an unchanging self-interested human nature and conducted in the absence of any authority above the state.

  2. 2

    Why do realists treat the state as the key actor in global politics?

    Model answer

    Because only states hold sovereignty — supreme authority over a territory and population — and only states command the armed force and legal standing to guarantee their own survival. Other actors operate on terms states allow.

  3. 3

    What do realists mean by international anarchy?

    Model answer

    Not chaos, but the absence of any overarching authority above states. There is no world government able to enforce agreements or protect a state that is attacked.

  4. 4

    What are the implications of anarchy according to realists?

    Model answer

    Each state must provide for its own security, since no one else will. That makes self-help the governing principle, breeds mutual suspicion, and turns relative advantage over rivals into the measure of success.

  5. 5

    What is the security dilemma?

    Model answer

    The trap in which measures one state takes to make itself safer — building forces, forming alliances — look threatening to others, who arm in response, leaving everyone less secure despite nobody intending aggression.

  6. 6

    Why is the security dilemma so hard to escape?

    Model answer

    Because intentions cannot be verified. A state can never be certain a neighbour's build-up is defensive, and the cost of guessing wrong about an aggressor is far greater than the cost of arming unnecessarily.

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Patriotism means attachment to one’s country.
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