mearsheimer's 5 assumptions of realism

Under conditions of anarchy, when there is the threat of predation and resource competition (as in many eras and locales in history), cognitive and physiological mechanisms of egoism, dominance, and groupishness are triggered. PDF | Previous research has found emotion interpretation biases in individuals with social anxiety (SA) when emotions are ambiguous. The impact of these biological factors on social and political behavior will vary depending on context. The key finding is that humans quickly adopt an us (ingroup) versus them (outgroup) worldview. Mearsheimer's main innovation is his theory of 'offensive realism' that seeks to re-formulate Kenneth Waltz's structural realist theory to explain from a struc-tural point of departure the sheer amount of international aggression, which may be hard to reconcile with Waltz's more defensive realism. Cooperation and peace efforts often fail precisely because people have too rosy a view of human nature and thus fail to structure incentives effectively. It is therefore no surprise, as psychologists have argued, that evolution has favored a bias to be fearful of strangers to avoid the costlier error.Reference Haselton and Nettle146,Reference Rozin and Royzman147. At worst, this perspective will make us err on the side of caution. Men, more often than women, lead states. To an observant international relations scholar, the behavior of chimpanzees is remarkably like the behavior of states predicted by the theory of offensive realism. Unsatisfied with military life, he decided to pursue graduate studies rather than become a career officer. In 2007 Mearsheimer coauthored with Stephen M. Walt a best-selling but highly controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007). . We recognize that humans are influenced by culture, norms, rational calculation, and moral principles. A key debate in evolutionary anthropology has revolved around the origins and extent of intergroup conflict among hunter-gatherers, and the emerging consensus is that such conflict is (and has long been) significant and widespread, and that it serves adaptive functions.59, Let us first consider these functional advantages. Second, the group might seek an alternative for the resource, perhaps through technological innovation or by substitution. Mearsheimer based his theory on five core assumptions: (1) the international system is anarchic (there is no authority that exists above the states to arbitrate their conflicts), (2) all states have some military capability (however limited), (3) states can never fully ascertain the intentions of other states, (4) states value survival above all else, and (5) states are rational actors that seek to promote their own interests. First, neorealism does not rely on noumenal ultimate causation, and, second, it explains and predicts variations in the likelihood of war in international politicsparticularly among great powers. Offensive realism holds that states are disposed to competition and conflict because they are self-interested, power maximizing, and fearful of other states. Moreover, the very acquisition and exercise of power itself is known to inflate dominance behavior further.161. Cooperation among unrelated individuals is possible but only as the result of interactions that help genes replicate in the long run, through mechanisms such as reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, and signaling.Reference Nowak92 Even cooperation and helping behavior, therefore, are strategies that increase an individuals Darwinian fitnessindeed, that is precisely why they evolved.Reference West, El Mouden and Gardner93 In nature, genetic egoism is the basis of natural selection. With regard to U.S. foreign policy, he advocated a strategy of global balancing rather than global hegemony. A superpower such as the United States, he argued, should not try to impose its rule on all continents but should intervene only when another major power threatens to rule a region of strategic importance. The Ngogo group annexed their newly captured area, increasing their territory by more than 20 percent.Reference Mitani, Watts and Amsler1. Mearsheimers contrasting view, which he called offensive realism, holds that the need for security, and ultimately for survival, makes states aggressive power maximizers. As such, an evolutionary account does not necessarily expect animals, humans, or states to act as offensive realists all the time and in all situations. Scholars often argue over whether historically humans experienced a Hobbesian state of nature, butwhatever the outcome of that debateit is certainly a much closer approximation to the prehistoric environment in which human brains and behavior evolved.48,Reference Buss49,Reference Mirazn Lahr, Rivera, Power, Mounier, Copsey, Crivellaro, Edung, Maillo Fernandez, Kiarie, Lawrence, Leakey, Mbua, Miller, Muigai, Mukhongo, Van Baelen, Wood, Schwenninger, Grn, Achyuthan, Wilshaw and Foley50 This legacy heavily influences our decision-making and behavior today, evenperhaps especiallyin the anarchy of international politics. Those conditions, according to Mearsheimer, create strong incentives for states to behave aggressively toward each other. Because states cannot know with certainty the present or future intentions of other states, he concluded, it is rational for them to attempt to preempt possible acts of aggression by increasing their military might and adopting an assertive position whenever their core security interests are at stake. In fact, interactions with people from other groupsunrelated others that may not have shared interestsmay be especially costly or lethal compared to within-group interactions. He expands on Waltz's idea of structure causing behaviour . Incorporating ideas from the life sciences into the social sciencesrich in the study of culture and institutions and other influences on political behaviorwill help scholars base their theories in rigorous scientific principles and subject their assumptions to empirical testing.Reference Wilson20,21 Our approach draws heavily on evolutionary anthropology, which recognizes that human behavior is in large part the result of evolved cognitive, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms designed to solve recurrent problems confronted by our ancestors in the environment in which we evolved. Like most international relations scholars of his generation, Mearsheimer was deeply influenced by Kenneth Waltz, the founder of the school of international relations known as neorealism. Our evolutionary theory of offensive realism is unlimited in time, explaining behavior from the ancestral environment to the present day, whereas offensive realism is conventionally inapplicable prior to 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia established the European state system. The origins of warfare are rooted in the imperative to gain and defend resources necessary for survival and reproduction in dangerous and competitive conditions. Correspondence: Dominic D. P. Johnson, Alastair Buchan Professor ofInternational Relations, Department of Politics andInternational Relations, University of Oxford, St. Antonys College, 62 Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6JF, United Kingdom. Major realist theories and their predictions,154 plus predictions from human evolution. However, he criticized post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy for overestimating the countrys military power and its capacity to project that power at will. 6,No. See. However, there is, of course, considerable variation in egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias. Volume 1: Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Gorillas, Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Punish or perish? Both laboratory experiments and real-world observations have identified empirical differences between men and women in a range of social behaviors, not least that men tend to have relative-gains, or zero-sum motivations (wanting to get ahead at the expense of others), whereas women tend to favor payoff-maximization, or variable-sum motivations (content to do well even if others also do well in the process).Reference Lopez, McDermott and Petersen106,Reference Ellis, Hershberger, Field, Wersinger, Pellis, Hetsroni and Geary107,Reference Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung and Updegraff108,Reference Van Vugt and Spisak109, It is well established that dominance and status-seeking behaviors in humans are based on many of the same biochemical and neurological processes as in other mammals, such as the secretion and uptake of testosterone and serotonin, which modify status-challenging behavior.110,111 However rational we may like to think we are, our judgments and decision-making are nevertheless influenced by cognitive mechanisms and biochemicals circulating in our bodies and brains that relate to dominance behavior.Reference McDermott112,Reference Damasio113,114,115, Dominance hierarchies need not only benefit those at the top. Humans evolved in a state of nature where competition for resources and dangers from other humans and the environment were great. Sexual selection is typically responsible for the hierarchical nature of group-living animal species, including humans, as males fight for rank and the reproductive benefits in brings. While this may be true in western, industrialized . Natural selection generates contingent behavior because it is more effective than blind aggression. In general, humans cooperate where we can (e.g., within groups or within alliances deriving mutual benefit), but the anarchy of international relations is a hostile environment that, like the one in which humans evolved, tends to trigger our egoism, dominance, and group bias. Evolutionary theory accounts for egoism and explains why cooperation can extend to the family or close kin group but remains difficult between unrelated individuals. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-spc8s Will a male from the outgroup present competition for mates, or will his presence threaten the ingroup males position in the extended family or group? 1 (Summer 1990), pp. Evolutionary theory provides an important framework for understanding the ingroup/outgroup distinction commonly noted by anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists, and perhaps most prominently by psychologists.Reference Kurzban, Neuberg and Buss120,121 Of the many biases identified in the so-called cognitive revolution in psychology, the ingroup/outgroup bias is one of most pervasive, pernicious, and powerful. That certainly may be, as he attempts to demonstrate. In this section, we have presented standard biological arguments that egoism, dominance, and ingroup/outgroup bias are deeply rooted behavioral adaptations common among mammals in general and primate species in particular. Darwin himself envisioned these nuances, even though he did not know the biological mechanisms at work. An individuals Darwinian fitness therefore includes the success of related others (hence the phrase inclusive fitness). Total loading time: 0 As Mearsheimer and others acknowledge, power maximization may not always be a good strategy and, indeed, it has led a number of states into disaster. As formulated by Mearsheimer, the theory of offensive realism is a type of neorealism because the principal causes of state behavior are rooted in the anarchic international system. This is not to deny that they miscalculate from time to time. Of the many features of hunter-gatherer society and organization, we focus on intergroup relations, since these are most relevant to the behaviors associated with international relations. This perspective does not deny the importance of institutions, norms, and governance in international politics. To summarize, a species that lives communally could have two broad forms of social organization. [2] The five bed-rock assumptions of Mearsheimer's theory of offensive realism are: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59922#eid5780558, http://edge.org/conversation/steven_pinker-the-false-allure-of-group-selection. The genes of egoistic individuals survive and spread at the expense of those that fail to effectively put their own interests first. 2018. An evolutionary foundation offers a major reinterpretation of the theory of offensive realism and permits its broader application to political behavior across a wide range of actors, domains, and historical eras. Psychologists argue that the ingroup/outgroup distinction develops from a need for social identity. Mearsheimer's theory is a spin-off of Kenneth Waltz's neorealism, also known as structural or defensive realism. In international politics, the bigger problem may be aspiring hegemonsstates that do not need to cooperate to obtain what they want. In human history and prehistory, other human groups were commonly the most dangerous threat in the environment, and the ingroup/outgroup bias is likely to have helped the ingroup remain cohesive, avoid and be wary of outgroups, solve the collective action problem in emergencies, and kill outsiders.136,137,Reference Tooby, Cosmides and Hgh-Olesen138, Second, the ingroup/outgroup bias offers a rapid heuristic to weigh the various threats when encountering other humans. Mearsheimer's 5 Assumptions 1) International System is Anarchic 2) Great Powers possess military capability 3) States can't be certain about other state intentions 4) Survival is the primary goal of great powers 5) Great powers are rational actors Mearsheimer's 3 Functions of State Behavior 1) States fear each other Under these conditions, such behavior will have been favored by natural selection and spread. John Mearsheimer's Theory and its Major Assumptions|Realism #realpolitik International Relations & Politics 13.4K subscribers Subscribe 153 2.4K views 6 months ago Talk given on December. Some of these date from the split with our last nonhuman primate ancestor at the beginning of the Pliocene, around 5 million years ago. Conflict may seem costly to all parties involved, winners and losers alike, but what matters for natural selection is whether fighting, despite its costs, can bring net benefits to Darwinian fitness. Drawing on both disciplines, he is interested in how new research on evolution, biology, and human nature challenges theories of international relations, conflict, and cooperation. However, an overtone of this argument is that power or domination is distasteful for leadersthat they tolerate it only for the sake of their states security. However, once again, the potential for cultural group selection does not change or challenge our argument. Behavior under anarchy in different domains. Chimpanzees, for example, will attack others when they have a numerical advantage, but they will retreat if they are outnumbered.Reference Wilson, Britton and Franks162 This behavior makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective, because a decision-making mechanism that takes account of the probability of winning will spread at the expense of a decision-making mechanism that does not. This story might have come from any number of bloody human conflicts around the world. We find that these precise traits are not only evolutionarily adaptive but also empirically common across the animal kingdom, especially in primate and human societies. Offensive Realism and Maximizing Power. Many models of consumer behavior include fundamental assumptions which are rarely questioned. It is also worth noting that offensive realism may often be derided because we do not want it to be true. Individuals bide their time, form coalitions and alliances, and cooperate with others, but they also seize power where the opportunity arises. This foundation permits us to reach realist conclusions about international politics, such as the importance of power in interstate relations, without having to believe in Morgenthaus animus dominandi. We argue that evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior (see Table1). We understand that this assertion may be a point of contention and look forward to engaging with our critics on this matter. I, Classical Realism (3) Emphasis on traits of mankind, Core Assumptions of Neorealism aka Stuctural Realism Waltz:, Core Assumptions of Offensive Realism Mearsheimer -Fear/Self Help W However, if actors seek dominance at least partly because of evolved behavioral dispositions (of which actors may not even be aware), then we may expect sometimes to observe power-maximizing behavior whether or not it is a good strategy.
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