Paper Assignment

Over the past few months, record numbers of migrants have sought entry into European countries, leading to tensions among European leaders regarding how best to address the growing crisis.

At a meeting earlier this week, leaders of European countries failed to reach agreement on a proposal to facilitate the resettlement of migrants.

And thus far, efforts to pass a UN Security Council Resolution to combat the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean have also failed.

Why have international actors failed to achieve cooperation to address the growing migrant crisis in Europe?

Choose two of the four theoretical perspectives we have discussed in the course thus far: realism, neoliberal institutionalism, constructivism, and domestic political approaches.

How would each of these two theoretical perspectives explain the failure to achieve international cooperation on this issue?

Which of these two theoretical perspectives do you think provides the most convincing explanation for failure to achieve international cooperation?

Why do you find this theoretical perspective more convincing than the other theoretical perspective you considered?

This is a paper assignment question. I want some general ideas about how can each theoretical perspectives explain the failure to achieve international cooperation on the issue of Europe migrant crisis, and which two are more convincing and why.

The following list is the required readings for this assignment, which I believe are all fundamental works for international relations.

Anarchy and Realist Approaches to International Relations

Jack Snyder, "One World, Rival Theories"

Hans Morgenthau, "A Realist Theory of International Politics and Political Power"

John Mearsheimer, "Anarchy and the Struggle for Power"

Thucydides, "Melian Dialogue"

Neoliberal Institutionalism & Prospects for Cooperation under Anarchy

Robert O. Keohane, "From After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy"

John Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions"

Constructivism

Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics"

Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change," International Organization, vol. 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998).

Martha Finnemore, "Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity"

Domestic Politics, Liberalism, and the Democratic Peace

Michael W. Doyle, "Liberalism and World Politics"

Erik Gartzke, "Capitalist Peace or Democratic Peace?"