6. Key Concepts:
Core-Periphery
• Core
– U.S., Europe, Japan,
Australia
– Wealthy
– Powerful
– Controls Media and
Finance
– Technologically
advanced
• Periphery
– Less Developed
– Poor
– Dependent upon Core
countries for:
• Education
• Technology
• Media
• Military Equipment
12. • Geo-politics is the study of the influence of
geographical factors on state behavior
– How location, climate, natural resources,
population, and physical terrain determine a
state’s foreign policy options and its position in
the hierarchy of states (M.Griffith & T. O’Callaghan, International
Relations: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2002:120)
Geo-politics:
Geographic Factor as the Context
13. Geopolitics as Possibilism
• Geography does not have a distinctive
subject matter; it is a perspective on how
context affects behavior.
• Mode of thinking:
– micro-phenomena within macro-context
14. Environmental Possibilism
• Human (or decision makers) is capable of making choices,
because:
• “. . . the initiatives lie with man, not with the milieu which
encompasses him. Possibilism rejects the idea of controls, or
influences, pressing man along a road set by Nature or any
other environing conditions. The milieu, in the possibilist
doctrine, does not compel or direct man to do anything. The
milieu is simply there . . . In the possibilist doctrine, the milieu
is conceived as a set of opportunities and limitations.”
– (Sprout & Sprout, 1965:83)
15. Sprout: Ecological Perspective
• The triad:
– An Entity
– Its Environment
– Entity-Environment Relationship
• Argument:
– Whether the focus is on a single decision-maker, a
small group of decision-makers, a foreign policy
organization, a government as a whole, or the state as
an international actor,
– we need to look at the on-going policy/choice processes
within that entity, its context or environment, and then
the interaction between the entity and the environment
16. Environmental Probabilism
• Environment limits human opportunities; constrains the
types of action that can be taken and the consequences
of that action.
• Assumption: the limitations are discoverable.
• Once these limitations are known → “environmental
probabilism.”
– As the decision-makers view their environment, the
characteristics of that environment provide cues to the
probability of certain outcomes. The environment not only
presents the entity with what is possible, but with what
choices would be more or less likely under those particular
circumstances
17. Cognitive Behaviorism
• The principle is
– “that a person reacts to his milieu as he perceives
and interprets it in light of past experience” (Sprout,
1969:45)
• Thus, perception of the entity is very
important:
– How humans see the environment is the central
matter of importance in choice.
– The “real” world has an impact only after choices
are made and an implementation attempt is sent
out into that real world
18. Entity-Environment:
Opportunity-Willingness Framework
• Both opportunity (possibilism) and willingness
(probabilism & cognitive behaviorism) are
necessary for understanding behavior:
– The environment must be permissive and the acting unit must
choose (according to some incentive structure or calculus)
• The geographical & geopolitical components of the
environment of any international actor are essential to
understanding choice in foreign policy and international
relations.
19. The Structure of
Opportunities and Willingness
• Geopolitical factors provides a structure of opportunities
and constraints.
• Geopolitical (geographical) structure is “enabling and
constraining”.
• Structure is more than simply opportunity, or possibilism.
• Opportunity consists both of
– The possibility that exist in the international system (e.g.,
technology, ideology, religion, social inventions such as new
forms of government), AND
– How these possibilities are distributed in the system (e.g.,
distribution of resources, people or behavior)
