Introduction to International Relations

Rousseau proclaimed the natural goodness of man and believed that one man by nature is just as good as any other. For Rousseau, a man could be just without virtue and good without effort. According to Rousseau, man in the state of nature was free, wise, and good and the laws of nature were benevolent. It follows that it was civilization that enslaved and corrupted man and made him unnatural. Because in the order of nature all men were equal, it also follows that distinction and differentiation among men are the products of culture and civilization. Because man is by nature a saint, it must be the corrupting influence of society that is responsible for the misconduct of the individual. Rousseau thought private property to be the source of social ills. He considered that private ownership of property tended to corrupt men and destroy their character and regarded the man without property (i.e., the noble savage) to be the freest. Although he did not actually support the abolition of private property, he believed that private property should be minimal and should be distributed equally among the members of the society. Rousseau anticipated the need for the state to minimize private property. He wanted the property of the state to be as great and powerful as possible, and that of the citizens to be as small and weak as possible. With private property being so limited, the state would need to apply very little force in order to lead the people.

Behavioralism proposes that individuals, both alone and in groups, act in patterned ways. The task of the behavioral scientist is to suggest plausible hypotheses regarding those patterned actions and to test them. These scholars hope to predict future behavior. An example of the behavioral method is the Correlates of War project, which sought to understand why wars happen through collecting data about wars and looking for patterns.
During the 1980s and 1990s, scholars seriously questioned the behavioral approach. The foundational questions—the nature of man and society—are neglected by behaviorists because they are not easily testable by empirical methods.

Bipolarity can be defined as a system of world order in which the majority of global economic, military and cultural influence is held between two states. The classic case of a bipolar world is that of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which dominated the second half of the twentieth century.

Most of the current experts and international authorities agree on 194 countries in existence, however, different international bodies differ greatly on how many countries there are. The 194 countries does not include Kosovo (disclaimer), or Palestine or Western Sahara or Taiwan or Greenland or many other partly recognized states Membership within the United Nations system divides the 206 listed states into three categories: 193 member states, two observer states, and 11 other states. The sovereignty dispute column indicates states whose sovereignty is undisputed (190 states) and states whose sovereignty is disputed (16 states).