Regional Integration. Contribution or hindrance to evolution?

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 4, Mount Kenya University (Department of Social Sciences), course: Master of Arts in International Relations & Diplomacy, language: English, abstract: International relations is a branch of political science that studies the relations between nations and their foreign policies. Like all scientific studies, international relations can be best understood by the aid of theories. The theorization of international relations emerged during the interwar period with liberalists calling for a collective security system to replace the balance of power policy which was being fronted by the realists. Since the turn of the 20th century when interstate relations intensified, it has always been hard to talk about international relations without making a reference to the three grand theories; realism, Marxism, and liberalism. This paper will therefore present and evaluate these three main theories. These theories have extensively been used by different scholars to explain and predict interstate behaviours in the international system. International relations theories are also described as a set of ideas that explain the nature of the international system while predicting the outcomes from actions by major players in international relations. These theories reflect what transpires in international relations and this implies that their concepts reflect what happens on the ground. They have provided a conceptual basis upon which to analyse the complicated and intricate mechanisms of international relations. However, there have been constant clashes amongst the proponents of these theories with each group trying to prove how relevant it is over the other.