Comparison And Appraisal On The Neorealism And Neoliberal Institutionalism Thoughts About International Cooperation

Neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism are the two main schools in the 4 western international relations theory debate, in which international cooperation was one of the core issues. Either side's understandings and statements on international cooperation issue had become mature along with the debate, in which they differed greatly and argued hotly in many aspects, such as in the prospect for international cooperation, the maintaining conditions and obstacles for international cooperation in the anarchy world. In addition, as their debates went further, their thoughts on international cooperation had a tendency of convergence in some degree because both of them revisited or refined their views on international cooperation partially, which would add much difficulty and inconvenience for understanding both sides' thoughts about international cooperation doubtlessly.This thesis begins with the introduction of the neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism thoughts. It summarizes some core issues in both sides' debates on international cooperation and taken them as the clue and starting point, the thesis makes a comparison on the differences in both sides' thoughts on international cooperation. Later, this thesis treats the neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism thoughts about international cooperation as a whole and appraises it objectively, which will do a great deal of good to understanding them comprehensively and accurately.Five sections are included in this thesis. The first section acts as introduction of the thesis. It introduces the origin of this thesis' title, the significance of the research, the up-to-now related research both at home and abroad. It also defines some core concepts in this thesis and introduces the research method. Section Two makes a summary of the main viewpoints of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, which settles a good foundation for a further understanding of each side's thoughts about international cooperation. Section Three makes a comparison between the main viewpoints of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism from five aspects, i.e. the quality and sequence of anarchy, power and institution, the distribution of income and cooperation, actors' number hypothesis, the nations' prior aim. A theme that runs through this section is that neorealism see a pessimistic prospect for cooperationbecause of the concerning about power, while neoliberal institutionalism don't agree because they see the function of institution. Section Four makes an objective appraisal on both sides' viewpoints about international cooperation. On the one hand, this section discusses their validity, commonness and progress for international relations theory;on the other hand, it also discusses their limits objectively from epistemology, methodology and ontology point of view. Section Five is the epilogue of this thesis. In this part, a conclusion about the theme and structure of the whole thesis will be made. And it ends with three inspirations to China for the comparison and study of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism thoughts about international cooperation.