Through the Second Lens, the complexities
of world politics are seen as products of domestic
structures and politics. Looking inside countries
shows how state variablesgovernment, economy,
population, resources, and stabilityaffect
states' international behavior. Second-Lens scholars
assume that such variables are more important
than the motivations of individual leaders or
assessments of the balance of power.
For example, democratic
peace theorists such as Michael Doyle emphasize
such variables as free markets, representative
legislatures, contested electoral systems, and
liberal political cultures to argue that liberal
democracies do not fight other liberal democracies.
The absence of war, from a Second-Lens perspective,
is due to the fact that these countries are liberal
and democratic. It does not depend on whether
the president is John
F. Kennedy, Richard
Nixon, or Franklin
Roosevelt, but rather that all three presidents
governed a nation with democratic institutions.
Nor is the absence of war among liberal democracies
explained by the distribution of power in the
international system; rather, domestic sources
trump these variables.
A Second-Lens analysis begins with
a series of snapshots of important domestic variables.
To start, it is important to ascertain the type
of government, economy, population, and natural
resource base associated with each country critical
to your case. These snapshots provide a basis
for some preliminary explanation. For example,
we can expect free market economies to be more
open to multilateral efforts to reduce trade barriers
than are command economies. Likewise, snapshots
suggest that democratic states, which tend to
have open markets, would be more likely to cooperate
with each other on these efforts. For example,
the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is an effort
to reduce trade barriers throughout the western
hemisphere. The effort includes all thirty-four
democracies in the region, but excludes Cubaa
clear assertion that the type of government and
economy matters to obtain FTAA membership.
Analysis must then go beyond basic
description of structure to assess the relative
condition of the overall domestic political environment.
We can collect the individual snapshots and develop
a broader measure of the domestic stability of
a country, which itself can be seen as an overarching
explanatory variable. Our examination of domestic
variables must consider both their individual
effects as well as their interaction and contribution
to a state's overall political dynamic, which
in turn influences national and international
decision making.
Comparing Pictures: The Second Lens
One of the main challenges of using
the Second Lens to explain world politics is the
significant detail needed for analysis. For example,
the government variable requires attention not
only to governmental structures, but also to the
processes of governmentthe political relationships
between government agencies, legislative oversight
committees, and outside lobbying groups, for example.
To assess these bureaucratic politics requires
access to information about the key players, national
priorities, and power of domestic agencies. In
the case of the United States's decision
concerning the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treatya treaty that the George
W. Bush administration believes is obsoletean
in-depth analysis would require assessing the
power of the Defense Department's Ballistic
Missile Defense Organization relative to that
of the State Department's Arms Control Bureau.
Even if you can accumulate the necessary
information, you are not guaranteed to develop
a good explanation. In a democratic, highly bureaucratic
society like that of the United States, the person
at the top of the hierarchythe presidentmakes
decisions of great import. In crises, such an
individual has a great effect on the direction
of international events. If Woodrow
Wilson had not been president at the outbreak
of the First World War or if George Washington
had not stepped aside after two terms, U.S. history
would have been altered. Domestic structures can
be changed or ignored by powerful leaders. Soviet
General Secretary Mikhail
Gorbachev placed the Soviet Union on a different
economic and cultural course despite retaining
the country's Communist structure during his time
in office. A Second-Lens analysis may overlook
the importance of leaders at critical moments
in history.
Third-Lens analysts criticize Second-Lens
analysts for providing descriptive detail without
enough core explanation and analysis. As will
be discussed in this webBOOK's treatment of the
Third
Lens, scholars with Third-Lens sympathies
note that all major states spend significant money
on the military and that a balancing of power
occurs when one state acquires a preponderance
of power regardless of Second-Lens snapshot variables.
The consistency of states' approaches to international
trade and security suggests to Third-Lens analysts
that the Second Lens's variables do not have a
uniform effect and may not be critical to explaining
basic international behavior.
Despite these criticisms, Second-Lens
advocates marshal enormous amounts of detail to
suggest that the causes of international relations
lie within states. Although there are many variables
that can be studied, as a starting point, Second-Lens
theorists focus on five general features of states
to support their viewpoint.
Second-Lens Variables
TYPE
OF GOVERNMENT
ECONOMIC
STRUCTURE AND ACTIVITY
POPULATION
CONSIDERATIONS
RESOURCE
BASE
DOMESTIC
STABILITY
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