Science Fiction can often help us understand realpolitik in the real world.

Is Tyrian Lannister a realist or a liberal? What would Mr. Spock have to say about rational choice theory? And what did Stanley Kubrick read to create Dr. Strangelove? Stephen Dyson is the author of Otherworldly Politics: The International Relations of Star Trek, Game of Thrones, and Battlestar Galactica(Johns Hopkins University Press 2015) and associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut. In this interview with Heath Brown (originally made for the New Books Network) he takes on these questions with an enjoyable exploration for how the classic theories of International Relations have been played on our television and movie screens.

Heath Brown: Even those of us who don’t study International Relations know about the classic divide between ‘realists’ and ‘liberals’.  You look to the fictional world of Game of Thrones to explain this.  So, who are the realists and who are the liberals in the world of Westeros?

SD:  I think the whole first season of Game of Thrones is an excellent illustration of this whole liberal/realist divide.  The liberals are the idealists, of course, people who believe politics should be about values and ethics, and human nature is fundamentally good, and the way you promote peace in the world – and peace is achievable – is that you act in accordance with your values and you trust other people.  I think they were represented, especially in the first season, and later, by the Starks in Game of Thrones, the Guardians of the North.  People like Ned Stark, an extremely stubborn individual, very moralistic, someone who always wanted to do the right thing, but who was (as many liberals are, as idealists are) pretty bad at the down and dirty work of politics.  In Game of Thrones Ned is doing well in the North, he is among his own people, and he understands its politics and is able to make a virtue of his idealism.  Then the king, his old friend, comes to see him and says, ‘I need you in the South’.  But Southern politics is very different, the realm of Real Politique, the realm of the Stark’s great antagonists the Lanisters, who represent the realist point of view.

Ned, very unwisely, follows his friend down south.  It is the right thing to do, he gave his word to his friend, he owes duty to his friend, the king, and he meets a sticky end in the south because he is out manoevered by realists.

HB: And we can say, for those who haven’t watched the show…..

SD: ……yes, spoiler alert…..

HB: that you haven’t yet been spoiled!  You write in the book about Star Trek, Game of Thrones, Battlestar Gallactica, but not about Star wars - so no Star Wars spoilers, either!

One of the central concerns of scholars in lots of fields is the extent to which rationality is an abstract idea, or something that really drives decision making.  Trekkies have their own ways to express this debate…..how does Star Trek use Mr Sock’s rationality?

SD: Mr Spock is probably the greatest fictional representative of what is, in academic circles, in danger of being the pretty boring and bloodless theory of rational choice.  When you try to explain it, eyes glaze over but if you can dramatise it in the figure of someone like Mr Spock you can keep them interested.  Spock, on Star Trek, was a Vulcan, someone committed to making decisions from a logical standpoint calculating the costs and benefits.  The greatest example was in the movie The Wrath of Khan, my favourite movie.  Again, spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it, Spock applies his utilitarianism, his rationality throughout the movie to help his friend Kirk (the embodiment of feeling and emotion) – Spock is cool and Kirk is hot – and when they work together they can be really successful.  And they ARE successful.  They beat Kirk’s nemesis, Khan, and it is Spock’s rationality and Kirk’s emotion that work together, but at a huge cost!

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