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http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2014/05/02/international-studies-dying-discipline

International Studies: A Dying Discipline?

May 2, 2014

By Amitav Acharya

Is the field of international studies relevant to the needs of today's policymakers? In a fast-

changing and increasingly interdependent world, many policy wonks and media analysts doubt

the relevance of the historically Western field of international studies, also known as

international relations. Bilahari Kausikan, a former head of Singapores Foreign Ministry says,

International relationsis the worst possible training for a career in the foreign service.

But the field, interdisciplinary in nature, is one of the fastest growing academic disciplines in

countries across the globe. If able to keep up with changing nature of world politics, international

relations will continue to educate the next generation of global citizens and leaders in ways other

fields cannot. In a 2009 report, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities

urged U.S. institutions to emphasize math, science and international studies, or risk becoming

less globally competitive.

In a recent column for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff argued, most of them [political

scientists] just dont matter in todays great debates. Kristoff's opinion is at the heart of the

academic-professional debate. Many argue that such an academic emphasis on the nature of

world politics defeats the purpose of truly understanding the world - first through specializing in

a specific area, and then through professional experience.

Two key issues arise from this divide. The first is whether the study of international relations is

all that useful if one wants a career in global policymaking. The second is whether IR scholars do

enough outreach to connect with policymakers.

It is obvious that many prominent foreign policy practitioners have been trained in IR. In the

United States, some names would include Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, and Condoleezza

Rice. In Asia, former South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-Joo and current Indonesian

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Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa hold doctorates in IR. Similarly, Vietnamese Foreign

Minister Pham Binh Minh and Singapores former ambassador to the U.S., Chan Heng Chee,

were trained in political science.

International relations has strong academic advantages. As an interdisciplinary field, it attracts all

types of minds quantitative and qualitative alike. Given the diversity of students, we can argue

that the study of IR is vital to understanding and managing globalizationarguably the most

important trend of our timein all its complexity. No other discipline does this so

comprehensively.

Many professional IR schools (such as John Hopkins School of Advanced International

Studies, Georgetown University and University of Denver) have recently appointed former

diplomats as deans. While traditionalists may bemoan this practice for diluting academic rigor, it

broadens the appeal of IR, making it more relevant to policymaking. IR closely engages leaders

of civil society organizations, as well as the business community.

This leads to the second issue: do academics make enough effort to reach out to policy makers?

There are several examples where academics have shaped big policy ideas. Samuel Huntington

and Francis Fukuyama (a SAIS professor) defined two of the main debates of the post-Cold War:

Clash of Civilizations and End of History. Another example is the development of the

Responsibility to Protect Norms (Ramesh Thakur, Tom Weiss, and Francis Deng). Proposals for

multilateral institutions in Asia, such as Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Regional Forum, Asia-Pacific Economic Community and ASEAN Security Community were

substantially the handiwork of academics.

But policy relevant work/public affairs commentary is not [and should not] be everyone's choice

and it has its dangers. In Asia and other parts of the world far from being an 'academia-policy

gap', the situation may be the other way around: too many academics are doing (or trying to do)

too much policy work to find time for serious academic research and writing.

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One way to make international studies more relevant is to encourage universities to broaden the

curriculum so that it reflects the history, culture, politics, and ideas of the whole world, and not

just the West. That would address a frequent and justified complaint against the international

studies education is that it is too Western-centric, or as the Harvard Professor Stanley Hoffmann

put it, an American social science. Whether America is declining or not, the study of

international relations needs to adapt to the accelerating global diffusion of power.

*****

Amitav Acharya is a professor at American University and President of the International Studies

Association.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/International_relations.aspx

International Relations

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences | 1968

I. THE FIELD Chadwick F. Alger

BIBLIOGRAPHY

II. IDEOLOGICAL ASPECTS John H. Herz

BIBLIOGRAPHY

III. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS Herbert C. Kelman

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. THE FIELD

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International relations is a human activity in which persons from more than one nation,

individually and in groups, interact. International relations are carried on by face-to-face contact

and through more indirect communications. Usage of the term international relations by

scholars in the field is not consistent. Some use international relations and international

politics interchangeably, but many prefer to reserve international politics for relations

between governments and use international relations as a more inclusive term. They consider

international politics and subjects such as international economics, international

communications, international law, international war, and international organization to be

subcategories of international relations.

In more popular discourse international relations is often used to refer to phenomena about

nations that do not involve relations between them. Sometimes the study of foreign nations and

foreign governments is called international relations, but this broad usage is diminishing. The

study of international relations includes certain aspects of nations and their governments,

particularly foreign-policy-making activity. But the more restricted usage that is evolving

includes only those characteristics of nations that have the greatest effect on interaction between

nations. Advancing knowledge is making possible more explicit boundaries for the field as

research more clearly identifies which characteristics of nations cause the greatest variation in

their relations with each other.

History

Although men have written about international relations for thousands of years, only in this

century has the field begun to have some of the characteristics of an academic discipline. The

publication of World Politics by Paul Reinsch in 1900 is often cited as an early landmark in this

development. Before World War I, courses in the field were confined largely to diplomatic

history, international law, and international economics. The war stimulated the development of

courses in international organization, international relations, and international politics. Often

these courses were devoted (and some still are) to the study of current events and to preaching

about how the world ought to be organized. By the outbreak of World War II a reaction to these

modes of study had developed. E. H. Carrs The Twenty Years Crisis, 19191939 (1939), which

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was highly critical of research and teaching in the field, and F. Schumans International Politics

(1933) indicated the beginning of the realist (also sometimes called empirical) emphasis in the

study of international relations. This trend included both an effort to overcome idealistic bias in

research and teaching and an aspiration toward more systematic study. A precursor of future

systematic work was Quincy Wrights monumental Study of War from 1500 to 1940, published

in 1942.

After World War II the realist position was stated persuasively by Hans Morgenthau in a highly

successful and very influential textbook, Politics Among Nations (1948). Morgenthau

emphasized the importance of power in the attainment of national objectives. Arguing largely

against those who deprecated power politics, Morgenthau asserted that the struggle for power

occurs in all social relations and that international politics is not excepted from this general

proposition. Morgenthaus book brought on widespread debate between the realists and the

idealists. Although Morgenthau had defined power as the ability to influence the minds and

actions of men exercised by political, psychological, and military means, there was a tendency

for realists to emphasize the importance of military power. Idealists, on the other hand, stressed

the importance of assuring that ideological ends not be subverted through the pursuit of tangible

instruments of power.

To a considerable degree the realistidealist debate subverted the initial contribution of the

realist school to the development of an empirical science of international relations. For many,

realism became a goal toward which they believed policy makers should aspire, rather than an

enterprise devoted to the explanation of actual international behavior. But the realist emphasis

has left significant legacies. One is the section devoted to the elements of national power that

appears in most international relations textbooks. Morgenthau lists the following components of

national power: geography, natural resources, industrial capacity, military preparedness,

population, national character, national morale, quality of diplomacy, and quality of government.

Some writers, Organski, for example, tend to treat national power as something that can be

represented by a single measure, through combining measurements of its components (1958).

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As power tended to become the central concept in the international relations literature, concern

developed about the analytic effectiveness of subsuming so much under one concept. There was

particular difficulty in accounting for occasions when smaller nations influenced the behavior of

larger nations, thus revealing the limitations of a single measure of national power. The tendency

for the concept to become a fad rather than a useful analytic tool was underlined when Denis

Sullivan, in an analysis of international relations textbooks (1963), found 17 different usages.

The fact that individual authors use the concept in a number of ways compounds the confusion.

[See Power; Power transition.]

As a moderately cohesive discipline of international relations was developing in the first half of

the twentieth century, rapid social, technological, and scientific changes that would make much

of this effort obsolete were already under way. The number of independent nations has doubled

since 1900, reaching some 135 in 1966. By 1964 the number of international organizations had

increased to some 1,900 (not including international business enterprises). Approximately 180 of

these organizations are intergovernmental. Communication and transportation developments

greatly changed the character of international relations and stimulated regional economic

integration. Nuclear weapons altered the role of violence as an instrument for carrying out

international relations. These changes so dramatically transformed the character of the

international system that even the vocabulary of international relations rapidly became obsolete.

The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and contemplation of the next generation of nuclear

weapons greater killing capacity brought a dramatic extension of interest in international

relations. As a result, men of virtually all academic disciplines began contributing to the study of

international relations.

Scientific change has not only affected the study of international relations through the impact of

technological change on the data of international relations but also directly affected analytic

techniques. While the twentieth-century world was self-consciously pondering the significance

of rapidly developing knowledge in the physical sciences, changes of potentially equal

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importance were taking place in the social sciences. A new generation of international relations

scholars, armed with the contributions of an increasingly rigorous social science and aided by

new norms for interdisciplinary collaboration, began making significant progress toward the

development of a science of international relations. (See, e.g., Sprout & Sprout 1962 and the

successive issues of World Politics, founded in 1948.) The concepts and techniques employed in

analyzing such topics as decision making, conflict, game theory, bargaining, communication,

systems, geography, attitudes, etc., were applied to problems in international relations. Machine

data processing and computers extended the range of manageable problems, and mancomputer

and all-computer simulations permitted for the first time controlled experimentation in

international relations.

The state of the field

Decision making

Advances in social science are facilitating the handling of some of the problems that for a long

time have troubled international relations scholars. One such problem is discovering the links

between the gross characteristics of nations, such as measures of national power, and the specific

behavior of individuals acting for nations. While most contributors to the literature on national

power would not deny that variation in the individuals and groups making foreign policy

decisions sometimes has significant effects, they have not provided analytic tools for assessing

these effects.

In 1954 Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin published an influential monograph, Decision-making as an

Approach to the Study of International Politics, that provided an analytic scheme suggesting the

relevance of work in various areas of political science, sociology, social psychology,

communication theory, and organizational behavior to the study of international relations. Their

approach conceives of the actions of nations as resulting from the way identifiable decision

makers define the action situation. It postulates that national decision-making behavior takes

place in a complex organizational setting and can be accounted for by interrelations of three

clusters of variables: organizational roles and relations, communication and information, and

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motivation. Four years later Snyder and Paige (1958) applied the scheme to the United States

decision to intervene militarily in Korea in June 1950. This effort stimulated some refinements in

the analytic scheme and helped to develop hypotheses linking the variables.

The work on decision making enriched the literature of international relations by demonstrating

the relevance of concepts from other areas of social science. However, the collection of data on

variables describing a specific decisional group presents methodological difficulties of a

different order from those encountered in measuring national power. Documentary materials

may not even reveal the membership of a decision-making group, requiring the decision-making

researcher to move from the library to field work in governmental agencies in his quest for data.

Thus, decision-making analysis has stimulated the application of the field-research techniques of

social science to the study of international relations. Problems in gaining access to foreign policy

decision makers, because of the secrecy that traditionally surrounds their activity, require the

international relations researcher not only to borrow field-research techniques of other social

sciences but also to adapt them and to develop his own. [See Decision making.]

Systems analysis

In 1955 Charles McClelland urged the application of general systems analysis, developed by the

biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, to the study of international relations. This followed

applications in physics, physical chemistry, and the social sciences. Bertalanffy developed his

general systems approach as a result of perceiving similarities in conceptual schemes developed

in fields of knowledge commonly considered to be widely separated McClelland asserted that the

application of the concepts and hypotheses of general systems analysis to international relations

provides insights beyond those generally afforded by more traditional international relations

approaches. For example, he stated that a general systems approach leads inquiry away from a

concern with the accumulation of power, that its emphasis is instead on adaptive action.

McClelland also believes that a systems perspective draws attention to quiet processes of growth,

adjustment, and adaptation, thus overcoming tendencies to give too much attention to spectacular

international events as causal factors (1955).

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Morton Kaplan (1957) used a radically different method of systems analysis developed by W.

Ross Ashby. This approach employs closed and simple systems, rather than general ones, and

does not imply either the probability or the improbability of gradual change. Kaplan constructed

six possible international systems and specified the environmental circumstances under which

each is likely to persist and those under which it is likely to be transformed into one of the other

kinds of systems. Kaplan did not provide historical examples of all of his systems, since it is his

goal to develop an analytic perspective that can handle all possible kinds of international

systems, not just those that have occurred already. In Action and Reaction in World Politics

(1963) Rosecrance also cites Ashby as he applies systems analysis to an examination of nine

international systems that existed after 1740. From these historical cases he generates nine

models.

Theories generated by the application of systems analysis move the study of international

relations closer to rigorous comparative study. They provide concepts that can be applied across

diverse geographic regions and in numerous historical periods. The propositions embedded

within the theories invite refinement or rejection, thus encouraging researchers to move beyond

description and on to the development of explanatory theory. [See Systems analysis.]

Integration

Some taking an international systems perspective have focused on international integration. The

development of integration as a major focus of international relations research has been spurred

by regional integration, particularly in Europe in the post-World War II period. International

relations scholars have a variety of usages for the term integration. It is frequently used to

mean (1) a specified state of an international systeme.g., a system where nations expect to

have no war with each other or where citizens feel a strong sense of community; and (2) a system

with certain kinds of central governmental institutions. Common in much of the integration

literature is self-conscious concern with development of theory applicable to all international

systems, universal and regional, through the study of systems more limited in scope. There also

is a wide interest in discerning both the necessary and sufficient conditions for certain kinds of

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international governmental authority and the processes whereby such authorities can be

established.

Case studies have provided the raw material for important integration work, but in contrast to

most earlier work in international relations, the cases have not been ends in themselves but tools

for the generation of general theory. In a pioneering work Karl Deutsch and Richard Van

Wagenen, both political scientists, and a team of historians (Deutsch et al. 1957) examined ten

cases of successful and unsuccessful integration in the North Atlantic area, ranging from the

formation of England in the Middle Ages to the breakup of the union between Ireland and the

United Kingdom in 1921. From these case studies they generated a list of conditions necessary

for both amalgamated and pluralistic security communities. This effort borrowed a great deal

from communications research.

Ernst Haas has preferred to study integration through firsthand depth research of one

international organization at a time, using the organizations as whetstones for sharpening

theory. His work on the European Steel and Coal Community (1958) and the International

Labour Organisation (1964) has given much attention to the process whereby integration in one

governmental function spills over into another area. The theoretical framework developed by

Etzioni (1965) is influenced importantly by his native discipline, sociology. He has worked

primarily with secondary sources in applying this framework to the European Economic

Community, the Nordic Council, efforts to unite Egypt and Syria, and to the attempted

Federation of the West Indies.

While the styles and interests of these contributors to the study of international integration vary a

great deal, their efforts to build explicitly on the work of each other, although yet limited, is

characteristic of a growing trend among international relations scholars. As they become more

interested in general theory and less concerned with the uniqueness of individual cases, the

possibilities for cumulative and cooperative development of knowledge are increasing in the

whole field of international relations.

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The work on integration is affecting traditional perspectives of the role of international

organizations in the control of international violence and in the development of world order.

Work such as that of Deutsch and his colleagues (1957) on pluralistic security communities (i.e.,

international systems in which nations do not expect to war with each other) raises serious

questions about the validity of the often repeated proposition that world order can come only

after the establishment of a world government. Furthermore, their hypotheses about necessary

conditions for amalgamated security communities (e.g., mutual predictability of behavior, mutual

responsiveness, and mobility of persons in politically relevant strata) have encouraged scholars

to supplement traditional concern for ideal constitutional forms believed necessary for world

order with empirical research on the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of

international governmental apparatus.

An earlier alternative to the more grandiose world government schemes had been provided by

functionalism, whose best-known advocate was David Mitrany in the 1940s. The key element in

functionalism is the belief that international conflict can be diminished by the establishment of

international welfare agencies manned by experts who, it is presumed, would be devoted to the

achieving of their tasks on the basis of expert criteria, rather than to the acquisition of power.

The work on integration, particularly that of Haas, who explicitly builds on the thought of the

functionalists, offers some support for and a critique of functionalist theory, particularly in the

development of more sophisticated theory linking international welfare activity and national

political organization. [See International integration and International organization.]

Simulation

Perhaps controlled experimentation in international relations is the most vivid indicator of

ferment generated by borrowing from other disciplines. Formerly limited to the study of

individual behavior and the study of small groups, experimental techniques have now been

extended to decision making in business organizations, community conflict, and international

relations. Simulation of international relations has also developed out of military war games.

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This heritage is recognized by Lincoln Bloomfield and Norman Padelford (1959) and others,

who use the term political gaming to refer to their simulation efforts.

Some simulations of international relations have used human subjects, under quasi-laboratory

conditions, who act for nations that are replicas of either actual nations or nations designed by

the experimenter. There are also machine simulations, in which computers are used to simulate

both the mental processes of decision makers and the social processes of international relations.

Some simulate a specific situation, such as a crisis, whereas others simulate international systems

that represent years of real-world time.

Like experimentation in other realms, simulation of international relations permits the student to

have more control than he has in the study of the real world. It also permits the study of problems

for which data are not available, possibly because the world has not yet produced the situation

being studied. For example, in 1960 Richard Brody and Michael Driver ran 16 simulations of a

two-bloc cold war international system, identical except that each simulation had different

decision makers. Each of the 16 simulations began with two nuclear powers and each

experienced nuclear proliferation at an identical time (see Brody 1963). This experiment

permitted investigation of widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons before it occurred in the

real world.

The most sustained effort in international relations simulation was begun by Harold Guetzkow in

1958 (see Guetzkow et al. 1963). His InterNation Simulation is an operating model of prototypic,

rather than actual, nations. The model has been utilized in the experimental runs of Brody, as

well as others. A variety of techniques is being used to validate the evolving model, including

participation of diplomats in the simulation. The Inter-Nation Simulation and modifications of it

have been used in research and teaching by a number of institutions in the United States, Latin

America, Europe, and the Far East. The rapid spread of simulation activity suggests that

controlled experimentation and the construction of operating models have a permanent place in

the methodology of international relations. [See Simulation.]

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Military strategy

The advent of nuclear weapons has stimulated more-widespread attention to military strategy and

diminished the gulf that had developedfor both scholars and policy-makers between military

and political factors in international relations. As the destructive power of nuclear weapons

increased, intense concern developed over the risks of nuclear war, particularly over the

possibility of accidental nuclear war and the escalation of limited conventional wars into nuclear

war. [See Limited WAR and Nuclear WAR.] In response, political scientists, psychologists, and

economists began applying a wide range of social science knowledge to problems of military

strategy. Thomas C. Schelling, an economist, called attention to the mixture of mutual

dependence and conflict in relations between international adversaries. In his Strategy of

Conflict he saw enlightening similarities between, say, maneuvering in limited war and

jockeying in a traffic jam, between deterring the Russians and deterring ones own children, or

between the modern balance of terror and the ancient institution of hostages (1960, p. v).

Fear that nuclear-weapons delivery systems, ostensibly developed to deter aggressors, might

cause war encouraged the development of a literature on deterrence that enriched international

relations discourse [see Deterrence]. As military planners and scholars attempted to discern how

weapons systems could offer a credible deterrent to aggressors and at the same time not cause the

war they were intended to prevent, the interdependence of national weapons systems became

more apparent. Scholars became concerned not only with actual military capability of nations but

also with the perceptions decision makers have of this capability and their inferences about its

future use. These perceptions were seen to be influenced importantly by communications

systems linking decision makers in different nations. Research on deterrence stimulated the

application of social psychology, communications theory, and game theory to military strategy

problems.

As deterrence of national military action came to be treated as one of many efforts to influence

by discouragement, some began to ask why strategic planning did not include efforts to influence

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by encouragement. Thomas Milburn (1959) is one who called attention to the findings of

psychological research that indicate that reward for desired behavior is sometimes more

efficacious than punishment for undesired behavior in influencing human conduct. This kind of

thinking encouraged an integration of research on military policy and research on policy utilizing

other means of influence. [See Military policy; National security; Strategy.]

Disarmament

The overwhelmingly destructive power of nuclear weapons brought renewed interest in

disarmament and arms limitation. Similar concern had been manifested at the time of the Hague

Peace Conference at the turn of the century and also in the late 1920s and early 1930s. But the

complex military technology of the nuclear age encouraged greater participation of physical

scientists in disarmament discussion. Their involvement was partially a result of the obligation

they felt to help control the destructive power they had created. The pages of the Bulletin of

Atomic Scientists provide evidence of increased participation of physicists in arms-control and

disarmament research and discussion. Their contributions to the technology of nuclear-test

detection and nuclear-armament inspection began the development of a technology of nuclear

control.

Disarmament study in the nuclear age also came to be concerned more with research into the

relationship between societies and the organizations for waging war that they create. Machines of

war had come to consume such a high proportion of national product in some nations that the

economic consequences of disarmament were studied. The realization that disarmament would

not bring an end to conflict fostered consideration of alternatives to violence that could be used

for waging conflict in a disarmed world (e.g., Millis et al. 1961). This line of inquiry gradually

brought a subtle but profound evolution in the interests of some international relations scholars,

from concern with the causes of war to study of the causes of peace. [See Disarmament.]

Peace research

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At the outbreak of World War II one of the pioneers in the scientific study of international

relations, Lewis F. Richardson, asserted, There are many anti-war societies, but they are

concerned with propaganda, not research. There is a wide public interest in the subject provided

it is expressed in bold rhetoric, but not if it is a quantitative scientific study involving statistics

and mathematics. There is no appropriate learned society (1960, p. 284).

In the 1960s Richardsons statement would be less true because of the development of the peace

research movement. Aspiring to equal the rigor of the physical sciences in the study of the

necessary and sufficient conditions for peace, the movement was started primarily by social

scientists outside the traditional field of international relations, and physical scientists, also, have

been prominently involved. Examples of the better-known products of the peace research

movement are Conflict and Defense (1962), by Kenneth Boulding, an economist; The Peace

Race (1961), by Seymour Melman, an industrial engineer; and Strategy and Conscience (1964),

by Anatol Rapoport, a mathematical biologist.

The peace research movement set up conferences and associations separate from the meetings of

established professional societies. Peace research organizations, in the form of both professional

associations and research institutes, have been created in a number of nations, primarily in

Europe and North America. These developments have taken place in nations in which social

science is developed most highly. Within the peace research movement considerable effort has

been devoted to the establishment of international collaboration in developing a science of

international peace free from national bias. [See Peace.]

Limited perspective of research

Although international relations research has focused primarily on recent intergovernmental

relations of a few great powers, there are tendencies toward more-inclusive interest, partially

because of increasing interest in the development of general theory. Work on current regional

international systems has made possible modest efforts at comparative international relations.

Historical resources also provide opportunity for comparison (e.g., Rosecrance 1963). In Politics

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and Culture in International History (1960) Adda Bozeman overcomes the customary

preoccupation of international relations scholars with Europe and North America. In a work that

is global in scope, she assesses historical experience in international relations up to a.d. 1500.

Despite these efforts at comparative inquiry, the attention of international relations researchers is

still focused largely on a limited number of current intergovernmental relationsthose with a

high degree of conflict.

International relations research and theorizing has also tended to neglect nongovernmental

international relations. There is considerable justification for the neglect, because of the degree

to which governments dominate international relations and often exercise great control over

nongovernmental international relations. On the other hand, the efforts of governments to control

and to influence nongovernmental international relations suggest that officials may consider

them more important than do scholars. There are numerous cases in which business investment

has had an important effect on international relations, for example, United States business

investment in Latin America. As former colonies have achieved independence, the actual and

perceived influence of business interests of former governing nations has had a vital effect on

intergovernmental relations. Some important research has been done on nongovernmental

international relations, for example, Pools recent work (1965) on the effect of international

travel on national and international images and research by Herbert Kelman (1963) on the

reactions of participants in exchange programs. But nongovernmental international relations tend

not to be incorporated into the more general theoretical work in the field.

Nongovernmental international organizations also have been neglected, although some seventeen

hundred of the approximately nineteen hundred international organizations (excluding

international businesses) are nongovernmental. Studies of European integration have indicated

the importance of international labor and management organizations in European integration.

There are numerous anecdotal accounts of the effects of church organizations and business

corporations on intergovernmental relationships. But there has been no concerted effort to study

the consequences of variation in the number or character of nongovernmental international

organizations on intergovernmental relationships in specific international systems.

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Conceptual issues

The neglect of nongovernmental relations is partially a result of the traditional presumption that

nations are single actors. The tendency to reify nations is diminishing; many writers now assert

that when they say that nations act, this is only a shorthand way of indicating that human beings

act for nations. But it is still customary for scholars to study the activities of all actors for a

specific nation as if they were those of a single actor and to treat instances of contradictory

behavior of different actors, when they are recognized at all, as aberrations.

As more national government departments have become involved in international relations and

as participation in international organizations has increased, the number of sites at which a

nations representatives simultaneously interact with their counterparts from other nations has

greatly increased. The ability of foreign offices to control or even to coordinate foreign policy

seems to be declining. [See Foreign policy.] Assuming that nations are single actors inhibits

investigation of the effects on international relations of variation in the number, location, and

roles of actors that a nation has in the international system. Such variation may importantly affect

the capacity of nations to adjust to and control external change.

Acknowledging that nations have multiple actors in international relations leads one to ask

whom individual actors represent. Wilson was recognized as the representative of the United

States at the Paris Peace Conference, but whom did he actually represent? What portion of a

nations attention and resources can individual national actors or all of a nations actors

command? What portion of a nations attention and resources are commanded by actors not

involved in international relations? These questions lead to the conclusion that nations comprise

a variety of international and domestic actors, both governmental and nongovernmental, all

acting in the name of the nation. Because some of these actors are domestic, they are part of the

environment of the international system. Treating them as environment inhibits the misleading

tendency to subsume total populations, resources, and activities of all nations under the rubric of

international relations simply because virtually all mankind lives within nations. It is clear that

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variation in this environment affects the capacity of international actors to adjust to and control

changes in the international system.

The future

The study of international relations will continue to be affected by the urgency of war and peace

problems and by increasing belief that research can contribute to the understanding and solution

of these problems. International relations research will in the near future be even more affected

by the twentieth-century revolution in social science than it has been in the past. It is probable

that a separate body of international relations theory will not be developed and that international

relations will be a part of the broader theoretical framework of intergroup relations.

It is likely that aspects of international relations will be increasingly incorporated into the

concerns of each of the social sciences. This development can be observed already, for example,

in the pages of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, an interdisciplinary quarterly devoted to

research related to war and peace. It can also be seen in the growing number of sessions devoted

to international relations at the meetings of professional societies of the different social sciences.

The various kinds of human behavior which scholars have traditionally classified as diplomacy

will be dissected and studied as cases of negotiation, legislative behavior, representative

behavior, political socialization, communication, organizational behavior, etc. [See Diplomacy

and Negotiation.] These developments will tend to inhibit the growth of a coherent discipline,

but there will be pressures toward coherence as members of different disciplines collaborate.

This tendency is manifest in a volume edited by Kelman, International Behavior (1965), with

contributions by political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, and an anthropologist. It is also

revealed in the founding of the multidisciplinary International Studies Association in 1959.

As the field of international relations is integrated into the main stream of social science, it may

be expected that the generalizations that international relations scholars advance will be

subjected to rigorous testing through systematic data collection. High-speed computers already

have made possible significant efforts to marshal data on hundreds of national social, political,

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and economic attributes and to analyze their relationship to international relations (see Russett et

al. 1964). Quantitative International Politics (Singer 1967) reveals the growing tendency of

scholars to use rigorous social science techniques for gathering and analyzing data. Scholars will

probably also increase their efforts to gather data through field-research techniques, as a

supplement to documentary sources and statistics provided by governments and international

agencies. (See, e.g., Alger 1965.)

Continued change in patterns of international relations will, of course, intensify the conceptual

problems of the field. The number, size, and importance of intergovernmental organizations and

nongovernmental organizations will grow. The increased importance in international activity of

social units other than nations will require scholars to develop conceptual schemes and theories

that take them into account. This development will be encouraged by the increasing participation

of social scientists other than political scientists in international relations research. It will be

stimulated also by the increasing interest of political scientists in the relationship between

societal characteristics and governmental organization.

It is likely, therefore, that future prescriptions for world order, in contrast to those of the past,

will be concerned more with the development of nongovernmental international relations: What

kind of international society is needed to support certain kinds of central institutions? Can an

international society with certain attributes provide desired restraints on violence and offer

mechanisms for peaceful change, perhaps without highly developed central institutions? Insight

into these questions is likely to be provided by theories of social control generated by research on

intergroup relations in a variety of settings. The pursuit of data to test these theories in

international systems will require the international relations scholar to extend his vision to

phenomena often neglected: tourism, student exchange, trade, cultural exchange, international

nongovernmental organizations (business, religious, philanthropic, professional), international

media, etc.

20

Diligent application of mans scientific skills and resources to the problems of international

relations in the concluding decades of the twentieth century could increase mans capability for

international construction to the point where it will more nearly approximate his highly

developed ability for international destruction.

Chandwick F. Alger

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Alger, Chadwick F. 1965 Personal Contact in Inter-governmental Organizations. Pages 521547

in Herbert Kelman (editor), International Behavior: A Social-psychological Analysis. New York:

Holt.

Bloomfield, Lincoln; and Padelford, Norman J. 1959

Three Experiments in Political Gaming. American Political Science Review 53:11051115.

Boulding, Kenneth E. 1962 Conflict and Defense: A General Theory. A publication of the Center

for Research in Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan. New York: Harper.

Bozeman, Adda B. 1960 Politics and Culture in International History. Princeton Univ. Press.

Brody, Richard A. 1963 Some Systemic Effects of the Spread of Nuclear Weapons Technology:

A Study Through Simulation of a Multi-nuclear Future. Journal of Conflict Resolution 7:663

753.

21

Carr, Edward H. (1939) 1962The Twenty Years Crisis, 19191939: An Introduction to the

Study of International Relations, 2d ed. New York: St. Martins.

Deutsch, Karl W. et al. 1957 Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International

Organization in the Light of Historical Experience. Princeton Univ. Press.

Etzioni, Amitai 1965 Political Unification: A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces. New

York: Holt.

Fox, William T. R. (editor) 1959 Theoretical Aspects of International Relations. Univ. of Notre

Dame Press.

Guetzkow, Harold et al. 1963 Simulation in International Relations: Developments for Research

and Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Haas, Ernst B. 1958 The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 19501957.

Stanford Univ. Press.

Haas, Ernst B. 1964 Beyond the Nation-state: Functionalism and International Organization.

Stanford Univ. Press.

Hoffmann, Stanley (editor) 1960 Contemporary Theory in International Relations. Englewood

Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Kaplan, Morton A. 1957 System and Process in International Politics. New York: Wiley.

22

Kelman, Herbert C. 1963 The Reactions of Participants in a Foreign Specialists Seminar to Their

American Experience. Journal of Social Issues 19, no. 3: 61114.

Kelman, Herbert C. (editor) 1965 International Behavior: A Social-psychological Analysis. New

York: Holt.

Knorr, Klaus E.; and Verba, Sidney (editors) 1961 The International System: Theoretical Essays.

Princeton Univ. Press.

McClelland, Charles A. (1955) 1961 Applications of General Systems Theory in International

Relations. Pages 412420 in James N. Rosenau (editor), International Politics and Foreign

Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory. New York: Free Press. First published in Volume

12 of Main Currents in Modern Thought.

Melman, Seymour 1961 The Peace Race. New York: Ballantine.

Milburn, Thomas W. 1959 What Constitutes Effective Deterrence? Journal of Conflict

Resolution 3:138145.

Millis, Walter et al. 1961 A World Without War. New York: Washington Square Press.

Mitrany, David (1943) 1966 A Working Peace System. Chicago: Quadrangle. The 1966

edition includes additional material dated 19481965.

Morgenthau, Hans J. (1948) 1966 Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace.

4th ed. New York: Knopf.

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Organski, A. F. K. 1958 World Politics. New York: Knopf.

Pool, Ithiel DE Sola 1965 Effects of Cross-national Contact on National and International

Images. Pages 106129 in Herbert C. Kelman (editor), International Behavior: A Social-

psychological Analysis. New York: Holt.

Rapoport, Anatol 1964 Strategy and Conscience. New York: Harper.

Reinsch, Paul S. (1900) 1918 World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century as Influenced

by the Oriental Situation. London: Macmillan.

Richardson, Lewis F. 1960 Arms and Insecurity: A Mathematical Study of the Causes and

Origins of War. Edited by Nicolas Rashevsky and Ernesto Trucco. Pittsburgh: Boxwood.

Published posthumously.

Rosecrance, Richard N. 1963 Action and Reaction in World Politics: International Systems in

Perspective. Boston: Little.

Rosenau, James N. (editor) 1961 International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research

and Theory. New York: Free Press.

Russett, Bruce M. et al. 1964 World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators. New Haven:

Yale Univ. Press.

Schelling, Thomas C. 1960 The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.

24

Schuman, Frederick L. (1933) 1958 International Politics. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Singer, J. David 1962 Deterrence, Arms Control, and Disarmament. Columbus: Ohio State Univ.

Press.

Singer, J. David (editor) 1967 Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence.

International Yearbook of Political Behavior Research, Vol. 6. New York: Free Press.

Snyder, Glenn H. 1961 Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security.

Princeton Univ. Press.

Snyder, Richard C. 1962 Some Recent Trends in International Relations Theory and Research.

Pages 103172 in Austin Ranney (editor), Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics. Urbana:

Univ. of Illinois Press.

Snyder, Richard C.; Bruck, H. W.j and Sapin, Burton 1954 Decision-making as an Approach to

the Study of International Politics. Foreign Policy Analysis Series, Vol. 3. Princeton Univ.,

Organizational Behavior Section.

Snyder, Richard C.; Bruck, H. W.; and Sapin, Burton (editors) 1962 Foreign Policy Decision

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United States Decision to Resist Aggression in Korea: The Application of an Analytical Scheme.

Administrative Science Quarterly 3:341378.

Sprout, Harold H.; and Sprout, Margaret 1962 Foundations of International Politics. Princeton,

N.J.: Van Nostrand.

Sullivan, Denis G. 1963 Towards an Inventory of Major Propositions Contained in

Contemporary Textbooks in International Relations. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern Univ.

Wolfers, Arnold 1962 Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins Press.

Wright, Quincy (1942) 1965 A Study of War. 2d ed. With a commentary on war since 1942.

Univ. of Chicago Press.

Wright, Quincy 1955 The Study of International Relations. New York: Appleton.

II. IDEOLOGICAL ASPECTS

In order to understand the role of ideology in international affairs it is important to distinguish

between ideologies in and theories of international relations. Ideology is the more or less

coherent and consistent sum total of ideas and views on life and the world (belief system,

doctrine, Weltanschauung) that guides the attitudes of actual or would-be power holders: leaders

of political units, such as nation-states or city-states, or of major organizations or movements,

such as churches or political parties. Theory, on the other hand, refers to the more or less

systematic entirety of concepts and ideas about international relations held and developed by

individuals (such as political philosophers). Yet the connection between theories and ideologies

can be close. Leaders, power holders, and movements are often influenced by theorists whose

26

concepts and ideas (although frequently in modified, especially in vulgarized, form) become the

basis of their doctrine. In these instances, ideology can be denned either as the Idea (in the

Hegelian sense) that tries to obtain or succeeds in obtaining Power or, in pragmatic terms, as

theory that has become effective through the medium of social movements or power groups.

Movements or power holders are related to the international environment in two major ways:

either their ideas and attitudes concerning the structure and nature of the world and concerning

their status in the world form part and parcel of their original ideology or they find themselves

subsequently involved in world relations and thus compelled to take a stand. To illustrate from

the history of religious movements: Christianity, at first otherworldly and without its own

international ideology, subsequently developed one (the doctrine of bellum justum, etc.),

whereas Islam, possessing one from the outset, became an expanding, crusading movement right

away.

In regard to the specific character of international ideologies, we may distinguish between

world-revolutionary ideologies and all others. Great political movements, in initial stages of

success, often develop ideas and expectations of the complete and imminent transformation of

the world, including the international environment. The ideologies of both the French and the

Bolshevist revolutionaries had such chiliastic expectations during the early phase of their

respective revolutions. When these expectations fail to materialize, the world-revolutionary

ideology usually changes into an ideology more or less closely tied to the power requirements of

the respective units.

Examples of both types of ideology, the world-revolutionary and the more pragmatic, will occur

in the survey of historical development that follows. From the vast number of internationally

relevant ideologies this survey will select significant ones in three different areas: that of

religious movements and churches (Islam, Christianity), that of democratic movements and

attitudes (pacific democracy, democratic nationalism, economic liberalism, and

27

internationalism), and that of (in the Western sense) undemocratic or antidemocratic doctrines

and movements (integral nationalism, imperialism, and communism).

Historical development

A definition of ideology as a system of thoughts and beliefs that becomes effective in

movements or power units implies a connection between ideology and masses. We hardly

speak of ideology in reference to the motivations of a ruler in the age of monarchical absolutism,

even where he is motivated by certain theories (such as that of raison d tat) in his foreign

policy. But we speak meaningfully of ideology where nationalism or socialist ideas imbue entire

populations. Ideology thus seems to have emerged when, in an age of modernization and the

spread of literacy, masses were being mobilized for the support of movements and policiesthat

is, in Europe, approximately with the French Revolution. Prior to the rise of the masses to

political influence, publics were usually passive followers of elites, which, in turn, were little

affected by ideology. However, where efforts are made to instill over-all ideas and attitudes even

into passive publics, or where both elites and masses are equally imbued with ideas leading to

action, we may also legitimately speak of ideology. Such, in premodern times, was often the

function of religious movements.

Islam

A prime example of the tremendous effect ideology can have on world affairs is offered by

Islam. In contrast to more otherworldly religions, Islam from the outset regarded its function as

this-worldly, proselytizing, and crusading. Its aim was to spread its creed over the entire world.

The world was ultimately to be ruled by one ruler, the imam, whose authority was at once

secular and religious. Until this goal was reached, a ceaseless holy war of conquest (jihad) was to

be the instrument of the universalization of religion as well as of the expansion of secular

control.

This universalism and exclusivism gave the early expansion of Islam its explosive force. The

jihad was a just war to transform the Dr ul-Harb (the world of war, outside Islam, inhabited

28

by unbelievers) into the Dr ul-Islm (the world controlled by Islam); participation in it

guaranteed the believer paradise. This ideology is the prototype of all doctrines of universal

causes, where the world has to be saved and mankind is divided into those saved and those

damned. It cannot recognize, as Islam did not, the equal status or coexistence of other

communities. Therefore, a state of war, not peace, was the normal relationship between Muslims

and non-Muslims, and even when the initial expansion of Islam had reached its limits, only short

intervals of nonwar (up to ten years) were permitted. Subsequently, during what the Western

world came to call the Middle Ages, an uneasy coexistence was established among the two

Islamic empires and the two Christian empires, complete with balances of power, negotiations,

treaties, and even a good deal of mutual toleration. Ideologically, however, nonrecognition of the

dar al-harb continued to be a principle of Muslim doctrine [seeIslam].

Christianity

Christianity, like Islam, aimed at converting all mankind to its creed. But its efforts were less

concentrated in time and space, warlike expansion or attempts at expansion occurring only

intermittently (for example, Charlemagnes conversion of the Saxons, the Crusades, some

aspects of the expansion of European powers into the non-European world during the age of

discoveries). This universalist and proselytizing ideology had a lesser impact for two reasons.

One was that Christianity, like Hinduism, arose as an otherworldly creed, concerned with the

inner man and the salvation of his soul rather than with establishing the millennium in this

world. Thus, even after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, when an ideology of the

political and spiritual unity of Christendom became established, the Christian polity was

conceived as one of peace, even in its relation with the world at large, and war was considered

justified on specific grounds only (bellum justum, for example, as defense against an inflicted

injury). Under these categories, wars against infidels, crusades to recover the Holy Land,

were at times found to be just wars, but the idea of an incessant state of holy war with the

non-Christian world remained alien to Christianity even at the height of its universalist phase.

The second reason Christianitys universalism remained less potent, in ideology as well as in

practice, was that Western Christendom split into secular and spiritual contenders for supremacy.

Two universalist ideologies, that of the empire and that of the papacy, neutralized each other, the

29

result being a decline in the universalist idea and in the universalist powers in favor of the rising

territorial state.

There remained aftereffects of Christian ideology, the most lasting, perhaps, being its pacifist,

nonviolent component. Although never fully accepted into the main churches, Christian

pacifism remained an undercurrent in more or less esoteric sects and denominations through the

Middle Ages and modern times, coming to the fore in nineteenth-century peace movements as

well as in twentieth-century integral or nuclear pacifism (for example, the unilateralists in the

British disarmament movement). Here it often merges with secular ideologies of similar nature

and purpose [seeChristianity].

Pacific democracy

The modern European state, established on the ruins of medieval Christian universalism, did not

at first develop an international ideology of its own. The idea of civitas maxima, of a common

bond encompassing all mankind, paled before the interests and conflicts of sovereign powers,

which, run by small elites of rulers and their aristocratic and bureaucratic aides, could afford to

be unconcerned about the ideas and attitudes of people at large. The doctrine of raison d tat,

according to which each unit should consider its specific national interests as guideposts for

action, determined the policies of these rulers without the intervention of significant ideology,

unless one discerns such an ideology in the attenuating idea that some European equilibrium, or

balance of power, should be maintained in the chaos of power politics.

With the rise of the European middle classes, however, ideas concerning the role that the

people should play in the affairs of their countries came to the fore. Democratic ideology, the

claim of the people to be the ultimate power in a given unit, produced two ideologies of

international affairs, that of democratic nationalism and that of pacific democracy.

The latter arose from a contrasting of democratic aims and ideals with what are thought to be the

results of nondemocracy in foreign affairs. Nondemocratic systems and their policies are said to

30

result in perpetual conflict and war, since their elites are interested in their own prestige, glory,

and the aggrandizement of their domain, and not in the welfare of the people. The ideology of

pacific democracy considers this the deepest cause of the ancient and tragic story of warring

mankind. Once the people take over the control of their destiny, all this will change radically: the

people at large can only suffer from war, their basic common interest being in peace, and thus

universal peace will result from the spread of democratic government over the world. This

antinomy of warlike authoritarianism and peace-loving democracy was announced by a

spokesman of the first great modern republican revolution, Thomas Paine, was taken up by

Jefferson, and can be followed through to Woodrow Wilson (World War I fought to make the

world safe for democracy and, in this way, to end all wars); it is still an important part of

Western democractic ideology [see Pacifism].

Democratic nationalism

Early nationalism is closely related to democratic ideology. Indeed, it may be said to arise

logically from democratic premises: exactly as under domestic democracy individuals become

self-determining on a basis of equality, internationally, the groups in which individuals are said

to congregate naturallynationalitiesassert the right to become self-determining, free, and

equal nation-states. Accordingly, the right of each nationality to establish itself as an independent

political unit is proclaimed as the decisive principle of a new world order. Past systems and

policies, under which dynastic rulers disregarded ethnic groups, cut them up, shifted populations

hither and thither regardless of their wishes, are said to have led to constant conflict and war.

With the recognition of national self-determination and the rise of nationalities to state-hood,

international relations will be radically trans-formed. According to the ideologists of early

nationalism (Herder, Fichte, Mazzini), nations organized ethnically will live in peace and

harmony with one another because none need aspire to anything the others have. Such nations

are endowed each with its peculiar traits (souls, according to political romanticism); they

blossom when free and not interfered with; they are diverse but not superior or inferior, equal in

their right to cultural fulfillment. Early nationalism, in intent and ideology, thus is pacific,

humanitarian, equalitarian, and adverse to national expansionism and domination.

31

In its subsequent development nationalism has been beset by two major problems; one is the

tendency to develop into the opposite of its original ideology, namely, an exclusivist and

aggressive integral nationalism (see below), the other concerns the difficulty of agreeing on a

simple and unequivocal criterion of what constitutes a nationality group, or nation. In

particular, could the relatively clear-cut ethniccultural criteria of European nationality groups be

applied to non-European populations? Or would racial, linguistic, religious, or other standards be

controlling? With the rise of the new countries to independence, the problem has become of

crucial importance. What defines an African nation? Is there an Arab nation? Or one of the

Maghreb? Or a Malayan one? In this respect, no unequivocal ideology has as yet been developed

by the leaders or populations of the new units. There is some tendency to substitute larger units

for nationalities. Thus, in Africa, some advocate that entire continents should form the basic

international units of the future, whereas others want to unite on the basis of race (ngritude), and

still others (probably the majority) trust the development of an artificially established unit (based

on colonial boundary lines) into genuine nationhood [seeNationalism].

In general, the nationalism of the new nations still partakes of the characteristics of democratic

nationalism, Even where expressed in negative terms (anti-imperialism, anticolonialism), its

emphasis is on each nations right to a separate national identity. Indeed, through its opposition

to ideologies and policies of racial or similar superiority, has made equalitarian nationalism into

a truly niversalist ideology. Of this and other adaptations to twentieth-century conditions, the

foreign-policy ideology developed by Jawaharlal Nehru in India is an outstanding example.

Nehru believed that a peaceful world of diverse nations is attainable; indeed, it is necessary to

attain it, because the new nature of weapons and war and the rising demands of all people for

basic needs and services no longer admit of the old game of power politics. But two centuries of

applied nationalism have also shown that the harmonious result expected by the earlier

nationalist ideology will not materialize easily. Mutual fear drives even self-determining nations

into conflict; fear feeds on fear. A radical change of attitudes is therefore demanded from leaders

and people, in particular vis--vis ones opponent. Gandhis principles of toleration and

avoidance of violence here influence Indian ideology. It assumes that in most situations violence

32

can be avoided by the application of the five principles of Panchshila (mutual respect for

territory, nonaggression, noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and

peaceful coexistence). However redundant these principles are, they indicate the thrust of an

ideology that insists on the desirability and feasibility of peaceful international relations even

though it realistically recognizes the elements of conflict and strife. To cope with the latter, non-

alignment is advisable for nations not desiring to be drawn into the competition between major

powers and blocs; this will, so it is hoped, not only protect the neutrals but also contribute to

the attenuation of conflicts and provide the world with conciliators [seeNeutralism and

nonalignment].

Economic liberalism

In addition to pacific democracy and nationalism, there was in the nineteenth century the rise of

a third ideology of international peace and harmony, that of economic liberalism. The

Manchester school (Cobden, Bright) and other free traders advocated the liberalization of world

economic relations not only for its economic benefits but also because they were convinced that

only in this way could the political conflicts of nations be eliminated. Thus, like pacific

democracy and nationalism, this ideology is characterized by its monocausal nature; one major

factor (in this instance, economic nationalism or mercantilism) accounts for the ills of the past:

power politics, conflicts, wars. Abolish the cause (in this instance, eliminate the barriers in the

path of free exchange of goods and free migration), and political boundaries will become less

vital and people and nations the world over interested in peaceful relations rather than in conflict

and aggrandizement.

In more recent times, policies of foreign aid and development have often been connected with

similar expectations: through such policies the emerging poor nations and populations of the

world will be enabled to trade on an equal basis with the developed industrial countries; this way

the gap between the affluent North and the destitute South will be closed and the otherwise

threatening conflict between the impoverished and the rich turned into a beneficial common war

against poverty.

33

Internationalism

Although a monocausal approach often leads to dogmatism and fanaticism (one has the key to

the correct interpretation of world affairs; therefore, one insists that only this key be used to open

the door to the worlds improvement), in the course of the nineteenth century many strands of the

three pacific ideologies outlined above managed to unite in what may be called the mildly

internationalist ideology of virtually all the more progressive forces in the Western world: the

labor movement in its various groupings, portions of the trading and industrial (business) elites,

Christian and other churches, and the general humanitarian peace movement. The aim of this

ideology was, and still is, a world in which nation-states continue to be the primary units of

international affairs; where, ideally, all are ruled democratically and all are nationally self-

determining; and where they settle their disputes peacefully through mediation, arbitration, and

the use of international law in a setting of growing contact and cooperation. The experience of

two world wars added first the League of Nations and then the United Nations to the list of

instruments for the maintenance or enforcement of the peace. The same experience has led other

internationalists to advocate more fundamental changes in international relations. Regionalism

seeks the federation or integration of the traditional nation-states into larger and more viable

units on the pattern of the European integration movement, in order to overcome the increasing

splintering of the world of the new countries into an ever larger number of nations still claiming

sovereign equality. Still more radically, world federalists and others advocate the more or less

complete subordination of national sovereignties to a world government, above all for the

protection of world order in a disarmed world.

This optimistic world rule of law approach, especially in its more moderate version, has

characterized much in the attitudes of American, British, and other nations toward international

affairs over the last hundred years. But it has been disturbed time and again by the shattering

violence of opposite forces and contrary ideologies.

Integral nationalism and imperialism

34

In the age of the masses, elements that were intent on domination and aggrandizement had to

oppose ideologies of the peace and equality of nations with counterideologies of their own. It

would no longer do merely to voice principles of power politics. People at large had to be

convinced that what was done in their name was right. Thus, toward the end of the nineteenth

century, there arose in the major Western countries ideologies that undertook to justify

expansion, colonialism, and racism by asserting natural superiorities and inferiorities of

nations or races and by proclaiming that ones own group (nation, race) was by nature the

superior one and was therefore entitled to control, or at least to lead, others. This claim may be

expressed in a doctrine of the white mans burden to raise the other races of mankind to his

level of civilization or in a theory of the manifest destiny of the Anglo-Saxon variety of white

man to control the North American continent. It may extol the role of the Japanese to shape the

destiny of Asia or, in its most radical form, may proclaim an Aryan supremacy over the entire

world.

The last was the ideology of Hitlerism, whose social Darwinism was probably the only

genuine belief system that underpinned the policies of conquest and extermination carried on by

the Nazi regime. Social Darwinism, the application (or, rather, misapplication) of Darwinian

principles to international relations, sees mankind divided into racial groups, all, like animal

species, engaged in ceaseless struggle for survival; victory shows who is fittest and deserves to

dominate. This emphasis on strife and glorification of war and victory in war became the

hallmark of the ideology of that integral nationalism into which the earlier equalitarian and

humanitarian nationalism was transformed in many countries, most significantly, perhaps, in the

ideology of Italian fascism, which proclaimed that peace is a sheeps paradise where nations

decay, whereas war brings out the virile virtues [seeFascism; National socialism].

Communism

Of all recent ideologies, that of communism has, perhaps, had the most profound bearing on

world affairs. Communist ideology goes back to Marx, although original Marxism had relatively

little in the way of a theory of international relations, stating that all class societies produce wars,

that wars represent conflicts, not of nations but of their ruling classes, in which the ruled are used

35

for mere cannon fodder, and that the classless society to be established through the solidarity

and the world-wide struggle of the proletariat will do away with war, merging nations in socialist

brotherhood.

This ideal, as an expectation, was shared by all inheritors of the Marxian doctrine. They split,

however, over the question of how to attain it. Democratic socialism, by and large, came to share

the tenets of moderate internationalism (see above); communism condemned this approach as

bourgeois illusion, substituting for it Lenins doctrine of imperialism.

Lenin held that imperialism, the expansion of capitalist countries and interests all over the world,

marks the final phase of the capitalist system. The conflicts imperialism produces derive from

competition over markets, investment opportunities, sources of raw material, and cheap labor;

they are, therefore, inherent in the system that thus, sooner or later, results in world-wide wars

among the imperialist powers. These wars will afford the proletariat, allied with the exploited

masses of the colonial and semicolonial world, a chance for world revolution and for the

transformation of capitalism into socialism.

Lenins theory, by way of self-fulfilling prophecy, became the ideology of victorious

Bolshevism. But the Soviet rulers were soon confronted with a novel question: when, contrary to

their initial world-revolutionary expectations, the revolution failed to sweep the world, the

problem of the relation between the two worlds of socialism (communism) and imperialism

became crucial. There was no doubt in their mindsas there is none todaythat the conflict was

irreconcilable, that it would become global, and that it would end in the world-wide victory of

communism. But communist ideology has been wavering and unclear about the strategy to be

used for the attainment of this goal.

Lenin had commented upon inevitable collisions between Soviets and encircling imperialists.

Stalin harped variably on peaceful coexistence and the danger of capitalist aggression.

Toward the end of his rule, although he reiterated, in Leninist fashion, the inevitability of wars

36

among imperialist powers, he was inclined to consider war between the two camps avoidable in

view of the increased strength of the Soviet camp. Khrushchev, claiming that Soviet nuclear

might could now deter imperialist countries not only from attacking communist ones but also

from warring among themselves, pronounced Lenins doctrine of the inevitability of war

outdated by developments; there is no fatalistic inevitability; peaceful co-existence now and

eventual nonviolent transition from capitalism to socialism are possible and, since major war

threatens the survival of all, preferable. Class struggle on the international plane will continue in

the form of economic and ideological competition.

The Chinese communist leadership, on the other hand, while not adhering strictly to the thesis of

the inevitability of war either, insists that imperialist aggression can be deterred only by firm,

energetic policy. The Chinese claim that a low risk policy emphasizing peaceful coexistence

merely threatens to encourage such aggression. On the issue of internal revolutions, especially in

the underdeveloped world (colonial and similar wars of liberation), Mao Tse-tungs ideology

stresses the necessity of violence and the responsibility of the communist camp to aid and assist

revolutionary forces all over the world. Here, too, Soviet ideology asserts the possibility of

peaceful transitions.

Hence, contrary to the dogmatism with which the ideological dispute appears to be carried on,

the chief differences between the Chinese and Soviet leaders actually concern issues of strategy

and tacticsin particular, the degree of militancy needed to pursue their ideological goals. Both

sides agree on the need for the doctrinal unity of the camp. As often before in the history of

ideology, inability to agree on who decides in case of doctrinal disunity has led to the actual

split, with the Chinese rejecting the Soviet leaderships claim to ideological primacy

[seeCommunism; Marxism].

The role of ideology

The foregoing has made clear the impact of ideology on world affairs. Especially in recent times,

there are few issues not carried on in an ideological framework; observerspractitioners as well

37

as theoreticianshave, therefore, focused their attention on the problem of cause and effect. Are

ideologies major causes of events and policies or are they secondary phenomena, slogans

explaining, justifying, or veiling that which really underlies events, namely, strategic,

economic, and other interests of nations and power groups? Marxism, for example, which itself

has given rise to one of historys most powerful ideologies, plays down ideology as the mere

superstructure of economic and class interests. Similarly disparaging attitudes have been

expressed by such dissimilar actors as Hitler, Nehru, and de Gaulle.

It is easy to discover interests behind ideology, and the realistic trend in recent theory of

international politics, emphasizing power and national interest, may account for the prevalence

of this interpretation. But it needs more study and refinement, for example, distinction between

movements aspiring to power, where the impact of ideology seems often stronger than that of

interest (accounting for the Utopian elements in such movements), and groups in power, which

are more often and more strongly swayed by interests.

Even there, however, policies are only rarely conducted in entirely unideological fashion. They

proceed in an environment of ideas, if not ideologies, which shapes the outlook and action of

leaders and/or people. All policy is affected by the way in which reality is perceived. There is

usually no uniform perception; even the most realistic statesman sees the world through some

prism, if not in blinkers, applying his own interpretative framework to foreign affairs. Thus

communist leaders, however realistic and cold-blooded they may be in their approach to world

affairs, see the world in terms of class conflict, divided into aggressive and peace-loving

forces. Even supposing that Stalin at some point had come to free himself completely from

ideological considerations, viewing the world in terms of power interests exclusively, he could

not have helped communicating with party, people, and communists abroad through the concepts

and in the parlance of communism. Ideology similarly has affected the present SinoSoviet

conflict, which, obvious underlying conflicts of interests notwithstanding, would otherwise

hardly be carried on in its peculiar acrimonious fashion, pulling into its vortex communist

countries and parties all over the world.

38

Research problems

Although a good deal of attention is being paid to specific ideological problems (for example, the

SinoSoviet dispute), the general and fundamental study of the relation of ideology to interests

and of ideologys impact on policy is undoubtedly on the agenda of needed analysis and

research. In this connection, attention should be paid not only to the national interestthe

overriding political interest of the whole nationbut also to economic, social, and other special

interests of subgroups within a nation. Careful and detailed research into the relation of specific

ideologies to specific class, group, or national interests at a given time and place would seem to

be more fruitful than speculations about general causal connections between national interests

and broad ideologies.

More specifically, the following research areas might be explored: the impact of international

events on ideologies (for example, the rise of new centers of power, bipolarity giving way to

multipolarity in the international system and the influence of this transformation on the major

ideologies); the interplay of different ideologies (for example, communism and the nationalism

of the emerging nations); the difference in degree of the impact of ideologies on foreign policy

(for example, in totalitarian as contrasted with liberaldemocratic regimes); the extent to which

publics share in the ideologies of leaders and the ways in which leaders try to mobilize

ideological support for foreign policies; the way in which ideology affects the leaders

assessment of national interests. Also, a typology of international ideologies might be

undertaken.

Analysis of this sort could conceivably affect policies. Study of ideology enables one to

understand other peoples blinkers and eventually, perhaps, ones own. This way the West

might come to understand communist policy as based, in part at least, on fears rather than

inherent aggressiveness; and communist countries might better understand the preoccupations of

the West, particularly in the light of the gradual erosion of ideology that some observers see in

the communist world. A resulting deideologization of foreign policies might dampen their

emotional, crusading character, reducing tensions to conflicts over interest, where compromise is

easier to achieve than in ideological struggle. The realization of the danger in which nuclear

39

weapons have placed all mankind might contribute to deideologization (as apparently it has done

in recent Soviet policy), thereby furnishing one perspective of reality common to all. With the

dusk of ideology we might eventually witness the dawn of a true theory and practice of peace.

John H. Herz

[See alsoColonialism; Ideology; Imperialism; Revolution; Social movements.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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40

Hersch, Jeanne 1956 Idologies et ralite: Essai dorientation politique. Paris: Plon.

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III. PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS

During the 1950s, a new and rather vigorous area of specialization emerged that might loosely be

called the social psychology of international relations. The exact boundaries of this emerging

field are hard to define, and it necessarily s