Помощничек
Главная | Обратная связь


Археология
Архитектура
Астрономия
Аудит
Биология
Ботаника
Бухгалтерский учёт
Войное дело
Генетика
География
Геология
Дизайн
Искусство
История
Кино
Кулинария
Культура
Литература
Математика
Медицина
Металлургия
Мифология
Музыка
Психология
Религия
Спорт
Строительство
Техника
Транспорт
Туризм
Усадьба
Физика
Фотография
Химия
Экология
Электричество
Электроника
Энергетика

OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS



AS A FIELD OF STUDY

The line dividing a historian's approach to international relations from that of a social scientist is not as clear-cut as the comments above would indicate, for historians frequently attempt to uncover patterns of behavior and elements of recurrence in diplomatic relations, while many political scientists hold that the most valid approach to the subject is careful description of events that are as­sumed to be unique. In fact, a review of the history of this field of study reveals that most work has used a historical, descriptive, and developmental (analyzing the conditions that caused or helped bring about certain events or ideas) ap­proach.

The earliest writings on international relations were largely concerned with proffering practical advice to policy makers. The Chinese philosopher Men-cius in the fourth century B.C., Kautilya, a prime minister under the Indian emperor Chandragupta (326-298 B.C.), and Niccolo Machiavelli wrote works that are studied today for their insight into the kinds of problems that still confront statesmen. But the main purpose of these authors was not so much to provide general analyses of the relations between states as to offer advice on the most effective forms of statecraft. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, diplomatic memoirs, studies on military thought and strategy, and works on international law proliferated. Few authors took the trouble to analyze the behavior of governments in their external relations from a systematic and de­tached vantage, although a number of observers did suggest that the "balance of power" was a more or less fundamental law of politics at the international level.4 There were many philosophers, statesmen, lawyers, and military officials who claimed they knew what was wrong with the world and devised schemes for overcoming these deficiencies. It was not until the twentieth century that attempts at systematic analysis appeared.

Scholars in the United States first began to take serious interest in inter­national problems following America's involvement in Asian and European poli­tics at the turn of the century. Their studies, as well as those of many Europeans before World War I, were oriented largely to analysis of treaties and principles

4 See Per Mauserth, "Balance of Power Thinking from the Renaissance to the French

Revolution,"/оттм' of Peace Research, No. 2 (1964), 120-36.

7 Approaches to the Study of International Politics

of international law. They were typically legalistic and moral in tone, based on the assumptions that most disputes were raised to be settled, that the "shrink­ing" world was making people more "internationalist," and that peace and stabil­ity could be constructed through the extension of democracy or the construction of international institutions, such as a world court, with power to enforce their decisions. International laws of neutrality and warfare and the problems of arbi­tration and disarmament were the main subjects considered in courses and texts in international relations.

Academic studies in the 1920s largely continued to expand on the prewar perspectives, although establishment of the League of Nations gave observers something new to write about. Institutes dedicated to the study of international law and organization were formed in Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. Articles in scholarly journals contained lengthy descriptions of interna­tional conferences and treaties, while popular and academic analysts presented innumerable commentaries on the proceedings of the League of Nations. Aside from these descriptive studies—from which one could deduce few generaliza­tions—most work in the field during this decade had a normative orientation: Writers were less concerned with the variables or conditions affecting govern­ment behavior in external relations than with judging the policies of states ac­cording to their own values. The only new development in courses and texts, aside from the analyses of the League of Nations, was an emphasis on description of the "background" conditions of current international affairs.

Hitler's violent assault on the postwar order had important consequences on the ways in which scholars in the international-relations field approached their subject. Many observers became impatient with the descriptive, moralistic, and legalistic orientation of the 1920s and realized that, as important as treaties and international organizations were to international relations, objectives such as security and expansion, processes such as trade and diplomacy, and means such as propaganda and subversion had to be studied as well. Hence, while one group of scholars and commentators continued to emphasize the traditional concerns of law, institutions, and current affairs, another branched off to begin more systematic and comparative studies of objectives, processes, and means, as well as those "basic forces" (as they were then called) assumed to affect a state's foreign-policy behavior. These studies assessed the phenomenon of na­tionalism, the influence of geography on a country's foreign policy, and particu­larly the effect of "power" (or lack of it) on a nation's fate. Not infrequently, these same people were concerned with the strategies the democracies should adopt to ward off the threats posed by Hitler's Germany.

Most important, writers in this school attempted to become more analyti­cal by defining concepts, exploring some ancient myths about international poli­tics, and emphasizing the extent to which all states were equally interested in certain values and interests, such as security, power, territory, or peace. While these analysts remained occupied with current problems and described in detail the foreign policies of major powers, behind their teaching and research was

8Approaches to the Study of International Politics

the idea that detailed description should be used not only to acquaint the reader or student with facts, but also to illustrate some generalizations or theories about international politics. The emphasis in the classroom and in texts thus turned from efforts to inculcate in students certain attitudes about international politics ("We must strengthen the League of Nations") to creating understanding about reality, leaving the student to form his or her own judgments about the best ways to deal with contemporary problems.

Since the end of World War II, the study of international relations has seen important changes. With the development of basic animosities between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Middle East states, and China and its neighbors, the creation of weapons of mass destruction, and the rise of more than ninety new states, policy makers have had to cope with extremely difficult, dangerous, and, in some cases, unprecedented problems. Most academics, no matter how concerned with creating a scientific field of study, could not avoid becoming involved in the great policy and ethical issues of the day. Yet a definite trend away from descriptions, legal analysis, and policy advice has developed in the field. Its objective has not been to assess the main issues in the cold war or describe current international developments, but to create explanatory theories about international phenomena and, in some cases, even to propose the development of a general and predictive "science" of international relations. It is now possible to identify at least five different, if overlapping, "schools" of scholars who study international phenomena. The distinctions among these groups are not entirely clear, but the main differences arise over (1) the subjects to be studied, (2) the methods of analysis, and (3) the purposes of inquiry.

CURRENT "SCHOOLS" OF STUDY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Traditional Analysis

The first group includes those scholars who are continuing the traditional, pre­dominantly descriptive, analysis of international politics and institutions: various states' foreign policies, certain international "problems," and international insti­tutions. They analyze the historical and constitutional development of the United Nations or describe the results of international conferences dealing with such topics as the international law of the sea, control of narcotics smuggling, or nuclear strategy in NATO. Their purposes are essentially to report and analyze current international problems and to speculate on the sources and outcomes of various policy alternatives for specific states or for international organizations.

The Strategists

The second group, which has proliferated dramatically since 1945, might be called the "strategists." Their main concern has been to understand the logic of deterrence in the nuclear age, to analyze the impact of new weapons systems

9 Approaches to the Study of International Politics

on deterrence, and to develop strategies to maximize national security while minimizing the possibility of nuclear war. The methods have ranged from logical analysis to the elucidation of policy alternatives inferred from the results of war games and game theory. Although much of this work has been essentially analytical, its policy implications have been great. In some cases, academic studies have become the basis of adopted military strategies; in others, they have pro­vided rationalizations for decisions made by military leaders, or critiques of these decisions.

The Grand Theorists

Hans J. Morgenthau, in his classic treatise Politics Among Nations (1948), was the major developer of what might be called the "grand theory" of international politics. Unlike his predecessors, who saw their task mainly as reporting on current events or pushing for their favorite peace panacea, Morgenthau argued that the diverse data of international politics could be made coherent within the terms of a model of power politics. His major contribution was to show (1) that the field must seek to establish generalizations, not remain focused on unique events; (2) that interstate relations, in their essence, display patterns of behavior and recurrence; and (3) that the core of the subject is to explore the sources of state behavior (the search for power) and the resulting patterns of relations (the balance of power). A number of political scientists have subse­quently developed their own "grand theories," which have made the field signifi­cantly more coherent than in the past. These theorists have emphasized such concepts as equilibrium, decision making, systems, and communications models as the central organizing devices for the field. Like Morgenthau, they have as­sumed that the most important aspects of foreign policy and international pro­cesses could be understood or explained by a single concept or set of interrelated concepts.

Middle-Range Theory

A fourth group of scholars has as its major purpose the empirical exploration of selected aspects of international politics and foreign policy. This group is prob­lem-oriented, searching for precise description and explanation of specific phe­nomena. Theory, for these scholars, serves primarily as a source of hypotheses to be tested, rather than as a device for organizing the entire field. The subjects to be explored go far beyond the traditional concerns of international relations scholars, who focused on law, institutions, or current events. This new research delves into such questions as: How are foreign-policy decisions arrived at? How do "images," stereotypes, and ideologies affect policy makers' perceptions of reality and, consequently, their choices among alternative courses of action? How do policy makers react in periods of great stress, in crisis situations? Is a strategy of bargaining in which one side threatens to punish more effective than one in which it offers rewards? How do trust and suspicion affect the propensity of governments to enter into cooperative ventures? What conditions

10 Approaches to the Study of International Politics

are most conducive to escalation in a crisis situation? What social, economic, and political conditions are most conducive to successful supranational integra­tion? Is there a relationship between the amount of violence within a state and the amount of violence that that state employs in its external relations? Other scholars are involved in research that should tell us much more than we now know about the consequences of interdependence on national economic policy making, the origins and types of international conflicts, the conditions under which alliances are formed or disintegrate, and the relationship between the construction of alliances and the outbreak or incidence of war. As answers to these questions become available through systematic and comparative re­search, middle-range theories explaining specific phenomena are developing. If we do not yet have a "grand theory" of international politics, scholars have at least developed the components of, let us say, a theory of arms races or crisis decision making.

Some members of this group argue that the ultimate purpose of scientific analysis is not just explanation but prediction, and, they maintain, reliable predic­tions can be made only if the main variables affecting political behavior have been identified and relationships among the variables specified. These scholars might point out that economists can predict, once the relationship between variables is known, the general consequences of a lowering of bank interest rates, a rise in the supply of money, or an increase in public demand for a product.*What would economists predict about a lowering of bank interest rates? Certainly not that John Smith or Jane White would apply for loans. But they could estimate that in the economy as a whole, there would be an increase of 5 percent in the volume of borrowing if interest rates were lowered by .25 percent. In other words, they can predict classes of events, not individual incidents of that class. Similarly, proponents of a predictive science of international politics claim that when enough basic propositions about the behavior of policy makers, states, and international systems have been tested and verified through rigorous research methods, predictive statements about classes of events and trends can be put forward with reasonable confidence. Although we all make casual predic­tions about specific events in foreign policy or international politics, a number of scholars have already made or tested propositions useful for understanding or predicting behavior in recurring situations. For example, the results of psycho­logical experiments and historical research suggest that in times of crisis and high tension, policy makers tend to perceive and consider fewer alternative courses of action than when they are not under stress. On a broader scale, we can predict that alliances will tend to disintegrate if the members of the alliance cease to perceive a common potential enemy.

Notice that these statements are not laws; they do not state that ir the next international crisis Prime Minister X will perceive only one course о action open to him or that NATO will be dissolved next year. They are, rather probability or tendency statements about classes of events. Exceptions can anc will occur, but experimentation or careful analysis of data has established that

11 Approaches to the Study of International Politics

in most instances, the dependent variable (perception of fewer alternatives or disintegration of alliances) can be predicted from knowledge of the state of the independent variable (level of tension or stress and degree of perception of a common enemy).

In order to conduct research into such questions, old methods of inquiry that relied primarily upon analysis of documents and treaties are no longer adequate. Investigators find it difficult to observe policy makers in action, and they are too impatient to wait forty to fifty years until all the documents are available. Moreover, many aspects of foreign policy making, diplomatic bargain­ing, or handling of international conflicts remain undocumented. Thus, scholars have recently fashioned a number of research tools that enable them to formulate and test propositions about their subject without having to go through meticulous documentary examination. The computer, which can analyze the contents and themes of thousands of documents in minutes once a key or dictionary has been formulated, is one important research aid. Surveys and interviews help to obtain information of public attitudes about international problems. Scholars have developed games or simulations of international politics that can be played by anyone. The researchers build into a game many features of reality, so that the pressures faced by lay "policy makers" (often undergraduate students) be­come to a certain extent similar to those faced by real policy makers. By observing the students' behavior (for example, when they decide to go to war; how they construct alliances, react to a major scientific breakthrough, Handle conflicts, or solve the age-old problem of meeting domestic economic demands while providing arms for security) and by controlling certain aspects of "reality," the investigators are able to test propositions in a manner that would take years of research in government archives. As developed primarily by economists and psychologists, games can also be helpful in examining the conditions and varia­bles, such as trust, suspicion, risk, rewards, or degree of communication, that affect bargaining behavior.

The systematic collection of data to test hypotheses has also been a feature of the work of this fourth group. Scholars in the past often arrived at generalizations on the basis of anecdotal evidence. For example, by citing the long history of French attempts to secure defensive frontiers against Germany and Italy, some scholars claimed that the (or a) basic source of foreign policy is a country's geographical location. This universal proposition was derived from examination of only one case. Or, more recently, citing the cases of Ghana or Indonesia, scholars have claimed that fluctuations in the prices of export com­modities sold by developing nations have a great impact on the political stability of those countries. Researchers are now investigating propositions like these by employing data gathered from large samples of nations. The purpose is to see if there is any mathematical relationship between the quantified independent variables (in the two cases, geographic location and size of trade losses), and the. dependent variables (various aspects of a country's foreign policy and the amount of political stability). Studies of this type, which presently predominate

12 Approaches to the Study of International Politics

in academic circles, must be based on extensive data, including facts and figures about the countries' size, population, GNP, rate of economic development, liter­acy, defense spending, internal violence, foreign-policy actions, and the like.

"Peace Research"

The fifth type of scholarship combines the main characteristics of traditional analysis and empirical study—that is, it is deeply concerned with the problems of peace and war but argues that these can never be understood and ultimately controlled unless a vast amount of reliable knowledge about the subject is first cheated. The objective of the research is clearly normative—devising ways to control processes leading to violence—and the techniques are scientific and systematic. This type of scholarship has earned the unfortunate title of "peace research," a term that creates in the minds of the general public and government officials the notion of fuzzy-minded, naive intellectuals pontificating from their ivory towers about the ways to secure everlasting peace. Some of the work, however, has made important contributions to our understanding of such prob­lems as the processes leading to war; escalation of violence; the relationship between individual personality characteristics and the phenomena of bigotry, prejudice, and national hostility; the economic consequences of disarmament and arms control programs; and the sources of public attitudes toward foreign countries and alien cultures. Whether the findings of these studies will ever be reflected in public policy remains to be seen. Much of the scholarly work on arms control and disarmament in the United States has been made available to the government, and a large amount is being undertaken by government officials themselves or by independent scholars under government contract. Other areas of "peace research" have not yet fared so well, for it is often a difficult political task to translate research findings into policy proposals accepta­ble to those who run governments.

 




Поиск по сайту:

©2015-2020 studopedya.ru Все права принадлежат авторам размещенных материалов.