According to Hans Morgenthau, ‘the application of domestic legal experience to international law is really the main stock in trade of modern international thought’ (1946, 113). More recently, Charles Beitz made a similar point when he remarked that ‘most writers in the modern tradition of political theory, and many contemporary students of international politics, have conceived of international relations on the analogy of the [Hobbesian] state of nature,’ and that ‘perceptions of international relations have been more thoroughly influenced by the analogy of states and persons than by any other device’ (1979, 179, 69). What the two writers are pointing to is the prevalent influence upon international thought of what some theorists of international relations call the ‘domestic analogy’.

This analogy, however, has had its critics. Indeed, among many professional writers on International Relations, reliance on the domestic analogy appears no longer to be considered as a very respectable thing. This analogy is associated with ‘all that was wrong’ about the theory and practice of international relations before E. H. Carr (1939) wrote a telling critique of the League of Nations approach to the problem of world order. Moreover, those, such as C. A. W. Manning, who endeavoured to win for International Relations the status of an academic discipline saw in the modern states system unique qualities which, in their judgement, could best be appreciated if the habit of thought cultivated for the understanding of domestic social phenomena could be discarded (Suganami 1983).