INTRODUCTION

The approach taken in this book has been criticised on many different counts. These range from basic differences in the philosophy of knowledge to simple misunderstandings and confusions, with serious but answerable difficulties somewhere in the middle. The differences which come from different philosophies of knowledge are basic and not resolvable here; perhaps they are not resolvable at all at present. However, many of the other disagreements are due to a lack of consistency on the part of some scholars of international relations, who seem to be able to hold one set of methodological views when it comes to international relations and conflict analysis, and another when it comes to anything else.

Underlying much of the criticism is the doubt whether the study of international conflict can be approached as a social science. There are two levels of criticism. One I shall refer to as the ‘radical critique’ (‘radical’ meaning ‘fundamental’, not, in this case, ‘left-wing’), and the other I shall refer to as the ‘limited critique’. The radical critique involves an assertion that a social science in the sense of sets of testable hypotheses about human behaviour of any sort is not possible; the limited critique involves an assertion that, while some forms of human behaviour, such as economic behaviour, can be analysed in this way, international behaviour is excluded from the normal precepts of the social sciences.