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A Transactional Theory of Political Integration and Arms Control*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
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Nominally, the English became a nation in the eighth century but did not achieve political integration until the seventeenth century, a thousand years later. During the millennium, the English “nation” was the scene of recurring internal wars, the last ending with the acceptance of the Bill of Rights by William III and Mary in 1688. What was the process leading to cessation in the use of armed conflict as a technique of domestic politics in England?
Nominally, Mexico was an independent nation in 1821 but did not see the end of its internal wars until the 1940's. What political process led to domestic “arms control” in Mexico?
Although taking place in different centuries and in nations with distinct political cultures, were there common elements in the two transitions to internal arms control? What were critical factors in the integrative process? May the same factors, or analogous ones, be identified and controlled in contemporary efforts related to regional and international arms control? What may be learned from the English, the Mexican, and other national cases that is generalizable to the problem of international political integration and arms control?
The present theory sketch views arms control as an aspect of the integration of political organizations. Political integration, in turn, is the consequence of a process of political transactions among principal political actors over time.
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1969
Footnotes
This report is part of an investigation under contract between the Group Psychology Branch, Office of Naval Research, and the Frederic Burk Foundation for Education, San Francisco State College. (Contract Nonr-4722 (00), Project NR 177258). The author is indebted to Luigi Petrullo, Director, Psychological Sciences Division, ONR, and Abraham S. Levine, formerly of the Group Psychology Branch, for their advice and encouragement.
References
1 The distinction between “disarmament” and “arms control” is significant. Neither England nor Mexico, for example, is a domestically disarmed nation. Rather, as a consequence of the processes to be examined with this theory, each nation—as others that are politically integrated—has established a monopoly of its major means of internal violence. Domestic peace, that is, the cessation of internal wars, seems to be associated with conditions of arms control (involving decisional currency exchanges) rather than disarmament.
“Political development” and “political integration” are also troublesome terms that should not delay us long. Since World War II, the rubric “political development” has tended to be employed mainly to describe comparative studies of national modernization, particularly with respect to the growth of economic organization and governmental bureaucracies. Overviews of current usage are reported in Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, 17 (04, 1965), 386–430 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riggs, Fred W., “The Theory of Political Development,” in Charlesworth, J. C. (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis (New York: The Free Press 1967), pp. 317–349 Google Scholar; Holt, Robert T. and Turner, John E., The Political Basis of Economic Development (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1966)Google Scholar. The approach described in this report is “developmental” simply in its search for recurring tendencies.
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14 “… Evolution of trust goes through phases brought on by a time-dependent cognitive reappraisal of the relationship,” in the words of Pilisuk, Marc, Skolnick, Paul, Thomas, Kenneth, and Chapman, Reuben, “Boredom vs. Cognitive Reappraisal in the Development of Cooperative Strategy,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 9 (03, 1967), p. 116 Google Scholar. Cf. processes taking place during “critical transition” in the present theory.
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17 Ake, Claude, A Theory of Political Integration (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1967), pp. 8–11 Google Scholar.
18 An excellent empirical study of political integration, employing a content analysis of the American colonial press, is Merritt's, Richard L. Symbols of American Community, 1735–1775 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar. For an outstanding attempt to cope with the logical and empirical issues of defining “integration,” see Galtung, Johan, “A Structural Theory of Integration,” Journal of Peace Research (1968), No. 4, pp. 375–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Galtung, integration is “the process whereby two or more actors form a new actor.”
19 For development of these definitions, Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York: Knopf, 1951)Google Scholar; Barnard, Chester, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938)Google Scholar; March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958)Google Scholar; and Gross, Bertram M., The Managing of Organizations (New York: Free Press, 1964)Google Scholar.
20 Defined in this author's “A Theory of Conflict Processes and Organizational Offices,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 10 (09, 1966), 331–334 Google Scholar.
21 Buchanan and Tullock, op. cit.
22 See cited Final Technical Report entitled “A Transactional Theory of Political Integration and Arms Control” (11 1968)Google Scholar, Office of Naval Research Project NR 177258, Contral Nonr-4722 (00).
23 This Review, 26 (April, 1932), 223–240.
24 The mathematical and logical problems of measurement in such a time-series may be considered in the light of the excellent discussion by Coleman, James S., “The Mathematical Study of Change,” in Blalock, Hubert M. Jr., and Blalock, Ann B. (eds.), Methodology in Social Research (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), Chap. 11Google Scholar.
25 Final Technical Report, ONR Project NR 177258, op. cit.
26 For further pertinent comment, Holsti, Ole R. and North, Robert C., “History as a ‘Laboratory of Conflict’,” in McNeil, Elton B. (ed.), Social Science and Human Conflict (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1955)Google Scholar.
27 Rosenberg, Milton J., in Rosenau, James N. (ed.), Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar, for example, attempts to build new ways to reduce distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union from approaches suggested by validated psychological theories. One suggestion is to rely upon systematic “cross-trading,” wherein the advantage in one interest conflict is given to one side, while the advantage in another conflict is given to the other side. Thus, adversary leaders may be conditioned away from the view that their relationship is an extended zero-sum game, and attitudes of distrust toward one another may be modified by overt transactional successes.
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