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³ Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr., eds, Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, introduction and conclusion; Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977)Google Scholar; Coplin, William D., Mills, Stephen and O'Leary, Michael K., ‘The PRINCE Concepts and the Study of Foreign Policy’Google Scholar, in McGowan, P., ed., Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies, 1 (1973), 73–103Google Scholar; Mansbach, Richard W. and Vasquez, John A., In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).Google Scholar

⁴ O'Leary, Michael K., ‘The Role of Issues’, in Rosenau, J., ed., In Search of Global Patterns (New York: Free Press, 1976), 318–25Google Scholar; Mansbach, Richard W., Ferguson, Yale and Lampert, Donald, The Web of World Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976)Google Scholar; Mansbach, Richard W. and Vasquez, John A., ‘The Effect of Actor and Issue Classifications on the Analysis of Global Conflict-Cooperation’, Journal of Politics, XLIII (1981), 861–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other empirical work on issue areas not directly related to this hypothesis see Brewer, Thomas L., ‘Issue and Context Variation in Foreign Policy’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, XVII (1973), 89–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knudsen, Olav, ‘Capabilities, Issue-Areas and Inter-State Power’, in Goldmann, Kjell and Sjöstedt, Gunnar, eds, Power, Capabilities, Interdependence: Problems in the Study of International Influence (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), 85–114Google Scholar; Wish, Naomi Bailin, ‘Foreign Policy Makers and Their National Role Conceptions’, International Studies Quarterly, XXIV (1980), 532–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lampert, Donald, ‘Issues for Global Actors: The USA’, in Boyd, G. and Pentland, C., eds, Issues in Global Politics (New York: Free Press, 1981), 36–83.Google Scholar

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⁷ Although we will not give operational definitions for each concept, we will suggest possible indicators in order to demonstrate that the concepts are operational. It should also be noted that the model we present here is conceptual and not statistical. Our purpose is to derive a set of testable propositions and not to provide, at this point, a causal model like those employed in path analysis. For this reason we do not address potential problems associated with non-recursive and under-identified causal models. We believe that once we have indicators for each of our concepts, we shall be able to employ standard solutions to each of these problems so that our propositions may be tested properly. On this question see Asher, Herbert B., Causal Modeling, Sage Paper on Quantitative Applications in the Social Science Series No. 07–003 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976), pp. 49–62.Google Scholar

⁸ Rummel, R. J., ‘US Foreign Relations: Conflict, Cooperation and Attribute Distances’, in Russett, B., ed., Peace, War and Numbers (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1972), pp. 71–114, especially pp. 98–9.Google Scholar

⁹ Ward, Michael D., ‘Cooperation and Conflict in Foreign Policy Behavior: Reaction and Memory’, International Studies Quarterly, XXVI (1982), 87–126, pp. 91, 93, 111, 118–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ McClelland, Charles A. and Hoggard, Gary, ‘Conflict Patterns in the Interactions Among Nations’, in Rosenau, J., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1969), pp. 711–24Google Scholar, especially p. 713.

¹¹ Agreement among actors can be operationalized as a shared official issue position, which can be derived from votes in international organizations and/or content analysis of governmental documents or media reports. Positive and negative acts have already been measured in a number of event-data studies. Friendship-hostility may be measured by survey research and psychological instruments like the semantic differential. Since Abravanel and Hughes have shown that public sentiment toward foreign rivals tends to follow the action of their own decision makers, it may be possible to measure friendship-hostility for open societies by measuring public opinion. See Abravanel, Martin and Hughes, Barry, ‘Public Attitudes and Foreign Policy Behavior in Western Democracies’, in Chittick, W., ed., The Analysis of Foreign Policy Outputs (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1975), pp. 46–73Google Scholar. Certainly, changes in American public sentiment toward certain actors – the USSR, Iran or OPEC – show that that this measure can be a valid indirect indicator of this concept. In more closed societies, friendship-hostility could be measured through a content analysis of editorials in the official or semi-official press, or by an examination of the way foreign nations are portrayed to children and adolescents.

¹² Coplin, William D. and O'Leary, Michael K., ‘A Simulation Model for the Analysis and Explanation of International Interactions’ (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1971), p. 9.Google Scholar

¹³ Kegley, Charles W. Jr. and Skinner, Richard A., ‘The Case-for-Analysis Problem’Google Scholar, in Rosenau, , ed., In Search of Global Patterns, pp. 303–18, especially pp. 308–11Google Scholar. National attributes are also unrelated to war-prone behaviour. Here too a relational approach (one example of which is the dyadic approach) appears more useful. See Singer, J. David, ‘Confrontational Behavior and Escalation to War 1816–1980: A Research Plan’, Journal of Peace Research, XIX (1982), 37–48, pp. 37–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Azar, Edward, ‘Conflict Escalation and Conflict Reduction in an International Crisis: Suez 1956’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, XVI (1972), 183–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClelland, Charles A., ‘The Beginning, Duration and Abatement of International Crises: Comparisons in Two Conflict Areas’ in Hermann, C., ed., International Crises (New York: Free Press, 1972), 83–111.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Eberwein, Wolf-Dieter, ‘The Quantitative Study of International Conflict: Quantity or Quality?’, Journal of Peace Research, XVIII (1981), 19–38, p. 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ The main research here is McClelland and Hoggard, , ‘Conflict Patterns’Google Scholar and Salmore, Stephen A. and Munton, Donald, ‘An Empirically Based Typology of Foreign Policy Behaviors’, in Rosenau, ed., Comparing Foreign Policies, 329–52.Google Scholar However, such research must be treated cautiously, since, as Salmore and Salmore point out, these factors may be an artefact of the coding scheme that is employed, see Salmore, Stephen A. and Salmore, Barbara G., ‘Defining the Limits of the Inductive Approach’, in Callahan et al. Describing Foreign Policy Behavior, 53–71.Google Scholar

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¹⁸ Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, Hopple, Gerald, Rossa, Paul and Andriole, Stephen, Foreign Policy Behavior (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980), pp. 183–4, 192–3, 217–29.Google Scholar

¹⁹ On the concept of ‘regime’ see Krasner, Stephen D., ‘Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables’, International Organization, XXXVI (1982), 185–205, pp. 185–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Deutsch, Karl et al. , Political Community in the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 5–6Google Scholar. For a review of the problems in identifying and defining integration see Sullivan, Michael P., International Relations: Theories and Evidence (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), pp. 213–15.Google Scholar

²¹ Mansbach, and Vasquez, , In Search of Theory, pp. 282–7.Google Scholar The meaning of the first three mechanisms is fairly obvious. By ‘principle’, we mean the allocation of values on the basis of some norm such as equity, utilitarianism, status, etc.

²² The question of whether there are ‘forms’ or ‘stages’ of co-operation is best decided after empirical investigation. The main difference between the two is that stages connote a developmental and teleological process approaching epigenesis. This conception has some merit to the extent that relationships do in fact evolve and later stages cannot be reached without going through the earlier stages. There is some evidence that wars rarely occur without a preceding pattern of crises (see Wallensteen, Peter, ‘Incompatibility, Confrontation and War: Four Models and Three Historical Systems, 1816–1976’, Journal of Peace Research, XVIII (1981), 57–90, pp. 84–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and that formal or informal regimes are created before there is integration (see Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence, pp. 5, 21).Google Scholar To the extent that actors shift from one stage to the next, or continually ‘fall back’, then it is better to speak of ‘forms’ rather than ‘stages’.

²³ The degree to which an actor behaves in unitary fashion or has a coherent foreign policy will depend on the internal struggles within the actor. While we assume that all the individuals who partake in the policy-making process, as either decision makers or policy influencers, will react to the variables in the model, we do not assume that they will necessarily react in the same manner or become involved in a process that will rationalize their differences in a coherent fashion. Those questions are considered exogenous.

²⁴ See Abravanel, and Hughes, , ‘Public Attitudes and Foreign Policy Behavior’.Google Scholar

²⁵ See Rummel, R. J., War, Power, Peace: Vol. 4 Understanding Conflict and War (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar, Appendix 16B for a thorough review.

²⁶ Rummel, , ‘US Foreign Relations’, pp. 100–7.Google Scholar Additional studies along these lines by Choi, , Rhee, and Schwerin, (in Rummel, R. J., Field Theory Evolving (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977), pp. 403–25, 315–69, 301–14Google Scholar confirm that differences in attributes are an important predictor of interactions.

²⁷ Rummel, R. J., ‘A Status-Field Theory of International Relations’Google Scholar, in Rummel, , Field Theory Evolving, pp. 199–255, especially p. 213.Google Scholar

²⁸ See Wallace, Michael D., ‘Status, Formal Organization and Arms Levels as Factors Leading to the Onset of War, 1820–1964’Google Scholar, in Russett, , ed., Peace, War and Numbers, pp. 49–71Google Scholar; East, Maurice, ‘Status Discrepancy and Violence in the International System: An Empirical Analysis’, in Rosenau, J. et al. , eds, The Analysis of International Politics (New York: Free Press, 1972), pp. 299–319Google Scholar; Midlarsky, Manus, On War (New York: Free Press, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁹ Phillips, Warren R., ‘Prior Behavior as an Explanation of Foreign Policy’, in East, M., Salmore, S. and Hermann, C., eds, Why Nations Act (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1978), pp. 161–72.Google Scholar

³⁰ Holsti, Ole, North, Robert and Brody, Richard, ‘Perception and Action in the 1914 Crisis’ in Singer, J. D., ed., Quantitative International Politics (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 123–58Google Scholar; Phillips, Warren R., ‘The Conflict Environment of Nations: A Study of Conflict Inputs to Nations in 1963’, in Wilkenfeld, J., ed., Conflict Behavior and Linkage Politics (New York: David McKay, 1973), pp. 124–48Google Scholar; Wilkenfeld, et al. , Foreign Policy BehaviorGoogle Scholar, Chap. 6; Ward, , ‘Cooperation and Conflict’.Google Scholar

³¹ Phillips, Warren R. and Crain, Robert C., ‘Dynamic Foreign Policy Interactions: Reciprocity and Uncertainty in Foreign Policy’, in P. McGowan, ed., Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies, II (1974), 227–66Google Scholar; Tanter, Raymond, Modelling and Managing International Conflict (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1974)Google Scholar; McCormick, James, ‘Evaluating Models of Crisis Behavior: Some Evidence from the Middle East’, International Studies Quarterly, XIX (1975), 17–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² Rummel, , ‘A Status-Field Theory of International Relations’; Cobb, Robert and Elder, Charles, International Community (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), pp. 39–44Google Scholar; Rosenau, , ‘Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy’, pp. 46–9Google Scholar; Richardson, Lewis F., Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (Pittsburg: Boxwood Press, 1960), pp. 22–5.Google Scholar

³³ One of the major tasks of empirical research is to discover which attributes are critical, and whether they change over time and for a specific issue. Only once this is accomplished does it make sense to develop more fully the theoretical rationale for this variable. All of the following characteristics have been mentioned in the literature: political, economic, cultural, religious, linguistic, ethnic, racial, demographic and geographical.

³⁴ On the concept of critical issue see Vasquez, and Mansbach, , ‘The Issue Cycle’, p. 261.Google Scholar The very short-term action-reaction or inertia patterns that occur within a given thirty days would be considered current behaviour and would be captured by agreement-disagreement, positive-negative acts, and friendship-hostility.

³⁵ Of course a weak actor may in alliance with a strong actor become a rival of an actor stronger than itself. These weak actors are then seen as ‘proxies’.

³⁶ While a thorough operationalization of issue dimension is beyond the scope of this article, there seems to be no obstacle, in principle, to prevent this concept from being reliably and validly operationalized and measured. The first step would be to identify specific stakes, like the Golan Heights or lowering restrictions on the import of Japanese autos to the United States. These stakes could then be coded into two categories – a substantive focus (e.g. territorial, trade, arms control, food, weather, international sports, nuclear proliferation issues) and a geographical location. The second step would be to determine how these stakes are linked into a single issue, and whether the underlying dimension is an actor or stake dimension. Whether stakes are linked can be determined by whether actors make proposals for the disposition of one stake contingent on the disposition of another. Such linkages may be delineated through a detailed content analysis of negotiations at international conferences or of interactions recorded in a historical reconstruction of the diplomatic record. While such an approach will need considerable pre-testing, it is possible at this point to tap the boundaries of the issue (i.e. which stakes are linked), by seeing if the issue position of an actor on one stake is correlated with its issue position on another stake. This could be accomplished through Guttman scaling or factor analysis of recorded or reconstructed votes at United Nations or other international meetings (see Alker, Hayward and Russett, Bruce, World Politics in the General Assembly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

An actor dimension would be indicated among two or more actors the degree to which their interactions (1) were confined primarily to a single issue (as determined by a cluster technique); (2) had stakes from a variety of substantive foci and geographical locations; and (3) had issue positions that were highly correlated within and across the issues. Such indicators could even be used to construct an ordinal scale. Conversely, the stake dimension would be indicated by the presence of many (statistically) identifiable issues, each with little substantative variety or geographical location, and a low correlation of actors' issue positions across the issues.

³⁷ This, of course, is a drawn-out process because decision makers, various policy influencers, and their publics in each side must go through it. For example, in the United States during the Cold War it took from 1945 until the Korean War in 1950 for the actor dimension to dominate, and then remaining dissenters were purged in the McCarthy era.

³⁸ Vasquez, , ‘Tangibility of Issues’Google Scholar; Henehan, , ‘A Data-Based Evaluation of Issue Typologies’, p. 13Google Scholar

³⁹ Even though symbolic and transcendent stakes often co-occur, it is important to keep them theoretically distinct because they have different effects. This is sometimes difficult, because symbolic stakes may be infused with transcendent qualities, thereby becoming transcendent stakes. Nevertheless, a symbolic stake may be said to lack a transcendent quality when contention on it does not centre on ideological struggles that take on highly moralistic overtones and a sense that this may be the final battle between good and evil.

⁴⁰ While these propositions have not been tested, Wish finds that ideological issues are the most hostile of five she examined (a 0·59 significant correlation), which is consistent with the notion that transcendent stakes are the most conflict-prone. See Wish, ‘Foreign Policy Makers’, pp. 544–5. Sullivan finds that the use of symbolic rhetoric by American presidents is associated with American escalation in the Vietnam War. See Sullivan, Michael P., ‘Foreign Policy Articulations and US Conflict Behavior’, in Singer, J. D. and Wallace, M., eds, To Augur Well (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), pp. 215–35.Google Scholar From the perspective of this analysis, this finding suggests that presidents felt the need to emphasize the symbolic importance of Vietnam as they escalated. Sullivan's work is also of interest in terms of his measurement of symbolic qualities.

⁴¹ One of the clearest illustrations of this is Dean Acheson's speech to congressional leaders attending a White House briefing on the 1947 Greek and Turkish crisis. The congressmen were not persuaded by Secretary of State Marshall's ‘dry, laconic presentation’, but were persuaded when Acheson spoke of a world divided between irreconcilable ideologies with comparisons to Rome and Carthage. Vandenberg announced his support provided the President put the crisis in the terms Acheson had. Gaddis, John Lewis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 349Google Scholar; see Jones, Joseph Marion, The Fifteen Weeks (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1955), pp. 138–43Google Scholar for an inside account of how various stakes were linked and infused with both symbolic and transcendent qualities. A theoretical discussion of overselling is provided by Lowi, , ‘Making Democracy Safe for the World’, pp. 315–23.Google Scholar

⁴² Cf. Gochman, Charles and Leng, Russell, ‘Realpolitik and the Road to War’, International Studies Quarterly, XXVII (1983), 97–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ For an excellent analysis of how transcendent stakes gave rise to total war in the seventeenth century see Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints (New York: Atheneum, 1965), pp. 275–77, 296.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For an elaboration of the role of issues in the onset of rivalry and of war see Vasquez, John A., ‘The Steps Toward War’ (paper presented at the second Congress of the World University, Rotterdam, Netherlands, June 1984).Google Scholar On the role of territoriality in human and animal aggression see Wilson, Edward O., Sociobiology (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1975), pp. 49–51Google Scholar, Chaps 11 and 12; Wilmsen, Edwin N., ‘Interaction, Spacing Behavior, and the Organization of Hunting Bands’, Journal of Anthropological Research, XXIX (1973), pp. 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁵ See Sullivan, Michael P., ‘Transnationalism, Power Politics, and the Realities of the Present System’, in Maghroori, Ray and Ramberg, Bennett, eds, Globalism Versus Realism: International Relations' Third Debate (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982), pp. 195–221, especially p. 203.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Deutsch, Morton, The Resolution of Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 46.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Some hard-liners within the Reagan administration felt that way early on. For an analysis of the impact of American hostility on Soviet hard-liners see Breslauer, George W., ‘Do Soviet Leaders Test New Presidents?’, International Security, VIII (1983–1984), 83–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957), pp. 10–13, 264.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ The above propositions attempt to specify the conditions in which decision makers are most likely to be able to make a difference, and therefore delineate the circumstances under which individual characteristics will be potent predictors of foreign policy behaviour. For a review of individual characteristics that seem potent see Guetzkow, Harold and Valadez, J. J., ‘Simulation and “Reality”: Validity Research’, in Guetzkow, H. and Valadez, J. J., eds, Simulated International Processes (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1981), pp. 253–330Google Scholar, especially pp. 260–85, 301–5, 312–25; Hermann, Margaret, ‘Explaining Foreign Policy Behavior Using the Personal Characteristics of Political Leaders’, International Studies Quarterly, XXIV (1980), 7–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Etheredge, Lloyd, A World of Men (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978).Google Scholar