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International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Hedley Bull
Hedley Bull
Affiliation:
University of London
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Extract

Two approaches to the theory of international relations at present compete for our attention. The first of these I shall call the classical approach. By this I do not mean the study and criticism of the “classics” of international relations, the writings of Hobbes, Grotius, Kant, and other great thinkers of the past who have turned their attention to international affairs. Such study does indeed exemplify the classical approach, and it provides a method that is particularly fruitful and important. What I have in mind, however, is something much wider than this: the approach to theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment and by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about international relations, that general propositions about this subject must therefore derive from a scientifically imperfect process of perception or intuition, and that these general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , April 1966 , pp. 361 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1966

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References

1 See, for example, Kaplan, , System and Process in International Politics (New York 1957)Google Scholar; Morgenstern, , The Question of National Defense (New York 1959)Google Scholar; Schelling, , The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; Deutsch, and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton 1957)Google Scholar; Riker, , The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven 1962)Google Scholar; Modelski, , A Theory of Foreign Policy (New York 1962)Google Scholar; Richardson, , Arms and Insecurity: A Mathematical Study of the Causes and Origin of War, ed. Rashevsky, Nicolas and Trucco, Ernesto (Pittsburgh 1960)Google Scholar, and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, ed. Wright, Quincy and Lienau, C. C. (Pittsburgh 1960)Google Scholar; Boulding, , Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (New York 1962)Google Scholar; Rapoport, , Fights, Games, and Debates (Ann Arbor 1960).Google Scholar

2 “Problems of Theory Building and Theory Confirmation in International Politics,” World Politics, XIV (October 1961), 7.Google Scholar

3 Deutsch has, of course, been author or part-author of a number of other works besides Political Community and the North Atlantic Area, but apart from his Political Community at the International Level (Princeton 1953)Google Scholar, this is the one that most comes to grips with the theory of international relations.

4 Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1963).Google Scholar

5 The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (Berkeley and London 1959).Google Scholar