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International and Comparative Politics: Toward a Synthesis?

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FarrellR. Barry, editor, Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1966, 368 pp. $9.95 (cloth), $3.95 (paper).
HolstiK. J., International Politics: A Framework for Analysis, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1967, 505 pp. $7.50.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Wolfram F. Hanrieder
Wolfram F. Hanrieder
Affiliation:
University of California
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Extract

The traditional distinction between domestic and foreign politics, made by both decision-makers and analysts, is increasingly called into question by contemporary historical developments. The cold-war conflict and the attending mobilization of military, socioeconomic, and psychological resources by the superpowers and their allies; ventures of regional economic integration; the changing nature of the nation-state; the close connection between the conditions prevailing in the international system and the attempts made by the new states to modernize and to coalesce into viable societies—these are just a few examples of how foreign and domestic policy projects have become overlapping and perhaps entirely inseparable.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , April 1968 , pp. 480 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 Singer, J. David, “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,” World Politics, xiv (October 1961), 81Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 91.

3 The editor notes in the Preface that “both ‘behavioral’ and ‘traditional’ approaches are represented, in addition to other approaches by scholars who regard this dichotomy as uninteresting or unreal” (p. vii). Some of my critical remarks in the following pages may create the impression that, on the whole, I find less fault with the “traditional” approaches. This impression would be erroneous, and I should like to say at the outset that although I find the “behavioral-traditional” distinction neither uninteresting nor unreal, I consider it unfortunate and unnecessary.

4 This criterion for focusing attention seems justified by the general theoretical intent of the collection. By other standards, Vernon V. Aspaturian's essentially non-theoretical essay “Internal Politics and Foreign Policy in the Soviet Union” is perhaps the finest in the collection.

5 Cf. Deutsch, Karl W., The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control (New York 1963), esp. 124Google Scholar.

6 To the extent that Rosenau at least recognizes this problem (even though he dismisses it), he belongs to a group of notably sophisticated behavioral analysts who make their epistemological assumptions explicit and try to anticipate the resulting methodological consequences. Unfortunately, too many others cling to the innocent belief that empirical “facts” can be perceived and analyzed without a prior epistemological commitment. Despite their claims to scientific avant-garde status in the social sciences, such analysts are methodological Victorians with assumptions that have long been debunked in the natural sciences.

7 Cf. Sondermann, Fred A., “The Linkage Between Foreign Policy and International Politics,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York 1961), 8–17Google Scholar.

8 Hanrieder, Wolfram F., “Compatibility and Consensus: A Proposal for the Conceptual Linkage of External and Internal Dimensions of Foreign Policy,” American Political Science Review, LXI (December 1967), 971–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 (New York 1959).