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The Study of International Relations: New Approaches to a Familiar Subject

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Charles B. Neff
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii
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Extract

Three recent texts on international relations, chosen out of the welter of new books and revisions that have appeared in the last few years, are the subject of this review. They have been picked because in some ways each is an excellent and important work. They are also books which in their strengths and weaknesses complement each other. Each author or set of authors has a distinct emphasis in outlook and in method, but at the same time the books exhibit a core of agreement about certain fundamental aspects of world politics today that indicates a growing consensus among contemporary analysts and scholars. A comparative review of this type can thus be used not only to evaluate the suitability of these books as texts and their contributions to international relations theory, but also to assess this consensus and to indicate its main outlines.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1963

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References

1 Foundations of National Power (2nd edn., New York 1951).

2 Stoessinger's discussion of regionalism, though, is marred by a rather imprecise usage of the term. By no stretch of meaning can the Commonwealth be referred to as a regional organization and its goals are far from regional in nature.

3 One factual error cannot go unnoticed. Stoessinger states that 85 per cent of US aid goes for defense and military purposes. The exact percentage depends upon interpretation, but it is clearly not this high.

4 By fortunate coincidence the August 1962 issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, which arrived after this review article was written, is addressed to a discussion of this problem.

5 See Wright, Quincy, The Study of International Relations (New York 1955), 531–67.Google Scholar