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The Politics of Interdependence

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BurtonJ. W.International Relations: A General Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. viii + 288 pp., $6.50.
CooperRichard N.The Economics of Interdependence: Economic Policy in the Atlantic Community. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968. xiv + 302 pp., $10.95.
DeutschKarl W., and others. France, Germany and the Western Alliance: A Study of Elite Attitudes on European Integration and World Politics. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967. xi + 324 pp., $6.95.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Edward L. Morse
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International Organization , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , Spring 1969 , pp. 311 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1969

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References

1 I have quite consciously used the term “international relations” in an ambiguous sense. It seems more obvious that the restricted use of the terms “international relations” and “international politics” results in the omission of significant relations which occur at subnational or extra-national levels. Moreover, the mix of political and economic relations among modern societies is such as to warrant the reintroduction of a more universal term. Actually, the ambiguity of such terms is a reflection of the general inadequacy of the descriptive concepts which can be used to outline and explain the politics of interdependence.

2 “Ideological” or “realist” cold-war revisionism is an apparent exception to this school of thought. The exception is one of substance, however, rather than one of emphasis on conflict. Accordingly, the structure of the international system is viewed as “imperial” with the central focus on the “American Empire.”

3 See Friedheim, Robert L., “The ‘Satisfied’ and ‘Dissatisfied’ States Negotiate International Law: A Case Study,” World Politics, 10 1965 (Vol. 18, No. 1), pp. 20–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Friedmann, Wolfgang, The Changing Structure of International Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

4 “Thus it is,” he asserts,

that foreign policy in the twentieth century has become turned inward; peace and security is a function of domestic policies and not of international structures…. The agreed proposition is that peace and security are a function of domestic pressures and policies…. Governments are required, in the interests of peace and security, to contract out of the traditional role of government in the modern State–protection of interests threatened by foreign changes–and actively to engage in promoting adjustment. This is the political impact of nuclear strategy and world consensus ….

(Pp. 264–265.)

5 Deutsch and others, p. 298. Deutsch's conclusions are, of course, contradicted by most European observers. The major common policies of the EEC–in agriculture, tax equalization, and investment– occurred after the implementation of the Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (Treaty of Rome) in 1958.

6 See especially the paradigm developed in Deutsch, Karl W. and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

7 Deutsch, Karl W., “The Impact of Communications upon International Relations Theory,” in Said, Abdul A. (ed.), Theory of International Relations: The Crisis of Relevance (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 74–92Google Scholar. They are also outlined in Deutsch's recent book The Analysis of International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1968)Google Scholar.

8 Deutsch, in Said (ed.), p. 88.

9 Ibid., pp. 88–92.

10 For a technical critique of the RA Index see Alker, Hayward Jr., and Puchala, Donald, “Trends in Economic Partnership: the North Atlantic Area, 1928–1963,” in Singer, J. David (ed.), Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence (New York: Free Press, 1968), especially pp. 290–293Google Scholar.

11 The terms cooperation and conflict are generic. Cooperative and conflictual relations take a variety of forms and it may make a great difference which of these forms they take. For example, cooperative relations may be any combination of collaboration, coaction, concert, or congruence.

12 In defining “public goods” one usually places the emphasis on one society rather than on a group of societies. The focus is then on the incapacity of a single organization or government to prevent any individual member from receiving its benefits. Olson, for example, defines “public good” as follows:

“A common, collective, or public good is here defined as any good such diat, if any person X4 in a group X1…, Xl…, Xn consumes it, it cannot feasibly be withheld from the others in that group.” Olson, Mancur Jr, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), p. 14Google Scholar. In terms of the relations between highly modern societies I prefer to place theemphasis on the impossibility for any state to create a common good widiout cooperating in its production with other states. In the context of these relations cooperation is a requisite of benefit.

13 Various economic theories formulated in the past century and a half have emphasized the pacific nature of economic relations between industrialized societies. See, for example, the analysis of these theories in Siberner, Edmund, La Guerre et la paix dans l'histoire des doctrines économiques (Paris: Sirey, 1957)Google Scholar. Most of these theories are unsubstantiated and ideological. For another, briefer, review of them see Modelski, George, “Agraria and Industria: Two Models of the International System,” in Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney (ed.), The International System: Theoretical Essays (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 118–143Google Scholar. Modelski, himself, presents one of the only analyses of a system of such relations to have appeared in the literature of international politics. He characterizes “industrial international systems” as those having:

(1) a well-developed international division of labor, including international organization; (2) international authority determined by achievement and a diversity of leadership and decisionmaking roles; (3) system integration through ideological loyalty to an international order; and (4) large-scale and specialized procedures for the diffusion of culture.

(P. 139)

14 The distinction between predominantly cooperative and predominantly conflictual relations should also raise the important question about the nature of the relationship between economic and political interdependencies.

15 With reference to premodern societies the one major empirical objective referred to territory and imperial accretion. Usually, however, territorial objectives were elements of odier transcendental objectives such as those listed above. For a discussion of the effect on action of the transfer of the referents of action from transcendental to empirical referents see JrLevy, Marion J., “Rapid Social Change and Some Implications for Modernization,” International Conference on the Problems of Modernization in Asia, Report (Seoul: Asiatic Research Center, 1965), especially pp. 657–658Google Scholar.

16 I hesitate to call them “actors,” the traditionally accepted term for the basic political elements of international politics. “Actor” connotes the “billiard-ball” model of separate, discrete, and unified states, each under the leadership of a single spokesman. These new corporate entities are neither independent in the sense connoted by “actor” nor are they wholly dependent. This fact of the current reality of international politics is another example of the crisis in orthodoxy in theorizing on international politics and the inadequacy of our descriptive concepts.

17 Vernon, Raymond, “Economic Sovereignty at Bay,” Foreign Affairs, 10 1968 (Vol. 47, No. 1), pp. 119–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.