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The International Arena as a Source of Dysfunctional Tension
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Extract
TENSION is not of itself an evil. Indeed, certain levels of tension are necessary if either life or social processes are to occur. Therefore, tensions may be either functional or dysfunctional. Dysfunctional tensions produce an inaccurate orientation to reality, impede or prevent the attainment of desired goals, or permit their realization at an unnecessarily high cost. Dysfunctional tension is, in general, undesirable, although it may at times be an appropriate instrument of policy. It should not be assumed that international tension is a cause of war, at least in a simple or direct fashion. Dysfunctional international tension is, however, usually productive of undesired consequences.
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- Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1954
References
1 Nation states do not exhaust the membership, but we cannot examine the matter further in this article.
2 The inference that a different form of international social structure would be less productive of dysfunctional tension is a possible rather than necessary conclusion.
3 For this to follow, we require only the additional assumptions that the actors are structured complexly and that their four-dimensional environments are variegated.