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New Perspectives on Historical States-Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

David S. Yost
David S. Yost
Affiliation:
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.
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Abstract

Theoretical analyses of international systems tend to fall into three categories: case studies of specific past systems aiming at modest generalizations; rigorous examinations of the current global system in search of manipulable variables; and heuristic models of hypothetical international systems. The late Martin Wight's studies of historical statessystems indicate possible ways of giving this area of theoretical inquiry a new empirical and conceptual foundation. Wight's insights about norms and values within specific past and present states-systems, and about ambiguities involved in identifying their boundaries and transformation mechanisms, seem especially valuable and original when compared to recent work in the same field by F. S. Northedge. Even Wight's work is essentially exploratory, however. Numerous historical states-systems remain to be thoroughly studied, and Wight's analytical framework may require some modifications.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , October 1979 , pp. 151 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1979

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References

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20 Cf. pp. 27, 30–31, 42, 141, 187–88. Northedge at one point deviates from his contention that foreign policy decisions are determined by systemic necessities. The deviation concerns the developing states which, as Northedge notes, are typically non-aligned and anticolonialist champions of a new international economic order: “For many of these states foreign policy tends to be rather more an external projection of internal requirements than a rational reaction to international events. To that extent, to revert to our terminology, their behaviour in the international system is ‘idiosyncratic’ rather than ‘systemic’” (p. 172). It would seem just as logical to argue that these policies are “systemic,” reflecting conformity to prevailing fashions among peers in the system.

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23 Aron, (fn. 2), 148Google Scholar; emphasis in original.

24 Waltz, Deutsch and Singer, and Rosecrance (fn. 8). This criticism applies with greater force to Deutsch and Singer, of course. Waltz, (fn. 11), p. 11Google Scholar, has, incidentally, acknowledged the justice of such criticism.

25 Kaplan (fn. 6).

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