Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T02:17:57.517Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

New Perspectives on Historical States-Systems

Review products

NorthedgeF. S., The International Political System. London: Faber and Faber, 1976, 336 pp., £3.25.
WightMartin, Systems of States. Edited and with an Introduction by Hedley Bull. London: Leicester University Press in Association with the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1977, 232 pp., £7.00; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, $14.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

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

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hoffmann, , “An American Social Science: International Relations,” Daedalus Vol. 106 (Summer 1977), 51–52.Google Scholar

2 Hoffmann, , “International Systems and International Law,” in Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney, eds., The International System: Theoretical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1961), 215.Google Scholar Cf. Aron, Raymond, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans, by Howard, Richard and Baker Fox, Annette (New York: Praeger 1966), 147.Google Scholar

3 Brecher, Michael, “International Relations and Asian Studies: The Subordinate State System of Southern Asia,” World Politics, XV (January 1963), 213–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holsti, K. J., International Politics: A Framework for Analysis (3rd ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1977), 29–101Google Scholar; Modelski, George, “Kautilya: Foreign Policy and International System in the Ancient Hindu World,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 58 (September 1964), 549–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosecrance, Richard N., Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston: Little, Brown 1963).Google Scholar Among other relevant studies, see Bozeman, Adda B., Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1960)Google Scholar: Eisenstadt, S. N., The Political Systems of Empires (New York: Free Press 1963)Google Scholar; Walker, Richard L., The Multi-State System of Ancient China (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press 1953).Google Scholar

4 McClelland, , Theory and the International System (New York: Macmillan 1966), 59.Google Scholar Cf. Singer, , “System stability and transformation: a global system approach,” British Journal of International Studies, 111 (October 1977), 231–32.Google Scholar

5 McClelland, , “The Anticipation of International Crises: Prospects for Theory and Research,” International Studies Quarterly, XXI (March 1977), 15–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Singer, , “The ‘Correlates of War’ Project: Interim Report and Rationale,” World Politics, XXIV (January 1972), 243–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Several appreciations of Singer's work may be found in Hoole, Francis W. and Zinnes, Dina A., eds., Quantitative International Politics: An Appraisal (New York: Praeger 1976).Google Scholar

6 Kaplan, , System and Process in International Politics (New York: Wiley 1957)Google Scholar; Kaplan, , “Variants on Six Models of the International System,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press 1969), 291–303.Google Scholar

7 Hsi-sheng Chi, “The Chinese Warlord System as an International System,” and Winfried Franke, “The Italian City-State System as an International System,” both in Kaplan, Morton, ed., New Approaches to International Relations (New York: St. Martin's Press 1968), 405–25Google Scholar; 426–58.

8 “Agraria and Industria: Two Models of the International System,” in Knorr, and Verba, (fn. 2), 124.Google Scholar Several essays regarding relationships between polarity and stability in international systems furnish additional examples of largely hypothetical systems: Kenneth N. Waltz, “International Structure, National Force, and the Balance of Power,” Karl W. Deutsch and J. David Singer, “Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability,” and Richard Rosecrance, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Future,” all in Rosenau, (fn. 6): 304–14, 315–24, 325–35.Google Scholar

9 Bull, , The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan 1977), 233–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Falk, , This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (New York: Random House 1971).Google Scholar

10 Dougherty, James E. and Pfaltzgraff, Robert L. Jr, Contending Theories of International Relations (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott 1971), 137.Google Scholar

11 Waltz, , “Theory of International Relations,” in Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds., Handbook of Political Science, VIII; International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley 1975), 43–65.Google Scholar

12 Modelski, George, “The Promise of Geocentric Politics,” World Politics, XXII (July 1970), 631.Google Scholar

13 Haas, Ernst, “On Systems and International Regimes,” World Politics, XXVII (January 1975), 148.Google Scholar

14 Stephens, Jerone, “An Appraisal of Some System Approaches in the Study of International Systems,” International Studies Quarterly, XVI (September 1972), 348.Google Scholar

15 Lampert, Donald E., Falkowski, Lawrence S., and Mansbach, Richard W., “Is There an International System?” International Studies Quarterly, XXII (March 1978), 143–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weltman, John T., Systems Theory in International Relations: A Study in Metaphoric Hypertrophy (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath 1973).Google Scholar

16 Butterfield, Herbert and Wight, Martin, eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1966).Google Scholar

17 Bull has provided a fuller discussion of Wight's contributions to international relations theory in “Martin Wight and the theory of international relations: The Sec ond Martin Wight Memorial Lecture,” British Journal of International Studies, 11 (July 1976), 101–16.

18 Alexandrowicz, Charles H., “New and Original States: The Issue of Reversion to Sovereignty,” International Affairs, Vol. 65 (July 1969), 465–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Cf. Hinsley, , Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations between States (London: Cambridge University Press 1963), 153–85.Google Scholar Incidentally, the Europe of the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War was hardly a “united” fortress, and the Ottoman threat was still taken seriously in the late eighteenth century.

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.

21 Waltz, (fn. 11), 65.Google Scholar

22 Rosecrance (fn. 3).

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).

26 J. David Singer and Melvin Small, “National Alliance Commitments and War Involvement, 1818–1945,” in Rosenau, (fn. 6), 513–14.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 515, 523–24.

28 Cf. Waltz, (fn. 11), 47–50.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 46.

30 Hoffmann, , Review of Handbook of Political Science, VIIIGoogle Scholar, International Politics, ed. by Greenstein, Fred I. and Polsby, Nelson W., in American Political Science Review, Vol. 71 (December 1977), 1635–36.Google Scholar

31 Waltz, (fn. 11), 12.Google Scholar

32 That is not to imply that useful historical studies have not been done. For examples, see Davidson, Basil, The Lost Cities of Africa (rev. ed.; Boston: Little, Brown 1970)Google Scholar, and Brundage, Burr C., Two Earths, Two Heavens: An Essay Contrasting the Aztecs and the Incas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1975).Google Scholar

33 Albright, W. F., “The Amarna Letters from Palestine,” The Cambridge Ancient History, II (rev. ed.; London: Cambridge University Press 1966)Google Scholar, chap, XX, 12.

34 See, for example, Bohannon, Paul, ed., Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict (New York: Natural History Press 1967).Google Scholar

35 Cf. Emerson, Rupert, “The New Higher Law of Anti-Colonialism,” in Deutsch, Karl and Hoffmann, Stanley, eds., The Relevance of International Law (New York: Doubleday 1971), 202–30Google Scholar; Emerson, , “The Fate of Human Rights in the Third World,” World Politics, XXVII (January 1975), 201–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, Richard N., “A New International Economic Order for Mutual Gain,” Foreign Policy, No. 26 (Spring 1977), 66–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Bozeman, , The Future of Law in a Multicultural World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1971)Google Scholar; Bozeman, , “War and the Clash of Ideas,” Orbis, XX (Spring 1976), 61–102.Google Scholar For a useful discussion of Lasswell and McDougal, with an ample bibliography, see Tipson, Frederick S., “The Lasswell-McDougal Enterprise: Toward a World Public Order of Human Dignity,” Virginia Journal of International Law, XIV (Spring 1974), 535–85.Google Scholar

37 Forsyth, Murray, “The Classical Theory of International Relations,” Political Studies, XXVI (September 1978), 414.Google Scholar

38 Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press 1976), 230.Google Scholar