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The Promise of the World Order Modelling Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Harold D. Lasswell
Harold D. Lasswell
Affiliation:
Yale University Law School
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Type
Research Note
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World Politics , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , April 1977 , pp. 425 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

1 The summary report is Mendlovitz, Saul H., ed., On the Creation of a Just World Order: Preferred Worlds for the 1990's (New York: Free Press 1975)Google Scholar. Other volumes include: Kothari, Rajni, Footsteps into the Future: Diagnosis of the Present and a Design for an Alternative (New York: Free Press 1974)Google Scholar; Mazrui, Ali A., A World Federation of Cultures: An African Perspective (New York: Free Press 1976)Google Scholar; Falk, Richard A., A Study of Future Worlds (New York: Free Press 1975)Google Scholar. Subsequent activities will be guided by The Institute for World Order, New York.

2 Lin, “Development Guided by Values: Comments on China's Road and Its Implications,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 259–96; quotation from p. 272.

3 Lagos, “The Revolution of Being,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 71–110; quotation from pp. 81–82.

4 The emphasis on goals, problem-solving, and contextuality indicates the significance of the modelling method, which is affiliated with the “international” rather than the “causal” tradition. A lucid paper on these fundamental points is Ronald D. Brunner, “An Intentional Alternative in Public Opinion Design,” initially presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, Canada, August 1974. One starting point is von Wright, G. H., Explanation and Understanding (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1971)Google Scholar. See also Alker, Hayward R. and Christensen, Cheryl, “From Causal Modelling to Artificial Intelligence: The Evolution of a UN Peace Making Simulation,” in Laponce, J. A. and Smoker, Paul, eds., Experimentation and Simulation in Political Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1972)Google Scholar.

5 Falk, “Toward a New World Order: Modest Methods and Drastic Visions,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 211–58; quotation from pp. 221–22.

6 On the uses of history, whether in prose or in quantitative form, see Montgomery, John D., Technology and Civic Life (Cambridge: MIT Press 1974)Google Scholar; Black, Cyril E., The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper Torchbooks 1967)Google Scholar.

7 In fact, the concentration on the scientific or on any one intellectual task is likely to interfere with the fundamental self-orienting aims. See Hirschman, Albert O., “The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding,” World Politics xxii (April 1970), 329–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Contemporary literature on the interplay between the pursuit of science and the multiple objectives of policy is improving in theoretical subtlety and empirical content. For example, Campbell, Donald T., “Quasi-Experimental Design,” in Sills, D. L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan and Free Press 1968, III, 133–53)Google Scholar. Tightly controlled procedures in the global context require strategies of simultaneity among scientists and decision makers: Brewer, Garry D. and Brunner, Ronald D., eds., Political Development and Change: A Policy Approach (New-York: Free Press 1975)Google Scholar; Rivlin, Alice M., Systematic Thinking for Social Action (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press 1971)Google Scholar; Etzioni, Amitai, “Policy Research,” American Sociologist vi (June 1971)Google Scholar. A striking combination of the systematic and the empirical is Warren F. Ilchman, “Population Knowledge and Fertility Policies,” chap. 1 in Ilchman, Warren F., Lasswell, Harold D., Montgomery, John D., and Weiner, Myron, eds., Policy Sciences and Population (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books 1975)Google Scholar.

9 Sakamoto, “Toward Global Identity,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 189–210; quotation from p. 194, emphasis in original.

10 Mazrui, “World Order and the Search for Consensus,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 1–38; quotations from pp. 3–4, 7–8, emphases in original.

11 This approach to projection harmonizes with the “new classics,” such as Gabor, Dennis, Inventing the Future (New York: Knopf 1964)Google Scholar, and Juvenel, Bertrand de, The Art of Conjecture (New York: Basic Books 1967)Google Scholar. On wider involvement, see Chaplin, George and Paige, Glen D., eds., Hawaii 2000: Continuing Experiment in Anticipatory Democracy (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii 1973)Google Scholar.

12 See Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker, “A Sceptical Contribution,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 111–50.

13 The groups of WOMP add face-to-face discussion to the Delphi technique of projecting futures. Bases of inferences range from rigorous mathematical-statistical to essay-scenarios. Some reminders of the literature: Helmar, Olaf, Social Technology (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, P-3063, February 1965)Google Scholar; Wiener, Norbert, Extrapolation, Interpolation, and Smoothing Stationary Time Series (Cambridge: MIT Press 1949)Google Scholar; Robinson, Thomas and Choucri, Nazli, eds., Forecasting in International Relations (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman 1974)Google Scholar; Azar, Edward E. and Ben-Dak, Joseph, eds., Theory and Practice of Events Analysis (New York: Gordon and Breach 1975)Google Scholar; Heiss, H. P., Knorr, Klaus, and Morgenstern, Oskar, Long-Term Projections of Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger 1973)Google Scholar; Russett, Bruce M., Alker, Hayward R. Jr., Deutsch, Karl W., and Lasswell, Harold D., World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven: Yale University Press 1961)Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles L., ed., Aggregate Data Analysis (Paris: Mouton 1968Google Scholar, International Social Science Council); Taylor, Charles L. and Hudson, Michael C., World Handbook, of Political and Social Indicators (26. ed., New Haven: Yale University Press 1972)Google Scholar; Harrison, Daniel P., Social Forecasting Methodology: Suggestions for Research (New York: Russell Sage Foundation 1976)Google Scholar.

14 Falk (fn. 5), 213.

15 On considerations of timing, note Nordlinger, Eric A., “Political Development: Time Sequences and Rates of Change,” World Politics xx (April 1968), 494–520CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leontieff, Wassily, “The Structure of Development,” Scientific American, Vol. 209, (September 1963), 148–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Kothari, “World Politics and World Order: The Issue of Autonomy,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 39–69; quotation from p. 69.

17 Falk (fn. 5).

18 World order modelling groups are able to utilize all the technologies of visual presentation (as well as data storage and retrieval) of the contemporary world. These visual aids are only effectively employed when they have the relevant content and when the appropriate agendas are followed. On these points see, for example, my discussion of “decision seminars” and the “social planetarium” in , Lasswell, A Preview of the Policy Sciences (New York: Elsevier 1971)Google Scholar, chap. 8 and the literature cited there.

19 Falk (fn. 5), 240.

20 Kothari (fn. 1), Appendix, 159–61.

21 Summarized in Galtung, “Nonterritorial Actors and the Problem of Peace,” in Mendlovitz (fn. 1), 151–88.

22 Accessible examples are Environment and Society in Transition: Scientific Developments, Social Consequences, Policy Implications (New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 184, 1971)Google Scholar, and Public Policy Toward Environment 1973: A Review and Appraisal (New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 261, 1975)Google Scholar. These conferences and publications were sponsored by the American Division of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Geographical Society, The New York Academy of Sciences, and others. See the contributions in volume 261, for example, by Francis Perrin, Boris Pragel, Willard F. Libby, Jack M. Hollander, Rene Dumont, George Bergstrom, John McHale, Martin Shubik, Jan Tinbergen, Myres S. McDougal, and Lord Ritchie-Calder.

23 Richard C. Snyder, Charles F. Herman, and Harold D. Lasswell, “A Global Monitoring System: Appraising the Effects of Government on Human Dignity,” International Studies Quarterly (Autumn 1976); Guttentag, Marcia and Struening, Elmer, eds., Handbook, of Evaluation Research (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications 1975, 2 vols.)Google Scholar; LaPorte, Todd R., ed., Organized Social Complexity (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1975)Google Scholar; Ascher, William, Prophecy and Policy: The Performance and Use of Forecasting (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1977)Google Scholar. It is important to recognize the other connections among relatively “extensive” and “intensive” standpoints of scientific observations. See especially Steven R. Brown, “Intensive Analysis in Political Research,” Political Methodology (1974), 1–25.