Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T09:22:21.394Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Teaching of International Relations in the United States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

William T. R. Fox  and
Annette Baker Fox
William T. R. Fox
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Annette Baker Fox
Affiliation:
Hunter College
Get access

Extract

INTERNATIONAL relations, as a subject of instruction, has flourished more in the United States than elsewhere and more in recent years than ever before. What forces explain its growth and its present shape? How have methods of teaching it been affected by the goals of the teacher, by his relation to research, and by the formal organization of international studies in American colleges and universities? To what extent is the American experience so rooted in uniquely American conditions that it is unlikely to be repeated elsewhere? These questions will be considered in turn.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , April 1961 , pp. 339 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1961

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 “L'étude des relations internationales, spécialité américaine?” Revue Française de Science Politique, VI, No. 3 (July-September 1956), pp. 634–51. Wright, Quincy, The Study of International Relations (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955)Google Scholar, and Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations (2nd ed., New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1954)Google Scholar, are reviewed at length. There are briefer comments on seven general textbooks.

2 Much of the ferment, vigor, and variety, however, in the American study of international relations has come from men whose origin and, in many cases, entire scholarly training were European. It was not only in atomic physics that the traumatic European events of the 1930's and the beckoning opportunities in the United States combined to make it easier for many scholars to go to America than to go to another European country. John Herz, Hans Kelsen, Hans Morgenthau, Sigmund Neumann, Stefan Possony, Hans Speier, Nicholas Spykman, Robert Strausz-Hupé, and Arnold Wolfers had all put down new roots in American soil before World War II. Postwar appointments at Harvard of Stanley Hoffmann, at Yale of Karl Deutsch, at Notre Dame of Stephen Kertesz, and at American University of Michael Lindsay are demonstrations of a continuing receptivity to scholars of transatlantic origin.

3 Reinhold Niebuhr has written of “the error of excessive voluntarism” of those who assume that “it would be a fairly easy achievement for nations to abridge their sovereignty in favor of a new international authority” (The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, New York, Scribner's, 1944, p. 169). Voluntarism can also be éexcessive” in a nationalist direction, as was shown by the emotion-charged debate as to which Americans brought about the loss of mainland China to the Communists. Presumably, there is a degree of voluntarism which Professor Niebuhr would not regard as excessive.

4 “Political Theory and International Relations,” introductory essay in Wolfers, Arnold and Martin, Laurence W., eds. The Anglo-American Tradition in Foreign Affairs, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1956, pp. ix–xxvii.Google Scholar

5 The key concept in a notable teaching experiment in international relations at San Francisco State College has been “transformations.” Materials compiled and edited for this teaching experiment, and published as “Chandler Studies in International and Intercultural Relations,” include three specifically dealing with transformations: Charles A. McClelland, Nuclear Weapons, Missiles, and Future War, DeVere E. Pentony, The Underdeveloped Lands, and Whitaker, Urban G. Jr, Nationalism and International Progress, San Francisco, Calif., Howard Chandler, 1960.Google Scholar

6 Former members of the policy-planning staff of the Department of State have produced a series of books stressing the “realities” and therefore the limits of choice in American foreign policy. See Halle, Louis J., Dream and Reality, New York, Harper, 1959Google Scholar; Kennan, George F., Realities of American Foreign Policy, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1955Google Scholar; Marshall, Charles B., The Limits of Foreign Policy, New York, Henry Holt, 1954.Google Scholar

7 See Reitzel, William, Kaplan, Morton A., and Coblenz, Constance G., United States Foreign Policy, 1941–1955 (Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 1956)Google Scholar, for a survey which explicitly relates the relatively unchanging goals of American policy to changing American capabilities and transformations in world politics in order to clarify policy choices made in the decade surveyed and to be made in the years that followed. This was a logical development of Brookings Institution emphasis under Leo Pasvolsky on formulating problems for analysis so that the result would approximate a “position paper” such as might have been prepared inside the Department of State on one of these problems.

8 Columbia University, for example, has a Russian Institute, an East Asian Institute, and a Near and Middle East Institute. Each has meant a permanent expansion of the faculty by several professorships, and in each case one of the added professors has specialized in the international relations of the area.

9 E.g., Haas, Ernst B., The Uniting of Europe, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1958Google Scholar; and Deutsch, Karl W., Burrell, Sidney A., Kahn, Robert A., Lee, Maurice Jr, Lichterman, Martin, Lindgren, Raymond E., Loewenheim, Francis L., and Van Wagenen, Richard W., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1957.Google Scholar

10 Dankwart Rustow is, for example, an “associate professor of international social forces” at Columbia University. In the Columbia University Bulletin his course of lectures in that subject is described as “a comparative examination of cultural, social, and ideological forces of political change in their international setting. Modernization, nationalism, recruitment of political leadership, the multiplication of sovereignties, and the problems of new states.”

11 Cf. Brodie, Bernard, Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1959CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaufmann, William W., ed., Military Policy and National Security, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1956Google Scholar; and Kissinger, Henry A., Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, New York, Harper, 1957.Google Scholar

12 Although the division of labor is not entirely logical, armament policies are usually analyzed in courses on “international politics,” while arms limitation policies are dealt with in courses on “international organization.” See Nogee, Joseph, “The Diplomacy of Disarmament,” International Conciliation, No. 526 (January 1960)Google Scholar; and the symposium issue on “Arms Control” of Daedalus (American Academy of Arts and Sciences), Fall 1960.

13 See, e.g., Huntington, Samuel P., The Soldier and the State, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1957Google Scholar; and Millis, Walter (with Harvey C. Mansfield and Harold Stein), Arms and the State, New York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1958.Google Scholar The Social Science Research Council has for several years had a Committee on National Security Policy Research.

14 For a discussion of the distinction between scientific and other scholarly writing in international relations and a survey of the former, see Lasswell, Harold D., “The Scientific Study of International Relations,” Yearbook of World Affairs, XII (1958), pp. 1–28.Google Scholar

15 See Deutsch, Karl W., Nationalism and Social Communication, New York, John Wiley, 1953Google Scholar; and Leites, Nathan, “Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts,” World Politics, I, No. 1 (October 1948), pp. 102–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Thus, Rupert Emerson writes in his preface to From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960): “I have thrown my scruples to the winds and joined in a search for uniformities on the grand scale.” Two recent books which describe uniformities of state behavior observed in a series of case studies are Fox, Annette B., The Power of Small States (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959)Google Scholar, and Kecskemeti, Paul, Strategic Surrender (Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1958).Google Scholar

17 E.g., Knorr, Klaus, ed., NATO and American Security, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1959CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wolfers, Arnold, ed., Alliance Policy in the Cold War, Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins Press, 1956.Google Scholar

18 Their most recent contributions to the discussion are Morgenthau, H. J., Dilemmas of Politics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958Google Scholar; and Thompson, K. W., Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Waldo, Dwight, Political Science in the United States of America, Paris, UNESCO, 1956Google Scholar, chap. 5. See Fox, William T. R., “Les fondements moraux et juridiques de la politique étrangère américaine,” in La politique étrangère et ses fondements (Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, No. 55, Paris, A. Colin, 1954, pp. 278–90)Google Scholar, for a distinction between the doctrinal realist position and what is there called “empirical realism,” which is said to characterize most present-day American international relations research. In the idealist-realist debate, Cook, Thomas I. and Moos, Malcolm (Power Through Purpose, Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins Press, 1954)Google Scholar are two political scientists on the idealist side.

20 International Politics, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1933.

21 New York, McGraw-Hill, 1935.

22 New York, Harcourt Brace, 1942.

23 New York and London, Macmillan, 1939.

24 The phrase “one of the political sciences” is used in order to avoid discussing whether the study of international relations belongs more to political science or to sociology, if it is not a separate discipline. Certain scholars distinguish between “direct action” and “political action.” They reserve the latter term for action taken through or with a view to controlling the action of governments. The study of direct action would lie in the province of sociology and the study of the structure and functioning of international society would be a species of sociology. See Spykman, N. J., America's Strategy in World Politics, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1942, p. 13.Google ScholarThe Policy Sciences, edited by Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell (Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1951; translated into French as Les sciences de la politique aux Etats-Unis, Paris, A. Colin, 1951), stresses the unity of the studies of which international relations is a part. The content of the study of international relations is not automatically affected by a decision to call it a species of political science, a species of sociology, or something separate from either.

25 See Almond, Gabriel, The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1950Google Scholar; and Hilsman, Roger, “Congressional-Executive Relations and the Foreign Policy Consensus,” American Political Science Review, LII, No. 3 (September 1958), pp. 725–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Cf. Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1958.Google Scholar

27 Journal of Conflict Resolution and the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution.

28 E.g., Goodrich, Leland M., Korea: A Study of United States Policy in the United Nations, New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 1956.Google Scholar

29 See the forthcoming collection of case studies of civil-military relations by Harold Stein, to be published by the Twentieth Century Fund, New York, N.Y.

30 See Leites, Nathan, A Study of Bolshevism, Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1953.Google Scholar The Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University has commissioned a group of case studies emphasizing civilian and military perspectives in the making of national security policy.

31 Cf. Cohen, Bernard C., The Political Process and Foreign Policy, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 E.g., Snyder, Richard C., Bruck, H. W., and Sapin, Burton M., Decision-making as an Approach to the Study of International Relations, Princeton, N.J., Foreign Policy Analysis Project, 1954.Google Scholar

33 New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.

34 New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951.

35 New York, John Wiley, 1957.

36 Man, the State, and War, New York, Columbia University Press, 1959.

37 Cf. “Symposium on the Place of Theory in the Conduct and Study of International Relations,” Ann Arbor, Mich., University of Michigan, May 12–14, 1960 (mimeographed).

38 Cf. Vagts, Alfred, Defense and Diplomacy, New York, King's Crown Press, 1956Google Scholar; and A. F. K. and Organski, Katherine, Population and International Relations, New York, Alfred A. Knopf (forthcoming).Google Scholar

39 Cf. Klineberg, Otto, Tensions Affecting International Understanding, New York, Social Science Research Council, 1950CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cantril, Hadley, ed., Tensions That Cause War, Urbana, Ill., University of Illinois Press, 1951.Google Scholar

40 Cf. the Hoover Institute Studies by Lasswell, Harold D., Lerner, Daniel, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and others, bearing the common tide, Revolution and the Development of International Relations, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1951–1952Google Scholar; and Lasswell, Harold D., “Communications as an Emerging Discipline,” Audio-Visual Communication Review, VI, No. 4 (Fall 1958), pp. 245–54.Google Scholar

41 Two indispensable volumes for the study of World War II are those dealing with United States foreign policy in 1937–1941 by Langer, William L. and Everett Gleason, S., The Challenge to Isolation and The Undeclared War (New York, Harper, 1952 and 1953).Google Scholar

42 The studies of Harold D. Lasswell and Myres S. McDougal are examples of effective collaboration between a political scientist and a lawyer. See, e.g., McDougal, and Lasswell, , “The Identification and Appraisal of Diverse Systems of Public Order,” American Journal of International Law, LIII, No. 1 (January 1959), pp. 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1959.

44 New York, Random House, 1956.

45 E.g., the sixteen studies on United States Foreign Policy prepared by different research institutions for the United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, 86th Congress, 1st and 2nd Sessions, Washington, D.C., G.P.O., 1959–1960.

46 For surveys of political science generally, in addition to Waldo, op.cit., see Goals for Political Science (New York, William Sloan Associates, 1951), a report of the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching of the American Political Science Association; also Hyneman, Charles S., The Study of Politics (Urbana, Ill., University of Illinois Press, 1959)Google Scholar, and Young, Roland, ed., Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston, Ill., Northwestern University Press, 1958)Google Scholar, two analyses growing out of a detailed examination of the political science curriculum at Northwestern University. The essay by Eulau, Heinz in Hoselitz, Bert F., ed., A Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences (Chicago, Ill., University of Chicago Press, 1959)Google Scholar, contains many suggestive comments.

47 Kirk, Grayson, The Study of International Relations in American Colleges and Universities, New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 1947Google Scholar; and Swift, Richard N., World Affairs and the College Curriculum, Washington, D.C., American Council on Education, 1959.Google Scholar The latter is the culminating volume in a series sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which examines various aspects of the study of “world affairs” in American colleges and universities.

48 Gange, John, University Research on International Affairs, Washington, D.C., American Council on Education, 1958, p. 12.Google Scholar

49 Dyke, Vernon Van, ed., Some Approaches and Concepts Used in the Teaching of International Politics, Iowa City, State University of Iowa, 1957.Google Scholar

50 Wolfers, Arnold, “The Actors in International Politics,” in Fox, William T. R., ed., Theoretical Aspects of International Relations, Notre Dame, Ind., University of Notre Dame Press, 1959, pp. 83–106.Google Scholar

51 E.g., Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations.

52 E.g., Lasswell, Harold D., World Politics and Personal Insecurity, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1935Google Scholar; and Dunn, Frederick S., War and the Minds of Men, New York, Council on Foreign Relations, 1951.Google Scholar

53 E.g., Eagleton, Clyde, International Government, 3rd ed., New York, Ronald Press, 1957.Google Scholar

54 A recent example is Mills, Lennox A. and McLaughlin, Charles H. N., World Politics in Transition (New York, Henry Holt, 1956)Google Scholar, in which about half the text is devoted to the foreign policies of particular states; an influential earlier work is Harold, and Sprout, Margaret, eds., Foundations of National Power (2nd ed., New York, Van Nostrand, 1951).Google Scholar

55 See “San Francisco International Studies Project” and “International Studies,” San Francisco State College, 1959 and 1960 (mimeographed); and Organski, A. F. K., World Politics, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1958.Google Scholar

56 Among the major transformations, that brought about by scientific and technological change has perhaps been least systematically analyzed. The short-run impact on military policy and strategic theory has been widely discussed, but non-military and long-run aspects have been generally neglected in both teaching and research. A few exceptions are Herz, John, International Politics in the Atomic Age, New York, Columbia University Press, 1959Google Scholar; Jessup, Philip C. and Taubenfeld, Howard, Controls for Outer Space and the Antarctic Analogy, New York, Columbia University Press, 1959Google Scholar; “Science and World Politics” (a symposium), Journal of International Affairs, XIII, No. 1 (1959); and Stoessinger, John G., “Atoms for Peace: The International Atomic Energy Agency,” in Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, Organizing Peace in the Nuclear Age, New York, New York University Press, 1959, pp. 117–233.Google Scholar

57 Cf. Kirk, , op.cit., p. 34Google Scholar: “All social studies are so interrelated that each can best be studied if the beginning student has already studied all the others.”

58 Schuman, Frederick L., International Politics (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1st ed., 1933Google Scholar; 6th ed., 1960), is distinctive for its long historical introduction.

59 Haas, Ernst B. and Whiting, Allen S., Dynamics of International Relations (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1956)Google Scholar, draws on both comparative politics and sociology.

60 H. and M. Sprout, eds., op.cit.

61 Strausz-Hupé, Robert and Possony, Stefan T., International Relations, 2nd ed., New York, McGraw-Hill, 1954Google Scholar; and Organski, World Politics, op.cit.

62 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations, 3rd ed., New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.Google Scholar

63 Sondermann, Fred A., in “The Study of International Relations: 1956 Version” (World Politics, X, No. 1, October 1957, pp. 102–11)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, distinguishes the texts with a unified conceptual framework from those “strung together … in a more or less random fashion.” The latter group often contains more factual data than the former.

64 Kirk, , op.cit., pp. 27–29.Google Scholar

65 Swift, , op.cit., pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

66 Enthusiasm for area studies sometimes goes so far that the task of filling in the gaps of knowledge about unfamiliar parts of the world may be mistaken for the whole study of international relations. This results from a genuine confusion between “foreign” and “international.” If “international” were synonymous with “everything foreign,” then one would only have to add up his knowledge of individual areas and call the sum total “international relations.”

67 See Bloomfield, Lincoln P. and Padelford, Norman J., “Three Experiments in Political Gaming,” American Political Science Review, LIII, No. 4 (December 1959), pp. 1105–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Goldhamer, Herbert and Speier, Hans, “Some Observations on Political Gaming,” World Politics, XII, No. 1 (October 1959), pp. 71–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 The difficulty of teaching undergraduate students with no foreign travel experience, no direct observation of politics in the national capital, and no simulated international relations experiences in mock meetings and political gaming may be lessened by the rise in standards of television news reporting on world affairs. Documentary presentations on such topics as “The Population Explosion” or “The Munich Crisis” and the showing in full of Nikita Khrushchev's two-hour press conference on the occasion of the abortive summit conference of May 1960 are examples. Cleveland, Harlan, “The Real International World and the Academic Lag,” in Price, Roy A., ed., New View-points in the Social Sciences (28th Yearbook, Washington, D.C., National Council for the Social Studies, 1958, pp. 172–88)Google Scholar, emphasizes the importance of immersion in some foreign culture as a “necessary modern supplement” to the education of every American, not just the student with a specialized concern in the field of international relations.

69 Cf. Dale Fuller, C., Training of Specialists in International Relations, Washington, D.C., American Council on Education, 1957.Google Scholar

70 It is possible to earn a Ph.D. specializing in international relations and an M.A. as a way-station on the road to the Ph.D. in most of the leading universities, whether in political science or under a separately organized international relations program. The University of Chicago and Yale University were among the first to develop a separately organized Ph.D. program in international relations. The quasi-professional terminal master's degree is offered in a smaller number of institutions. There are separately organized programs for training specialists, for example, at American University, Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University, and Tufts University (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy).

71 Gange, (op.cit., pp. 27–28)Google Scholar comments on the decline in the use of the pre-doctoral research assistant and the increase in the number of fellowships for which no service is expected and no special research training is received.

72 The RAND Corporation is sui generis. Although an outstanding example of “operations research” with unmatched government financial support and access for its staff to classified information and to the decision-making levels of government, it has many of the characteristics of an academic research organization. Social scientists on the RAND staff have increasingly been a source of leadership in international relations research. Their contributions to the study of military policy and strategic theory have already been cited, but they are influential in other fields, too.

73 E.g., Snyder et al., op.cit.

74 Although membership in the International Political Science Association is open to scholars throughout the world, active participants come mainly from the North Atlantic community. The Association has probably done much more to strengthen contacts within this regional community than between the North Atlantic group of scholars and those in other parts of the world.

75 In addition to the Committee on National Security Policy Research already cited, the Social Science Research Council has had a series of committees on the study of various foreign areas and on the comparative politics of underdeveloped areas which have also brought together scholars with international relations interests. Nearly thirty years ago, an SSRC committee under James T. Shotwell called for the creation of an Institute of Atlantic Affairs. The SSRC formerly had a committee on international relations research, out of whose work grew two general analyses—Dunn, Frederick S., “The Present Course of International Relations Research,” World Politics, II, No. 1 (October 1949), pp. 80–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and William T. R. Fox, “Interwar International Relations Research: The American Experience,” ibid., pp. 67–79.

76 The Carnegie Endowment has for many years had an office in Europe as well as its main office in New York. Formerly in Paris, it is now in Geneva.

77 Participants in the meetings of the International Studies Conference, founded in 1929, have been drawn almost entirely from North Atlantic countries. Thus, except for the Australian chairman, Professor W. R. Crocker, the whole membership of the Windsor meeting on the university teaching of international relations in March 1950 was from these countries. See Goodwin, Geoffrey L., ed., The University Teaching of international Relations, Oxford, Blackwell, 1951.Google Scholar

78 E.g., Eulau, loc.cit.; Hoffmann, Stanley, “International Relations: The Long Road to Theory,” World Politics, XI, No. 3 (April 1959), pp. 346–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hoffmann, , ed., Contemporary Theory in International Relations, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1960.Google Scholar

79 Richardson, L. F., “Generalized Foreign Politics,” British Journal of Psychology (Monograph supplement, Vol. XXIII, Cambridge, Eng., 1939)Google Scholar, and Ash, Maurice A., “An Analysis of Power, with Special Reference to International Politics” (World Politics, III, No. 2, January 1951, pp. 218–37)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, are examples of theoretical analyses by English scholars which have aroused the interest of American scholars with comparable theoretical concerns. Richardson's work on the mathematical theory of war was the subject of a symposium issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (I, No. 3, September 1957). His posthumous works, Arms and Insecurity and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels have recently been published (Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1960).

80 Grosser, , loc.cit., p. 639.Google Scholar

81 Ibid., p. 651. Professor Grosser also comments on the advantage enjoyed by European scholars in “not belonging to a country which plays such a decisive role in world politics….”

82 Morton A. Kaplan, in System and Process in International Politics (op.cit., chap. 2), identifies six types of international system: the “balance of power” system, the loose bipolar system, the tight bipolar system, the universal system, the hierarchical system, and the unit veto system. He does not claim to be able to cite historical examples of each of the six types.