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GEORGE CATLIN, THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS, AND ANGLO-AMERICAN UNION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2016

DANIEL GORMAN
DANIEL GORMAN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Waterloo E-mail: dpgorman@uwaterloo.ca
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Abstract

This article examines the intersection of interwar debates about the scientific study of politics and international order, two fields which are often studied in isolation. It does so through an analysis of the political and international thought of the British political scientist and advocate of Anglo-American union George Catlin, one of the few political thinkers who made important contributions to each field. Catlin was one of the earliest proponents of the scientific study of politics, and his work prefigured the subsequent advent of public-choice theory. He was also the most vocal British advocate of Anglo-American union in the 1930s and 1940s. Catlin believed that international peace could be attained through the equilibrium of regional blocs based upon shared cultural identities. He saw Anglo-American union as the most feasible first step towards such international organization, given what he identified as the existing close bonds of “Anglo-Saxony.”

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , April 2018 , pp. 123 - 152
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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