Evaluative statements concerning the performance of the international polity diverge dramatically from one another. On the one hand, there are those whose views border on the apocalyptic. They assert that the performance of this political system is imacceptably poor and that the international polity is currently headed toward catastrophe. They are convinced that the existing international political system cannot be reformed, a conclusion that implies the necessity of repudiating the existing system. Therefore, it is not surprising that those who hold such views are prominently associated with calls for a new world order. At the same time, many students of international affairs have views concerning the performance of the international polity which border on the complacent. The adequacy of the performance of this political system is often tacitly assumed. Such views are not uncommon even among those who are active in various reformist movements at the level of domestic politics.

Introduction

Two distinctive views of the modern state can be found in recent political science literature. One group of writers, drawing attention to the expansion of international agencies and transnational processes and organizations, have argued that these developments have precipitated an increase in the level of interdependence between states, eliminating the distinction between domestic and foreign policy and constraining the activities of governments within their own states. At the same time, another group of writers, focusing on the domestic system, have pointed to the expanding power of governments, expressed in terms of the growing range of their activities and the increasing number of policy instruments employed to monitor and control behaviour within the state. These two approaches present something of a paradox—the power of governments is depicted as expanding on the one hand, while being constrained on the other.

According to Professor Northedge,

It is well known that the expression ‘international’ came into use through the famous mistake made by Jeremy Bentham when he coined it to describe the system of law between sovereign states as a translation of the term ius gentium, which the Romans used to refer to the corpus of rules, controlled, of course, by Rome itself, between themselves and the tribes of Italy and later the various parts of the Roman Empire.

During the last ten years the Department of International Politics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, has been using the technique of crisis gaming as a supplementary part of its undergraduate programme. After being the first university in Britain to introduce crisis gaming as a teaching technique in 1966, the Department's initiative has been fairly widely followed at other British universities and polytechnics, most notably by Edinburgh with the GONEX series of games in 1967, Dr. Michael Nicholson's games at Lancaster1 and more recently by the University of London.

In November, 1934, the British Council for Relations with Other Countries was founded on the initiative of the Foreign Office. The decision to establish a body specifically designed to conduct cultural propaganda overseas on behalf of the British Government was, perhaps, the most constructive peacetime response to the growing realization that more positive measures were required to counter the detrimental effects of aggressive foreign propaganda upon British interests and prestige. The British Council, which continued to operate under the auspices of the Foreign Office, offered a new and alternative approach to the traditional conduct of foreign affairs: the practice of cultural diplomacy. It was believed that cultural propaganda — broadly interpreted as the dissemination of British ideals and beliefs in a general rather than specifically political form – would not only serve to enhance British influence and prestige abroad, but would also effectively further the wider ideals of international peace and understanding.

Brian White has taken me to task for my review article on British Foreign policy “claiming that an important opportunity in this journal was lost” and that the tone of the review was “complacent”. My two broad responses to these comments may sound contradictory. The first is that he was less than fair on the review article and the books which formed its basis, but second I applaud his initiative in raising a debate about the study of British foreign policy.

The last 11 years have witnessed a revolution in the political organization of the oceans, a revolution that has found expression, at the global level, in the third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, which held its first, procedural, session in New York in 1973 and began its seventh at Geneva this spring, having already consumed 41 weeks of diplomatic time in pursuit of its breath takingly ambitious target of a single comprehensive convention to govern the oceans. Today it, and the issues with which it is concerned, attract little public attention; but they have provoked a wealth of serious studies, conferences, and papers. Those examined here are among the more important of them, but they are far from exhausting the field.