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International Relations: The Disputed Search for Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Richard B. Finnegan
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Extract

The study of international relations has passed through a series of intellectual controversies. These have included the debate between political realism and political idealism and the debate as to whether international relations is a distinct discipline or the subject matter of several other disciplines. Now the discipline is debating appropriate methodology. Proponents of a traditional approach and proponents of a scientific approach both contend for their particular methodology.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , January 1972 , pp. 40 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1972

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References

* I am indebted to Richard B. Gray of Florida State University for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

1 See Morgenthau, Hans J., In Defense of the National Interest (New York, 1951)Google Scholar and Moos, Malcolm and Cook, Thomas, Power Through Purpose (Baltimore, 1954)Google Scholar for a sampling of the immense amount of literature on the realist-idealist debate. See Is International Relations a Discipline? (Eugene, 1960)Google Scholar and Kaplan, Morton A., “Is International Relations a Discipline?” Journal of Politics, XXIII, 3 (1961), 462–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a sampling of the literature on the disciplinary debate.

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35 Ibid., p. 23.

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47 Singer, J. David, “The Behavioral Science Approach to International Relations, Payoff and Prospect,” in Rosenau, James N. (ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York, 1969), p. 68Google Scholar.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

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59 Ibid.

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61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

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64 Ibid., p. 72–3.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid., p. 75.

67 Ibid., p. 76.

68 Kaplan, , “Traditionalism,” p. 58Google Scholar.

69 Ibid., p. 59. It must be noted that Kaplan himself is not above criticism by those who are in the scientific approach. One particularly scathing attack is Levy, Marion J., “Does it Matter if He's Naked Bawled the Child,” in Knorr, and Rosenau, , Contending Approaches, pp. 87–109Google Scholar.

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71 Dahl, , Modern Political Analysis, pp. 107–10Google Scholar.

72 See, for example, Kelman, Herbert C., ed., International Behavior (New York, 1965)Google Scholar, and Singer, ed., Human Behavior and International Politics as cited.

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75 Singer, , “Incompleat Theorist,” p. 68Google Scholar.

76 Kaplan, , “Traditionalism,” p. 56Google Scholar.

77 Singer, , “Incompleat Theorist,” p. 82Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., p. 68. Italics in original.

79 Rosenau, , “Games,” p. 295Google Scholar.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid., p. 297.

82 Ibid., p. 303.

83 North, Robert, “Research Pluralism and the International Elephant,” in Knorr, and Rosenau, , Contending Approaches, p. 241Google Scholar.

84 See, for example, Yalem, Ronald J., “Toward the Reconciliation of Traditional and Behavioral Approaches to International Theory,” Orbis, XIII (Summer, 1969) 578–600Google Scholar. An outstanding effort at mutual enrichment is Robinson, Thomas, “A National Interest Analysis of Sino-Soviet Relations,” International Studies Quarterly XI (06, 1967), 135–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Robinson takes Morgenthau's concept of national interest as “representative of the best which the ‘traditional’ approach has to offer. …” and works it into a model and tests it on a particular case.