This book has been concerned with both ideas and practices in relation to international order and its potential for reform. As such, it has explored continuity and change both in the ideology of international order and in its historical practice. It remains only to summarise the assessment of change, both as regards ideas about international relations and the actual conduct of international affairs. Finally, the conclusion will comment upon the mutual interaction between ideas and practices. That images of international order and historical patterns of international order affect each other is uncontroversial but trite: meanwhile, the precise nature of this inter-relationship resists adequate analysis.

IDEOLOGY

It has been noted in the course of this study that optimism and pessimism, whether in relation to the need for international reform or the possibility of its attainment, have been persistent attitudes of mind. At the same time, one or other of these moods has tended to become dominant during various phases of history: we tend to associate some periods with a prevailing mood of optimism or pessimism and these moods fluctuate, if not in cyclical fashion, then at least at fairly regular intervals.

It is, of course, possible to discern why some intellectual moods do arise. Most obviously, fears and hopes about the nature of international order are generated by events in the real world of international relations, be it in the form of current experience, or recent memories, or imminent expectations.