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The Present Course of International Relations Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Frederick S. Dunn
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Extract

This is a good time to ask what are the important emerging trends in research in international relations. In the first place, the problems of world politics today are as arresting in their implications for the security and well-being of peoples everywhere as they have ever been; at the same time, they seem less subject to human control. Secondly, a generation of experimenting and high-level groping with international problems has produced, or ought to have produced, some valuable conclusions about how to proceed in carrying out fruitful research in the field. Finally, the impressive advances made in various branches of the social sciences in the last few years have provided some interesting new tools and skills that ought to be of great help to the political analyst working on the international level.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , October 1949 , pp. 80 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1949

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References

1 See footnote 1 of the previous paper by Fox, William T. R., supra, p. 67.Google Scholar

2 See the two penetrating studies by Feis, Herbert, Seen from E. A., New York, A. A. Knopf, 1947Google Scholar, and The Spanish Story, New York, A. A. Knopf, 1948.

3 See Jessup, Philip C., A Modern Law of Nations, New York, Macmillan, 1948.Google Scholar

4 See Wolfers, Arnold, Britain and France between Two Wars, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1940Google Scholar; also Micaud, Charles, The French Right and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939, Durham, North Carolina, Duke Univ. Press, 1943.Google Scholar

5 Career specialists in international relations can view this fact with equanimity since the chances of complete removal of autonomous political divisions in the worldare too remote to be of serious present concern.

6 See Benedict, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1946Google Scholar; Tomasic, Dinko, Personality and Culture in Eastern European Politics, New York, George W. Stewart, 1948Google Scholar; Leites, Nathan, “Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts,” World Politics, Vol. I, No. 1 (October, 1948), pp. 102–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 At the same time, some social scientists, in their concern with new discoveries in unconscious motivation, seem to lose sight of the fact that, at least on the problem-solving level, men still use reason, more or less, in arriving at their choices of action.

8 See Journal of Social Issues, Winter, 1948, pp. 21 ff.

9 See Weldon, T. D., States and Morals, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1947.Google Scholar

10 See Carr, E. H., Conditions of Peace, New York, Macmillan, 1942Google Scholar, Ch. 5.

11 See Henderson, L. J., “The Study of Man,” Science, Vol. 94, No. 2427, July 4, 1941.CrossRefGoogle Scholar