Over the past decade traditionalists have launched a series of attacks on scientific approaches to international politics. Most of the arguments employed against the scientific approach stem from those used earlier by E. H. Carr in The Twenty Years’ Crisis. The general arguments that have been employed include these among others: that politics involves purpose in a way that physical science does not; that scientific knowledge is applicable to facts, but understanding, wisdom, or intuition are required for areas where human purpose is involved; that those pursuing scientific models tend to mistake their models for reality; that scientific method requires high precision and measurement and therefore is incapable of coping with the most important elements of international politics; and that the practitioners of scientific method can never be sure that they have not left something out of their model.

Conventional alliance theory asserts that calculation, not sentiment, determines original combinations; thereafter, ideology, cultural ties, and common historical traditions may buttress the connection achieved. Moreover, interest governs the breakdown of alliances; cultural affinities can only be retarding factors. Since the national “parts” are postulated as greater than the alliance “whole,” the logic of egocentric interests had led some to predict nuclear fragmentation within contemporary alliance systems.

Self-sustaining economic growth remains a tantalizing and remote goal for the world's poor nations, whose populations comprise some seventy percent of all the world's people. Now halfway through its “Development Decade,” the UN has observed that a continuation of past development trends is not something that can be looked upon with favor. There has in fact been a large expansion in industrial production and in overhead capital facilities in these poor lands over the past decade or two.

During the last ten years the study of comparative politics has undergone a methodological revolution. Reacting against the static, formalistic, “country-by-country” approach of earlier students of foreign governments, numerous contemporary political scientists have endeavored to create a more dynamic, empirically interpreted, and truly comparative method of analysis. This group of political scientists makes three general assumptions concerning the new approach.

Dag Hammarskjöld not long before his death called attention to the mainspring propelling the successful operation of the United Nations. The growth of the United Nations into an increasingly effective organization, he declared, will be dependent upon the cooperation extended by its Member nations in making the Charter “a living reality in practical political action as it is already in law” and in giving enhanced respect to United Nations decisions.