The relationship between students of international organization and students of international politics has been an erratic one, marked by appreciable shifts in both salience and sympathy. At some points, we may have been close but hostile, at others close and friendly, and more often than not, distant and mildly skeptical of one another's work. As I see it, the extraordinary gap of the 1960s is beginning to close, and I take it as one of my missions here to help accelerate this process, while enhancing the probability that, as our intellectual paths converge again, we will like what we see.
In every social science, there tends to be a recurrent and cyclical preoccupation with the lack of cumulativeness. Some attribute this to the familiar "absence of theory," and lay it at the doorstep of "barefooted empiricism." Others might see the culprit lurking in the conceptual morass that often passes for theory, and would suggest that grand schemata that are not — and usually cannot — be tested will hardly make for greater cumulativeness.There seems to be more than a germ of truth in both of these suspicions, but let me suggest a third possible source of our disappointment. I refer to certain norms and practices found among both the theorizers and the empiricists: those folkways that we pick up in college and graduate school, and are seldom able to shake in the postdoctoral years. On the assumption that an awareness of them and their implications may lead to their gradual extinction, I itemize here a few of what may be our less attractive foibles. While some of them may be peculiar to the field of world politics, most seem to be found all across the discipline.
While the Washington Conference of 1921–2 was not the first occasion on which public opinion had exercised an impact upon great power diplomacy, it seems to have provided one of the more dramatic illustrations of a process already well under way. In his Discourses, Machiavelli (p. 248) had already noted the dangers of building policy on the opinion of the people:And if you propose to them anything that, upon its face, seems profitable and courageous though there be really a loss concealed under it which may involve the ruin of the republic, the multitude will ever be most easily persuaded to it. But, if the measure proposed seems doubtful and likely to cause loss, then it will be difficult to persuade the people to it, even though the benefit and welfare of the republic were concealed under it.
The sci'fic study of war & peace had 3 pioneers: Quincy Wright, Pitirim Sorokin, & Lewis Richardson. Passing from the work of the past toward that of the future, a set of dimensions are presented for describing, & criteria for evaluating, soc sci knowledge on the causes of internat'l war. 2 criteria are identified: quality & relevance of knowledge. Quality is determined by accuracy, generality, & the explanatory dimension. The various efforts to search for explanatory variables & measure the incidence of war are discussed under the perspective of the relevance of knowledge. Finally, the problems of classifying & appraising the predictor variables are discussed. While the most widely used taxonomy is one which divides the alleged or potential explanatory variables into the standard disciplinary categories of pol'al, econ, psychol'al, & sociol'al, some studies include ideological factors. The inadequacy of this approach is pointed out & it is held that 'no coherent model of an essentially explanatory nature can emerge from so restricted a set of independent & intervening variables.' No explanation is sci'ly adequate if it fails to account for the human perceptions & responses which link up the allegedly causal sequence & fails to specify the decision process which links up the 'objective conditions' with the military events themselves. A design for a general strategy to acquire & codify knowledge on the causes of internat'l war includes the advice to dispense with certain kinds of conjectural work & focus on multi-variate conjecture instead. The right combination of conjectural & r'al res is needed. Computer simulation can be used to recreate past events & cases in a large variety of combinations. If the field is carried on from where Wright & his fellow pioneers left off, the most valuable applied sci ever known may yet be built. A Bibliog. M. Maxfield.
