INTERNATIONAL

RELATION
 • Historical development
• The field of international relations emerged at the beginning of the 20th
century largely in the West and in particular in the United States as
that country grew in power and influence. Whereas the study of
international relations in the newly founded Soviet Union and later in
communist China was stultified by officially imposed Marxist ideology, in
the West the field flourished as the result of a number of factors: a growing
demand to find less-dangerous and more-effective means of conducting
relations between peoples, societies, governments, and economies; a surge
of writing and research inspired by the belief that systematic observation
and inquiry could dispel ignorance and serve human betterment; and the
popularization of political affairs, including foreign affairs. The traditional
view that foreign and military matters should remain
the exclusive preserve of rulers and other elites yielded to the belief that
such matters constituted an important concern and responsibility of all
citizens. This increasing popularization of international relations
reinforced the idea that general education should include instruction in
foreign affairs and that knowledge should be advanced in the interests of
• This new perspective was articulated by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1913–
21) in his program for relations between the Great Powers following a settlement
of World War I. The first of his Fourteen Points, as his program came to be
known, was a call for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” in place of the
secret treaties that were believed to have contributed to the outbreak of the war.
The extreme devastation caused by the war strengthened the conviction among
political leaders that not enough was known about international relations and
that universities should promote research and teaching on issues related to
international cooperation and war and peace.
• International relations scholarship prior to World War I was conducted primarily
in two loosely organized branches of learning: diplomatic history and
international law. Involving meticulous archival and other primary-source
research, diplomatic history emphasized the uniqueness of international events
and the methods of diplomacy as it was actually conducted. International law—
especially the law of war—had a long history in international relations and was
viewed as the source of fundamental normative standards of international
conduct. The emergence of international relations was to broaden the scope of
international law beyond this traditional focal point.
• This new perspective was articulated by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1913–
21) in his program for relations between the Great Powers following a
settlement of World War I. The first of his Fourteen Points, as his program came
to be known, was a call for “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” in place
of the secret treaties that were believed to have contributed to the outbreak of
the war. The extreme devastation caused by the war strengthened
the conviction among political leaders that not enough was known about
international relations and that universities should promote research and
teaching on issues related to international cooperation and war and peace.
• International relations scholarship prior to World War I was conducted
primarily in two loosely organized branches of learning: diplomatic history and
international law. Involving meticulous archival and other primary-source
research, diplomatic history emphasized the uniqueness of international events
and the methods of diplomacy as it was actually conducted. International law—
especially the law of war—had a long history in international relations and was
viewed as the source of fundamental normative standards of international
conduct. The emergence of international relations was to broaden the scope of
international law beyond this traditional focal point.
• Between the two world wars
• During the 1920s new centres, institutes, schools, and university departments devoted to
teaching and research in international relations were created in Europe and North
America. In addition, private organizations promoting the study of international relations
were formed, and substantial philanthropic grants were made to support scholarly
journals, to sponsor training institutes, conferences, and seminars, and to stimulate
university research.
• Three subject areas initially commanded the most attention, each having its roots
in World War I. During the revolutionary upheavals at the end of the war, major portions
of the government archives of imperial Russia and imperial Germany were opened,
making possible some impressive scholarly work in diplomatic history that pieced
together the unknown history of prewar alliances, secret diplomacy, and military
planning. These materials were integrated to provide detailed explanations of the origins
of World War I. Among such works several are particularly noteworthy, including Sidney
Bradshaw Fay’s meticulous The Origins of the World War (1928), which explored prewar
diplomacy and alliance systems; Bernadotte E. Schmitt’s The Coming of the War,
1914 (1930) and Triple Alliance and Triple Entente (1934); Pierre Renouvin’s The
Immediate Origins of the War (1928); Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis (1923–29);
and Arnold J. Toynbee’s The World After the Peace Conference (1925). There also were
extensive memoirs and volumes of published documents that provided much material for
diplomatic historians and other international relations scholars.
 The postwar ascendancy of realism
• Hans J. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1948) helped to meet the need for a
general theoretical framework. Not only did it become one of the most extensively used
textbooks in the United States and Britain—it continued to be republished over the next
half century—it also was an essential exposition of the realist theory of international
relations. Numerous other contributors to realist theory emerged in the decade or so
after World War II, including Arnold Wolfers, George F. Kennan, Robert Strausz-Hupé,
Kissinger, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
• Although there are many variations of realism, all of them make use of the core concepts
of national interest and the struggle for power. According to realism, states exist within
an anarchic international system in which they are ultimately dependent on their own
capabilities, or power, to further their national interests. The most important national
interest is the survival of the state, including its people, political system, and
territorial integrity. Other major interests for realists include preservation of
the culture and the economy. Realists contend that, as long as the world is divided into
nation-states in an anarchic setting, national interest will remain the essence of
international politics. The struggle for power is part of human nature and takes
essentially two forms: collaboration and competition. Collaboration occurs when parties
find that their interests coincide (e.g., when they form alliances or coalitions designed to
maximize their collective power, usually against an adversary). Rivalry, competition, and
conflict result from the clash of national interests that is characteristic of the anarchic
system. Accommodation between states is possible through skillful political leadership,
which includes the prioritizing of national goals in order to limit conflicts with other
states.
The behavioral approach and the task of
integration
• In the 1950s an important development in the social sciences, including the study of international relations, was the arrival of new concepts
and methodologies that were loosely identified in ensemble as behavioral theory. This general approach, which emphasized narrowly
focused quantitative studies designed to obtain precise results, created a wide-ranging controversy between theorists who believed that the
social sciences should emulate as much as possible the methodologies of the physical sciences and those who held that such an approach is
fundamentally unsound. In addition, the great number of new topics investigated at the time—including cognition, conflict
resolution, decision making, deterrence, development, the environment, game theory, economic and political integration, and systems
analysis—provoked some anxiety that the discipline would collapse into complete conceptual and methodological chaos. Accordingly, much
of the intellectual effort of the mid-1950s to mid-1960s—the so-called “behavioral decade”—went into the task of comparing, interpreting,
and integrating various concepts from new areas of study, and the scholarly goal of the period was to link theories, or to connect so-called
“islands of theory,” into a greater, more comprehensive theory of international relations.
• This task proved to be a difficult one. Indeed, some scholars began to question the necessity—or even the possibility—of arriving at a single
theory that would explain all the varied, diverse, and complex facets of international relations. Instead, these researchers suggested that a
number of separate theories would be needed.
• At the same time, theories that trace the forces of international relations to a single source were increasingly viewed as unsatisfactory. The
struggle for power, for example, was accepted as a fact in past and current international politics, but attempts to make all other factors
subordinate to or dependent upon power were thought to exclude too much of what is important and interesting in international relations.
Similar assessments were made of the theory that asserts that the character of a nation—and hence the character of its participation in
international relations—is determined by its child-rearing practices, as well as of the Marxist theory that international relations are solely
the historical expression of class struggle.
• PRESENTED BY – MOHIT RAWAT
• MA POLITICAL SCIENCE
• TOPIC – INTERNATIONAL RELATION