Abstract
If, therefore, there does exist something that can be reasonably described as international society, how should it be studied? How relevant to it are the kinds of theory that have been devised by social scientists in examining smaller-scale societies?
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Notes
See, for example, the discussions of this problem in K. M. Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York, 1959),
and David Singer, The Level of Analysis Problems, in K. Knorr and S. Verba (eds), The International System (Princeton, 1961).
A. Comte, The Positive Philosophy (London, 1896) vol. n, bk vi, iii, p. 219.
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (New York, 1928) vol. ii, Secs 217 and 223.
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, trans. G. Simpson (Glencoe, Ill., 1949) pp. 130–1.
The international relations studies that come closest to such a study are the works of K. W. Deutsch on integration (for example, Political Community in the North Atlantic Area, Princeton, N.J., 1957)
and those of E. Haas on similar themes, for example, Beyond the Nation-State (Stanford, Calif., 1964).
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (London, 1952) p. 176.
C. Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (Harmondsworth, Middx., 1972) p. 59.
Talcott Parsons and E. Shils, Towards a General Theory of Action (Harvard, Mass., 1951) p. 107.
Talcott Parsons, ‘An Outline of the Social System’, in T. Parsons et al. (eds), Theories of Society (New York, 1961) pp. 36–70.
R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill., 1949) pp. 49–61.
Such an approach was adopted in Morton Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics (New York, 1957)
and in A. M. Scott, The Functioning of the International Political System (New York, 1967).
This approach has been applied in M. Liska, International Equilibrium (Cambridge, Mass., 1957).
Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation (Glencoe, Ill., 1947) p. 88.
The most complete statement of Schütz’s theories is in his book The Imaginary Construction of the Social World (Vienna, 1932).
A large number of studies of foreign policy and its formulation have been undertaken by writers on international relations: for example in J. N. Rosenau (ed.), International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York, 1961);
J. E. Black and K. W. Thompson, Foreign Policies in a World of Change (New York, 1963);
R. C. Snyder, W. H. Bruck and B. Sapin, Foreign Policy Decision-Making (New York, 1962);
K. N. Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics (Boston, Mass., 1967).
T. Parsons in The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons, ed. Max Black (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1961) p. 327.
Charles W. Mills, The Power Elite (New York, 1967).
R. Dahrendorf, Class and Conflict in an Industrial Society (London, 1959).
J. Rex, Key Problems of Sociological Theory (London, 1961) pp. 122–35.
A. Giddens, Profiles in Contemporary Social Theory (London, 1982) pp. 28–39.
To this category belong most writings of the traditional “realist” school — F. L. Schuman’s International Politics (New York, 1954);
G. Schwarzenburger’s Power Politics (London, 1941);
M. Wight’s Power Politics (London, 1946);
and Hans Morgenthan’s Politics among Nations (New York, 1948).
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© 1990 Evan Luard
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Luard, E. (1990). Social Theory and International Society. In: International Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20636-0_2
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