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Cybernetic Analysis and Political Study

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The Application of Cybernetic Analysis to the Study of International Politics

Abstract

This study is conceived of as an effort to apply the systems approach developed by Karl Deutsch in his Nerves of Government 1 to the study of international politics. When work was started on this project, Deutsch’s general statement about political processes found in Nerves of Government appeared to this author as a most unique and important theoretical initiative in political science. Deutsch’s work was an effort to respond to the increasingly complex style of modem life. He attempted to develop a new approach to politics that would combine traditional scholarship with the more modem findings of science. The product of his effort, Nerves of Government, was not a completed study. Instead it was an “interim report” that Deutsch hoped would eventually lead to a “theory of politics, both national and international.”2

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References

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  2. Ibid., p. 25

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  3. Ibid., p. 27

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  6. A good description of these changes is given by Charles A. McClelland, Theory and the International System. ( New York: Macmillan and Company, 1966 ), pp. 63–88.

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  76. This I speculate as a possibility. Deutsch only barely hints at the implications in Nerves of Government, pp. 242–244.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Government, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, USA

    Stephen David Bryen

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  1. Stephen David Bryen
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© 1971 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

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Bryen, S.D. (1971). Cybernetic Analysis and Political Study. In: The Application of Cybernetic Analysis to the Study of International Politics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3005-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3005-2_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-3007-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-010-3005-2

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