Isolation and collaboration: a partial theory of inter-nation relations

Abstract

This paper develops a theory of how groups meet their members' demands. It is argued that the members of social units obtain satisfaction of their economic, cultural, and political needs through participation in social groups, including states or nations. It posits that changing environmental conditions may give rise to new needs or demands on the part of the members of groups. It argues that these new demands may be realizable either through self-reliant policies pursued in isolation or through relations with other political and social units. The theory is concerned particularly with national behaviors-be they individual or group, official or unofficial—which constitute the external responses of peoples comprising nation-states. The model essentially consists of the opposition of the two sets of factors. The direction of behavior of a group is schematized as the resultant balance between the strength of factors driving and/or attracting behavior inward and the strength of those factors pushing and/or pulling toward collaboration. The paper discusses factors influencing the choice in each of the two directions and predicts that the individual's and group's behaviors at any given time will be determined by the balance between these factors. The direction of behavior of the group is hypothesized to be conditioned upon such past history and current realities as the following: 1.1 and 1.2. The satisfactoriness or un-satisfactoriness of the group's experiences with its self-reliance versus its experiences with collaborative measures. 2.1 and 2.2. The degree to which the ideologies of the group's members are isolationist or collaborative. 3.1 and 3.2. The extent to which self-reliant means seem practical and advantageous versus the extent to which collaborative means seem feasible and advantageous. 3.3. The extent to which the group's task requires interdependence on other groups or allows the group to pursue its goal in isolation. 4.1. The degree to which the group's leadership perceives isolation or collaboration as supporting or destroying its elite positions. 4.2. The extent to which the members of the group think of collaborative relations as interfering with successful self-reliance. In addition to factors which give directionality to the behavior of groups, the model hypothesizes that there are auxiliary factors, which may facilitate or hinder the extent to which the group achieves isolation or collaboration, such as: 5.1. The extent to which the groups which interact have common and congruent, rather than contradictory and conflictful, elements in their cultural backgrounds and language-thought processes. After a discussion of the model's general characteristics and its inadequacies and limitations, brief illustrations are given of its use in the analysis of current policy issues in international affairs. For example, the theory indicates that regional collaboration, whether it is successful or unsuccessful, will tend to make universal collaboration less likely. On the issue of the number of functions which should be encompassed by a supra-group organization, the model predicts that single-purpose collaboration will tend to be extinguished, while multifunctionalism generates further collaboration.