Muddling,Meddling and Modelling: Alternative Approaches to the Study of World Politics in an Era of Rapid Change

For a succinct review of a variety of efforts to employ the meddling approach, see Kal J. Holsti , " A New International Politics? Diplomacy in Complex Interdependence," International Organization (Vol. 32, Spring 1978), pp. 513-530.

For example, see J.R. Handelman , J.A. Vasquez , M.K. O'Leary and W.D. Coplin , " Color It Morgenthau: A Data-Based Assessment of Quantitative International Relations Research," a paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1973).

Examples here are John W. Burton , World Society (London : Cambridge University Press, 1972 ), and Richard A. Falk , A Study of Future Worlds ( New York: Free Press, 1975).

For a useful discussion of this point, see Jeffrey Harrod , " International Relations, Perceptions and Neo-Realism," The Year Book of World Affairs (Vol. 31, 1977), pp. 289-305.

For an analysis that emphasises such a bias and argues that the changes are superficial in comparison to the continuities of world politics, see F.S. Northedge , " Transnationalism: The American Illusion," Millennium (Vol. 5, Spring 1976), pp. 21-27.

For some systematic attempts to assess the degree of structural change in the global system, see P.J. Katzenstein , " International Interdependence: Some Long-Term Trends and Recent Changes," International Organization (Vol. 29, Autumn 1975), pp. 1020-1034; R.R. Kaufman , H.I. Chernotsky and D.S. Geller , " A Preliminary Test of the Theory of Dependency," Comparative Politics (Vol. 7, April 1975), pp. 303-331 ; and R. Rosecrance , A. Alexandroff , W. Koehler , J. Kroll , S. Laqueur and J. Stocker , " Whither Independence?" International Organization (Vol. 31, Summer 1975), pp. 425-472.

Two observers, for example, note that the study of " international relations is an American invention dating from the time after World War I when the American intellectual community discovered the world. Like most American essays in regard to the world, it has been enthusiastic, well-financed, faddist, nationally-oriented, and creating more problems than it solves." Fed Warner Neal and Bruce D. Hamlett , " The Never-Never Land of International Relations ," International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 13, September 1969), p. 283.

Robert L, Heilbronner , "Inescapable Marx," The New York Review of Books (Vol. XXV, June 29, 1978), p. 34.

Ibid., p. 35.

That the ensuing analysis deals only with aggregative processes is not meant to imply that there need be no concern about the causal flows from macro to micro units. On the contrary, as noted elsewhere, the processes of disaggregation are also central to any paradigm-building effort. Aggregative and disaggregative processes, however, differ in certain key respects and I only have time here to probe the former. For an initial consideration of the latter, see James N. Rosenau , " The Tourist and the Terrorist: Two Extremes on a Transnational Continuum ," a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., February 23, 1978, and the Workshop on Transnational and Transgovernmental Relations and International Outcomes, European Consortium for Political Research, Grenoble, France, April 8, 1978.

For a useful elaboration of this point, see R.L. Paarlberg , "Domesticating Global Management," Foreign Affairs (Vol. 54, April 1976), pp. 563-577.

For an initial effort to probe how the concept of authority might be used as a building block for a new paradigm, see James N. Rosenau , " International Studies in a Transnational World," Millennium (Vol. 5, Spring 1976), pp. 1-20. An initial formulation of the rôle concept in this context can be found in my " The Tourist and the Terrorist " paper (see note 10 above).

For a cogent analysis that notes the difficulties inherent in applying the concept of authority to the non-legal structures that sustain international phenomena, see Harry Eckstein, " Authority Patterns: A Structural Basis for Political Inquiry," American Political Science Review (Vol. 67, December 1973), pp. 1142-1161.