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Compatibility, Consensus, and an Emerging Political Science of Adaptation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James N. Rosenau
James N. Rosenau*
Affiliation:
Douglass College, Rutgers—The State University
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Extract

When the laws of social dynamics are codified, surely the First will be that people see what they want to see. Given its universality, the First Law is no less applicable to scholars than anyone else. As political scientists, seeing what we want to see in a colleague's work, we find it “insightful,” “constructive,” and “important”; alternatively, not seeing in it what we want to see or, even worse, seeing what we don't want to see, we find it “turgid,” “misleading,” and “trivial.”

So it is with Hanrieder's formulation. Since it is only a bare outline and contains no data, no one is likely to regard his article as a definitive statement, but reactions to it are likely to be quite varied and conflicting. Some readers, especially those who worry about the prevalence of a malady they call “methodologism” in political science, will see in Hanrieder's effort to develop the concepts of compatibility and consensus yet another case of the quibbling over words that is the prime symptom of this affliction. After all, such critics will point out, compatibility and consensus are, respectively, only thirteen- and nine-letter words and to claim great explanatory power for them without elaboration is to substitute the form of language for the substance of thought. In a similar manner those long committed to a particular framework for examining foreign policy phenomena will preserve their commitment and wonder why Hanrieder makes so much fuss about the need for a new formulation when the available conceptual equipment seems capable of handling the convergence of national and international politics. After all, these analysts will conclude, Hanrieder himself says that researchers should be less inclined to create new schemes and more ready to build on existing ones; why, then, does he not follow his own advice?

On the other hand, analysts who are themselves perplexed by the convergence of national and international politics are likely to be more sympathetic to Hanrieder's effort, if not to its result. They may have doubts as to whether Hanrieder's unqualified claims for the concepts of compatibility and consensus are justified, but they will see his article as a serious attempt to confront a genuine and difficult problem.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , December 1967 , pp. 983 - 988
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1967

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References

1 Cf. Joseph LaPalombara, “Decline of Ideology: A Dissent and an Interpretation,” and Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Further Comments on ‘The End of Ideology,’” this Review, LX (March, 1966), 5–18: and Jack L. Walker, “A Critique of the Elitist Theory of Democracy,” and Robert A. Dahl, “Further Reflections on ‘The Elitist Theory of Democracy,’” this Review. LX (June, 1966), 285–305.

2 For other recent attempts not mentioned by Hanrieder, see Kissinger, Henry A., “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy,” Daedalus, Vol. 95 (Spring 1966), 503–29Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl W., “External Influences on the Internal Behavior of States,” in Farrell, R. Barry (ed.), Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 5–26Google Scholar; Rummel, Rudolph J., “Testing Some Possible Predictors of Conflict Behavior Within and Between Nations,” Peace Research Society Papers, Vol. I (1964), pp. 78–111Google Scholar; the papers presented at the Conference on Comparative Foreign Policy, Committee on Comparative Politics, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor: mimeo., March 1967); and the proceedings summarized in my Of Boundaries and Bridges: A Report on a Conference on the Interdependences of National and International Political Systems (Princeton: Center of International Studies, Research Monograph #27, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 Newcomb, Theodore M., Social Psychology (New York: The Dryden Press, 1950), p. 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Elazar, Daniel J., American Federalism: A View from the States (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1966).Google Scholar

5 Almond, Gabriel A., The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950)Google Scholar, and Dahl, Robert A., Congress and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950).Google Scholar

6 For an elaboration of the theoretical challenges posed by foreign policy phenomena, see my “Comparative Foreign Policy: Fad, Fantasy, or Field?” a paper prepared for the Michigan Conference on Comparative Foreign Policy (op. cit.), 44–49.

(Editor's Note: For further comments by Professor Hanrieder, see Communications to the Editor, pp. 1096–1098).