Abstract
The readings in this chapter focus on the debate concerning the existence of transnationalism and interdependence. Some analysts maintain that increased interdependence and the growth of non-state actors fundamentally alter the nature of contemporary international relations. The dominant approach to the study of international relations rejects this claim. Realists maintain that the state is the main actor in international relations; that military force and security issues are the most salient aspects of contemporary international relations; and that interdependence is a myth. In contradistinction to the dominant realist position theorists of transnationalism argue that the role of the state has declined; a variety of non-state actors are now of vital importance in key-issue areas; the use of force is limited; national societies are more interdependent in the sense that domestic events are crucially influenced by external variables; and the range of issues of significance to national governments (especially economic issues) are more diverse and differentiated. As discussed below identification of transnationalism and interdependence is both a conceptual and an empirical problem. In discussing interdependence the most widely used definitions stress interconnectedness but this is an insufficient basis upon which to proceed. National societies have been interconnected long before the 1960s and therefore added significance must be attached in order for claims of interdependence to be meaningful.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Realism and Complex Interdependence Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye
… see K. Knorr, The Power of Nations (New York, Basic Books 1975).
S. Hoffmann, “The Acceptability of Military Force,” & L. Martin, “The Utility of Military Force,” in Force in Modern Societies: Its Place in International Politics (Adelphi Paper, IISS, 1973) …
H. Brandon, The Retreat of American Power (New York, Doubleday 1974) p. 218.
R. Bauer et al., American Business and Foreign Policy (New York, Atherton 1963) ch. 35 esp. pp. 472–75.
Transnationalism, Power Politics and the Realities of the Present System Michael P. Sullivan
Seyom Brown, New Forces in World Politics (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974); Robert E. Hunter, “Power and Peace,” Foreign Policy
(Winter 1972–1973), pp. 37–54; John R. Handleman, John A. Vasquez, Michael K. O’Leary, and William D. Coplin, “Colour It Morgenthau: A Data-Based Assessment of Quantitative International Relations Research,” PRINCE Research Studies, Paper No. 11, mimeographed, 1973; Richard W. Mansbach, Yale E. Ferguson, and Donald E. Lampert, The Web of World Politics: Non-State Actors in the Global System (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976);
Robert C. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977);
Oran Young, “Interdependencies in World Politics,” International Journal 24 (Autumn 1969), pp. 726–50;
James N. Rosenau, “Muddling, Meddling, and Modelling: Alternative Approaches to the Study of World Politics in an Era of Rapid Change,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 8 (Autumn 1979), pp. 130–44;
Richard W. Mansbach and John A. Vasquez, In Search of Theory: A Paradigm for Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).
Michael P. Sullivan, “Competing Frameworks and the Study of Contemporary International Politics,” Millenium: Journal of International Studies 7 (Autumn 1978). pp. 93–100.
Kal Holsti, “A New International Politics? Diplomacy in Complex Interdependence,” International Organisation 32 (Spring 1978), pp. 513–30.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
James N. Schubert, “Toward a ‘Working Peace System’ in Asia: Organisational Growth and State Participation in Asian Regionalism,” International Organisation 32 (Spring 1978), p. 427.
Kjell Skjelsbaek, “The Growth of Nongovernmental Organisations in the Twentieth Century,” International Organisation 25 (Summer 1971), pp. 422–42.
D. George Kousalas, On Government and Politics, 3d ed. (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, 1975), p. 233.
Mansbach and Vasquez, In Search of Theory; Richard Mansbach and John A. Vasquez, “The Effect of Issues on Global Conflict-Cooperation: American-West German Foreign Relations, 1959–1975,” presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, St. Louis, March, 1977.
Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971);
Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974).
William D. Coplin, Stephen L. Mills, and Michael K. O’Leary, “The PRINCE Concept and the Study of Foreign Policy,” in Patrick J. McGowan, ed., Sage International Yearbook of Foreign Policy Studies, Vol. 1 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1973).
James M. McCormick and Young W. Kihl, “IGOs and Nation-Behaviour: Routine or Salient?”, prepared for delivery at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Washington, February, 1978, p. 3.
Edward F. Mickolus, “An Events Data Base for Analysis of Transnational Terrorism,” in Richard J. Heuer, Jr., ed., Quantitive Approaches to Political Intelligence: The CIA Experience (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978);
Brian M. Jenkins and Janera Johnson, “International Terrorism: A Chronology, 1968–1974,” prepared for the Department of State and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, Rand Corporation, March, 1975; Brian M. Jenkins and Janera A. Johnson, “International Terrorism: A Chronology (1974 Supplement).”
The same observation applies to their critique of William Gamson and Andre Modigliani’s work on East-West cooperation and conflict. Coplin et al., showed that if Gamson and Modigliani’s data are broken down by region, different patterns of East-West relations emerge, but the frequencies of actions are severely distorted; for instance, breaking out USSR data for Latin America for 1960 means focusing on only one action — out of five major actions that occurred that year. See William Gamson and Andre Modigliani, Untangling the Cold War: A Strategy for Testing Rival Theories (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
William C. Potter, “Issue Area and Foreign Policy Analysis,” International Organisation 34 (Summer 1980), p. 427.
Peter J. Katzenstein, “International Independence: Some Long-Term Trends and Recent Changes,” International Organisation 29 (Autumn 1975), pp. 1021–34.
Richard N. Cooper, The Economics of Interdependence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 120 and 140.
Richard A. Rosecrance et al., “Whither Interdependence?” International Organisation 31 (Summer 1977), pp. 425–72. One way of summarising this evidence is to use the percentage of “significance” correlations; for Rosecrance, a “significant” correlation is one exceeding .75 in trend data and 30 in de-trended (percentage change) data.
Oskar Morgenstern, International Financial Transactions and Business Cycles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 102, 106, and 109. Six of the twelve pairs of countries had Z scores high enough to reject the null hypothesis of no agreement at the 5 percent level; only two of the twelve showed no correspondence. Six of the correlation coefficients were higher than .60, eight were .40 or higher; only one was below.
Philip Klein, Business Cycles in the Post War World: Some Reflections on Recent Research (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, Domestic Affairs Study No. 24, February, 1976), p. 42.
Konrad M. Kressley, “Integrated Television in Europe: A Note on the Eurovision Network,” International Organisation 32 (Autumn 1978), pp. 470–71.
Michael Hudson, Global Fracture: The New International Economic Order (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 219.
Frank L. Klingberg, “The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy,” World Politics 4 (January 1952), pp. 239–73;
Frank L. Klingberg, “Cyclical Trends in American Foreign Policy Moods and Their Policy Implications,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr., and Patrick J. McGowan, eds., Challenges to America: United States Foreign Policy in the 1980s (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979), pp. 37–56;
Michael Roskin, “From Pearl Harbour to Vietnam: Shifting Generational Paradigms and Foreign Policy,” Political Science Quarterly 89 (Fall 1974), pp. 563–88;
Jack E. Holmes, “The Mood/Interest Theory of American Foreign Policy,” mimeographed, 1977;
Michael P. Sullivan, “The Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy: Some Perspectives,” presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association/West, Los Angeles, April, 1977.
Holmes; “The Mood/Interest Theory”; Sullivan, “The Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1973), p. 4.
Edward Azar, Probe for Peace: Small-State Hostilities (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing, 1973), p. 4.
Steven J. Rosen and Walter S. Jones, The Logic of International Relations (Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publishers, 1974), p. 156.
J. David Singer and Melvin Small, The Wages of War, 1816–1965: A Statistical Handbook (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1972), p. 215.
Frank H. Denton and Warren Phillips, “Some Patterns in the History of Violence,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 12 (June 1968), p. 190.
Charles W. Ostrom, Jr., and John H. Aldrich, “The Relationship Between Size and Stability in the Major Power International System,” American Journal of Political Science 22 (November 1978), pp. 769–70.
Werner Levi, The Coming End of War (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1981) .
Edward L. Morse, Modernisation and the Transformation of International Relations (New York: Free Press, 1976), p. 178.
William D. Coplin, “Power Politics Versus Issue Politics: Paradigmatic Conflict, Levels of Analysis, and Theoretical Integration,” presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, March, 1979, pp. 6, 8–9.
Michael P. Sullivan, “Symbolic Commitment as a Correlate of Escalation: The Vietnam Case,” in Bruce Russett, ed., Peace, War, and Numbers (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1972);
Michael P. Sullivan, “Foreign Policy Articulations and U.S. Conflict Behaviour,” in J. David Singer and Michael D. Wallace, eds., To Augur Well: Early Warning Indicators in World Politics (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979).
Donald Puchala and Stuart Fagan, “International Politics in the 1970s: The Search for a Perspective,” International Organisation 28 (Spring 1974), pp. 251–52.
C. Fred Bergsten, Robert E. Keohane, and Joseph S. Nye, “International Economics and International Politics: A Framework for Analysis,” International Organisation 29 (Winter 1975), p. 23.
Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, “World Politics and the International Economic System,” in C. Fred Bergsten, ed., The Future of the International Economic Order: An Agenda for Research (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973), p. 147.
Richard W. Sterling, Macropolitics: International Politics in a Global Society (New York: Knopf, 1974), p. 65.
R.D. McLaurin, “Interdependence and Technology Transfer: Some Preliminary Thoughts,” presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, April, 1979, p. 19–20.
Kal J. Holsti, “Change in the International System: Interdependence, Integration, and Fragmentation,” in Ole R. Holsti, Randolph M. Silverson, and Alexander L. George, eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980), p. 33.
Further Reading
R.J.B. Jones and P. Willetts (eds), Interdependence on Trial (London: Frances Pinter, 1984).
R.O. Keohane and J.S. Nye (eds), Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
R. Maghroori and B. Ramberg (eds), Globalism vs Realism (Boulder: Westview, 1982).
E.L. Morse, Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations (New York: The Free Press, 1976).
J.N. Rosenau, The Study of Global Interdependence (London: Frances Pinter, 1980).
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1989 Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Williams, M. (1989). Transnationalism and Interdependence. In: Williams, M. (eds) International Relations in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20081-8_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20081-8_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-45274-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20081-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)