Global changes and theoretical challenges: approaches to world politics for the 1990s

Abstract

​​​​​​​PrefaceThis book has its origins in a transatlantic dialogue between the editors that began in the early 1980s and continues to the present. Whether it ensued in Los Angeles, Frankfurt, or through the mails, we found ourselves sharing a concern for the state of theorizing in the study of world politics. So much change seemed to be unfolding in international affairs, and yet so little attention seemed to be addressed to its implications. It might well be, we reasoned, that currently available paradigms and perspectives for comprehending world politics are sufficient to meet the challenges posed by the continuing processes of change but that the only way to reach this conclusion is by testing it, by focusing thoughtful minds on the question of whether new approaches and concepts are needed to probe the unfamiliar and often anomalous developments that arrest attention. Put differently, the more we communicated, the more were we struck by the discrepancy between the amount of empirical work done in the field and the relative paucity of coordinated efforts to locate this work in a more encompassing theoretical context. What coordination exists among international relations analysts, moreover, tends to be along national lines -- within countries rather than between them. Indeed, it can be fairly said that the cooperation among politicians in the Atlantic Community exceeds by far that which can be found in the community of American-European community of scholars.These considerations led to a call for collaboration in a series of workshops, the first of which resulted in this book and the second of which is now in the planning stages. Chapter 1 outlines the reasoning that underlay the first workshop and the specific foci that came within its purview. Chapter 14 undertakes a summary evaluation of the proceedings and the chapters that arose from the workshop.We are pleased to acknowledge our appreciation of the several individuals and organizations whose generosity enabled the workshop to be held and its proceedings to unfold in a relaxed and yet organized fashion. Birgit Hasselbach, a senior at the University of Frankfurt, shouldered most of the technical burdens of convening a transatlantic conference, and she did so with a zest and effectiveness that made a huge difference. The workshop itself was held at the conference site of the Werner-Reimers-Stiftung in Bad Homburg, West Germany, and we are indebted to that organization for providing facilities that were especially conducive to the exchange of complex ideas. And we gratefully note that financial support for the occasion was provided mainly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, with additional help from the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund, William and Jane Rosenau, and Harold C. Mayer.We are also grateful to members of the staff of the Institute for Transnational Studies at the University of Southern California -- E. Martha Decker, Lilia Amezcua, and Christine Kralovansky -- for their help in preparing the index.Our thanks go, too, to Jaime Welch-Donahue, Robert D. Bovenschulte, and their colleagues at Lexington Books who recognized that these essays would make a fine first entry in the new series on Issues in World Politics. It is a series designed to enable students to come to terms with the challenges of the 1990s, and for that purpose this book could hardly be more suitable.Lastly, as editors we feel a particularly keen sense of gratitude to our colleagues who attended the workshop and revised their papers for this book. In the end our effort at transatlantic intellectual cooperation was so successful precisely because they took on the awesome task of rethinking the nature of world politics so seriously and so creatively.