Inter-nation influence revisited

Abstract

Since 1950 social scientists have made impressive progress in clarifying and operationalizing the concept of power. The disciplines of psychology, sociology, and economics, as well as political science, have contributed to this undertaking. Strangely enough, students of international politics, who have traditionally invested so much time and effort in power analysis, have largely ignored this process. Although students of international politics have continued to analyze power relations and to reformulate the concept of power, they have remained relatively isolated from the thinking of other social scientists on this issue. International theorists2 have neither contributed to nor drawn on the power literature generated by other social scientists. Although there are exceptions to this rule, it is fair to say that one rarely finds references by students of international politics to the standard works on power by Lasswell and Kaplan