International and Comparative Politics: Toward a Synthesis?

Abstract

The traditional distinction between domestic and foreign politics, made by both decision-makers and analysts, is increasingly called into question by contemporary historical developments. The cold-war conflict and the attending mobilization of military, socioeconomic, and psychological resources by the superpowers and their allies; ventures of regional economic integration; the changing nature of the nation-state; the close connection between the conditions prevailing in the international system and the attempts made by the new states to modernize and to coalesce into viable societies—these are just a few examples of how foreign and domestic policy projects have become overlapping and perhaps entirely inseparable.