International Subsystems-A Submacro Approach to International Studies

Abstract

Foreign policy analysis of individual nation-states (micro) and the study of the global international system (macro) represent one important analytic division in the field of international relations, The purpose of this special issue is to explore an area of inquiry between these two foci, which we might usefully term submacro.' There is nothing original about this level of analysis if we include the notion of regions and integration, although there is some controversy over the term region. The debate between the traditionalists and behavioralists often obscures another division-that between the area specialists and the theorists-generalists (the latter usually possessing greater or lesser expertise in Western affairs). The importance of bridging the differences between the two has been emphasized by Leonard Binder and Michael Brecher,2 who were similarly concerned with the need to stress what they have called subordinate systems. In each case, however, their concern has been with one particular region (the Middle East and Southern Asia) and solely in the contemporary setting. To this perspective we have initially added the vertical and