The Theory of International Politics, 1919–1969 (1972)

Abstract

By the theory of international politics we may understand the body of general propositions that may be advanced about political relations between states, or more generally about world politics.1 It includes normative propositions, stating the moral or legal considerations that are held to apply to international politics, as well as positive propositions which define or explain its actual character. It includes comprehensive theories, concerned to describe or to prescribe for international politics as a whole, but also partial theories concerned with some element of it such as war or peace, strategy or diplomacy. It includes theories about international society or the international system, which deal with the interrelatedness of the various units (states; nations; supranational, transnational, and subnational groups' etc.) of which world politics is made up, as well as theories about the units themselves. It includes theories developed in the self-conscious attempt to emulate the methods of the natural sciences, thus rejecting whatever cannot be either logically or mathematically proved or verified by strict, empirical procedures; and it includes theories propounded without a self-denying ordinance of this kind.