Book Review: International Politics and Economics: Action and Reaction in World Politics
| Author | A. L. Burns |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206502000115 |
| Published date | 01 March 1965 |
| Date | 01 March 1965 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
119
ACTION
AND
REACTION
IN
WORLD
POLITICS.
International
Systems
in
Perspective.
By
Richard
N.
Rosecrance.
1963.
(Boston:
Toronto:
Little,
Brown.
xii,
314pp.
$7.00)
An
excellent
text
for
teaching
world
politics
(explicitly,
politics
in
the external
or
international
aspect)
to
postgraduate
students
or
final-
honours
undergraduates,
this
volume
provides
an
analysis,
both
systemic
and historical,
of
the
European
system(s)
from
1740
to
its merging
into
the
world
system(s)
of
post-1920
and
post-1945.
It
forces
the
reader
to
think
about
systems while
looking
at
concrete
historical
fact.
It
leads
him
through
nine
successive
transformations
of
a
formal
model
of
the
European
and
world
systems,
each
corresponding to
an
historical
era.
He
is
thus
introduced
to the
conduct
of
what
our
ancestors
called
"foreign
affairs",
and
to
the
art
of
constructing
abstract
models
whose
succession
represents
certain
changes
in
the
story
of
that
conduct.
If
he feels
that
the
abstractions
are
more classificatory
than
explanatory,
then
Professor
Rosecrance
can
point
to
the
concept
of
a
Regulator,
represented
in
successive
eras
by
successive
formal
or
informal
pro-
cesses
(the
alliance system,
the
balance
of
power,
the
Concert
of
Europe,
the
League
of
Nations,
the
United
Nations)
through
whose
coping
with
sporadic
shocks
("inputs")
spread
by
or
from within
the
several
"actors,"
the
system as
a
whole
enjoys
more-or-less
briefly
a
certain
stability-until
the
input
produces
more
variety
than the
regulation has
variety
of
its
own
to
cope
with.
A
"systemic
change"
then
occurs:
an
epoch
in
world-politics
is
passed
and
a
new
era
begins.
Professor
Rosecrance,
anxious
to
do
no
violence
to
historical
fact,
provides
in
this
way
a
generous
and
adaptable
theoretic
framework,
frankly
qualitative,
but
with
structure
enough
to
encourage
students
into
reflection
upon
the
historic
data,
and
into
examination
of
other
types
of model
and theory,
perhaps other
conceptions of
what
con-
stitutes
systemic
change:
for
the author
appears
sometimes
to
refer
by
that
notion
to
mere
changes
in
the balance
of
power,
or
to
the
emergence
or
disappearance
of
members
of
the
system
not
radically
different
as
Powers
from
the
other
members.
As
a
theorist,
Professor
Rosecrance
displays
a
rare
and
effective
virtue:
he
can
"place"
his own position
on
the
present
map
of
the
discipline:
"If
any single
thesis
emerges
from
the
following
pages
it
is
that
international
constellations and
patterns
of
conflict
are
very
often
determined
as
the
inadvertent
by-product of
domestic
change."
It
is
useful to have
that
position
occupied
once
more.
Australian
National
University
A.
L.
BURNS
Military
and
Scientific
Affairs
STRATEGY
AND
CONSCIENCE.
By
Anatol
Rapoport.
1964.
(New
York:
Harper
&
Row.
Toronto: Longmans.
xxvii,
323pp.
$8.00)
Can
we
begin
a
dialogue
between
those
who
think
of
nuclear
war
in
terms
of
the
greatest
of
human
tragedies and
the
"strategists"
who
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