A double omission

Abstract

The title of the article is intended to focus the attention of Western writers on international relations theory upon two aspects of this rapidly growing research area. Rather than meeting with an incomprehensible neglect it is our argument that the aspects referred to might well be accorded one of the key places. Failure to do so, it our contention, when transferred from considerations of theoretical efficiency into the no less precarious realm of practical policy, might well have proportionately hazardous implications. We would beg forbearance, however, if within the necessarily limited scope of this article only a very perfunctory and sketchy outline of the meaning and implications of the omissions can be given. The sole purpose of this article is to provoke interest in these particular areas rather than to supply the deficiencies – a task which clearly could only be undertaken in the expanded context of a major work.

Competing paradigms in international politics

“…Soviet theorists of international relations, another group of structuralist scholars, attempt to 'diagonalize' the two basic social vectors, the 'vertical' one of class and the 'horizontal' dimension of the state, 5 and though the analytical products of the Soviet academies and their satellite schools and the sort of institutionalized Marxism manufactured there is not what I would choose to accept as a rendition of world affairs, it seems a more realistic performance than the one a strictly pluralist view provides.…”