Open AccessThe Disorder of World Order Thought
Author(s) -
Gary D. Kelley,
Michael A. Kelley
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
american review of politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2374-779X
pISSN - 2374-7781
DOI - 10.15763/issn.2374-7781.1985.6.0.3-21
Subject(s) - politics , state (computer science) , normative , political science , injustice , obsolescence , alienation , order (exchange) , criticism , sociology , positive economics , social science , law and economics , political economy , law , economics , paleontology , finance , algorithm , computer science , biology
There has emerged in recent years a cascade of criticism aimed at the alleged obsolescence of the nation-state system which currently orders global politics, and the inadequacies of "mainstream literature and teaching about international studies (which) do not focus sufficiently upon global problems or long-range strategies for dealing with them" (Weiss, 1974: 22). According to this view, orthodox, empirical international studies train their focus on the state and its traditional "high politics" concerns of war and peace to the exclusion of other weighty concerns such as environmental deterioration, poverty, social injustice, and individual alienation. Nor are orthodox empirical studies likely to discover solutions to these problems, or even that of war, because these are seemingly products of the very nation-state system, which the international studies discipline, in its empirically conservative concern with state interactions, helps to perpetuate. A new normative order embracing the goal of world community is said to be needed if we are to survive these supposed dysfunctions of the nation-state system, and many advocates of this approach have set themselves the task of revising the international studies discipline to include discussion of all relevant problems, values, potential forces for change, and strategies for molding the future.