International system

Unlike the theory of international trade and payments, theorising UNLIKE on international relations or the international system is of fairly recent origin, has attracted relatively few scholars, and in terms of achievement is still in a rather underdeveloped stage. But there has in fact been important progress during the last twenty five years, much of it along tentative, experimental, and not necessarily congruent lines. Nowadays there seems to be new interest in such theorizing and the Center of International Studies at Princeton University thought it useful to collect a reasonably representative sample of recent thinking and, toward this end, to call upon younger scholars in the field rather than on the established leaders, such as Harold Lasswell, Hans Morgenthau, Richard Snyder, Arnold Wolfers, and Quincy Wright.

The papers contained in this volume were first presented at a sym posium on international relations theory that was sponsored by the Center of International Studies and held in Princeton in September 1960. Most of the authors attended it and the individual papers as well as the general subject of theory in international relations were discussed. In this discussion, the authors were joined by Harold Sprout, Harry Eckstein, and Andrew Janos of Princeton University and James Rosenau of Douglass College. The papers were then revised in light of the discussion.

In preparing their contributions, the various authors were given little guidance by the editors as to the direction the papers ought to take. The topic of our symposium was "international relations theory"; and when one thinks of the ambiguities of that topic and the multiplicity of interests of those who write on international relations, it is little wonder that the papers included in this volume differ in scope and method, and cover a wide range of topics. In fact, the volume is essentially that: a collection of essays comprising a wide range of approaches and con siderations in connection with international theory. Any further unity in the volume, to provide the usual disclaimer, is purely coincidental.