Image and Reality in World Politics / edited by Johhn C. Farrell and ASA P. Smith

The gap between appearance and reality, which has been a staple of phi losophers and literary men from Plato to Pirandello, has increasingly engaged the attention of students of international politics. Articles have been appearing in academic journals under titles bearing words like "per ception," "misperception," and "image." And the eclectic discipline of in ternational relations has borrowed some new concepts (and some new jargon) from the social-psychological approaches favored by many of the scholars who are studying the images held by decision-makers and the men in the mass who compose the nations they represent. "Cognitive disso nance" poses no immediate threat to balance of power as a central concept of the field, but it nevertheless must be included among the hodgepodge of conceptual tools with which scholars are patiently trying to fashion a comprehensive theory of international relations.