Karl W. Deutsch

Nationalism and social communication : an inquiry into the foundations of nationality

There are outstanding studies of nationalism as a history of nationalistic ideas, as in the writings of Hans Kohn; there are competent descriptions of nationalism as a force in politics, as by the Study Group of the Royal Institute of International Affairs headed by Edward Hallett Carr; and there are important works organizing the many facts about nationalism in terms of some particular problem, such as Quincy Wright?s monumental Study of War. But there has seemed to be no answer to the question why nationalist ideas met with wide and strong response at certain times and places, and with almost no response at others.In certain areas, economic growth has led to national unification; in others to greater national diversity. Why did national sentiments develop in one direction but not in the other? In certain cases, individuals can and do change from membership in one people to membership in another; in other situations they seem almost powerless to do so, and nationality appears as if it were some objective fact beyond the decisions of individuals.What, then, is ethnic nationality? Under which conditions will a government or a political organization find it an asset? Under which a liability? What is the relation of this nationalisty to economic life, to incomes, opportunities, and expectations? And how may it become so important to individuals as to override their economic interest and even their interest in self-preservation?To make a beginning at answering these questions we need studies about objective as well as the subjective sides of nationalisty, and about the long-run trends of national assimilation or differentiation.The present study represents an attempt toward such a theory.

Social Mobilization and Political Development

Social mobilization is a name given to an overall process of change, which happens to substantial parts of the population in countries which are moving from traditional to modern ways of life. It denotes a concept which brackets together a number of more specific processes of change, such as changes of residence, of occupation, of social setting, of face-to-face associates, of institutions, roles, and ways of acting, of experiences and expectations, and finally of personal memories, habits and needs, including the need for new patterns of group affiliation and new images of personal identity. Singly, and even more in their cumulative impact, these changes tend to influence and sometimes to transform political behavior.The concept of social mobilization is not merely a short way of referring to the collection of changes just listed, including any extensions of this list. It implies that these processes tend to go together in certain historical situations and stages of economic development; that these situations are identifiable and recurrent, in their essentials, from one country to another; and that they are relevant for politics. Each of these points will be taken up in the course of this paper.Social mobilization, let us repeat, is something that happens to large numbers of people in areas which undergo modernization, i.e., where advanced, non-traditional practices in culture, technology and economic life are introduced and accepted on a considerable scale. It is not identical, therefore, with this process of modernization as a whole, but it deals with one of its major aspects, or better, with a recurrent cluster among its consequences.

Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability

In the classical literature of diplomatic history, the balance-of-power concept occupies a central position. Regardless of ones interpretation of the term or ones preference for or antipathy to it, the international relations scholar cannot escape dealing with it. The model is, of course, a multifaceted one, and it produces a fascinating array of corollaries; among these, the relationship between the number of actors and the stability of the system is one of the most widely accepted and persuasive. That is, as the system moves away from bipolarity toward multipolarity, the frequency and intensity of war should be expected to diminish.

Toward a Rational Theory of Decentralization: Some Implications of a Mathematical Approach

This paper seeks to open for exploration the field of decentralization in politics and organizational design. As a first approach, it examines conditions under which decentralization is preferable from the viewpoint of rationality or cost-effectiveness. Our normative statements as to what would be best, or what should be done, are formulated first from the viewpoint of the subjects or clients, but they are expected to include the interest of the community in ensuring adequate service at low cost, and they also include the interest of the rulers, insofar as their power in the long run depends on their capacity to respond to the demands made upon them quickly enough and adequately enough to retain their political support. The political theory underlying our study assumes that modern governments retain “their just powers by the consent of the governed,” and hence that both their legitimacy and their power will depend at least in significant part on their ability to respond adequately to the popular demands made upon them. We do not deal in this study with other important criteria of preference, such as the psychological value which some of those who take the role of powerholders may put upon centralized control, or the contrary value which some of those who identify with their subjects may put upon power sharing and decentralization.

On Political Theory and Political Action

This paper is a revision of the Presidential Address delivered to the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, September 10, 1970. It identifies nine aspects of political theories: storage and retrieval of memories; assistance to insight; simplification of knowledge; heuristic effectiveness; self-critical cognition; normative awareness of values; scientifically testable knowledge; pragmatic skills; and wisdom, or second-order knowledge of what contexts are worth choosing—a wisdom subject to the possibility of radical restructuring. These nine aspects of theory form an integrated production cycle of knowledge. “Scientific” and “humanistic” political theorists need each other to understand the central task of politics: the collective self-determination of societies. To appraise this steering performance of political systems, large amounts of empirical data as indicators of social performance are indispensable. Political science has grown in knowledge of cases, data, research methods, and sensitivity to problems of disadvantaged groups and of the individual. It is learning to recognize qualities and patterns, verify the limited truth content of theories, and be more critical of its societies and of itself. It needs to increase research on implementation of insights, on positive proposals for reform, changes in political wisdom, and on the abolition of poverty and large-scale war. For these tasks, cognitive contributions from political theory are indispensable; working to make them remains a moral commitment.

Integration and Arms Control in the European Political Environment: A Summary Report

At the heart of our research was a single basic question: What arms control and disarmament measures might be acceptable to Europeans in 1966, in 1971, and in 1976? And differently put: What would be Europes attitude in those years either to arms competition or to arms control, and what particular policies would be most popular or least popular in Europe in this respect? This basic question implied four more detailed questions. The first, What is Europe now, in 1966, and where is it going for the 1971 to 1976 period? Is it going to be a Europe of nation-states with only marginal common functional arrangements on matters not central in importance to the concerns of its citizens? Or will it be to some extent substantially integrated, with some major policy decisions made by common institutions? Or will it be a common body politic, speaking with a single voice and developing common institutions for a wide range of decisions? Second, do Europeans in general approve or disapprove of arms control? Do they welcome the relaxation of tensions between America and Russia and between the East and West, or do they fear such relaxation? Third, what specific arms control measures are likely to be most acceptable to Europeans, and which arms control measures are likely to be least acceptable? And fourth, what are the strength, location, and time aspects of political support for specific policies, such as the policies of France and its President de Gaulle vis-a-vis the NATO Alliance and the United States?

Population, Sovereignty, and the Share of Foreign Trade

What are the main influences on the share of international transactions in the total ensemble of economic activities of a country? Do national economies become more international in the course of time or of economic development? Do their international sectors grow or decline, relative to the rest, with the size of states, or with the growth of population, or with the increase of literacy, with the growth of per capita income, or with the shift from colonial status to national independence ? Or is the opposite the case ? Or do these conditions seem to have no appreciable effects on the relative share of foreign trade among the total economic activities in a country?

Game Theory and Politics: Some Problems of Application *

The similarity of certain games and certain social situations is, of course, not accidental. A considerable body of psychological research deals with the transfer of patterns of social behaviour into the play activity of children and back from the play of children into social life. It seems plausible that adults, as well as children, may tend to find those types of games more interesting which would permit them to adopt patterns of behaviour which they could also apply to some social situation, or which would permit them to act out, as games, those patterns of behaviour which were initiated in some experience of social life but which only in the innocuous form of games can be carried to completion. Though we cannot wage private war and kill our opponent, we can play chess and checkmate his king; and the art of deceiving others profitably is more safely practised first in the game of poker than in politics or economic life. Granting the potential relevance of games to the analysis of political behaviour, the approach of the theory then consists first of all in analysing simplified prototypes of such games as chess, poker, and others; to calculate as accurately as possible, the winning chances for each player and each hand; and to determine the conditions under which advantageous coalitions can be made, or alternative strategies can be evaluated for their chances of success. *This paper was read in draft form to the Center of International Studies at Princeton University on October 8, 1952. In writing it, I have had the benefit of discussions with Professor Norbert Wiener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. L. C. Haimson of the American Museum of Natural History; with the members of the Research Seminar on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council, under the chairmanship of Professor Roy C. Macridis; and with Dr. Martin Shubik, Professors Oskar Morgenstern and Richard C. Snyder, and Mr. Harold W. Chase, all of Princeton University. While all these have been helpful, the responsibility for the present paper remains, of course, my own.

Pluralization: A Mathematical Model

This is the first of a series of simple mathematical models to explore the concept of decentralization. The primary focus is on pluralization as one of three aspects of decentralization. We derive expressions for cost and for net benefit as a function of the number of identical, uniformly dispersed facilities capable of servicing requests from sources that are uniformly distributed along a long, thin, geographical strip. The optimal, or cost-minimizing, number of such pluralized facilities is computed. We also derive conditions in terms of the basic parameters, such as the number of requests per month, transport costs per unit time, etc., which favor pluralization over centralization. The models are also analyzed for the secondary benefits of redundancy for more dependable service and to smooth fluctuations in demand. We found that, on balance of all the factors, historical trends-particularly the trend toward more requests per unit time-favor pluralization.

THE PROPENSITY TO INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS

IN the thinking of some economic theorists, a ‘propensity’ is the average share of efforts or resources allocated to a specific class of activities. Thus, the ‘propensity to save’ is the average percentage of income which people allocate to saving. Such percentages can then be plotted against other variables which are believed to be relevant, in order to find out whether, and how, changes in each variable are correlated with changes in the proportions of resources allocated to the activities in question. In this manner the average percentages of their incomes which the people of some country save can be plotted against the levels of their incomes, as found in different income groups. Very roughly put, it may then appear that those who are richer save a bigger share of their incomes; someone may infer from this that the ‘propensity to save’rises with the level of the income; and this inference may be tested by investigating whether, and to what extent, the same people, when and as they get richer, do in fact increase the proportions of their incomes which they save. Similar studies can be carried out for the behaviour of members of other social groups, so that one might speak of the ‘propensity to save’ of farmers, or workers, or Protestants, or Negroes, or of more narrowly defined sub-groups; and other types of behaviour can be studied in similar terms, such as the ‘propensity to invest’, the ‘propensity to hoard’, and so forth.’ It is impractical to go here beyond this extremely crude sketch of what is actually a considerably more complex field of economic theory and measurement. Yet the main points should be clear. A propensity is a quantitative concept; it is a proportion, derived from the measurement of some class of past activities of the members of some defined group, and applied to the tentative prediction of the future frequency of similar activities-and sometimes of related ones-within the same social group, or within similar ones. In its relation to other variables it can be depicted as a curve on a graph, and expected values can be read from it for various conditions. This