Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Political science 193
financial and administrative connexions: much research is directed to the con-
duct of daily practical business, which is the source of administrative friction
and of demands for reform. This research is short-range and ‘field-induced‘;
nevertheless, it serves as basis for serious thought about the continuing clash
between local ‘community interests’ and national ‘functional interests’, and the
conceptual difficulties involved in measuring their relative strength except by
the process of struggle.
Independently, there has grown, partly from the sociology of communities,
partly from cybernetic theories about systems unified by internal interchange of
information, a wide-ranging study of local communities and functional rela-
tions within modern States: and so, one stage further on, of the conditions of
nation-building and the conservation of nation-States. For those who choose
this appr0ach3~ formal institutions are secondary; they cannot succeed unless
conditions are favourable, and these conditions relate primarily to economic
integration and to social communication. The model is not difficult to establish:
general systems theory and information theory dTer a very wide range of bio-
logical and electronic analogies, and there are real possibilities of measurement.
But of necessity there is a zone of uncertainty: the marginal situation in which
the State, or those who wield its legal powers, might contrive to make the nation,
with some luck and some skill - but equally they might fail.
Thus the nomothetic is coloured by the idiographic here too: laws merely
define a band or zone of possibility, with obscure boundaries. Nevertheless, the
area has been well-explored, and a great deal can be said about the institutional
tools of integration, and about measurement of the growth or decrease of in-
tegration. It wil be noted that this links the international to the State, the State
to the territorial or functional interests of the individual; similarly it integrates
an institutional approach and a ‘behavioural’ approach in a way which encour-
ages hopes about the unity of the discipline. Furthermore, in this twilight zone,
where the making and unmaking of States is in doubt, there is little embarrass-
ment about the distinction between Statecraft and Politics without States. The
distinction is not meaningless: what is in issue is the birth and survival of a State.
But the fact that the very existence of States is in dispute gives the discipline a
freedom of manoeuvre which it has not gained in dealing with politics between
States or politics within States.
C. Public administration
As we have seen, the special focus and special importance of the study of inter-
national relations suggest that this might be regarded as a separate discipline.
Yet there is no point at which one can draw a clear line between the study of
international politics and the study of State politics. Indeed, the question of
the possibility and character of such a boundary is itself a central subject of ar-
gument in political science.
The position regarding the study of public administration is somewhat simi-
lar. As is explained below, there has been convergence in the study of public