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Karl W. Deutsch: Pioneer in the Theory of International Relations

With a Preface by Charles Lewis Taylor and Bruce M. Russett

  • 2020
  • Buch
Herausgegeben von
Charles Lewis Taylor
Prof. Dr. Bruce M. Russett
Buchreihe
Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice
Verlag
Springer International Publishing
Enthalten in
Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"
Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"
insite
SUCHEN

Über dieses Buch

This is a memorial for Karl Wolfgang Deutsch, a pioneering political scientist, international relations specialist and peace scholar of the 20th century. Born in Prague, he was a professor at MIT, Yale and Harvard and spent a decade at the Social Science Center Berlin (WZB). He was a global leader in the theory and scientific analysis of international relations and comparative politics who published on nationalism, social communication, European integration, war and peace, arms control, social cybernetics, general systems analysis, and global modelling. He pioneered the development and analysis of large-scale political and social data across nations and over time and proposed a widespread access to these data and their scientific evaluation.
This book offers biographical data on Karl W. Deutsch, reproduces chapters from his PhD thesis and his book Nerves of Government. Colleagues from the USA (A.S. Markovits, H. Alker, R.L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr.,P. J. Katzenstein, T.R. Cusack, C.L. Taylor), Germany (D. Senghaas, R. Wildenmann, R. Mackensen, K. v. Beyme) and the Czech Republic (M. Hroch) offer Collegial Critiques and Memorials. It provides a comprehensive bibliography of his publications and memorials for a great scholar, a superb academic teacher and world citizen.
• Karl Wolfgang Deutsch was a major global pioneer in Political Science, internationalrelations and peace research in the 20th century.
• His most creative contributions were the concept of social mobilization, the use of cyberneticsto study human relationships, the introduction of politics in world modeling, and the role of communication in governance.• He was president of the American Political Science Association (1969-70) and of theInternational Political Science Association (1976-79) and was a Director of the SocialScience Research Center Berlin (1977-87).
• Academics, including graduate students, exploring nationalism, political integration,social communications, cybernetics, and global modeling will find this volume instructive.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

On Karl Wolfgang Deutsch

Frontmatter
1. Biography of Karl Wolfgang Deutsch (1912–1992)
Abstract
Karl Deutsch, one of the most insightful political scientists of the twentieth century, was born into a Sudeten German family on July 21, 1912 in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While his father Moritz Deutsch served in the emperor’s army during the Great War of 1914–1918, Karl spent his youngest years alone with his mother Leopoldine Maria Scharf Deutsch. At the end of hostilities, Moritz Deutsch returned to Prague and his business as optician.
Charles Lewis Taylor, Bruce M. Russett
2. A Life of Productivity
Abstract
Karl Deutsch had a profound influence upon the study of comparative and international politics and his work has been widely acclaimed.
Charles Lewis Taylor

Selected Texts from Deutsch’s Work

Frontmatter
3. Peoples, Nations, and Communication
Abstract
Social scientists have collected a vast number of facts on the changing alignment of individuals in peoples, national cultures, and national political movements. We know that these problems are important, that even experienced statesmen have often seriously misjudged them, and that we need to understand them better. But what is meant by understanding?
Karl W. Deutsch
4. National Assimilation or Differentiation
Abstract
Situations favorable to ethnic assimilation or differentiation often have been produced by the acts of persons who neither foresaw nor desired any such results. Migrations were undertaken for economic, political, or military reasons; employers recruited labor; speculators sought and found buyers for their land; generals sought soldiers; landowners wished to enhance the value of their holdings by promoting industries or mining operations, and by teaching new skills to the serfs or tenants on their estates.
Karl W. Deutsch
5. Communication Models and Decision Systems: Some Implications for Research
Abstract
The recent models of communication and control may make us more sensitive to some aspects of politics that have often been overlooked or slighted in the past. This, as we know, is a major function of models in their early stages.
Karl W. Deutsch
6. Learning Capacity and Creativity in Politics: The Search for Cohesion and Values
Abstract
Another kind of interest suggested by the stress on information might deal with the resourcefulness or creativity of political decisions. In Toynbee’s analysis, referred to above, the failure of populations to imitate their rulers is viewed as a consequence of the failure of these rulers to invent and execute an effective new ‘response’ to some new ‘challenge’ presented to the state or the society by its environment. In this view, Greek valley farmers were challenged by invasions of plundering herdsmen from the hills, and responded to this challenge by the invention of the city-state. Later, the Athenians, when confronted with the “Malthusian challenge” of increasing numbers on insufficient soil, responded with the inventions of the “Solonic Revolution”: oil culture and long-distance trade.
Karl W. Deutsch
7. Government as a Process of Steering
Abstract
Let us recall that our word ‘government’ comes from a Greek root that refers to the art of the steersman. The same underlying concept is reflected in the double meaning of the modern word ‘governor’ as a person charged with the administrative control of a political unit, and as a mechanical device controlling the performance of a steam engine or an automobile.
Karl W. Deutsch
8. Political Self-awareness, Autonomy, and Sovereignty
Abstract
In an earlier section it was noted that goal images could be stored in a goal-seeking system and that such stored information could then be applied to the further behavior of the system. We then made this notion more general, and distinguished two classes of messages or symbols, primary and secondary, that may move through a decision system. Primary messages were taken to be those referring to events outside the system; and secondary i were taken to be those referring to primary messages, or secondary messages up to any level of regress. In terms of a message, we said, a decision system might ‘know’ of an external fact; by means of secondary messages it would ‘know’ that it ‘knows.’ This, it was suggested, is perhaps the most simple pattern of what is called consciousness.
Karl W. Deutsch

Collegial Critiques and Memorials

Frontmatter
9. Historical Experience and the Culture of Knowledge: Karl W. Deutsch from Prague to America
Abstract
I am so honored to deliver a lecture on Karl W. Deutsch at an institution named after Simon Dubnow. Simon Dubnow is perhaps the most important and – considering his fate – also the most tragic of the three great modern historians of Judaism. The other two, of course, are Heinrich Hirsch Graetz and Salo Wittmayer Baron. Dubnow’s two-volume History of Chasidism was my introduction into this highly interesting and important field of Jewish life. His ten-volume [World] History of the Jews from the Earliest Times Until the Present Day [Weltgeschichte des jüdischen Volkes von den Uranfängen bis zur Gegenwart] is one of the great achievements of modern historiography, and not merely with respect to Jewish history.
Andrei S. Markovits
10. The Power of Networks: Insights from the Political Cybernetics of Karl W. Deutsch
Abstract
This article reconstructs Karl Deutsch’s fearful yet hopeful views about the powers and pathologies of military, and other, national and international network systems. These views presuppose Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetic Interpretive Hypothesis: that ‘society can only be understood through a study of the messages and communication facilities which belong to it’; that the societal trend is towards more computerized communication systems; and that they embody an ‘open vs. closed’ living systems ethos. Drawing on science and technology studies by Edwards and Mirowski, the author suggests how Deutsch’s and Wiener’s prophetic hopes, fears, and insights can also enrich and redefine contemporary debates about the historical-technological development of our national societies, the powers and pathologies of game-theoretically programmed computer networks, the assessment of the life-preserving potential of our partly automated security systems, the major threats from the continued poverty of the less developed world, problems of decentralized governance, and the political, ethical, and religious justifications for our national, international, and civilizational identities and purposes.
Hayward R. Alker
11. Karl Deutsch and the Study of Political Science
Abstract
In the so-called ‘behavioral’ phase of political science, Karl W. Deutsch occupies a place of major importance. His work reflects many of the major trends which have characterized political science in this phase: a quest for concepts of sufficient precision and applicability to provide the basis for the development of theory; the creation of operational (quantifiable) indicators for the testing of hypotheses about political behavior; and the adaptation and utilization of concepts, methodologies and insights from other disciplines. Deutsch’s writings not only reflect this emphasis but also represent a major contribution to political science at this stage in its development.
Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr.
12. Three Encounters with Karl W. Deutsch
Abstract
The author approaches the works of Karl W. Deutsch from the position of a historian and presents three aspects of his own encounters with Deutsch’s writings. First, he describes how he applied some of the methodological principles in Deutsch’s concept of nation-building to his own research work. Second, he presents his opinion on the place Deutsch occupies in the evolution of ‘theories of nationalism’. Third, he reflects on how Deutsch’s The Nerves of Government can serve as a source of inspiration in the present day, especially the parts of this work that deal with the risks for the collapse of political systems.
Miroslav Hroch
13. Practizing Politics with Alert Senses: Remembering Karl W. Deutsch (1912–1992)
Abstract
Anyone who had a chance to meet Karl Deutsch, however fleeting or profound the encounter, must have had the experience that the conversation quickly turned towards two questions: What is the fundamental problem on the person’s mind at the time of the conversation?
Dieter Senghaas
14. Karl W. Deutsch: Testing Great Ideas Against the Real World: Concepts and Theories Grounded Firmly in Data
Abstract
Karl Wolfgang Deutsch was a gentle man and a scholar. In each of these capacities, he had an enormous impact upon his students and his profession. His concepts and theories grounded both in quantitative data and in qualitative understanding, his persistence in encouraging empirical cross-national research, his insistence on the relevance of quantitative methods of analysis, and his emphasis upon an interdisciplinary approach brought a profound and revolutionary change in the way that comparative and international political research was conducted.
Charles Lewis Taylor
15. Karl W. Deutsch: Teacher, Scholar, Mentor, Mensch
Abstract
In thinking about Karl as a teacher one fact stands out. His mind soared. What was so extraordinary for his students, was to him a way of life. It happened spontaneously in any setting: while answering questions in a lecture hall filled with 250 undergraduates; while debating research strategies in an advanced graduate seminar; and in discussions, one-on-one. Karl often appeared to be unprepared for class, ready to jump on any possible diversion.
Peter J. Katzenstein
16. Karl W. Deutsch Interviewed
Abstract
Andy: It’s great to have you back, Karl. I really have missed our many conversations in your office at Littauer, your cozy study at your lovely house on Lakeview Avenue, and, of course, our sporadic meals in fine restaurants in Berlin, Vienna and other European cities. What would you say is the single-most important change in the world of politics, economics, culture – any and all of it – which you have noticed since your untimely but temporal departure in 1992?
Andrei S. Markovits
17. Karl W. Deutsch and the International Development of the Social Sciences: Researcher, Teacher, Humanist – His Importance for Political Science
Abstract
We have come together to celebrate Karl Deutsch on the occasion of his 70th birthday – on the occasion of a stage in his life when, fortunately, his statistical life expectancy has already noticeably lengthened. Not to mention our expectation of knowing him for a very, very long time to come. Not to mention his own mental and physical vitality, his still youthful exhilaration.
Rudolf Wildenmann
18. Nerves Instead of Muscles – On Peace in the Thinking of Karl W. Deutsch
Abstract
There are few professorships for peace research; in Germany only one. If the holder of such a chair at Harvard University decides to continue his research in Berlin, then it is obvious that the local universities will show him their respect at the appropriate opportunity.
Rainer Mackensen
19. Karl Deutsch and Realist Theory in International Politics
Abstract
Karl Deutsch’s major contributions to the field of international relations are appropriately classified within the ‘communitarian’ paradigm. As such, they stand outside the Realist approach that traditionally dominated western thinking and theorizing about the problems of international relations and the prospects for international peace. Deutsch, however, did not ignore the Realist approach. Indeed, in an often cited paper, written together with J. David Singer and published in 1964, he laid out one of the most insightful and systematic critiques of mainstream Realism.
Thomas Cusack
20. “Critical Reverence” – Encomium on Karl W. Deutsch
Abstract
“The more the mind is capable of such creative learning” – wrote Karl Deutsch in 1963 – “the greater the variety of new information that it can assimilate, thanks to its capacity for self-direction, abstraction and deduction, and the more it can be regarded as truly inexhaustible. Indeed, a person’s mind can only remain inexhaustible if it is constantly open in such a way.”
Klaus von Beyme
21. A Statement of Thanks (1983)
Abstract
When I first came to Berlin as a ten-year-old boy, I would probably never have dreamed that one day I would be on show in the Berlin Museum with so many eminent politicians and scholars, at least for a short time. But I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude.
Karl W. Deutsch
Backmatter
Titel
Karl W. Deutsch: Pioneer in the Theory of International Relations
Herausgegeben von
Charles Lewis Taylor
Prof. Dr. Bruce M. Russett
Copyright-Jahr
2020
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-02910-8
Print ISBN
978-3-319-02909-2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02910-8

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