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A comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 1985

Extract

Robert McLaren is to be commended for his stimulating response to my article ‘Re-Reading Mitrany’ (Review of International Studies, 10, 2, 1984). He suggests that my discussion constituted the creation of ‘…an interpretive subset of Mitranian functionalism’. I would like to disclaim the attribution and attempt to demonstrate that the set of propositions derived from my discussion are: (a) genuinely attributable to the thrust of Mitrany's original formulation; and (b) sustainable as a prescription for the reduction of interstate violence in the international political system, I would not suggest that any inevitability may be attached to the possibility of a ‘working peace system’, but McLaren's commitment to the impossibility of functionalism invites a response:

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1985

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References

1. Mitrany, D., A Working Peace System, RIIA (Chicago, 1966), 1943 reprinted, p. 75.Google Scholar

2. Mitrany, D., The Functional Theory of Politics (London, 1975), p. 266.Google Scholar

3. Mitrany, D., ‘The Functional Theory in Historical Perspective’, International Affairs, 47 (1971), p. 533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Mitrany, D., ‘The Functional Approach to World Organisation’, International Affairs, 24 (1948), p. 356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. D. Mitrany, 1943 (and 1966), pp. 115–16.

6. Most recently in extensive press coverage of UNESCO. See Sunday Times (London) 8 January 1984 and International Herald Tribune, 2 March 1984. A more substantial, and sympathetic treatment can be found in R. Hoggart, An Idea and its Servants (London, 1978).

7. Jacobson, H. K., Networks of Interdependence (New York, 1979), pp. 85–6Google Scholar. (Jacobson's figures exclude the loans of grant aid of the IMF and IBRD).

8. Barnett, R. J., The Lean Years (London, 1980), p. 309.Google Scholar

9. Mitrany, D., The Progress of International Government (London, 1933)Google Scholar, 1975 reprinted, op. cit. p. 85.