FORMAL ALLIANCES, 1815&Mdash;1939
FORMAL ALLIANCES, 1815—1939 A Quantitative Description By J. DAVID SINGER and MELVI N SMALL University of Michigan 1. Introduction selves. Finally, we will describe as com- Although there are many types of rela- pletely as is possible and necessary the tionship and interaction between and coding and classifying procedures, such among nations, very few of them leave the that others might either replicate the data- sort of ’trace’ which makes them vulner- making operation, or, at least, know ex- able to systematic observation. To ’get at’ plicitly wherein their understanding and indicators of interdependence, interpene- our results differ. tration, hostility, cooperation, threats, or political distance phenomena, for example, 2. The basic sources of information, is a costly and time-consuming enterprise Since our need was for a classified cata- whose results might turn out to be either log of formal alliances that did not, to methodologically unreliable or theoreti- our knowledge, exist, the problem was to cally uninteresting. But one type of inter- identify the sources from which such in- nation relationship which leaves a rela- formation could be compiled for the 125- tively reliable trace and which is full of year period under investigation. Basically, theoretical implications is the formal alli- two types of sources are available. The ance. It is, therefore, surprising that we preferable one, because there is more rele- have seldom gone beyond the anecdotal vant information in a single volume, is treatment of a very few such relationships,
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