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Between Sovereignty and Integration: Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Karl Deutsch
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Extract

LET US ASK FIRST OF ALL A SIMPLE QUESTION – ‘WHY DOES ANYBODY want integration?’ There are usually two reasons. The first is: in order not to be killed by somebody with whom we fail to integrate. This argument for integration has been stressed by popular writers, such as Emery Reeves and others. It is a variation of the old German proverb which goes, loosely translated, ‘If thou wilt not my brother be, I'll smash thy skull most certainly.’ This notion that groups that do not integrate must destroy each other is a widespread but false belief. Luckily it is not true. The Scandinavians did not form any United States of the North, and yet they have not killed each other for a long time even though their ancestors were formidable warriors.

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Article
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Government and Opposition , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1974, pp. 113 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1974

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References

1 In terms of per capita gross national product in 1965, the peoples of Honduras, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador were poorer than those of Malaysia, Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Mongolia, as well as poorer than those of Gabon and Ghana in Africa. For data, see Taylor, C. L. and Hudson, M. C., World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators: Second Edition, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1972, p. 316 Google Scholar.

2 Syria briefly merged with Egypt in the United Arab Republic but soon seceded again. The English and French parts of Cameroon voted in favour of a single Cameroon but they had not been fully sovereign states before.

3 Within each country, as well as for the world, the trade‐to‐GDP ratio is an indicator of the relative proportions of the relative power base or power potential ‐ in terms of manpower and money ‐ which internationally and nationally oriented interest groups, respectively, could try to mobilize in pursuit of goals. To fulfil this rough but useful indicator function, for any particular year, the ratio should be computed in prices of that year, or of a year as close as possible to it, so as to indicate the relative share of contemporary economic activities and manpower of each sector. To ‘deflate’ or otherwise change the figures for either trade or GDP by recalculating them in prices of, say, 1913, in order to say that in terms of those prices the current T/GDP ratio would have been different, is to miss the entire point of this calculation, which is to gauge the relative current potential political resources of each sector. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding of the method seems to have occurred in the article by Rosecrance, Richard and Stein, Arthur, ‘Interdependence: Myth or Reality?’ World Politics, 26: I, 10 1973, pp. 1–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 5–7. For a discussion of the political meaning of the T/GDP indicator, see Deutsch, K. W. and Ekstein, A., ‘National Industrialization and the Declining Importance of the International Sector’, World Politics, 13:2, 01 1961, pp. 267–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Reischauer, Edwin O., Toward the 21 st Century: Education for a Changing World, New York: Knopf, 1973 Google Scholar.