7. Критика трансакционализма

Evaluation:

-)Deutsch is considered to be one of leading political scientists of the century. He developed non-realist approaches to the study of IR, created new techniques to the study of politics. His main contribution is an innovate investigation of relations between societies and peoples, their causes and consequences.

-)But his contribution to the study of European integration is less clear. Unlike other theories(federalism and functionalism), Deutsch was less concerned with the transcendence of nation-state and the creation of international institutions. The theory isn’t centered on the experience of the European Steel and Coal community. It looked at multiple historical examples of security communities to create a set of general theoretical propositions

Critique

-)Critisism usually begins with the problems of measurement and operationalisation. The approach deals with a great amount of data which is difficult to measure. Moreover, it’s difficult to find out the effects of transactions(such as international travel or phone calls) on the identities of mutual identifications between peoples

-)The second line of criticism concerns the lack of clearness of the mechanisms through which the processes are operated. For example, how exactly informal interactions generate formal institution-building and socio-psychological changes influence authoritative actions. T. fails to understand the politics of motivation in the processes of communication that in turn becomes the problem of power. The assumption of transactioanalists was that the mass sentimental change would eventually force formal police changes. But it could be argued that attitudes of mass public derive from national media which is shaped by the government.

-)The third reason for critisism is the assumption that increased communication necessarily lead to cognitive changes

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