Crisis Diplomacy
The Great Powers since the Mid-Nineteenth Century

In this book James Richardson examines nine major international crises from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to explain the differing outcomes of each.

James L. Richardson (Author)

9780521459877, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 September 1994

440 pages, 6 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 3 cm, 0.71 kg

'Richardson has written an old-fasioned good book, bringing together scholarship, learning, judgement, conceptualisation and theory … an important contribution to the field.' World Affairs

Although much has been written on international crises, the literature suffers from a lack of historical depth, and a proliferation of competing theoretical frameworks. Through case studies drawing on the rich historical experience of crisis diplomacy, James Richardson offers an integrated analysis based on a critical assessment of the main theoretical approaches. Due weight is given to systemic and structural factors, but also to the specific historical factors of each case, and to theories which do not presuppose rationality as well as those which do. Crisis diplomacy the major political choices made by decision makers, and their strategies, judgments and misjudgments - is found to play a crucial role in each of the case studies. This broad historical inquiry is especially timely when the ending of the Cold War has removed the settled parameters within which the superpowers conducted their crisis diplomacy.

Part I: 1. Introduction: aims and approaches
2. Theories of crisis behaviour
3. 'Crisis management' versus 'crisis diplomacy'
Part II: 4. The Eastern crisis, 1839–1841
5. The Crimean war crisis, 1853–1854
6. The Russo-Japanese crisis, 1903–1904
7. The Sudeten crisis, 1938
8. The Franco-Prussian and Agadir crises
9. Pearl Harbor and the Berlin crises
Part III: 10. Crises and the international system: arenas, alignments and norms
11. The choice of goals: values, interests and objectives
12. Selective perception and misperception
13. Crisis bargaining
14. Internal politics
15. The outcome and risk of war
Part IV: 16. Conclusions: theory and policy.

Subject Areas: Diplomacy [JPSD]