13 September 2005
The main purpose of this book, according to Nolte, is to persuade her American-style political scientist colleagues to adopt broader and more constructivist approaches for the interpretation of changes in states’ behaviour with respect to military interventions. ‘Her general claim is that the so-called realist or neo-realist schools, by identifying certain aspects of material ‘power’, ‘interests’, and ‘systems’ as the determining factors for military intervention, overlook or underestimate softer factors, such as international institutions and law, professions and epistemic communities, social movements, persuasions and communicative action, ‘affective mechanisms such as liking and empathy’, and finally ‘social influence plus internalization’.