Books by William Zimmerman

How are foreign policy decisions made? This volume shows the various approaches to answer this question

How are foreign policy decisions made? This volume shows the various approaches to answer this question

Serious debates and discussions on world politics in Russian journals and books have greatly increased since 1956, resulting in a steadily changing appraisal of the world political situation by the Russians. Professor Zimmerman studies that changing appraisal. He describes Soviet international relations perspectives during Khrushchev's years in power and the three years following. He uncovers the answers Soviet commentators implicitly or explicitly give to such questions as: Who, in the Soviet view, are the main actors in international politics, and what does identifying them suggest about the Soviet perspective? In the Soviet analysis, what is the global distribution of power? How do Soviet analysts characterize the capabilities, motives, and decision-making process of the United States?Contents: I. Introduction. II. The Emergence of International Relations as a Discipline. III. The Actors. IV. The Hierarchy. V. The Distribution of Power. VI. United States Foreign Policy from the Soviet Perspective. VII. The Balance of Power as System and Policy. VIII. Post-Imperialism and the Transformation of Soviet Foreign Policy.Originally published in 1969.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Since the fall of communism, public opinion in Russia, including that of a now more diverse elite, has become a substantial factor in that country's policymaking process. What this opinion might be and how it responds to American actions is the subject of this study. William Zimmerman offers important and sometimes disturbing insight into the thinking of citizens in America's former Cold War adversary about such matters as NATO expansion. Drawing on nearly a decade of unprecedented surveys he conducted with a wide spectrum of the Russian public, he gauges the impact of Russia's opening on its foreign policy and how liberal democrats orient themselves to foreign policy. He also shows that insights from the study of American foreign policy are often "e;portable"e; to the study of Russian foreign policy attitudes. As Zimmerman shows, the general public, which had a modest but real role in foreign policy decision making, tended much more toward isolationism than did the predominant elites who steered Russia's foreign policy in the 1990s. Interspersing smooth prose with a wide array of richly informative tables, the book represents an invaluable opportunity to discern probable shifts in Russian foreign policy that domestic political changes would bring. And it powerfully suggests that the West, by forging its own policies toward Russia with more prudence, can have a say in the outcome of the great choice facing Russia--whether to forge ahead with democracy or slip back into authoritarianism.