ABSTRACT
Before systemic approaches to IR consolidated throughout the second half of the twentieth century, a number of internationalist studies developed that drew attention to domestic factors affecting national foreign policies and the way that these interact with external factors. Some of these approaches are largely presystemic or a-systemic and many of them are not completely formulated theories but rather partial lines of researching. Secondly, as argued above, some system theorists – notably critics of realism and neo-realism – have also highlighted the importance of domestic politics to International Relations. Thirdly, comparative studies on both sides of the Atlantic have also considered the contextualization of political and economic, rational and irrational, individual, collective and institutional domestic factors, as well as ideational, normative and historical aspects of states’ foreign policies. These approaches are an important facet of the richly pluralistic background of contemporary international relations.1
