Internation Politics. Communication Approach

The term communication has been borrowed from the concept of ‘cybernetics’ which means ‘steering’. Norbert Weiner developed the concept of cybernetics in his famous work Cybernetics, to signify the control of communication in political system.

Cybernetics is “a body of theory and technique for the study of probabilities in different but analogous universes such as certain types of machines, animals, individual human beings, societies and nation-states and the ways in which message transactions function to control such universes”.

Communication is treated as the cement that makes organizations. It alone enables a group to think together, to see together and to act together. All social sciences require the understanding of communication.

Evolution:

This approach in international relations was developed by Deutsch in his celebrated work The Nerves of Government: Model of Political Communication and Control. In this book, Deutsch applies the concept of the theory of information, communication and control to problems of political and social science borrowing from Weiner’s concepts of ‘feedback’, ‘channel capacity’ and ‘memory’. From these, Deutsch developed his concept of “consciousness”, “will” and “social learning”. Since 1960s, the communication approach became popular in social sciences, and terms like ‘feedback’, ‘steering’, and ‘learning capacity’ have become a common usage while analyzing political systems.

Features of theory:

For Deutsch, communism in the true sense of the world are the nerves of government. A government is analogous to steering of a ship and it is a form of administration of communication channels: Control of steering is central to the problem of steering. A government, which can lessen the uncertainty of the international environment, has an advantage and can steer clear in the troubled waters of international relations.

For this, the main component is information which is vital to the state’s decision-making, both present and future, vis-à-vis other states as well as non-state actors about their present and future courses of actions. Very important in this respect is the feedback. This means the government is able to assess the impact of its decisions on other actors through feedback mechanism. This helps the government, especially those charged with the decision-making to carefully steer through the troubled waters of international relations.

Therefore, the main focus of communications approach is communication and information flows and not unitary emphasis on power.

Criticism:

According to the critics of the communication approach,

·There is enormous difficulty in either applying a model or making use of it for a purposeful study of IR, which has been directly influenced by natural sciences. The terminology borrowed from electrical or mechanical engineering also makes it more complex in its application, and there are chances that the model can be misapplied.

·The most vehement criticism has been launched by scholars from the developing world who contend that the communication flow and feedback is not among equals but among unequal subsystems characterized by domination and subordination.

Example, Global North is dominant who controls the communication facilities and thus the flow of information and consequentially the feedback from the weaker subsystem, the subordinate South.

·The proponents of communications approach have not addressed the phenomenon of dependence and dominance of North over South. Therefore, the complete landscape of international relations cannot be understood by this approach alone.