German Perceptions of the Triple Entente after 1911: Their Mounting Apprehensions Reconsidered
After 1911, Germany felt increasingly threatened by the Triple Entente. Secret intelligence from the Russian embassy in London revealed a growing cohesion among the Triple Entente partners: Britain, Russia, and France. In particular, Berlin feared the success of Raymond Poincare of France, first as premier and then later as President, as he worked to convert the entente with London into an alliance and to reinforce alliance ties with Russia. In the summer of 1914 came the murders at Sarajevo of Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. When Vienna decided to punish Serbia, Berlin agreed to support them in the belief that Russia would not back Serbia. But even if Russia did support Serbia, better a war now than later. Rather than be intimidated, Russia took escalatory actions of its own to help Serbia and their French ally. The First World War was the result.
Do Decision-Makers Matter?
How useful is the individual level of analysis in understanding foreign policy? This is a legitimate question since there is still controversy surrounding the use of this unit of analysis. With the behavioral revolution in the 1960s, internationalists abandoned the study of “great men”. Kenneth Waltz was the first to acknowledge that heads of state do sometimes play a defining role, but considered that they are too complex and idiosyncratic for a systematic analysis (1959). In recent years, however, the individual level of analysis has gradually regained its proper place in the analysis of foreign policy. Several internationalists now recognize that completely ignoring the role of individuals is reductive and counterproductive. As this chapter shows, some researchers are focusing on the cognitive and affective characteristics specific to a given individual, while others are trying to identify major trends in the way decision-makers generally perceive and interpret their environment.
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of