The national interest is a
sovereign state
A sovereign state or sovereign country, is a political entity represented by one central government that has supreme legitimate authority over territory. International law defines sovereign states as having a permanent population, defined te ...
's goals and ambitions (economic, military, cultural, or otherwise), taken to be the aim of government.
Etymology
The Italian phrase ''ragione degli stati'' was first used by
Giovanni della Casa
Giovanni della Casa (28 June 1503 – 14 November 1556), was a Florentine poet, writer on etiquette and society, diplomat, and inquisitor. He is celebrated for his famous treatise on polite behavior, '' Il Galateo overo de’ costumi'' (1558). Fr ...
around the year 1547.
The expression "reason of state" (''Ragion di Stato'') was championed by Italian diplomat and political thinker
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli ( , , ; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527), occasionally rendered in English as Nicholas Machiavel ( , ; see below), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. ...
, and was later popularised by Italian political thinker
Giovanni Botero
Giovanni Botero (c. 1544 – 1617) was an Italian thinker, priest, poet, and diplomat, author of '' Della ragion di Stato (The Reason of State)'',Botero, Giovanni, Pamela Waley, Daniel Philip Waley, and Robert Peterson. 1956. The Reason of St ...
around 1580s,
. Prominently, Chief Minister
Cardinal Richelieu justified France's intervention on the
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
side, despite its own
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, in the
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle ...
as being in the national interest in order to block the increasing power of the Catholic
Holy Roman Emperor. At Richelieu's prompting,
Jean de Silhon defended the concept of ''raison d'État'' as "a mean between what conscience permits and affairs require."
[Thuau, E. 1996. ''Raison d'État et Pensée Politique a l'époque de Richelieu.'' Paris: ]Armand Colin
Armand Colin is a French publishing house founded in 1870 by Auguste Armand Colin. It specializes in publishing works concerning human sciences, economics and education. Among its best-known publications are the "U" collection begun in 1968, an ...
.
Usage
Within the field of
international relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...
, the national interest has frequently been assumed to comprise the pursuit of power, security and wealth.
Neorealist and liberal institutionalist scholars tend to define the national interest as revolving around security and power. Liberal scholars see national interests as an aggregation of the preferences of domestic political groups. Constructivist scholars reject that the national interest of states are static and can be assumed ''a priori''; rather, they argue that the preferences of states are shaped through social interactions and are changeable.
See also
*
Common good
In philosophy, economics, and political science, the common good (also commonwealth, general welfare, or public benefit) is either what is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community, or alternatively, what is achieved by c ...
*
Nation state
A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.
A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may i ...
*
Public interest
The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society.
Overview
Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefor ...
*
Realpolitik
''Realpolitik'' (; ) refers to enacting or engaging in diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly binding itself to explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical ...
*
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. ...
*
Realism (international relations)
Realism is one of the dominant schools of thought in international relations theory, theoretically formalising the Realpolitik statesmanship of early modern Europe. Although a highly diverse body of thought, it is unified by the belief that ...
*
Moral nihilism
References
Further reading
* Beard, Charles A. 1934. ''The Idea of National Interest.''
Macmillan.
* Burchill, Scott. 2005. ''The National Interest in International Relations Theory.''
Palgrave Macmillan
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains off ...
.
* Frankel, Joseph. 1970. ''National Interest.'' London: Pall Mall.
* Hu, Shaohua. 2016. "A Framework for analysis of national interest: United States policy toward Taiwan." ''Contemporary Security Policy'' 37(1):144–167.
*
Nuechterlein, Donald. 1976. "National interests and foreign policy: A conceptual framework for analysis and decision-making." ''
British Journal of International Studies
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
'' 2(3): 246–266.
* Rosenau, James. 1968. "National Interest." pp. 34–40 in ''International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences'' 2(1), edited by D. L. Sills and R. K. Merton. New York:
Macmillan/Free Press.
* Troianiello, Antonino. 1999. ''Raison d’État et droit public'', Thesis paper,
Université du Havre, 748 pages.
{{Authority control
Political realism
International relations
State ideologies