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Every year, Uppsala University awards the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science to a scholar who has made a valuable contribution to political science. In 1998 the prize was awarded to Stanford Professor Emeritus Alexander George for his `pathbreaking analysis of statecraft, its possibilities and limits, performed with great sensitivity for the importance of judgment, reasoned argumentation and responsible leadership in foreign policy decision-making'. George has made major contributions on presidential decision-making, crisis management, case study method, deterrence theory, coercive diplomacy, preventive diplomacy, and how to bridge the gap between the policy world and academics. While in Sweden to accept this prestigious award, George gave a lecture at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. This revised version of his address deals with how to develop academic scholarship for policy-making. The specific topic discussed here, strategies for preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution, is inspired by the work George has recently concluded for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and the Committee on International Conflict Resolution of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC. In this piece, George argues that in the new geopolitical environment of the post-Cold War world a better understanding of preventive diplomacy and conflict resolution is crucial for effective statecraft. To help accomplish this, he urges scholars to join foreign policy practitioners in analyzing the successes and failures of past cases of preventive diplomacy. Only through proper diagnoses can we better understand the many tools and instruments of conflict prevention and resolution and how policy-makers can make more effective use of them.

How analysis of Cold War diplomacy, both successful and unsuccessful, can help scholars and policy makers better understand conflict prevention and resolution in the post-Cold War era; focus on work of two groups in the US. Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict and the Committee on International Conflict Resolution of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.

This paper examines alternative approaches for developing norms of competition that might help to avoid war-threatening confrontations between the superpowers. Analysis of the abortive Nixon-Brezh nev experiment with 'general principles' and of subsequent efforts to devise general 'codes of conduct' to regulate the US-Soviet global competition suggests that such approaches are not workable. The paper argues that more attention should be given by the superpowers to a 'case-by-case' approach that focuses on the relative interests of the two sides in each specific area. The paper outlines a typology of competi tive 'games' that takes into account differences in the relative balance of interests between the US and the Soviet Union in various parts of the globe and points out the implications of these differences for norms of competition. Norms based upon relative interests, however, cannot be expected to work relia bly in all instances because the superpowers often experience difficulty in determining their interests in a particular area and in communicating their interests to each other in a timely and reliable way. The pa per notes the efforts the superpowers have made in recent years to develop a diplomatic mechanism for frequent discussions of regional problems and suggests how these bilateral discussions could be im proved and made more useful.

Based on conference paper. Efforts the superpowers have made in recent years to develop a diplomatic mechanism for frequent discussions of regional problems.