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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 ter ...
'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 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 around 1580s,. Prominently, Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu justified France's intervention on the
Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...
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 batt ...
as being in the national interest in order to block the increasing power of the Catholic
Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans ( la, Imperator Romanorum, german: Kaiser der Römer) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period ( la, Imperat ...
. At Richelieu's prompting,
Jean de Silhon Jean de Silhon (1596, Sos, Lot-et-Garonne – February 1667, Paris) was a French philosopher and politician. He was a founding member, and the first to occupy seat 24 of the Académie française in 1634. At Cardinal Richelieu Armand Jean du P ...
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.


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 ...
, 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 ...
*
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 * Pragmatism * Realism (international relations) *
Moral nihilism Moral nihilism (also known as ethical nihilism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or wrong. Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism, which allows for actions to be wrong relative to a particular culture or indiv ...


References


Further reading

* Beard, Charles A. 1934. ''The Idea of National Interest.''
Macmillan MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to: People * McMillan (surname) * Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan * Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician * James MacMillan, Scottish composer * William Duncan 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'' 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