It can be easily assumed that causes of World War I were born in the 19th century when the strong splash of civilizations took place. Such new powers as Germany and Italy once wished to establish themselves in the same row with old countries – Russia, France, and Britain, thus adjusting to new social ideological norms. The matter related to the causes of World War I remains one of the most heated debates in the world’s historiography since August 1914. Due to this reason, historians prefer using different approaches to the investigation of this problem. An institutional explanation of the causes of World War I may bring societies to the understanding of why it had actually occurred as a mystery to ordinary people and whether it was planned on purpose to establish a new balance of power and circle of influence. Presumably, World War I was neither sudden nor impossible to contemplate as the previous centuries brought an increase in intercultural misunderstandings and a social crisis in response to the formation of entirely new worldviews and social systems.
Generally, representatives of historical institutionalism tend to identify the institutional impact, following different political actors: the interests of the organization, ideological or social values peculiar to certain institutions – rather than to define them as the aggregation of individual interests and preferences. Conversely, the individual interests and preferences are not determined independently from the institutions, and political behavior is not linked directly to the individual intentions. Generalizations are built not by deductive reasoning with respect to the patterns of behavior, but based on a comparison of institutions, a comparative analysis of the political process or historical cases. Therefore, an institutional explanation of the causes of World War I would shed light on all the traces of the formation of an evident cult related to the concept of hostility prevalent at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries. Doyle proves that the theory of institutionalism can be applied in the context of World War as any other modern theories intended for explaining the overall causes of different phenomena.
The search of the causes of World War I leads to 1871 when the hegemony of Prussia was enshrined in the German Empire. To deprive France of an opportunity to avenge the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck attempted to link Russia and Austria-Hungary and Germany in a secret agreement in 1873. However, Russia put forward its claims in support of France and the Union of three emperors broke up. In 1882, Bismarck strengthened Germany’s position, creating the Triple Alliance that united Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany. By 1890, Germany came to the forefront of European diplomacy. However, it is incorrect to state that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip is one of the causes of the conflict that had grave consequences for the whole world. David Fromkin suggested that the assassination was just a mere occasion that accelerated the tendency. The historian demonstrates that the relationship between Franz Ferdinand and Wilhelm was far more complex than it appeared on the surface. He also states that the world of the 1890s and 1900s had been, not unlike our own age, a time of globalization of the world economy, and schemes to establish some sort of league of nations to outlaw war. This assumption leads to the fact that the end of the 19th century was marked with tension and exposed to changes.
There is an inclination among different scholars to consider World War I in the light of its deliberate nature because of the institutions’ aptitude for redefining the balance of power. David Fromkin was one of the scholars who dedicated their time to discover the true causes of the emerging worldly disorder. At the beginning of his book, the historian provided quite a suitable comparison between the causes for the disaster related to the United Airlines flight 826 of Boeing and World War I. On the basis of the mysteriousness of the underlying flight and accompanied natural cataclysms, Fromkin leapt to a conclusion that “The sky out of which Europe fell was not empty; on the contrary, it was alive with processes and powers. The forces that were to devastate it – nationalism, socialism, imperialism. European world was already buffeted by high winds”. This assumption constitutes evidence that the researcher also supports the theory of deliberateness.
Still, there are different opinions about the cause of World War I. Doyle confirms that the Leninist concept began to dominate in Russian worldview. The gist of it was that World War I was is an imperialist, predatory war between two hostile factions of the capitalist powers, German-Austrian bloc and the Entente, for the sake of re-division of the already divided world, re-distribution of colonies, markets, spheres of influence and capital investment