Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Basic elements of a model and definitions of stability
- 3 System stability and the balance of power
- 4 Resource stability and the balance of power
- 5 Preventive war
- 6 Geography, balancers, and central powers
- 7 Great-power alliance formation, 1871–1914
- 8 European conflict resolution, 1875–1914
- 9 Summary and conclusions
- References and selected bibliography on European great-power relations, 1871–1914
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Basic elements of a model and definitions of stability
- 3 System stability and the balance of power
- 4 Resource stability and the balance of power
- 5 Preventive war
- 6 Geography, balancers, and central powers
- 7 Great-power alliance formation, 1871–1914
- 8 European conflict resolution, 1875–1914
- 9 Summary and conclusions
- References and selected bibliography on European great-power relations, 1871–1914
- Index
Summary
Among the depressing features of international political studies is the small gain in explanatory power that has come from the large amount of work done in recent decades. Nothing seems to accumulate, not even criticism. Instead, the same sorts of summary and superficial criticisms are made over and over again, and the same sorts of errors are repeated.
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (1979, p. 18)Despite the attention of such intellectual giants as Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, and Clausewitz, we know little more about international conflict today than was known to Thucydides four hundred years before Christ.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, The War Trap (1981, p. 2)Perspectives
Although the causes of international instability and conflict have been the object of intense scholarly concern, the events of our century are not inconsistent with the supposition that we have made little progress in identifying those causes, that, once identified, we have not adequately applied our research to the discovery of correctives, or that those causes have multiplied at a pace that exceeds our abilities of assimilation and analysis. Some scholars amass and analyze vast arrays of data on diplomatic exchanges, military expenditures, economic indicators, the formation of alliances, and the frequency and severity of wars; others apply the mathematics of decision and game theory with varying degrees of sophistication to the description of international relations processes; and still others reason through the meaning and application of concepts and words such as polarity, power, regime, deterrence, neocolonialism, and the balance of power. If this research has uncovered causes and correctives then, for one reason or another, the corresponding scholarly utterances have been less than compelling.
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- Information
- The Balance of PowerStability in International Systems, pp. 1 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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