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Balance of Power, Bipolarity and other Models of International Systems1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Morton A. Kaplan
Morton A. Kaplan
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The postwar years have been a period of great interest in the theory of international politics. A contributor to this Review has surveyed the state of the study of that theory and indicated the alternatives open to it. Within the last year the Institute of War and Peace Studies of Columbia University has held a series of seminars on the subject in an effort to push forward research frontiers.

Interest in theory is no reflection upon the merits of scholarly endeavors that are not oriented primarily to theoretical considerations. But it does assume the independent importance of a theory of international politics. The present essay assumes the importance of theory in general, but is based upon a particular kind of theory, namely, systems theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1957 , pp. 684 - 695
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

2 Thompson, Kenneth W., “Toward a Theory of International Politics,” this Review, Vol. 49 (September 1955), pp. 733–746Google Scholar.

3 The development of systems theory by Ashby, W. Ross, Design for a Brain (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, is a landmark in theoretical research.

4 The term “essential actor” refers to “major power” as distinguished from “minor power.”

5 This kind of equilibrium is not mechanical like the equilibrium of a seesaw which reestablishes itself mechanically after a disturbance. Instead, it is a “steady state” or homeostatic equilibrium which maintains the stability of selected variables as the consequence of changes in other variables. For instance, the body maintains the temperature of blood in a “steady state” by perspiring in hot weather and by flushing the skin in cold weather. The international system is not simply stable but in Ashby's sense is ultrastable. That is, it acts selectively toward states of its internal variables and rejects those which lead to unstable states. See W. Ross Ashby, op. cit., p. 99, for a precise treatment of the concept of ultrastability.

6 It is nevertheless true that since Napoleon threatened the principle of dynastic legitimacy, the system would have been strained. The principle of legitimacy, for quite some time, reduced the suspicions which are natural to a “balance of power” system.

7 Britain and France violated rules 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 in the 1930's.

8 Extensional definitions would identify NATO as relatively non-hierarchical and the Communist bloc as mixed hierarchical. If the Communist bloc were to be so integrated that national boundaries and organizational forms were eliminated, it would become fully hierarchical.

9 In this connection, it is noteworthy that the Yugoslavs were able to resist the drastic Soviet demands for economic integration. Tito's withdrawal would have been much more difficult—and perhaps impossible—had this not been the case.

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