International relations: A theoretical synthesis

If the international system is envisaged as a trading network in which political, cutural and social mesotheses, as well as economic goods and services, are exchanged between Parsonian sectors (political, integrative and adaptive), then the behavior of governments, multinational corporations and other agencies can be modelled on those of actors exercising bounded rationality in a set of highly imperfect markets. Power can be conceptualized as a form of political credit, capable of investment, liable to inflation due to over‐extension, and subject to exhaustion—and the illegitimate substitution of force. Political actors attempt to optimize their legitimacy (or political solvency).

Thus global structure is envisaged as a more or less persistent network of exchanges, which necessarily assumes a market configuration, hierarchical and segmented. Then the nature of international relations varies as a function of the actors’ relative positions within this structure,—above/below, near/far—and of their relative systemic motions—fast/slow, rising/falling, approaching/receding.

It is proposed to accept the market structure as given, including the disparities in capacity between countries and their diverse institutions and cultures, in order to explain changes in international relations, i.e. changes in relative position. It is such change that chiefly concerns decision makers.

Several processes contribute to structural change. First, the great engine of change is “progress”: the market imperative for actors either to rise in the structure or to be taken over by others more progressive than they. Thus the whole system tends to “develop” upward. Second, cycles of deflation and inflation in various forms of “credit” operate to raise or lower the overall height of the market pyramid. Third, disparities in levels between Parsonian sectors give rise to turbulance within the global system.