Transaction Flows in the International System

When we speak of an international system, we start with the presumption that there is something habitual and regular about the behavior of the nations that constitute it. Unfortunately, the concept of an international system has had a singularly hollow ring in the works of many scholars who have employed the term. It is frequently compared to an incredibly complicated watch or thermostat, or alternatively it is defined so abstractly that it would appear to have no specific empirical referents—and therefore practically everything in one way or another would qualify as a “system.”The abstract and shadowy significance of the concept in international relations studies has retarded its usefulness for exploring the regularities that underlie the interactions of nations. More than ever before, however, the actions of nations have multiple reverberations on each other and can be ascribed meaning only within the context of the relations of many nations with each other. Because the configuration of inter-nation relations has become increasingly complex, it has become more and more difficult to trace out these relations and determine what structure, if any, there is in the “system.”We shall see later that any definition of a system is arbitrary to the extent that its inclusion and exclusion rules are arbitrary. If we can specify the simplifying assumptions which create this arbitrariness, however, then the problematic cases included or excluded in a system or component subsystems can usually be identified and explained. This approach seems preferable to positing systems criteria that are either ambiguous or non-operational, enriching the vocabulary but not the analysis.