Systemism and International Studies

This article introduces a Special Issue of Social Sciences on systemism and International Studies. With origins in the philosophy of science, systemism is having a rapidly expanding presence in academe. At the outset, systemism emphasized its status as a meta-method that could be used to assess the degree of completeness and logical consistency achieved by theorizing within respective disciplines of the social sciences. In International Relations, systemism has developed with an increasing emphasis on visualization, which played a modest role at the starting point in philosophy. The preceding shift in attention toward graphic conveyance is in line with tendencies toward a more visually oriented world along any number of dimensions. This introductory article unfolds in five stages. The first stage provides an overview. Stage two will introduce the systemist approach in a more specific way, with emphasis on the content and structure of its diagrams. The third section provides a detailed exposition, via a systemist figure and sub-figures, for a study of the evolving counterterrorism regime complex given its relevance to International Studies. Section four summarizes the other contributions to this Special Issue. The fifth and final section sums up what has been accomplished.