ABSTRACT
For most of IR as an academic field, as well as for peace and conflict research understood in a broader sense, modern systems theory in the Luhmannian tradition is still a stranger.1 A reader unsympathetic to the idea that studying international relations requires the frequent transgression of disciplinary boundaries may, of course, find that this is so for a good reason. According to common prejudice, modern systems theory is awkwardly complicated and not easy to understand. And it is indeed! Yet, it is so for the fairly good reason that a highly-complex world defies understanding in terms of simplistic world models and linear thought. Modern systems theory is one of the very few contributions in social science which can rightfully claim to have unearthed what could, in loose analogy to the natural sciences, be called a Newtonian worldview, in order to replace it with a modern, yet also more complex, body of theory. However, and notwithstanding the enthusiasm of some of its more devoted followers, it provides an open and dynamic body of theory opening many new research vistas in a number of disciplines.
