ABSTRACT
The balance of power interpretation of the Vienna settlement appears so obvious that a challenge to it is likely to be understood as merely a call to redefine or reclassify it, involving a taxonomic dispute of the sort familiar to historians. A move away from eighteenth-century balance of power politics to a different kind of politics was an essential element in the revolutionary transformation of European international politics achieved in 1813–1815. A "balance of power system" must mean one in which the power possessed and exercised by states within the system is checked and balanced by the power of others. All the major actors in the system must be subject to this kind of restraint, at least potentially having to fear the countervailing power of a blocking coalition or other deterrent action by other states, should they upset the balance by aggression, threat, or an inordinate growth in capability.
