ABSTRACT
Our examination shows that the network of economic and strategic pressures that holds a system together constrains its members to act and to refrain from acting in certain ways. These pressures act mechanically, in the sense that they operate outside the will of the community concerned. Except in the most directly administered empires, the mechanical pressures leave a large area which governments and spokesmen for communities can influence by conscious choice. Communities can to some extent organize their system, making it into what we have called an international society.
