ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the coming evolution of the international political system. The system's main features—the distribution of power, the rules of the various games of world politics—constrain and shape the behavior of the players and penalize transgressions. Robert Gilpin's theory of change focuses on the rise, decline, and fall of "hegemons," but it suffers from two weaknesses. It provides a better account of the international economic system than of the international political one; for instance, Britain may well have been the economic hegemon in the nineteenth century, and thus was able to dictate the terms of the international monetary system and of international trade. A proliferation of international regimes would not change the "ordering principle" of the international system, nor even "the principles on basis of which the constituent units are separable from one another." The USSR would have to transform the very essence of its regime and to overcome some of the most ancient traits of Russian political culture.
