ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on critical realism's ontology of social systems, or critical-realist social theory, and realist international relations theory. It provides the most elementary abstract model of the constitution of the international state system and world capitalist economy. Various manifestations of pandemic-management policies of governments virtually everywhere are striking confirmation of the primacy of interstate competition over interstate cooperation and bilateral consensus-building in world politics. Back in the real world, however, whatever the limitations of state responses to the pandemic, what cannot be in doubt is that, with rare exceptions, it was nation-states that erected the COVID-barricades and that supported these with furloughs that kept people in home-isolation. Turning now to the international picture with regard to the rollout of the vaccines. The way this has unfolded from its start on the cusp of 2021 up until the present day (April 2023) perfectly reflects the asymmetries of authoritative and allocative resources generally across the interstate system and world capitalist economy.
