ABSTRACT
The most common way of conceptualizing international systems is in terms of the supposedly significant units, the states. It is postulated that since state decision-makers are the source and the target of most significant international actions, a system conceived as consisting of states as units and the interactions among them will, if skilfully defined and analysed, assist in understanding the greater part of international occurrences. The system being usually seen as having no authoritative directing or controlling centre, the nature of the interactions will vary primarily according to the number, behaviour, and goals of the significant units or subsystems. Different types of state system may accordingly be conceptualized with two, five, fifteen, or fifty significant units, the controllers of which may have various kinds of goals, and will have at their disposal varying capabilities of advancing towards or achieving these goals in relation to each other. The number of units, the nature of goals, and capabilities, interact and are affected by each other: thus X resources (broadly defined) at the disposal of state A clearly provide different capabilities if only state B also disposes of approximately X resources, as compared with the situation where states B, C, D … N each disposes of approximately X resources, and interactions in the two systems would be very different; similarly the goals that the decisionmakers in state A could rationally seek to achieve would be different in the two systems; thirdly, if available resources drastically changed, or if inappropriate goals were sought, the number of units would be likely to be affected.
