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System and crisis in international politics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1985

Michael Brecher  and
Hemda Ben Yehuda
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Extract

This paper is an effort to overcome a major obstacle to a creative system orientation in international relations—a dearth of knowledge about system-level change. To accomplish this goal two tasks are necessary. First, building upon earlier contributions, a new definition of international system is offered and its essential properties—structure, process, equilibrium, stability—are discussed. The second requirement is to create a new approach to crisis and to forge links between its unit and system levels, the focus of the rest of the paper. This, in turn, will facilitate the analysis of crises as catalysts to system change, that is, as international earthquakes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 17 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1985

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