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Three approaches to the international system …: a reply to Dr. Little

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

There can be little doubt that of the three approaches to the international system which Dr. Little explores,1 what he calls the “organized complexity model” is the most useful and valid for an understanding of international relations. While the first of the models he considers, the mechanistic one, has “no room for evolution, adaption or self-regulation,” the second, the organic model still focuses problematically on structures which are supposed to maintain a given system and so both lack what the third seeks to provide: a fluid, dynamic perspective which can account for change.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1979

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References

page 86 note 1 See British Journal of International Studies iii (1977) pp. 269 285.

page 86 note 2. Ibid. p. 274.

page 86 note 3 Ibid. p. 278.

page 86 note 4 Ibid. p. 279.

page 86 note 5 Easton, D, A Framework for Political Analysis (New Jersey, 1965), p. 106Google Scholar.

page 87 note 1 Nicholson, M. B. and Reynolds, P. A., ‘General Systems, the International System and the Eastonian Analysis’, Political Studies xv (1967), p. 30Google Scholar.

page 87 note 2 Little, op. cit. p 285.

page 88 note 1 Ibid. p. 282.

page 88 note 2 Ibid. p. 285.

page 88 note 3 Ibid. As Dr. Little has commented more recently, “it often appears difficult to avoid a sense of anticlimax when concluding a discussion of the systems approach in International Relations.” See ‘A systems approach’, Approaches and Theory in International Relations, ed. Taylor, (London and New York, 1978), p. 201Google Scholar.

page 88 note 4 Little, op. cit. p. 282.

page 89 note 1 Ibid

page 89 note 2 Ibid.

page 89 note 3 Ibid.

page 89 note 4 In Rosenau, J. (ed.), Linkage Politics (New York, 1969), p. 22fGoogle Scholar. Cited by Kubalkova, V. and Cruikshank, A. A., “A double omission”, British Journal of International Studies iii (1977), p. 302Google Scholar

page 90 note 1 Kubalkova and Cruikshank, op. cit. p. 302.