The Composition and Status Ordering of the International System: 1815–1940

Abstract

This paper has two closely related purposes, both of which, if accomplished, may help to accelerate the development of international relations as an empirically based discipline. One is to identify the shifting and expanding membership of the international system during the 125 years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of World War II. The other is to classify all such members of the system according to their attributed importance or status during the same period. In each case, the intent is not only to provide certain data which may be useful to the discipline, but to describe in considerable detail the procedures by which such data were gathered or, more accurately, “made.”

Is India a Great Power? Understanding Great Power Status in Contemporary International Relations

“…188 India is a great power in at least one world region, Southeast Asia (and possibly in the Indian Ocean Region also), in addition to its home region in South Asia. China, on the other hand, is a great power in at least three world regions outside of its home region of Northeast Asia: Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia.…”

Globalization and Political Structure

“…For the nineteenth century, however, some leading conventions grossly underestimate the number of countries. For example, the "International System,"developed by Singer and Small (1966) and adopted in the Correlates of War project or in the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive, only includes countries with international recognition. In particular, prior to 1920, the criteria to be recognized as an independent country were to have population greater than 500,000 and to have had diplomatic missions at or above the rank of chargé d'a¤aires with Britain and France.…”

“…1 Since counting the number of sovereign countries in the past poses some challenges, especially in remote and underdeveloped areas, in Figure 2 we plot an alternative measure of political concentration: 2 shows that the end of World War II marks another structural break: before 1950, more than 1 See Appendix A.1 for more details about the data. 2 Most importantly, the commonly used "International System" (Singer and Small 1966), including countries with international recognition, grossly underestimates the number of independent political entities in the nineteenth-century developing world. one third of all territorial disputes were decided by war, while after that date diplomacy prevailed in almost 90% of cases.…”

Global cities and the transformation of the International System

“…To say that it is made up primarily of states, and that states and their interactions are the crucial objects of analysis in international politics, is an ontological choice representative of a particular perspective. The third issue that arises, once 78 Singer (1961) 79 Singer and Small (1966) Waltz (1979) Wendt (1999) 80 Keohane and Nye (1977) 81 Weaver (1998) 82 Cox (1981) 83 Wendt (1999: 8-10) again interlinked, is the question o f naturalism: to what extent is it possible to analyse the social world using the methods and techniques used by the physical sciences to understand the natural world. The problem o f naturalism has underpinned all of the discipline defining debates in IR.84 It is at the heart of the two most influential texts on the international system.…”

“…136 Singer and Small (1966) Kaplan (1957) Waltz (1979) 137 Buzan and Little (2000: 37) 138 Singer and Small (1966) 139 Bull (1969) This classic division between the 'explanation' offered by 'scientific' methodology, and the 'understanding' promised by historical and hermeneutic approaches, has gone on to divide the discipline ever since. Some argue that the divide between these two 'incommensurable' forms of knowledge is ultimately unbridgeable.140 With reference to the arguments o f the previous section, it seems clear that the 'second debate' has never been satisfactorily resolved in IR, and continues to lie at the centre of many o f the discipline's key theoretical arguments.…”