“Morton A. Kaplan’s system theory is contrary to the fundamental precepts of systems approach.” Comment. (2014, 15 Marks)
The systems approach entered political science with the behavioural revolution and its search for natural-science rigour. Morton A. Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics (1957) carried it into international relations. The statement holds that Kaplan borrowed the word “system” but discarded the logic that gives systems analysis its explanatory force.
The precepts of the systems approach
- Holism. In Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory a system resembles an organism: its parts are interdependent, so a change in one forces adjustment in the others.
- Boundary and environment. A system is marked off from an environment that acts upon it.
- Input, conversion, output, feedback. In David Easton’s political system, society sends in demands and supports; institutions convert them into authoritative allocations of values; the effects return as feedback.
- Equilibrium. A system restores a disturbed balance through its own processes.
Kaplan’s construction
Kaplan defined a system of action as a set of related variables, set against an environment, that shows describable behavioural regularities. He built six models: balance of power, loose bipolar, tight bipolar, universal, hierarchical and unit veto. Each has essential rules, transformation rules, and actor, capability and information variables.
Why the charge holds
- Environment named, not used. A system containing every state has no defined outside; domestic politics is parked as a constant, not theorised as inputs.
- No conversion or feedback. There is no counterpart to Easton’s demands and supports, and no machinery that turns them into decisions, because anarchy has no authoritative allocator. Without outputs there is no feedback loop.
- The parts dominate the whole. Kaplan conceded that the international system tends toward the “subsystem dominant” pole. Kenneth N. Waltz (Theory of International Politics, 1979) seized on this: if the units drive outcomes, the theory is reductionist, not systemic.
- Rules as prescriptions. The essential rules tell actors how to behave and are read off eighteenth-century European practice, the Eurocentrism Amitav Acharya later faulted in mainstream theory, rather than derived from structure. Equilibrium becomes nearly tautological.
- Classification, not process. Only the balance of power and loose bipolar models have historical referents; the others are hypothetical. Stanley Hoffmann judged the models rigorous in form but thin in political substance.
- A contrast. Karl W. Deutsch’s The Nerves of Government (1963) grounded the system in flows of communication and transactions, where feedback actually operates.
The case for Kaplan
- He made structural assumptions explicit, for example that a balance of power needs at least five essential actors and lenient treatment of the defeated.
- He established the systemic level of analysis, which Waltz refined into anarchy and the distribution of capabilities, with competition and socialisation as mechanisms.
- His later incomplete nuclear diffusion variant still describes the world: nine nuclear-armed states, and no treaty limiting the two largest arsenals since New START expired on 5 February 2026.
Conclusion
The charge is substantially correct. Kaplan kept the vocabulary of systems analysis but left out its working parts: a theorised environment, conversion and feedback. His failure was productive. By showing that taxonomy is not theory, he cleared the ground for Waltz’s leaner structural theory.