Examine the explanatory potential of Kaplan’s systems theory in explaining the phenomenon of international politics in the present context. (1998)
Morton A. Kaplan’s System and Process in International Politics (1957) offered six ideal-type international systems: balance of power, loose bipolar, tight bipolar, universal, hierarchical and unit veto. He added four variants in 1969, including very loose bipolar and incomplete nuclear diffusion. Each is defined by essential rules, transformation rules, and actor, capability and information variables. Do they explain the world of 2026? Partially, as a descriptive vocabulary, but with little explanatory force.
Where the models still illuminate
- A loosening bipolarity. The US–China rivalry is now the primary axis. Around it sit states that refuse bloc discipline, close to Kaplan’s non-member actors. In the General Assembly vote on Ukraine in February 2026 (107–12–51), India abstained. The 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi (12–13 September 2026) criticised unilateral tariffs and sanctions without forming a bloc. Kaplan’s very loose bipolar model, where leaders cannot discipline followers, fits better than his tight one, and non-alignment survives in a movement of some 120 members, against his expectation that bipolarity would tighten. Elements of his détente variant appear too: the US–China trade truce agreed at Busan in October 2025 was extended to 10 January 2027 during Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington in September 2026.
- Incomplete nuclear diffusion. Nine states hold some 12,187 warheads (SIPRI, January 2026), in a graded hierarchy of nuclear, threshold and non-nuclear states. New START expired on 5 February 2026 with no successor, and the 2026 NPT Review Conference ended without a consensus document for the third time running. This variant describes the present order closely.
- Balance-of-power rules as diagnostics. His rule against predominant coalitions captures the logic of the Quad and of hedging against China. His rule that defeated powers be readmitted as acceptable role partners explains why Vienna lasted and Versailles failed, and frames the debate over Russia after Ukraine.
- A weak universal actor. Kaplan saw the UN as a mediator, not an authority; Security Council paralysis over Ukraine and Gaza keeps the universal system hypothetical.
Where the explanatory potential fails
- Taxonomy, not explanation. The models show which box the world fits, not why. Stanley Hoffmann’s objection still applies: rigorous form, little political substance.
- No causal mechanism. Kenneth N. Waltz (1979) explained outcomes through the distribution of capabilities, competition and socialisation. Kaplan’s rules are drawn from eighteenth-century Europe, not derived.
- Non-state actors. Firms, terrorist networks, platforms and transnational movements have no place in his actor classification. Weaponised interdependence, such as export controls on chips and rare earths and the 2025 tariff wars, is economic, and his capability variables are military.
- Domestic politics. Shifts in US trade policy since 2025 come from domestic coalitions, a variable Kaplan’s models leave out.
- No predictive record. No model foresaw 1989, 1991 or 2022; transformation rules name end-states without thresholds or mechanisms.
- Ill fit. One military preponderance, several economic poles, dense institutions and diffused technology fit none of the ten models without blending. Amitav Acharya’s “multiplex world” (The End of American World Order, 2014), with many actors and layered orders, captures it better.
Conclusion
Kaplan’s theory keeps a heuristic value. It supplies a precise language of configurations and rules, and two of its variants describe today’s loosened bipolarity and nuclear disorder well. As explanation it is thin: it cannot account for non-state power, economic coercion or domestic drivers. Present-day analysis therefore uses Kaplan’s systemic level of analysis but relies on Waltzian, neoclassical and constructivist theories to do the explaining.