Structures of influence and cooperation‐conflict

Abstract

This paper outlines a structural approach to the analysis of patterns of influence and amity‐enmity in international politics. Structure is defined as a set of relations between pairs of social units, which justifies the use of graph theory to represent structures. Graph theoretical models of international structure are explored—one for each of the two types of relations. The author devises some typologies and observes changing structures. A tendency toward hierarchy in influence structures and toward bipolarization in cooperation‐conflict structures is discussed. It is hypothesized that high degrees of hierarchy and polarization are inimical to international peace. The graph theoretical studies yield intuitively reasonable results and the models appear to be useful in making several concepts of international relations theory more precise.