Contending Perspectives on the International System 123In short, radicals argue that great economic disparities are built into the structure
of the international system and that this structure constrains all actions and interac
tions. But some radicals recognize that transitions may occur. The hegemonic Dutch
of the eigh teenth century were replaced by the British in the nineteenth century and
the Americans in the twentieth. Change may occur in the semiperiphery and periph
ery, as states change their positions relative to each other. Capitalism goes through cycles
of growth and expansion, as occurred during the age of colonialism and imperialism,
followed by periods of contraction and decline. So capitalism itself is a dynamic force
for change, though radicals do not view those changes in a positive light.
But can the cap i tal ist system itself be changed? In other words, is system
transformation— such as the change from the feudal to the cap i tal ist system— pos si ble?
Here, radicals differ among themselves. In the original radical theories, the state had
to be done away with if capitalism was to collapse and permit the laborers of the world
a fair share of the world’s wealth. One pathway was revolution— global revolution. As
we saw in Chapter 2, however, in 1848, this revolutionary moment seemed to pass;
since 1917, the promise of revolutions in Rus sia, China, and Cuba all seemed to stall,
leaving permanent dictatorships in place. But today, we might won der whether
technology—in par tic u lar cyber and Internet technologies— might serve as an exog
enous factor capable of forcing revolutionary change. If cap i tal ist dominance is based
on mono poly owner ship of the means of production, as for example Marx and Engels
claimed, and technology breaks this mono poly, perhaps putting the means of pro
duction into workers’ hands, then capitalism might be undone, and with it, stratifi
cation and war. Already in the early part of this century, poor and desperate people
all over the world have begun using mobile phone technology to coordinate dissent in
their home countries, or to find pathways out of their deadly circumstances. But just as
realists disagree among themselves about policy implications, radicals disagree about
the likelihood that the system stratification they all abhor can be transcended.the International system according to constructivists
Constructivists argue that the whole concept of an international system is a Eu ro pean
idea that, over time, became accepted as a natu ral fact (at least among Eu ro pe ans and
North Americans). They hold that we can explain nothing by international material
structures alone. Martha Finnemore in The Purpose of Intervention suggests that there
have been diff er ent international orders with changing purposes, diff er ent views of
threat, and reliance on diff er ent ways to maintain order. She traces at least four Eu ro
pean international orders: an eighteenth century balance order; a nineteenth century
concert order; a sphere of influence system for much of the twentieth century; and, sinceESSIR7_CH04_106_131_11P.indd 123 6/14/16 10:04 AM