States in Evolution: Some Afterthoughts

Abstract

While discussing the 'Environment of Developmental Alternatives' in the larger treatise bearing the above title,1 I outlined three models the European, the imperial Chinese, and the Latin American, elaborating on the first two in the bulk of the book. The European model involves the intraand inter-state effects of intraand inter-regional balance-of-power systems (or protosystems); the Chinese model corrects or supersedes the first by the effects of involvement by outside great powers verging on competitive apportionment of pre-eminent or exclusive influence; and the Latin American model entails the suspension or arrest of regional system evolution due, among other things, to a lopsided or aberrant impact by such outside great powers. Each of these developmental models will affect, in one way or another, the relation between conflict-focused regional system of power equilibrium and co-operation-centred functional regionalism. When I now attempt to respond to the Journal's invitation to re-examine these themes in the light of subsequent events, I find the intervening time span too short to justify definitive pronouncements on what are, after all, very long-term secular trends and alternatives. This is especially true for the basic option in the Third World between arrest and continuance of the ongoing evolution of regional balance-of-power systems, each alternative having portentous implications for the timetable, the power