This is the first book to describe and test a fully systemic theory of international politics. Using statistics and diplomatic history, it traces statesmen's efforts to influence the power and ideas that form the broad contours of the international system within which they interact.[...]
Do great leaders make history? Or are they compelled to act by historical circumstance? This debate has remained unresolved since Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx framed it in the mid-nineteenth century, yet implicit answers inform our policies and our views of history. In this book, Professor Bear F. B[...]