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Game theoretic examinations of balance of power hypotheses in the context of N-player games have identified certain distributions of resources which should lead to system stability, defined as the continued survival of all participants (Wagner 1986, Niou, Ordeshook, and Rose 1989; Niou and Ordeshook 1990). This article uses data from a seven-player simulation of realist international politics to analyze hypotheses on power distributions, the number of actors, and system stability. By conducting the simulation over the Internet, a tremendous number of runs through the simulation can be completed in a relatively short time, thereby generating sufficient data for the statistical analysis of the distributions of power that occur. These data can then be used to examine how those distributions relate to the number of participants found in the eventual end-state of the system.

The evolutionary paradigm for global politics here presented consists of four key proposition: (1) The global political system is a population of policies or strategies; (2) global politics constitutes a complex system that evolves in specifiable conditions: (3) accounting for global political evolution is a four-phased learning process whose key operators are variation (innovation), cooperation, selection, and reinforcement; and (4) global politics coevolves with global economics, community, and opinion et cetera. The evolutionary paradigm sheds light on two processes in particular: the formation of institutions at the global level, and the rise and decline of world powers (the long cycle).

Feminist and Afrocentrist scholars have criticized Anglo-American 'realist' based theories of world politics for the latter's androcentrism and racism, respectively. Although the Eurocentric model has provided scientific standards of political and scholarly analyses, a combination of the realist and Afrocentric traditions will give rise to more vital insights. On the other hand, Afrocentricity must strive to be rigorous in its conceptual and methodological approaches to avoid being labelled as mere ideology.

A game-theoretic analysis, evolved by H.H. Kelley and J.W. Thibaut, helps in dispelling the confusion in theoretical analyses of international politics, interpretations of the term 'interdependence' and its relations with variations in state behavior. A comprehensive model of the interaction of states in international politics should incorporate vulnerability, sensitivity and independence. This model can help explain why ostensibly harmless issues in international politics result in conflict, and ostensibly dangerous issues have positive consequences.

This article reflects the feedback of empirical research on theorizing about international relations. The empirical results obtained by both Faber (1987a) and Houweling & Siccama (1988) can be explained by the theory of risky prospects developed by Tversky & Kahneman (1981). As this theory is easily integrated into Simon's concept of bounded rationality in human decision-taking, a theoretical framework for the explanation of international relations based on the resulting theoretical notions concerning human decision-taking is developed. Accordingly, decision-taking by governments concerning international relations is conceived to be steered by their bounded rationality with respect to their behavioural options and interaction opportunities and the goal of minimizing losses in their relative power positions with respect to foreign as well as domestic contenders. Because military power capabilities are not equally distributed across the member-states of the international system, the relative power positions of nations result in group-formation among them due to either actual domination or fear of domination. The dynamics of group-interactions is argued to give rise to global stability in international relations. When the power position of a nation deteriorates and the dynamics of group-interactions is absent the probability of an outbreak of war rises sharply.

What explains the world's newfound enthusiasm for free trade? Are government leaders integrating their economies to achieve Pareto-improving gains? Or is it because a critical mass of pro-free trade governments has acquired the capacity to 'go it alone,' leaving would-be protectionists with a choice between a bad option (opening their markets at very high political cost) and an even worse alternative (incurring the still higher political costs of exclusion)? This article suggests that in practice, mutual-gains-seeking motivations are frequently dominated by defensive ones. The North American Free Trade Agreement is a case in point: Without in any way being bullied or coerced, the Mexican and Canadian governments agreed to take part in a multilateral arrangement that the evidence suggests neither much liked. Although hard to reconcile with the political economy literature's positive-sum model of international cooperation, this finding is consistent with the broader 'power-politics' model introduced here.

This note expands on a recent article in International Studies Quarterly by Maoz and Felsenthal (1987) that discusses self-binding commitment by actors in three different 2 X 2 games. I augment their work by adding nine more 2 X 2 games in which self-binding commitment can be beneficial. In the three games presented by Maoz and Felsenthal, only one party has an incentive to make a self-binding commitment, that commitment is to a dominated strategy, and the other party benefits from the commitment as well. In other situations, however, each of these three characteristics of the commitment tactic can be different. In addition, in nine of the twelve games of commitment, deadlock danger arises in which both players seek to be the only one to establish a self-binding commitment, but if both do so, both are worse off than in the absence of any commitment. Examining the incentives and disincentives to commit oneself in various situations is vital to understanding this important bargaining tactic.