Rethinking the International System as a Complex Adaptive System
“ arises from interactions among ” the people , and it is not just a simple accumulation of people ( Wilensky & Resnick , 1999 , p . 5 ). As Wilensky and Rand ( 1999 ) argued , “ months do not interact to form a year ; they simply accumulate or ‘ add up .’ A year can be viewed , essentially , as a long month ” ( p . 5 ). However , a state is not just a big person . The difference is qualitative ( Wilensky & Resnick , 1999 , p . 5 ).
IR theory has largely relied on a container view of the international systems . Usually , dividing the system into three arbitrary level of analysis : the individual level , the state level , and the international level . These levels , also called images , have been used by scholars to study the phenomena of interest in isolation from the rest of the components of the system ( Wilensky & Resnick , 1999 , p . 5 ). However , by isolating a single phenomenon in a level of analysis , scholars lose the ability to see the emergent view and individuate the micromechanisms that are sufficient to generate the macroscopic behavior of interest ( Vicsek , 2002 , p . 131 ). This happens because these mechanisms are the outcome of cascading effects and chains of causalities that move from the micro to the macro , or vice versa , and therefore , can only be grasped through a multilevel perspective . Consequently , complex system theory breaks the distinction between the realm of domestic and international politics . International politics is the outcome of the interactions of agents and meta-agents at the domestic and at the international level . Hence , it is not possible , as explained in the previous section , to understand the international system without considering how it has emerged from it the lower levels of interactions among the people .
To conclude , by conceptualizing international relations in terms of levels of analysis as container views , IR scholars have repeatedly fallen into the trap of “ slipping between levels to attribute properties of one level to another ” ( Wilensky & Rand , 2015 , p . 13 ). Idealists and realists slipped from the individual to the aggregate by giving human attributes to the state ( e . g . states have national interests and are power seeking ). Neorealist slipped from the aggregate to the individual by deriving the properties of states from the anarchic international system ( e . g . states have to self-help and are security maximizers ). Both cases are an example of the failure of integrative understanding , which bars to see states as meta-agents qualitatively different from the agents that compose them ( people ) and the environment that they inhabit ( international system ).
Operators : Adaptation , the Higher Order Rule of International Relations
Adaptation occurs at the agent level through learning and at a systemic level through evolution . Overall adaptation goes in hand with coevolution . The internal attributes and rules of behavior of an adaptive agent constantly change through interaction with the environment and with other agents . As Hoffman explains :
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