Summary and Conclusions

Abstract

This study was carried out with an intent to respond creatively to the challenge implicit in the statement by Robert Riggs and his associates (1970: 230) that ‘there is little evidence in the literature surveyed that any coherent theoretical system (for the study of international organization) is likely to emerge in the foreseeable future.’ While we cannot claim to have fully laid out, let alone validated, such a ‘coherent theoretical system,’ we trust that the theoretical and empirical analyses reported here represent a recognizable step in this direction. We believe, in particular, that the present study has been successful in not succumbing to the divorce between theoretical work at relatively high levels of abstraction and data-based empirical work.