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Cosmopolitikos' Notes

Deutsch, Karl and J. David Singer (1964). "Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability," World Politics 16 (3), 390-406.

Karl Deutsch and David Singer explore the idea that multipolar systems are more stable or less prone to war. This “diffusion-stability” proposition is explained by 1° the rise of interaction opportunity and 2° the decrease in the allocation of attention. They analyze the implication of the “diffusion-stability” relationship on arm race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Hypothesis:

“As the system moves away from bipolarity towards multipolarity, the frequency and intensity of war should be expected to diminish.” (p. 390)

Definitions:

• Systemic stability: “the probability that the system retains all of its essential characteristics; that no single nation becomes dominant; that most of its members continue to survive; and that large-scale war does not occur.” (p. 390)
• Individualistic stability: “the probability of their [the states] continued political independence and territorial integrity without any significant probability of becoming engaged in a ‘war for survival’.” (pp. 390-391)
• Arms race: “An arms race proper would then be defined as one in which the rival states stimulate one another to divert increasing proportions of their national income to military preparations—a practice with obvious political and economic limits, well before the entire 100 per cent of national income is consumed by military spending.” (p. 391)

The Rise of Interaction Opportunities

• As the number of actors increases in the system, there is also an increase in the number of possible dyads or alternative partners following the equation: (N (N-1))/2.
• Therefore, according to the authors: “In a system characterized by conflict-generating scarcities, each and every increase in opportunities for cooperation (i.e., to engage in a mutually advantageous trade-off) will diminish the tendency to pursue a conflict up to, and over, the threshold of war.” (p. 396)

The Diminution in the Allocation of Attention

• The second argument of the authors is that states having a limited attention capability─that is, information-processing and resource-allocating capabilities─and that a minimum of attention is required for a conflicting relationship to arise, the increased in the number of actors will diminish the allocation of attention and, at the same time, the likelihood of war.

Richardson’s Arm Race Model

• Richardson tells us that in order to keep their relative military advantage, states will increase their military expenditure at an exponential rate.
• Deutsch and Singer think it “more reasonable to assume that a country is most likely to respond to an increase in the arm expenditure of a rival only in regard to that part which appears likely to be deployed against itself.” (p. 401)
• Therefore, the arm race is slower in a multipolar world than it is in a bipolar one.

Instable States and Nuclear Weapons

Deutsch and singer warn the policy-makers against the diffusion and proliferation of nuclear weapons for two main reasons:

• If we use the same logic of exponential rate to characterize de-escalation (exponential response to a decrease of arm expenditure targeted toward oneself) desarment might be as slow as the arm race.
• Relaxing the assumption of unitary states and reintroducing some unit-level characteristics, the introduction of a domestically unstable state in the multipolar nuclear system might, in reality make the whole system more unstable than conceived in theory.

Long-term instability

Although one could think that a multipolar system would remains stable forever, the authors tell us that a multipolar system, like all systems, is prone to long-term instability for two reasons:

• If we accept the realist assumption of the zero-sum game (the gain of A is the loss of B), the system has a tendency towards the diminution of independent units in the long run.
• The balancing of power normally produces moderate outcomes due to the relative equality in the alliances. But historically speaking a balance of power does not last in the long run leading to the destruction of one of the contending actors. Leading, again, to the diminution of actors.

Principal Reference of the Article