as on intrastate rather than international politics. The theory may be applied to the internal political conflicts of individual members of a society, or it may be applied to international relationships. When it is applied to the latter, the theory is usually referred to as the balance of power. Balance of power theory is distinct from equilibrium theory primarily because of its focus on power relationships between otherwise independent actors (nations).
It was not until around World War I that balance of power theory emerged as a mature school of thought for analyzing international politics (Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, 1990, p. 2). Political thought prior to the war focused on sovereign nationstates and the rights of individuals. Internal constitutions sought to distribute power in a rational basis. There was no such thinking in the international arena. International relations was not even a major emphasis of research. But immediately following the First World War, political scientists began looking at the causes of global conflict and ways to avoid it in the future.
The realistic model of human behavior, based on the assumption of conflict, quickly fell to the wayside in international politics as utopian models, based on an assumption of a supreme human value for order and peace, gained in favor. The ugly drama of World War I, and the subsequent seemingly utopian measures to prevent a recurrence of world war, strengthened the hand of utopian visions of international politics. The utopians shared Woodrow Wilson's idealism that created the League of Nations. In its simplest form, Wilson and the utopians saw American involvement in World War I as motivated by a desire to champion international morality, and the League of Nations afterward as the means for the global community to secure a lasting peace. Lost in the is/ought dilemma, the American utopians saw the world as how people should behave rather than how people a...