BALANCE OF POWER THEORY AND A UNIPOLAR Meicen Sun 130
INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM
DISCUSSIONS
THE DECLINE OF DEVOTION: FROM CATHOLICISM Aaron Pinto 108
TO LAÏCITÉ IN QUÉBEC
VVVVVIn the space of little more than fifty years, between the end of the Second World War and the close of the twentieth century, the Canadian province of Québec puzzingly went from being one of the most socially traditional, politically conservative, and religiously devout regions of the developed world to one of the very least; becoming a so-called province laïgue, or secular province. As a result, for Catholics in Québec today, let alone adherents of other faiths, religion has come to occupy a different place in their personal consciousness than what it once did; religion has become a freely chosen personal journey rather a celebration of a total vision incarnate in society.
"Balance of power theory grew out of many centuries of multipolarity and a few decades of bipolarity. Today the world is characterized by unprecedented unipolarity. Balance of power theory, therefore, cannot provide guidance for the world we are in."
In responding to this statement I will first discuss the logical fallacy inherent in its argument: though the balance of power theory (BOP, below1) emerged concurrent to certain types of power configuration in world politics-multipolarity and bipolarity in this case, it does not follow that it was these types of configuration per se that gave rise to the theory itself. Multipolarity and bipolarity can, and should be considered themselves as manifestations of the underlying logic of the international system which the BOP theory also embodies. This logic of relative positionality of states in an anarchic system, as I will argue, has not fundamentally changed since the emergence of BOP theory.
the statement. On the one hand, a de facto unipolarity characterized by American hegemony has been around for much longer than since the end of the Cold War. On the other hand, the current economic and political status of China places it in a pseudo-superpower position vis-à-vis the United States. Both of these mean that the degree of unipolarity we observe today relative to the bipolarity of the Cold War is, if any, weak. Therefore, much of BOP’s relevance in the bipolar world will continue to be in today’s international system.