Africa as a Subordinate State System in International Relations

Interpretations of patterns and trends in postwar international relations have frequently noted the outmoded position of the nation-state, the shrinking nature of the world, the extension of a single international relations system to global limits, and the rising importance of superpowers and regional organizations. It was then often concluded that the coming unit of international politics was likely to be not the territorial state, as in the past, but new regional groupings of states, where the component members would collectively acquire greater power by individually giving up some of their sovereignty to a bloc or group.