Capability concentration, power transition, and war

Theories of international politics and war are generally formulated at the state, dyad, or system level of analysis. Systemic theories focus on structural attributes of the international system such as the distribution of capabilities. Alternatively, state‐level theories tend to emphasize national attributes, whereas dyadic theories concentrate on relational qualities between paired sets of states. This study presents an analysis of war at these analytic levels and explores the possibilities of synergistic empirical linkage. The results of a simple statistical experiment demonstrate that the two higher levels of aggregation are not separate and independent: The interaction of system and dyad‐level power dynamics is associated with patterns of international conflict, and the integration of shifting capability distributions at these levels produces a more adequate explanation of the sources of major power war.