High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Theory of International Politics is a 1979 international relations theory book, written by Kenneth Waltz that elaborated a new theory, the neorealist theory of international relations, and surpassed the cognitive limitations of the past. Taking into account the influence of neoclassical economic theory, Waltz argued that the fundamental "ordering principle" (p. 88) of the international system is anarchy, which is defined by the presence of "functionally undifferentiated" (p. 97) individual state actors lacking "relations of super- and subordination" (p. 88) that are distinguished only by their varying capabilities.