Second Image Reversed

A seminal book to propose and evaluate levels of analysis is Kenneth Waltz’ Man, the State and War of 1959 (Waltz, 1959). He famously identified ‘three images’, or three levels of analysis: human nature/individuals, the state, and the international system.
Peter Gourevitch combined the system and state level in his ‘second image reversed’ theory (Gourevitch, 1978). This theory accounts for the way developments in the international system shape the nature of states, and as such, predominantly remains a system theory. Here the focus is not that much on invasions and conquests that eliminate states, but rather on how the society, political economy and polity of states adapt to external pressures in order to survive. An example of such deep domestic reform under international pressure is the 1867-’68 Meiji Restauration in Japan. Progressive samurai and landowners carried through a revolution and got rid of the former regime, in order to rapidly modernize the country and develop an effective central state, strong industry and powerful army, to fend off imperialist pressures from the European powers, the US and Russia. In this revolution, they ‘restored’ the emperor into a symbol for national mobilization for modernization.