| For the last half-century, international relations scholars have been wrestling with understanding, defining, and measuring the concept of satisfaction. While this concept stands as one of the primary components of systemic theories of international relations, such as Power Transitions theory, scholars have generally agreed only that existing measures (and theories) of satisfaction are inadequate. While early scholars such as Organski spoke of satisfaction of a nation with the international system, more recent work has also looked at the satisfaction of nations with each other. As the theory has evolved, current scholars look at the interactions of satisfaction at multiple levels of analysis. Utilizing a recently compiled, dynamically updated, 'big data' set of international news stories, this dissertation will look at existing theory and measures of satisfaction, and provide an alternative perspective to understanding, defining, and measuring satisfaction which, while not a panacea, may be a benchmark for future work as the scope of available data increases. The purpose of this dissertation is to try and bring the theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding and measuring the concept of satisfaction in to harmony, both with each other, as well as with modern realities and realizations. |
