As the power of a state increases, it seeks to extend its territorial control, its political influence, and/or its domination of the international economy. Reciprocally, these developments tend to increase the power of the state as more and more resources are made available to it and it is advantaged by economies of scale. The territorial, political, and economic expansion of a state increases the availability of economic surplus required to exercise dominion over the system (Rader, 1971, p. 46). The rise and decline of dominant states and empires are largely functions of the generation and then the eventual dissipation of this economic surplus.

If this relationship between the growth of power of a state and its control over the international system were linear, the result would be the eventual establishment by one state of a universal imperium. That this has not yet happened is a result of the fact that countervailing forces come into play to slow and eventually arrest the impulse to expand. Because of the influence of these countervailing forces, as a state increases its control over an international system, it begins at some point to encounter both increasing costs of further expansion and diminishing returns from further expansion; that is to say, there are decreasing net benefits to be gained from further efforts to transform and control the international system. This change in the returns from expansion imposes a limit on the further expansion of a state.