Several theoretical approaches have been developed as an attempt to explain the functioning of international politics. These different perspectives using different methods and assumptions can be useful to study and predict the actions and interactions of the actors they focus on and include, realism, liberalism and feminism. No single approach, however, can take into account all factors and outcomes in world politics, and each has distinct advantages, as well as some limitations. The realist view, for example, regards the nation-state as the fundamental unit of analysis and explains its decisions within an anarchic world system. There is no central force or power that can regulate the rules between states, as there is no form of a single viable international government, so the role of the state is to maximize its own power independently. Unlike national societies, this anarchic system builds a self-help security system since no state can depend on the help of another. Another point of view, structuralism, also known as neorealism, is based on realism but develops its considerations further. As explained by Goldstein, author of International Relations, it represents an attempt to make the realist approach much simpler, more formal and more complete. Using the international political structure within which various states operate as the basic unit of analysis, it provides the necessary tools to explain why states behave in a certain way, especially in relation to each other. However, as useful as it may be in explaining some phenomena, there are some limitations to this approach that should be examined. To show how structuralism, the system...... middle of paper .... ..and changes in their relative economic powers. In conclusion, structuralism is a beneficial approach to international politics but at the same time it cannot explain all international behavior due to some significant limitations. Once again, structuralism is based on the structure of the international system rather than the national state and refers to the state's struggle for position and relative power in an anarchic system. It would however be interesting to examine the role of actors within the global international system that are not competing national states but nevertheless exercise influence and help shape international politics and how structuralism would be able to address them. These include transnational non-state actors such as Al Qaeda, the international terrorist organization that is not specific to a nation state following the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.