Anarchy is used by IR specialists to refer to the situation in which there is no supreme political authority above the sovereign state. Anarchy in this technical sense does not necessarily imply ‘chaos’, ‘disorder’ and ‘confusion’ as it does in everyday usage: in international relations, anarchy can be a condition of order and stability. Anarchy does imply, however, that the state making up the international system must operate according to ‘self-help, principles. With no higher power on which to rely, each state must look after its own security and wellbeing. It is the interaction of self-help units, state, that gives anarchy its ‘causal weight’.