As contemporary societies become more complex and interdependent, world affairs develop into greater intricacy and global problems become more intractable. Under the circumstances international issues are increasingly difficult to resolve by traditional means. Political decisions based on haphazard or impressionistic grounds are no longer adequate to meet the mounting challenges of a dynamic world. 

In order to improve the policy-making process, political institutions have to develop more systematic methods of problem-solving and conflict-resolution. A necessary pre-requisite to such systematization is a better procedure for sensing, understanding and forecasting world events. Such procedure should increase our capacity to describe, explain and anticipate environmental continuities and changes.