Long Cycles and World-Systems:
Theoretical Research Programs
Marquesan warrior from Nukahiva
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Hiroko
Inoue
Institute
for Research on World-Systems, University of California Riverside
An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of
the Social Science History Association, Chicago, November 18, 2016. A revised
version will appear in William
R.Thompson (ed.) Oxford
Encyclopedia of Empirical International Relations Theories,New
York: Oxford
University Press and the online Oxford Research
Encyclopedia in Politics v. 1-19-17, 8962 words
This is IROWS Working Paper #115
available at http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows115/irows115.htm
The world-systems theoretical
research program employs anthropological and biological frameworks of
comparison to comprehend the evolution of geopolitics and economic
institutions. The scale and complexity of the contemporary global system is
analyzed as the outcome of processes that structured the Darwinian evolution of
cultureless social insects as well as the sociocultural evolution of human
organizations.[1]
Multilevel selection, and especially group selection primarily driven by
warfare, was a primary force behind of the emergence of large-scale social
organization for both humans and ants.[2]
The
world-system perspective emerged in the context of the world revolution of 1968
with a focus on the structural nature of global stratification – now called
global north/south relations. Because it emerged mainly from sociology and
radical economics it was somewhat immune to the tectonic debates between the realists
and the liberals in international relations. But there has been considerable
overlap with some international relations schools, especially the long cycle empirical
theory developed by George Modelski and William R. Thompson (Modelski 1987;
Modelski and Thompson 1988;1996). Despite different conceptual terminologies,
these approaches have had much in common, and both became interested in
questions of long-term sociocultural evolution. One important difference is with regard to the
attention paid to the non-core. Like most international relations theorists,
Modelski and Thompson focused most of their attention on the “great powers” in
the interstate system – what world-system scholars call the core (but see
Thompson and Modelski 1998; Reuveny and Thompson 2007). The world-systems
scholars see the whole system, including the periphery and semiperiphery, as an
interdependent and hierarchical whole in which power differences and economic
differences are reproduced by the normal operations of the system. The
core/periphery hierarchy is a fundamental theoretical construct for the
world-system theory.
International
relations theory is about the logic of power that exists in networks of
competing and allying polities. It has been developed mostly by observing and
trying to explain what happened in the European state system since the treaty
of Westphalia in 1648, but a similar logic was probably operating in earlier
interpolity systems (Wohlforth et al
2007). The comparative world-systems theoretical research program has been
developed to comprehend and explain sociocultural evolution as it has occurred
in an anthropological comparative framework – by considering prehistoric small
scale human polities and interacting systems of those polities since the Stone
Age. We review some of the basic
concepts of the world-systems empirical theory and report upon the research
that has been done to test some of the propositions that stem from it.
Territoriality is a feature of interaction among
microorganisms, insects, plants and animals. A complete grasp of the roots of
human imperialism would need to take this larger biogeographical context into
account. Organized warfare and competition for territory first emerged about 50
million years ago among social insects, especially ants. In an early version of
imperialism some ants kill the queen in an invaded colony and substitute their
queen for the dispatched old queen and thus harness the labor of the invaded
colony for raising and feeding the offspring of the invaders. The ant/human
comparison reveals a fascinating case of parallel evolution in which rather
similar behaviors and social structures emerged by very different processes of
selection--Darwinian in the case of insects, cultural in the case of humans
(Gowdy and Krall 2015; Turner and Machalek 2017: Chapter 15). Ants forge strong
cooperation based on so-called genetic eusociality. Most of the workers in a colony are closely
genetically related because they are the offspring of a single queen. This
produces a superorganism at the level of the colony and so it is colonies
rather than individuals or small groups that compete with one another for
territory and resources. The social insects prove that even Darwinian natural selection
operating in the absence of culture and in the presence of only simple
communication techniques and relatively simple nervous systems in individuals
can produce complex social structures when group selection is operating. This
is the important thing about the emergence of warfare among colonies of social
insects. Gowdy and Krall (2015) stress the importance of collective food
gathering, but it is the interaction of resource acquisition and competition
for territory that drives the emergence of complex social structures among
insects. These same mechanisms turn-out to be important for driving the
emergence of complex social structures among humans, though the process is
speeded up by the emergence of culture and complex cognition.
that
have made it possible for large groups of humans to cooperate with one another.
Competition for resources occurs simultaneously at several different levels
–between individuals, families, organizations and polities. Warfare among
polities has been an important selection mechanism driving sociocultural and
human biological evolution since the Stone Age.
Our
stance on theory is germane to the tasks set by the editor of this collection
(Thompson 2017). We follow the cumulative theory and testing approach embodied
in Imre Lakatos’s (1978) schema of theoretical research programs. Theories should
be explicitly and clearly formulated regarding the meanings of concepts and
interrelated causal propositions. Formalization can be axiomatic or can be
simulation models. We favor the latter (see Fletcher et al 2011). Different
formalized models can be compared regarding their simulation outcomes and parts
of these can be empirically tested. Our theoretical research program is still
under construction, but we can report some of the results so far.
The Long Cycle
Theory
Many social scientists have
correctly stressed the importance of warfare as a major selective mechanism
producing social change in world history (Spencer 1898, Mann 1986;
Army Ants
2013; Turner 1985, 2010; Cioffi-Revilla
1996; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Turchin 2003, 2007; Morris 2014). The long
cycle theory asserts and demonstrates important interactions between economic
and military power. As we have already said, there is a considerable overlap of
both analytical framework and theoretical assumptions between the world-system
perspective and some formulations of international relations theory. The approach within international relations
theory that is closest is the long cycle approach developed by George Modelski
and William R. Thompson (1996). This perspective has many grounding schemes in
common with the world-system perspectives, despite that the conceptual
terminologies are rather different.
Modelski and Thompson (1996) contend
that the current global political economy began to take shape around 1500AD.
This is like Immanuel Wallerstein’s
depiction of the rise of the modern world-system in the long 16th
century (Wallerstein 2011a). They argue
that major processes operating now were already recognizable in the 16th
century (Thompson 2000). Modelski
(1990), following the functionalism of Talcott Parsons (1966, 1971), sees
globalization as a general process of evolutionary learning by the human
species. The story is one in which the
human species transformed and built new institutions over a millennium, and the
successive steps revealed the “development of a planetary constitutional
design” (Modelski 2006:14)
Sociocultural evolution is, in Modelski’s
approach, a multilevel and self-organizing process. Using a Kantian and Parsonsian learning model
of social evolution, the long cycle approach contends that the generative
principle of world politics is based on an evolutionary learning process
(Modelski 1990). A major assumption is that the world needs to
have an order and that world powers rise to fulfill this need. It is presumed
that the long cycle in which great powers rise and fall results in a
progressive evolution of world politics that emerges from the functional needs
of the system (Modelski and Thompson 1996).
In
the long run of sociocultural evolution both the long cycle approach and the world-systems
perspective see the rise and fall of powerful polities as an important dynamic. The long cycle model depicts a process of
co-evolution of economic and political power sequences while the world-system
approach examines the hegemonic sequence (see Wallerstein 1984; Chase-Dunn
1998:
Chapter 9). The long cycle theory focusses on both economic
and military power. Economic power is
seen as an important and driving basis of global military power. The focus is
on the development within the leading power of new cutting-edge technologies of
production in which the leading power holds a comparative advantage (Modelski
and Thompson 1996). Military power is seen to be of two different kinds:
land-based forces allow powerful states to influence their contiguous
neighbors, while seapower is the key to global leadership (see also Rasler and Thompson. 1994).[3]
Modelski and Thompson (1988, 1996) measured
the concentration and deconcentration of naval power in the European interstate
system to reveal the world power sequences of Portugal in the 15th
century, the Dutch in the 17th century and the Britain in the 18th
and 19th centuries (two long cycles), and the U.S. in the 20th
century. The rise of new lead industries
is the basis of competitive political and economic advantages that have been
the main causes of the rise and fall of great powers. Modelski and Thompson
also show the ways in which the
Kondratieff Wave (K-waves of 40 to 60-year business cycles) are associated with
the rise and decline sequence of system leaders. K-waves and long long cycles are intertwined
such that there are two K-waves within each approximately 100-year long cycle. Modelski
(2005) also sees a long-term trend across hegemonies in which economic power
becomes more important and political/military power becomes more democratic.
Global
powers rise due to their comparative economic advantages in innovative and
transformative technological sectors in world commerce and industry – so-called
“new lead industries.” The economic resources from new lead industries allow it
to
win wars and to exercise
both military and political influence in the system. War and diplomacy are the mechanisms that produce
global integration and the concentration of global power, but success in war is
mainly a consequence of success in the development of new lead industries. Modelski
(2005) also employed the idea of imperial overreach that was formulated in Paul
Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers (1987). During the decline phase of a long cycle the system leader
sometimes overplays the military card after economic comparative advantage has been
lost. The U.K prosecution of the Boer Wars and U.S. unilateral military policy
during the 2nd Bush administration are given as examples. phase
Periods of hegemony are associated with peace
and periods of hegemonic decline are associated with war. Long cycles are seen to be composed of four
phases: the winner of a global war emerges from the
struggle for global leadership and maintains its position through naval power.
The logistical and ideological costs associated with global leadership
contribute to the world power's decline, giving way to two new stages: delegitimation
(decline in relative power) and deconcentration (challenges from emerging
rivals). Deconcentration proceeds until new contenders for world leadership
attempt to push the declining leader out of its hegemonic position. Modelski
and Thompson also note that hegemonic success often passes to a challenger that
has been allied with the previous hegemon.
There have been five long cycles since the 16th
century (see Table 1), with Britain having completed two of them as hegemon.
This led Joachim Rennstich (2001) to argue that the United States might be able
to serve as hegemon in another power cycle (but see Chase-Dunn et al 2011).
Table 1:
Long cycles in the modern system
The long cycle perspective claims to be
based on structural functionalist theoretical assumptions about social learning
and progress. Indeed, despite all the
attention to the importance of economic power, the word “capitalism” is never
mentioned by Modelski and Thompson.[4]
Others have pointed out that assertions about progress are troublesome and
unnecessary aspects of some theories of sociocultural evolution (Sanderson
1990). Patterns and their causes may be described and explained without the baggage
that is involved in normative statements about whether what has happened is
good or evil. The explanations in the long cycle theory can be evaluated
separately from its functionalist claims about learning and progress.
We should also note that George
Modelski (2003) produced a monumental contribution to our knowledge of the
population sizes of large cities since the Bronze Age by updating extending the
important compendium produced by Tertius Chandler. Modelski saw the emergence
of large cities as a central component of sociocultural evolution, a
perspective shared by some world-systems scholars (e.g. Inoue et al. 2015) and some historians
(Braudel 1984, Morris 2010, 2013).
World-System Theory
The world-system approach is less functionalist
and more critical of power. Perhaps this is due in part to its origins during
the world revolution of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war movement, but it may also
stem from greater attention to those who live at the bottom of the system (the
non-core). And rather than talking only
of economic development and economic comparative advantage, the
world-systemists describe and analyze the rise to predominance of capitalism. They
employ ideas from both Karl Marx and Max Weber to produce a critical prehension
of world historical social change. The world-systems theorists have mainly been
sociologists while the long cycle theorists are political scientists. In the
1960s sociologists were busy overthrowing their intellectual parents,
especially Talcott Parsons, while political scientists had different ancestors
and were more easily able to see the good things in Parsons’s evolutionary
synthesis. The main constructor of the world-systems approach in the 1970s were
Immanuel Wallerstein, Terence Hopkins, Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank and
Giovanni Arrighi. While there are interesting and important differences among
them, we will focus here primarily on Wallerstein, Hopkins and Arrighi because
their approaches are the most germane for the comparison with the long cycle
theory.
Terence
Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein (1979) described the cyclical rhythms and
secular trends of the capitalist world-economy as a stable systemic logic that
expands and deepens from its start to its end, but that does not much change
its basic nature over time. Giovanni Arrighi (1994) saw overlapping systemic
cycles of accumulation in which rising and falling hegemons expand and deepen
the commodification of the whole system. His modern world-system oscillates
alternates back and forth between more corporatist and more market-organized
forms of political structure while the extent of commodification deepens in
each round (Arrighi 2006). He builds on Wallerstein’s focus on hegemony as
based on comparative advantages in profitable types of production (Wallerstein
1984, 2004). And he utilizes Wallerstein’s idea that each hegemon goes through
stages in which the comparative advantage is first based on the production of
consumer goods, and then capital goods and then finance capital (see also
Arrighi and Silver 1999; Arrighi 2008). Arrighi
was also inspired by the work of Fernand Braudel to focus special attention on
the changes in the relationships between finance capital and state power that occurred
as the modern world-system evolved. For
both Wallerstein and Arrighi the hegemon is the top end of a global hierarchy
that constitutes the modern core/periphery division of labor. Hegemonies are
unstable and tend to devolve into hegemonic rivalry as comparative advantages
diffuse and the hegemon cannot stay ahead of the curve. Arrighi’s formulation
allows for greater evolutionary changes as the modern system expanded and deepened
while the Wallerstein/Hopkins formulation depicts a single continuous underlying
logic that does not change much except at the beginning and the end of the
historical system.
As we have mentioned above, the
world-systems scholars study the dialectical and dynamic interaction between
the core, the semiperiphery and the periphery and how these interactions are
important for the reproduction of the core/periphery hierarchy and how they
affect the outcomes of struggles within the core for hegemony (Boswell and Chase-Dunn
2000). The hegemon and the other great powers are the top end of a global
stratification system in which resources are competitively extracted from the
non-core and resistance from the non-core plays an important role in the
evolution of the system. This approach focusses on both institutions and on
social movements that challenge the powers that be. It is noted that
rebellions, labor unrest and anti-colonial and anti-imperial movements tend to
cluster together in certain periods. Often in the past the rebels were unaware
of each other’s efforts, but those in charge of keeping global order knew when
rebellions broke out on several continents within the same years or decades.
These periods in which collective unrest cluster in time are called “world
revolutions” by the world-systems scholars (Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein
1989). These semi-synchronized waves of resistance
can be labeled by pointing to the symbolic years that connote the general or
average nature of the movements – 1789 (the American, French. Bolivarian and
Haitian revolutions); 1848—(the “Springtime of Nations” plus the Taiping
Rebellion in China; 1917 – (the Mexican, Chinese and Russian revolutions); 1955
– (the anti-colonial revolts and the non-aligned movement at the Bandung Conference);
1968—(the student rebellions) 1989—(the demise of and reformation communist
regimes); and the current period of global unrest that seemed to have peaked in
2011
(Chase-Dunn and Niemeyer 2009). These complex “events” had important
consequences for both reproducing and restructuring the modern world-system.
Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein (1989) notice a pattern in which enlightened
conservatives try to coopt powerful challenges from below by granting some of
the demands of earlier world-revolutions. This has been an important driving
force toward democracy and equality over the past several centuries.
The modern system is multicultural in
the sense that important political and economic interaction networks connect
people who have very different languages and religions. Most earlier world-systems have also been
multicultural. There is, however, an emerging global culture that is produced
by the interaction of all the subcultures. It is a contentious mix that tends
to be dominated by the national and civilizational cultures of the core states,
but it is also an outcome of global communications and contentious resistance
(Meyer 2009). Immanuel Wallerstein (2001b) uses the term “geoculture” for the
predominant political ideology of centrist liberalism.
The
Comparative World-Systems Theoretical
Research Program (TRP)
Both the long cycle approach and the
world-systems perspective have adopted a very long-term framework that seeks to
explain sociocultural evolution over very long periods of time. George Modelski’s (1964) article on Khautyla
compares the institutional nature of the historically-known South Asian
interstate system with the institutions that emerged in the European system
with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The comparative and evolutionary world-systems
TRP explicitly employs an anthropological framework of comparison to examine
polities, settlements and interpolity system since the Stone Age. World-systems are defined in this approach
as systemic interaction networks in which regularized exchanges occur among formally
autonomous, but interdependent, polities.
World-systems are understood to be networks
of interacting polities. Systemness
means that these polities are interacting
with one another in important ways – interactions are two-way, necessary,
structured, regularized and reproductive. Systemic interconnectedness exists
when interactions importantly influence the lives of people within the
connected polities, and are consequential for social continuity or social
change.
Earlier regional world-systems did
not cover the entire surface of the planet. The word “world” refers to the
importantly connected interaction networks in which people live, whether these
are spatially small or large. Only the
modern world-system has become a global (Earth-wide) system composed of a
network of national states. It is a single economy composed of international
trade and capital flows, transnational corporations that produce products on
several continents, as well as all the economic transactions that occur within countries and at local
levels. The whole world-system is more
than just international relations. It is the whole system of human
interactions. The contemporary world economy is all the economic interactions
of all the people on Earth, not just international trade and investment.
When we discuss and compare different
kinds of world-systems it is important to use concepts that are applicable to
all of them. Polity is a general
term that means any organization that claims sovereign control over a territory
or a group of people. Polities include bands, tribes and chiefdoms as well as
states and empires. All world-systems are politically composed of multiple
interacting polities. Thus we can fruitfully compare the modern interstate
system with earlier systems in which there were tribes or chiefdoms, but not
states.
The modern world-system is structured
politically as an interstate system – a system of competing and allying states.
Political Scientists commonly call this “the international system”, and it is
the main focus of the field of International Relations. Some of these states
are much more powerful than others, but the main organizational feature of the
world political system is that it is multicentric.
There is no world state. Rather there is a system of states. This is a
fundamentally important feature of the modern system and of many earlier
regional world-systems as well.
The comparative world-systems
approach developed by Chase-Dunn and
Hall (1997; see also Chase-Dunn and Jorgenson 2003) notes that different kinds
of important interaction have different spatial scales. For all systems there
is a relatively small network of the exchange of basic foods and raw materials.
This is often smaller than the network of polities that are making war and
alliances with one another. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) call this the
Political/Military Network (PMN). This is the general equivalent of the modern
international system except that the polities may be tribes or chiefdoms rather
than states. The PMN is often smaller than the network of exchange of prestige
goods, valuables that move long distances and that may or may not be important
in the reproduction or change of local social structures.
The comparative evolutionary
world-systems theoretical research program uses David Wilkinson’s (1987) spatio-temporal
bounding of PMNs, which Wilkinson calls “civilizations.” This approach
delineates the spatial and temporal boundaries of networks of cities and states
that are making war and alliances with one another, beginning with the
Mesopotamian and Egyptian PMNs in the early Bronze Age. Wilkinson’s chronograph
shows that these two separate state systems merged with one another in the
decades around 1500 BCE forming a larger network that eventually expands to
include all the other networks and constituting the modern global system.
So
the modern world-system is now a global economy with a global political system
(the interstate system). It also includes all the cultural aspects and
interaction networks of the whole human population of the Earth. Culturally the modern system is composed of:
·
several civilizational
traditions, (e.g. Islam, Christendom, Hinduism, Confucianism, Secular Humanism,
etc.)
·
nationally-defined cultural
entities -- nations (and these are composed of class and functional
subcultures, e.g. lawyers, technocrats, bureaucrats, etc. , and
·
the cultures of indigenous and
minority ethnic groups within states.
While a global culture is in
formation it is important to note that the modern world-system is not primarily
integrated by normative consensus. The strongest forces producing social order
are states and markets (Chase-Dunn 1998: Chapter 5) and these are important
precisely because they do not require high levels of consensus about what
exists and what is good.
Chase-Dunn
and Hall (1997) allowed for the possibility that some world-systems did not
have core/periphery hierarchies. They also point to a general pattern that
occurred once world-systems became hierarchical -- a cycle of the rise and fall
of more powerful polities similar in some respects with the long cycle in the
modern system (Anderson 1994). They also
noted some emergent characteristics that qualitatively altered the ways in
which military and economic power operated as these systems became larger and
more complex.
Certain processes operate in all human world-systems
large and small, at least so far. Demographic cycles occur within polities and
in whole world-systems, and these both drive and are driven by changes in
technology, political organization and economic networks. Chase-Dunn and Lerro
(2014: Chapter 2) present a recent version of the “iteration model” first
proposed by Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: Chapter 6). This model proposes a
positive feedback loop in which population growth causes population pressure,
which causes migration until the land is filled up with humans (circumscription[Carneiro
1970]) which then causes within polity and between-polity conflict to rise,
lowering population pressure by killing off people. Some systems escape this
demographic regulator by forming larger polities and by increasing trade and
production. But this then allows for more population growth so the process goes
around again.
Institutions
such as states, cities, empires, markets and international organizations emerge
that alter the ways in which cooperation, competition and conflict shape the
emergence of larger and more complex systems. In both the long cycle and
world-systems approaches governance is understood to refer to those
institutions that structure the order of an interpolity system. So global governance in the modern system is
provided primarily by the process of the rise and fall of system leaders – or
hegemons. The nature of the polities and the nature of interpolity relations
are important, as are whatever suprapolity institutions and structures may
exist. In this sense, “global governance” can be understood as having evolved
in interpolity systems since the Stone Age.
The comparative world-systems TRP
studies how core/periphery hierarchies emerged and evolved. Chase-Dunn and Mann
(1998) showed that regional inequalities were mild in a small-scale
world-system that existed in Northern California before the arrival of the
Europeans. Though there was territoriality, there was little in the way of
exploitation or domination by powerful polities of weaker adjacent
polities. But as polities became
internally more hierarchical core/periphery exploitation emerged. Indigenous paramount
chiefdoms on the Chesapeake Bay extracted tribute from neighboring polities (Rountree
1993). Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) note an important aspect of sociocultural
evolution that cannot be well-studied by focusing on the great powers alone.
They notice the phenomenon of semiperipheral development in which polities
located in semiperipheral positions within core/periphery structures often play
important roles in transforming the scale and institutional nature of
world-systems. They designate and study
several different kinds of semiperipheral development: semiperipheral marcher
chiefdoms, semiperipheral marcher states, semiperipheral capitalist
city-states, the semiperipheral position of Europe and the Afroeurasian
world-system prior to the rise of the West, the semiperipheral position of the
modern hegemons prior to their rise to hegemony (the Dutch in the 17th
century; The British in the 19th century and the United States in
the 20th century) (see also Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014). It is semiperipheral development that best
explains the spatial movement of the cutting edge of complexity and hierarchy
that occurred as world-systems got larger.
Empirical Studies of Upsweeps in
World-Systems
Our research on the upsweeps[5]
in the territorial sizes of largest polities[6]
and the population sizes of largest cities[7]
since the Bronze Age is germane to testing competing hypotheses about the
causes of long-run trends in the formation of complexity and hierarchy
(Chase-Dunn et al. 2006).[8] We have conducted a series of quantitative
studies that have identified those instances in which the scale of polities and
cities significantly changed (upsweeps and downsweeps) Inoue et al 2012; Inoue et al 2015) and we have begun testing the hypothesis that these
scale changes were caused by semiperipheral marcher states (Inoue et al 2016). We contend that polities in
semipeiphery have been in fertile locations for implementation of
organizational and technological innovations that have transformed the scale and
sometimes the logic of world-systems (Inoue et
al. 2016). Semiperipheral polities enjoy geopolitical advantages
(the marcher state advantage of not having to defend the rear) and “advantages
of backwardness” such as less sunk investment in oldr organizational forms; less
subjection to core power relative to peripheral polities; and greater incentives
to take risks on innovations and new institutional development.
Upsweeps in the territorial size of the largest polity in an
interpolity system can occur when one of the states conquers the others to form
a larger polity. We try to determine whether or not the conquering state had
previously been in a semiperipheral or peripheral location within the regional
interpolity system. [9]
In our studies of upsweeps and non-core
marcher states we examined four regional world-systems (Mesopotamia, Egypt,
East Asia, and South Asia) as well as the expanding Central political/military
network that is designated by David Wilkinson’s (1987) temporal and spatial
bounding of state systems since the Bronze Age. This produced a list of
twenty-one territorial upsweeps.
The results of the study showed that
out of twenty-one cases of territorial upsweeps, ten cases were produced by
semiperipheral marcher states, and three cases were by peripheral marcher
states (Inoue et al. 2016). So about a half of the examined cases of territorial
upsweeps were caused by conquests by noncore marcher states and the other half
were not. This means that the hypothesis of noncore development does not
explain everything about the events in which polity sizes significantly
increased in geographical scale, but also that the phenomenon of noncore
development cannot be ignored in any explanation of the long-term trend in the
rise of polity sizes. We
characterized the events not caused by non-core marcher states as follows: 1.
mirror-empires -- a core state that was under pressure from a non-core polity
carried out a territorial expansion; 2. An internal revolt -- a new regime was formed by an internal ethnic
or class rebellion; and 3. internal
dynastic change -- a coup carried out by
a rising faction within the ruling class of a state led to a territorial
expansion (Inoue et al. 2016). These were instances in which processes
internal to existing core states were important causes of territorial
expansion. We also found that nine of the eighteen urban upsweeps were
produced by noncore marcher state conquests and eight directly followed, and
were caused by, upsweeps in the territorial sizes of polities (Inoue et al 2015). Whereas about half of the upsweep events were
caused by one or another form of non-core development, there were a significant
number of upsweep events in which the causes seem to be substantially internal (Inoue et al. 2016).
Thus what is needed is a multilevel model in
which processes that occur within polities are linked with processes occurring
between polities. Such a model would have important implications for debates in
international relations theory as well as for interdisciplinary approaches to
explaining sociocultural evolution.
A Multilevel Model of World-Systems
Evolution
The world-system perspective tends to focus on the network
and relational dynamics that are external to single polities despite occasional
holistic claims (above) that the contemporary system is composed of all the
individuals on Earth and is more than international relations. The findings of our studies of upsweeps
suggest that we need to examine both within-polity and between-polity as well
as whole system variables simultaneously in a multilevel model. In searching
for models of processes occurring within polities we are inclined to turn to the
structural demographic approach developed by Jack Goldstone (1991) and
elaborated and tested by Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefadov (2009). We are also
encouraged by Jack Goldstone’s (2014) studies of social movements and revolutions to
include these in our multilevel model of sociocultural evolution. Additionally,
our overall scheme for integrating both within-polity, between-polity and
system-level dynamics is inspired by the ecological models of the multilevel panarchy
theory (Green et al 2015; Gotts 2007;
Gunderson and Holling 2002; Holling 1973). Peter Turchin’s (2003) modified model of Ibn Khaldun’s
explanation of dynastic cycles and the long cycle approach of Modelski and
Thompson (1996) are also inspirations for our new (revised) model. We will also incorporate insights from Victor
Lieberrman’s (2003, 2009) studies of state formation in South East Asia and his
comparisons with similar processes in other regions.
Structural demographic theory
Jack Goldstone (1991) formulated the
first version of what has become known as the structural-demographic theory of
state collapse. Demographic growth causes population pressure on resources and
this results in fiscal problems for the state, which leads to increasingly
violent competition among elites and popular rebellion (see also Turchin 2016b). The theory has been respecified as a “secular
cycle” by Turchin and Nefadov (2009) and empirically verified by historical comparative
studies (Turchiin and Nefadov 2009; Korotayev et al. 2011; Korotayev et al
2015). Goldstone’s original model and
the succeeding models developed out of it have shown that the internal dynamics
of state breakdown and regime change involve revolutions, civil wars, dynastic
conflicts other outbreaks of social and political instability caused by
within-polity population growth.
Along with the internal dynamics specified
by structural-demographic theory, Peter Turchin’s (2006) model includes an
external mechanism that causes the emergence of large-scale empires. This model describes how variations in
within-polity solidarity were caused by inter-polity competition. The model uses the ethnic frontier theory of
Ibn Khaldun to contend that large-scale empires emerge on meta-ethnic frontiers
because intense competition between ethnically different groups produced higher levels of solidarity that
unified groups. The model also includes the
evolutionary adaptation theory proposed by Richardson and Boyd (2005) and
argues that the intense competition produced by interpolity warfare operated as
a selection mechanism that promoted the emergence of groups that had adaptive
advantages based on higher levels of solidarity and within-group cooperation. Groups with greater solidarity and
cooperation develop complex and large polities.[10] As in the long cycle approach of Modelski and
Thompson (1988, 1996), war is a selection mechanism that promotes the formation
of more powerful, more complex and more hierarchical polities.[11]
Panarchy
The panarchy approach has come to be
well-known as conceptual framework that seeks to bridge ecological and social
science explanations since the 1970s (Simon 1962; Hollings 1973). The framework has often been used to produce
analogies from ecology to explain complex social systems in social
science. Research inspired by the panarchy
model is similar in many respects to the world-systems approach. It employs a
nested multilevel analytical framework with cyclical processes to study the
emergence and transformation of complex systems (Gotts 2007; Gunderson and
Hollings 2002; Odom Green et al
2015). The panarchy model employs a holistic structure that integrates
ecological, social, and economic processes of stability and change.
The panarchists assert that a whole
system is more than the sum of its parts and that whole systems are often complex,
hierarchical and dynamic. Herbert Simon’s
(1962) classical formulation of adaptive hierarchical multilevel organizations laid
the foundation for the development of the panarchy tradition. Panarchy involves
partially autonomous and distinct nested levels that are formed from the
interactions among sets of variables operating at each level. Unlike the hierarchical structure of a
top-down authoritative control structure, Simon asserted that each level has
its own speed of change—smaller local levels change faster; larger and global
levels change more slowly and transformations can occur at each level without
affecting the integrity of the whole system.
Such adaptive hierarchical systems with partial autonomy of subsystems are
claimed to evolve faster than systems that have a single vertical hierarchical
structure (Simon 1962).
In the panarchy model, the smaller
levels have an impact on the larger level in the form of "revolts" in
which local events overwhelm larger level dynamics. Larger level dynamics set conditions for the
smaller level events by means of “remember” in which the accumulated structure
at the larger level impacts the reorganization of lower level events (Gunderson
and Hollings 2002). Resilience, or the
capacity of a system to tolerate disturbances, allows the system to avoid
collapse (Gunderson and Hollings 2002).
When the system goes beyond its resilience point its capacity to absorb
change is exceeded. Then the system is
likely to cross a threshold and to reorganize into a regime with a new set of
processes, feedbacks, and structures (Odom et
al. 2015).[12]
Non-core development, long cycles, the
secular cycle and world revolutions
Insights from the structural demographic (secular cycle) and
panarchy approaches can be combined with the world-system iteration model and
the non-core development hypothesis to produce a new synthetic multilevel model
of sociocultural evolution. The within-polity
dynamics of the structural-demographic model should help account for those
upsweep instances that do not involve conquests by non-core marcher states by
taking account of within-polity population pressures, fiscal crises,
intra-elite competition, social movements and political instability that have
led to state collapse and recoveries that have led to upsweeps. Some of these
variables are likely to operate both within and between polities. Social
movements, rebellions, and incursions from the non-core may cluster in time. World
revolutions have been conceptualized and studied only with respect to the
modern Europe-centered system (Chase-Dunn and Khutkyy 2016). But other studies indicate that earlier
regional world-systems also experienced periods in which collective behavior
events clustered during the same time periods with consequences for the whole
system (Thompson and Modelski 1998b). We are optimistic that a new synthetic
theory of sociocultural evolution that combines the insights
and research results from these approaches is nigh.
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[1] Ian Morris (2013) provides an excellent
review of the tumultuous intellectual history of the idea of sociocultural evolution
in the introduction to his operationalization of societal development since the
Stone Age. Michael Mann’s (2016)
examines major social changes since the Stone Age as to whether they
constituted instances of evolution or of accidental conjunctures.
[2] But
whereas the social insects hit a size ceiling about 30 million years ago, the
rapid 12,000-year expansion of the scale of human organizations has not yet hit
its size ceiling. Turner and Machalek (2017: Chapter 15) examine the evolution
of ants from a sociological point of view.
[3] Rasler and Thompson (1994) contend that a
global scale seapower system operates with regional land-power systems nested
within it. In world-system terms this implies that different power logics
(capitalist vs tributary) are operating simultaneously at different levels of
the system.
[4] The substantial overlap between sea power
and the economic importance of transportation and communications costs may
account for in important part of the substantial overlap between the Modelski
and Thompson long cycle approach and the world-system approach that focusses on
leadership in successful capitalism.
[5] We
distinguish between an “upswing,” which is any upturn in a
growth/decline sequence, and an “upsweep”, which goes to a level that is
more than 1/3 higher than the average of three prior peaks (Inoue et al 2012).
[6] Most of our estimates of the territorial
sizes of large polities come from the work of Rein Taagepera 1978a,
1978b,1979,1997).
[7] Most of our estimates of the population
sizes of largest cities comes from Modelski (2003).
[8] This
research has been carried by the Settlements and Polities Research Working
Group (SetPol) at the Institute for
Research on World-Systems at the University of California-Riverside. The
project web site is at http://irows.ucr.edu/
[9] When
a conquering polity is peripheral within a regional system we designate this
instance as a peripheral marcher state. The term we use to combine peripheral
and semiperipheral states is “noncore.”
[10] Peter Turchin (2016:81-90) provides a
lucid explanation of the Price Equation that delineates interactions among
levels in the multilevel selection that occurs in biological evolution.
[11] Turner and Machalek 2017: Chapter 10
distinguish Darwinian biological selection from five different types of
sociocultural selection that operate within and between polities.
[12] Because
of its complex holistic features and relatively abstract concepts the panarchy model
has been difficult to test (Odom et al.
2015).