States Systems and Universal Empires
نویسنده
چکیده
"Civilizations" and "world systems" are alternative labels for the largest macropolitical entities that have existed in human history. These historical civilizations/world systems may be seen as having two polar types of power structure, the "states system" and the "universal empire." Each form has certain characteristic accompaniments, which may promote it, be promoted by it, or both. For states systems, these are diversity, creativity, self-government and war. For universal empires, they are homogeneity, peace, repression. Universal empires tend to be late and short-lived formations, but also tend to recur. Each power structure also has its specific pathologies, which tend toward its transformation. States systems produce a great power oligarchy, out of which from time to time emerges a dominant power, which (again from time to time) establishes a universal empire. Universal empires, though preys to a variety of ills, tend to succumb because of a failed succession in the monarchic component of the state. A universal empire seems long overdue in the current global system; but which however shows signs of having "learned" how to prevent the birth of such an empire by conscious "balance of power" doctrines and policies of counterintervention, "grand alliance" and "general war." The destructiveness of modern warfare, as instanced most notably by nuclear weapons now challenges the viability of the balance-of-power doctrine, for which no clear substitute has yet emerged.
منابع مشابه
9 Oscillatory dynamics of city - size distributions in world historical systems 1
(proof corrections; variables not italicized) Globalization, world-system, and historical dynamic theory offer complementary perspectives for the study of city systems as the politico-economic engine of interstate networks. Here we combine these perspectives to examine a dy-namical perspective on systems of cities. Globalization theory applied to Eurasia in the last millennium (e.g. Modelski an...
متن کاملWarfare and the Evolution of Social Complexity: A Multilevel-Selection Approach
Multilevel selection is a powerful theoretical framework for understanding how complex hierarchical systems evolve by iteratively adding control levels. Here I apply this framework to a major transition in human social evolution, from small-scale egalitarian groups to large-scale hierarchical societies such as states and empires. A major mathematical result in multilevel selection, the Price eq...
متن کاملNations, Conglomerates, and Empires: The Tradeoff between Income and Sovereignty
Nations, Conglomerates, Why after the breakup of such multinational states as and Empires the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia -whose The Tradeoff between Income republicsjustified their and Sovereignty decision by claiming that they wanted to regain their Branko Milanovic sovereignty did the new states express strong desire to join the European Union, thus dissipating the very sove...
متن کاملSome improvements in fuzzy turing machines
In this paper, we improve some previous definitions of fuzzy-type Turing machines to obtain degrees of accepting and rejecting in a computational manner. We apply a BFS-based search method and some level’s upper bounds to propose a computational process in calculating degrees of accepting and rejecting. Next, we introduce the class of Extended Fuzzy Turing Machines equipped with indeterminacy s...
متن کامل