A Multilevel Spiral model of Sociocultural Evolution: Polities and Interpolity Systems

• In Event: 4462 - Theorizing Social Change

Abstract

The comparative world-systems theoretical research program employs anthropological and biological frameworks of comparison to comprehend the evolution of geopolitics and economic institutions. This paper outlines a revised formulation of the iteration model proposed by Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: Chapter 6) to explain the emergence and continued increase in sociocultural complexity in historical world-systems. We reformulate the iteration model as an explicitly multilevel model that shows the causal connections among processes operating within polities and those that operate between polities. For the within-polity part of the model we begin with the structural demographic theory proposed by Jack Goldstone, Peter Turchin and their colleagues. We include the role of social movements in the “secular cycle” of rise and fall within polities. For the world-system level of analysis part of our multilevel model we include the variables from the original iteration model and we add non-core development, trade relations and world revolutions in which social movements in different parts of the interpolity system cluster together in time to produce consequences for the both the polities and for the whole system

Authors

• Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside

• Hiroko Inoue, University of California, Riverside