Power, Size, Political Instability and Warfare: Comparing World-Systems

• In Event: 3167 - Section on Sociology of Development Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Theoretical Perspectives on Developmental Processes and Relationships

Abstract

This study examines the temporal relationships between the growth and decline of cities and empires and changes in the distribution of power among states and changes in the amount of interstate warfare in five whole interstate systems (world-systems) since 2700 BCE. Our earlier studies have found that urban and polity upsweeps (large increases in scale) are correlated over time. But the number of these instances of large-scale change (upsweeps) is few. In this study, we examine urban and polity swings in those five political-military interaction networks (PMNs) in which we have enough size estimates to quantitatively study changes in the sizes of the largest cities and empires. The interstate systems that we study are those centered in Mesopotamia, Egypt, East Asia, South Asia and the expanding central Political-Military Network. Our main unit of analysis is the political/military interaction network – a whole system of interacting polities that are making war and military alliances with one another. We also examine the relationships between urban and polity swings and changes in the power configuration of these same systems. Interstate power configurations vary from decentralized to centralized based on the relative sizes and power of the interacting states in each system. We also test the relationship between urban and polity swings and changes in the intensity of warfare and political instability in these systems. And we consider other potential causes of upswings and upsweeps such as population growth, population pressure and trade intensity. We also consider the possibility that the causes of downswings are different from the causes of upswings.

Authors

• Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside

• Hiroko Inoue, University of California, Riverside

• Levin Welch

• Manjing Gao, University of California-Riverside