Toward A Multilevel Spiral model of Sociocultural
Evolution:
Polities and Interpolity Systems
Hiroko Inoue and Christopher
Chase-Dunn
Institute
for Research on World-Systems, University of California Riverside
Raised
Power Mandelbrot Set (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OetJNOgrwfc )
Draft V. 4-18-2018, 12205 words. To be presented at International Sociological Association, World
Congress of Sociology. Toronto, July 15-21, 2018.
This is IROWS Working Paper
#126 available at http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows126/irows126.htm
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.
Introduction
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 understood as the outcome of processes that structured the Darwinian
evolution of cultureless social insects as well as the sociocultural evolution
of human organizations and institutions.[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]
Peter Grimes (2017) sees the emergence of sociocultural complexity as analogous
to, and an example of, a general process of biological and physical emergence
of self-reproducing dissipative structures that capture free energy to go up
the down staircase of entropy.
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 foraging 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 behaviours
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.
Human cooperation beyond the level of the
family is based on ideology and institutional mechanisms that facilitate
integrated action. It is the evolution
of institutional mechanisms such as states and markets 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.
Regarding
theory construction 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.
A World-System
Perspective
The
world-system approach is
less functionalist and more critical of power than most international relations
theories. This is due 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). World-systemists
describe and analyze the rising predominance of capitalism. They employ
ideas from Karl Marx and Max Weber to produce a critical prehension of world
historical social change. The main builders
of the world-system approach in the 1970s were Immanuel Wallerstein, Terence
Hopkins, Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank and Giovanni Arrighi.
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 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 fails
to stay ahead in the development and implementation of new lead technologies. 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 at the end of the
historical system.
As
we have mentioned above, the world-system 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
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 have
been labeled by pointing to the symbolic years that connote the general 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 period of global unrest that emerged in the first decade of
the 21st century (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 (2011b) uses the term “geoculture” for
the predominant political ideology of centrist liberalism.
The
Comparative World-Systems Theoretical Research Program
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 both social
continuity and social change. The whole
system here is a systemically interconnected network.
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.
This a rather different approach from those who analyze a single
global system over very long periods of time. Gerhard Lenski (2005); Andre Gunder Frank
and Barry Gills (1994) and George Modelski (2002; Modelski, Devezas and
Thompson 2008) and Sing Chew (2001;2007) all analyze the entire globe as a
single system over the past several thousand years. We contend that this
approach misses very important differences in the nature and timing of the
development of complexity and hierarchy in different world regions that stem
from the fact that they were unconnected or only very weakly connected, with
one another. Combining apples and oranges into a single global bowl of fruit is
a major mistake that makes it more difficult to both describe and explain
social change. The claim that there has always been a single global
world-system is profoundly misleading. The advantage of
our interaction networks approach is that we have more cases of whole systems
as we go back in time which enables us to use the methods of comparative
analysis.[3]
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. There is a relatively
small network of the exchange of basic foods and raw materials that Chase-Dunn
and Hall called the “bulk goods network.”[4]
This is usually smaller than the network of polities that are making war and
alliances with one another, which Chase-Dunn and Hall call 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 usually smaller than the network of exchange of
prestige goods (PGN) -- valuables that move long distances and that may or may
not be important in the reproduction or change of local social structures. About
the same size or large that the PGN is the network of communications.
The comparative evolutionary world-systems theoretical research
program uses David Wilkinson’s (1987) spatio-temporal
bounding of PMNs, which Wilkinson sometimes calls “civilizations” or “state
systems.” Whereas the word civilization
usually refers to consensually held values and beliefs, Wilkinson’s systems are
usually multicultural. Wilkinson 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 to form a larger geopolitical
network that eventually expanded to include all the other networks and to constitute
the modern global system. He has called this Central Civilization. We call it
the Central System.
The modern
world-system is now a global economy with a global political system (the
interstate system) and an emerging global culture. It also includes all the
local and national cultures and the 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, ethnic 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 effective 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 pointed 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 emerged
and these altered the ways in which cooperation, competition and conflict shaped
larger and more complex systems. Governance is understood to refer to those
institutions that structure the order of the 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.
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 core powers alone, as international relations theorists tend to
do. They notice the phenomenon of non-core development in which polities
located in semiperipheral or peripheral 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 non-core development: semiperipheral marcher
chiefdoms, semiperipheral and peripheral marcher
states, semiperipheral capitalist city-states, the semiperipheral position of Europe in the Afroeurasian world-system prior to the rise of the West,
the peripheral and semiperipheral positions 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 Inoue et
al 2016; Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014). It is non-core development that best explains
the spatial movement of the cutting edge of complexity and hierarchy that
occurred in many world-systems as they got larger. [5]
Empirical
Studies of Upsweeps in World-Systems
Our
research on upsweeps[6] in the territorial
sizes of largest polities[7]
and the population sizes of largest cities[8]
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).[9]
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
semipeipheral positions have been in fertile
locations for the implementation of organizational and technological
innovations that have transformed the scale, and sometimes the developmental
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 older
organizational forms; less subjection to core power relative to peripheral
polities; and greater incentives to take risks on innovative
technologies and institutions. Upsweeps in the territorial size of the largest
polity in an interpolity system can occur when one of
the polities conquers the others to form a larger polity. We try to determine whether
the conquering state had previously been in a semiperipheral
or peripheral location within the regional interpolity
system.[10]
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 our studies show that of twenty-one instances of territorial
upsweeps, ten were produced by conquests by semiperipheral
marcher states, and three were due to conquests by peripheral marcher states
(Inoue et al. 2016). So more than half of the examined instances
of territorial upsweeps were caused by conquests by noncore marcher
states and the other eight were not. This means that
the hypothesis of noncore development explains a lot of upsweeps but does not
explain a significant number. The phenomenon of noncore development cannot be
ignored in any explanation of the long-term rise of polity sizes, but it is not
the only explanation. 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 we studied 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.
Levels of Sociocultural Structural Analysis
Macrostructural
analyses in social science implicitly or explicitly contain subunits of nested
levels of analysis. In our earlier iteration model of world-systemic evolution
we specified variables that were alleged to be operating at the level of whole
world-systems, but this was not always clear to readers who critiqued this model
(Aldecoa 2018). They asked about the levels at which these
variables were operating and whether some variables operated at more than one
level of analysis? We use polities rather than societies as subunits of
world-systems, but we also acknowledge that world-systems contain smaller
actors that constitute important units of analysis and that these are often
nested within one another in ways that facilitate the construction of dynamical
models. A complete multilevel model
would contain:
·
human
individuals,
·
households,
·
organizations,
·
settlements,
·
autonomous
polities, and
·
whole world-systems.
But
here we follow Peter Turchin’s (2017) advice about simplicity
in the construction of dynamical models, and so the multilevel model we propose
in this paper will contain only two levels of analysis: autonomous polities and
whole world-systems composed of interacting polities. The variables we propose
for each of these levels will be composed of variable characteristics within
polities and within world-systems.[11]
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 within-polity,
between-polity and whole system variable characteristics 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
Lieberman’s (2003, 2009) studies of state formation in South East Asia and his
comparisons with similar processes in other regions. And we incorporate the
model of ecological degradation and collapse developed by Jared Diamond (2005).
Models |
Cycles |
Level of Analysis |
Wallerstein (1984); |
Cycles of polities; |
World-systems |
Long Cycle Theory |
Cycles of political and |
Inter-polity relations |
Structural demographic theory |
Dynastic cycles |
|
Panarchy |
Cycles among multi-level dimensions
and resulting changes |
Any level |
Table 1: Types of Cycles and
Levels of Analysis
Panarchy
The
panarchy approach has come to be well-known as a 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 can represent and integrate 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).
The panarchy paradigm posits an adaptive
cycle formed by a set of stages that both larger systems and subsystems go through: (1)
“exploitation” (r); (2) “conservation” (K); (3) “release” (W) or “creative
destruction,” and (4) “reorganization” (a). It is proposed that
these cycles influence one another, with system-wide transformations occurring
when subsystems come into synchrony and produce conditions that make transformational
change more likely.
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 become reorganized into a regime with a new set of processes,
feedbacks, and structures (Odom et al.
2015).[12]
Figure 1: Panarchy model of adaptive cycles, Adapted from Davoudi, 2012.
The panarchy approach is relevant for
comprehending world-systems because it proposes a general model of the
evolution of subsystems that are nested within a larger system. The obvious
world-system application is to polities that have internal processes, but that
are interacting within the context of a larger interpolity
system.[13]
The panarchy model is also suggestive regarding its
description of transformational changes that occur when resilience points are
exceeded. These issues are related to theories of the asymptotes that a mode of
accumulation may reach, which require systemic transformational reorganization
to resolve. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: Chapter 6) also distinguish between
explanations that designate transhistorical
continuities (which they call continuationism) and
those that designate qualitative transformations of systemic developmental
logic (which they call transformationism). The
iteration model of world-system processes discussed below is an effort to
specify those processes which are transhistorical,
but Chase-Dunn and Hall also contend that qualitative transformations have
occurred in the logic of world-systemic development. They are both continuationists and transformationist.
The panarchy approach suggests how the relationships
between systemic reproduction and systemic transformation could be specified.
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 mass poverty, heightened competition among elites, and a fiscal
crisis of the state and state collapse. Structural demographic cycles [also
called “secular cycles” by Turchin and Nefadov (2009)] are processes of demographic growth and
increasing population pressure within polities that cause class conflict and
state break-down. Turchin and Nefedov
explicated Jack Goldstone’s (1991) model of the secular cycle, an approximately
200 yearl demographic cycle, in which population
grows and then decreases. Population pressures emerge because the number of
mouths to be fed and the size of the group of elites get too large for the
resource base, causing conflict and the disruption of the polity. Strong empirical patterns indicate that instability dynamics in
agrarian polities are governed by general mechanisms. Population growth that is
greater than productivity gains in agriculture has several effects on social
institutions. It leads to persistent price inflation, falling real wages, rural
misery, migration from the countryside to cities and increased frequency of
food riots and wage protests. Rapid expansion of population also results in elite
overproduction – an increased number of aspirants for the limited supply of
elite positions. Increased intraelite competition
leads to the formation of rival patronage networks that vie with one another for
state rewards. Elites become riven by increasing rivalry and factionalism. Population
growth leads to expansion of the army and the bureaucracy and rising real costs
to the state. States have no choice but to seek to expand taxation, despite
resistance from the elites and the general populace. Yet, attempts to increase
revenues cannot keep up with spiraling state expenses. Thus, even if the state
succeeds in raising taxes, it is still headed for fiscal crisis. As all these
trends intensify, the result is state bankruptcy and consequent loss of the
military control because of elite movements of regional and national rebellion
and a combination of elite-mobilized and popular uprisings that manifest the
breakdown of central authority. This is an explanation of state collapse, which
is an important part of the rise and fall of dynasties within states.
Turchin and Nefedov (2009) tested
their formulation on several agrarian empires, confirming the principle that
cycles of population growth and elite overproduction lead to sociopolitical
instability and regime collapses within states.
And Peter Turchin (2017) has extended and
revised the theory to explain cycles of political instability in the United
States since 1790.
Figure 2: Causal
forms of the structural-demographic theory. (Source: http://peterturchin.com/structural-demographic-theory/)
The structural demographic theory
explicitly treats processes involving interactions that are external to
individual states as exogenous, but a recent article by Turchin,
Gavrilets and Goldstone (2017) proposes the development of a multilevel
model that would include interpolity variables such
as warfare and economic globalization as well as processes operating at the
level of individual decision-making.
Ibn Khaldun Cycles
The structural demographic cycle of
political instability has been theorized to occur entirely within polities
(states), but this kind of model recalls Ibn Khaldun’s (1958) model of both
state formation and state breakdown – dynastic cycles. Ibn Khaldun was a Tunisian Arab from an Andalusian family. In the 14th century CE he argued
that dynasties typically lasted three or four generations. A dynasty would get old and corrupt, and
“barbarians” (what we call non-core marcher states) would take over. The leader of a “barbarian” marcher polity
had to be generous, charismatic, and a brilliant and sophisticated war leader
as well as a good manager of men in order to inspire his warriors and get their
support. His followers thus developed ‘asabiyah, basically loyalty, but more than loyalty --
an obligation formed by the leader’s generosity (they owed him for feasting,
presents, etc.) and by respect for his ability and success. Thanks to genius and ‘asabiyah, a particular marcher polity could take over and
start a new dynasty. The first
generation went well. The leader was the
charismatic founder. There was lots of
land and loot, to say nothing of women and slaves, captured from the former
dynasty. The warriors were duly rewarded
for their ‘asabiyah by getting tons of
goodies. They settled down, but they
were still warlike enough to hold the state against all comers.
The
second generation was often a Golden Age, with the dynasty ruling over a realm
of peace and prosperity. Wealth derived
from using the land and other resources, producing taxes which were used to
support brilliant culture, science, and literature. The empire tended to expand at the expense of
neighbors and the population grew.
The
third generation was a time of decline.
The land filled up with people.
Production declined because of environmental degradation and taxes also
declined. The rulers therefore had to
extort more to keep going. Military
expansion hit a limit – the costs of war now exceeded the returns. The ratio of
war expenses to captured loot declined because the low hanging fruit had
already been picked and remaining targets were further away, requiring greater
expenditures for conquests. Meanwhile
the court was now far from its charismatic founder. The royal family had expanded, and there were
large numbers of supernumerary princes running around desperate for
wealth. The bureaucracy had expanded to
try to control the mess. Princes and
bureaucrats fell prey to corruption. How else could they keep up their
lifestyle? This meant still more taxes
on a population that had expanded while the land based had ceased to grow.
The
fourth generation saw overpopulation, corruption, and a broken system. The population became disloyal and rebellions
broke out. The stage was now set for the
next another barbarian to take-over. The
whole cycle took from 75 to 100 years (generations are typically 25 years).
This
cycle played out with incredible faithfulness throughout Near and Middle
Eastern history. Turchin
and Nefedov (2009) pointed out that in areas like
China and Europe, that were less exposed to pastoralist nomadic marchers, the
cycle usually took more generations, typically 200 to 300 years. And the
dynastic changes were more often due to internal coups, rather than barbarian
takeovers. China tended to alternate between periods of disunion ruled by small
dynasties that did indeed last about 75 years and periods of union under
dynasties that ruled from 200 to 400 years, but which followed the dynamics of
Ibn Khaldun’s cycles (charismatic leader, golden age, overpopulation, corruption,
collapse) to the letter except that some of the new dynasties were founded by
Chinese generals who co-opted popular revolutions, not by marcher lords.
Lieberman’s Model of
State Formation
A somewhat
different model of state formation is presented by Victor Lieberman (2003,
2009) that combines both internal and external factors to explain waves of
cultural integration and how these played out somewhat differently in regions
of Eurasia depending on how exposed they were to nomadic or seaborne invaders.
While the demographic structural approach focusses on state breakdown,
Lieberman focusses on state-building projects and their consequences for
cultural integration and the emergence of ethnic and national identities. From
his vantage point as an historian of Burma he focusses on mainland Southeast
Asia, and then, in a refreshing version of positionality, uses his model to
examine similar developments in other regions of Eurasia.
Lieberman’s
approach is relevant to our study of upsweeps of polity size and non-core
marcher states because he contends that the processes of integration differed
because some regions were less exposed to invasion than others. What
he calls the six “protected rimlands” of Eurasia
were regions that were on the edges of earlier civilizational complexity, and
that were less exposed to conquest because of geographical barriers to nomadic
or seaborne invaders. His six protected rimlands are
Burma, Siam, Vietnam, Russia, France and Japan. Because these areas were less
exposed to marcher states and incursions they were able to forge strong states
and strong national cultures. On the other hand, China, much of Southwest Asia,
the Indian subcontinent and island Southeast Asia were vulnerable to maritime
or nomadic invaders and so integration was slowed down because of conquest by
culturally different people (Lieberman 2003: 79).
Lieberman
(2003: 44-5) models the causes of political, cultural and economic integration,
but he is also careful to note that:
External
and domestic factors remained influential throughout the period under study,
but their relative weights and interconnections varied widely by time and
place. I therefore argue less of a single lockstep pattern than for a loose
constellation of influences whose local contours must be determined empirically
and without prejudice.
His
model is described thus (Lieberman 2003: 44-5) :
…:
External, including maritime, factors enhanced the economic and military advantages
of privileged lowland districts. In reciprocal fashion, multicausal increases in population, domestic output,
and local commodification aided foreign trade, while widening further the
material gap between incipient heartlands and dependent districts. So too, by
stimulating movements of religious and social reform and by strengthening
transportation and communication circuits between emergent cores and outlying
dependencies, economic exchange enhanced each core’s cultural
authority. As warfare between cohering polities grew in scale and expense, and
as the subjugation of more alien populations aggravated problems of imperial
control, those principalities that would survive were obliged systematically to
strengthen their patronage and military systems, to expand their tax bases, and
to promote official cultures over provincial and popular
traditions. Insofar as sustained warfare increased popular
dependence on the throne, it heightened the appeal of ethnic and religious
patterns championed by the capital. Pacification and military reforms also had
a variety of unplanned economic and social effects generally sympathetic to
integration. ….
And he presents a diagram that also shows the effects of
climate change and epidemic diseases:
Figure 3: Some elements in the integration of
mainland realms to 1830 and their potential interactions. Dotted lines indicate
the ambiguous, potentially centrifugal implications of frontier settlement in
the eastern lowlands during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Source: Lieberman 2003:65
Lieberman’s model is also relevant for earlier waves of
political integration and state expansion of the sort we are considering in
Mesopotamia, Egypt and the early Central PMN and probably for polity formation
in the Americas as well. His contention that external invasions slowed down
integration is supported by the case of Egypt, where there were fewer early
incursions and regional state formation emerged quickly. China, despite being
exposed to Central Asian steppe nomads and forest conquerors from the north,
managed to have some upsweeps that were caused by internal processes of the
kind theorized by the structural demographic model. The Khmer Empire
never recovered after its first charter floration because
its stronger neighbors (Siam and Vietnam) were able to prevent the reformation
of an integrated Cambodian state. Lieberman’s state formation model, when
combined with the factors of the demographic structural approach that explain
state breakdown, provides us with a good overall model for explaining waves of
political consolidation in agrarian systems. Though Lieberman is careful to
consider the effects of economic integration and commodification on local
integration, he does not explain how centrality in global circuits of trade and
investment could eventually lead to the modern hegemonies. Does this mean that
a completely different model is needed for the capitalist world-system or can
we have a model that is general enough to explain the emergence of complexity
and hierarchy from the Stone Age to the present?
Network Hub Theories
Trade leads not only to exchange of resources,
goods and services but also to the exchange of ideas and innovations (e.g.
McNeill and McNeill 2003). Interpolity trade
spatially binds regional world-systems and is important for generating
innovations at network nodes that can be important spurs of systemic evolution. Innovations that occur at centrally located
network nodes may be important causes of polity and urban upsweeps. Network hub explanations of
innovation have been popular among some world historians (McNeill and McNeill
2003; Christian 2004) and human ecologists (Hawley 1950). The hub theory holds
that new ideas and institutions tend to emerge in large and central settlements
where information cross-roads bring different ideas into interaction with one
another.
The
hub effect is probably a significant cause of upsweeps, but it cannot be the
whole explanation of human sociocultural evolution. If an information
cross-road was able to out-compete all contenders, then the original
information hub would still be the center of the world. But that is not the
case. We know that cities and states first emerged in Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamia is now Iraq. It had 100% of the world’s largest cities and the most
powerful polities on Earth in the Early Bronze Age (Morris 2010, 2012). Now it
has neither the largest cities nor the most powerful polities. Most of the
regional world-systems have undergone a process of uneven development in which
the old centers were eventually replaced by new centers out on the edge. The
node theory does not well account for the spatially uneven nature of
evolutionary change. The cutting edge of evolution moves. Old centers have
often been transcended by polities out on the edge that were able to rewire
network nodes in a way that expanded the spatial scale of networks.
The Unrevised Iteration Model
The Iteration model shows the main sources of
causation in the development of more hierarchical and complex social structures
as well as technological changes in the processes of production. The significant factor of the model is that
the variables both cause and are caused by the main processes iterate, causing
cyclical dynamics overtime. The positive
feedback explains systemic expansion, hierarchy formation, and technological
development as consequences of population pressure.
Much
like the structural demographic theory, the iteration model has population
growth as an initial driving force of the positive feedback loop that causes
upsweeps of complexity and hierarchy since the Paleolithic Era (Chase-Dunn and
Hall 1997: Chapter 6; Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014: 29).[14]
The iteration model assumes a system of polities that are interacting with one
another in ways that are important for the reproduction and transformation of
social structures and institutions (a world-system).
The
model shows the causes of cycles of increasing and decreasing levels of
conflict within between polities (warfare) but does not include conflict within
polities (political instability).
Population growth leads to the intensified use of natural resources,
which leads to population pressure. The costs of providing food and other
needed resources go up as the low hanging fruit is depleted and human production
activities cause pollution of the environment. Population pressure causes
migration if there are better locations available. But when better locations
are not accessible due to geographical or social barriers (circumscription),
population pressure causes a rise in the level of between-group conflict. Conflict may make things worse, but it may
also kill off some of the conflicting people, thus reducing population
pressure. Some regional world-systems
get stuck in a vicious cycle of population growth, population pressure and
rising conflict which operates as a demographic regulator that is similar in
form to the population cycles that operate among insects and animals (Kirch 1991; Fletcher et
al 2011). In other systems increased
levels of conflict produce opportunities for the emergence of a new dynasty or
a larger and more hierarchical polity by means of conquest. War weariness
lowers the resistance to hierarchy formation. It becomes less objectionable to
accept the authority claims of a new chief or king or the rule of an invader
than to continue fighting. Hierarchy formation creates an institutional
mechanism for mobilizing and accumulating resources in the form of taxes or
tribute, and some of these may be invested in new production technologies such
as fish ponds or irrigation systems, thus reducing population pressure by
producing additional resources (see Figure 4).
Figure 4:
Unrevised Iteration Model of World-System Evolution (Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2014: 29)
Figure 4 illustrates
several hypotheses about the causal relations among the main variables that sociocultural
evolution in the form of greater complexity and greater hierarchy. In this
unrevised version of the iteration model the main indicators of complexity and hierarchy
are in the upper left-hand corner of the model – hierarchy formation and
technological development. At the top of
Figure 4 is Population Growth.
Procreation is socially regulated in all human polities, but despite this there
has been a long-run tendency for population to grow. Population
Growth leads to Intensification,
defined by Marvin Harris (1977:5) as “the investment of more soil, water,
minerals, or energy per unit of time or area.”
Intensification leads to Environmental
Degradation as raw material inputs become scarcer and the unwanted
byproducts of human activity increase (soil erosion, deforestation, pollution,
etc.) modify the surrounding environment (see Chase-Dunn and Hall 1998). Together Intensification
and Environmental Degradation lead
to rising costs in terms of labor time needed to produce the food and raw
materials that people need, and this condition is called Population Pressure. In order to feed more people, farmers must
use more marginal land because the best soils have become degraded. Or deer
hunters must travel farther to find their quarry once deer have become depleted
in nearby districts. Thus, the cost in time and effort of producing a given
amount of food increases (Boserup 1965; 1981). Some
resources are less subject to depletion than others (e.g. fish compared to big
game), but increased use usually causes rising costs. Other types of
environmental degradation are due to the side effects of production, such as
the build-up of wastes and pollution of water sources. These also increase the
costs of continued production or cause other problems.
As long as there were
available lands to occupy, the consequences of population pressure led to Migration. Humans populated the whole
Earth. The costs of Migration are a
function of the availability of desirable alternative locations, moving costs,
and the effective resistance to immigration that is mounted by those who
already live in these alternative locations.
Circumscription
(Carneiro 1970) occurs when the costs of leaving are
higher than the costs of staying. This is a function of available lands, but
lands are differentially desirable depending on the technologies that the
migrants employ. Generally people have preferred to live in the way that they
have lived in the past, but Population
Pressure or other push factors can cause them to adopt new technologies in
order to occupy new lands.
The
factor of resistance from extant occupants is also a complex matter of
similarities and differences in technology, social organization and military
techniques between the occupants and the groups seeking to immigrate. Circumscription increases the
likelihood of higher levels of Conflict in
a situation of Population Pressure
because, though the costs of staying are great, the exit option is closed
off. This can lead to several different
kinds of warfare, but also to increasing intrapolity
struggles and conflicts (civil war, class antagonisms, etc.) A period of intense conflict tends to reduce Population Pressure if significant
numbers of people are killed off. And some systems get stuck in a vicious cycle
in which warfare, cannibalism and other forms of conflict operate as a
demographic regulator, e.g. the Marquesas Islands (Kirch
1991). This cycle corresponds to the path that goes from Population Pressure to Migration
to Circumscription to Conflict, and then a negative arrow
back to Population Pressure. When
population again builds up another round of heightened conflict knocks it back
down again. This is the “nasty bottom” of the iteration model (see Figure 5 and
Fletcher et al 2011).
Figure 5:
The Malthusian “Nasty Bottom” of the iteration model
Under the
right conditions a circumscribed situation in which the level of conflict has
been high will be the locus of the emergence of more hierarchical institutions,
larger states and larger cities. Carneiro (1970) and
Mann (1986) reasonably contend that people will be inclined to run away from
state-formation if they can in order to maintain autonomy and equality. But
circumscription prevents exit, and exhaustion from prolonged or extreme
conflict may make subservience to a new state the lesser evil. It is often
better to accept a king than to continue fighting. Kings (and big men, chiefs
and emperors) emerged within polities in situations in which conflict had
reduced the resistance to centralized power. This is quite different from the
usual portrayal of those who hold to the functional theory of
stratification. The world-system insight
here is that the newly emergent elites most often come from regions that have
been semiperipheral. And they often conquer other
polities to produce an upsweep in the territorial size of the largest polity. These
larger polities often build new (or expand existing) settlements (cities).
Interpolity systems
are often structured as hierarchies in which powerful core states dominate
and/or exploit less powerful semiperipheral and
peripheral peoples. Yet, some semiperipheral agents
of change are unusually able to put together effective campaigns for erecting
new levels of hierarchy. This may
involve both innovations in the “techniques of power” and innovations in
productive technology (Technological
Change). Newly emergent elites often implement new production technologies
as well as new waves of intensification. This, along with the more peaceful
regulation of access to resources structured as legal regulation of property,
creates the conditions for a new round of Population
Growth, which brings us around to the top of Figure 4 again. Female education
and involvement in the world of work outside the household lowers the birth
rate, and many countries in the contemporary world have stable population
sizes, but the world as a whole has not yet reached that point and so the
iteration model is still working. In about 50 or 75 years humans are likely to
reach a stable population maximum, that will then oscillate around a total
human population of 10 or 12 billion, depending on how long it takes to
stabilize. The iteration model may need to be modified to explain subsequent
development though population pressure will likely continue to influence
development because it is composed of the relationship between population size
(which will cycle around a high number) and the economical availability of
necessary resources for sustaining the high population. If a cheap and
sustainable source of energy is developed it will greatly reduce the importance
of population pressure in a context in which the total population size has
stabilized around a high normal. At that
point human sociocultural evolution will cease to be driven by population
pressure.
The emergence of and expanding importance of interpolity market exchange and states that specialize in
trade instead of conquest reduced the role of warfare and increased the role of
economic competition but did not eliminate warfare as an important selection
mechanism. The modern capitalist world-economy has continued to experience
waves of warfare, though the use of military power has increasingly become
directed toward goals that enhance the profitable production of commodities and
profitable financial services.
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
(upswing trend reversals) that have in some cases led to upsweeps of
territorial size and the population size of large cities. Some variables
operate both within and between polities and at the level of whole systems, but
they may work somewhat differently at different levels. Social movements,
rebellions, and incursions from the non-core may cluster in time. World
revolutions (periods in which rebellions across a system cluster in time) 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 1998). We are optimistic that a new
synthetic theory of sociocultural evolution that combines the insights and
research results from these approaches is nigh.
The variables in both the unrevised
and the revised iteration models are intentionally general and abstract because
this model is intended to capture those features of whole human world-systems
that are transhistorical – that work for both
hunter-gatherer world-systems and the modern global system. As Peter Turchin
(2017) does for the secular cycle, which was developed to explain state
collapses in agrarian societies but is respecified to
apply to the United States in the industrial era, we may need to translate our
general and abstract variables into less abstract measurable proxies that work
in specific cases in order empirically test our models. The most concrete
quantitative indicators of complexity that we can use transhistorically
are the population size of largest settlements and the territorial sizes of
largest polities, but even these have somewhat different implications in
different systems.
The Multilevel Spiral Model
As we
have said above, the panarchy model implies that
multi-scale interactions are consequential for social transformation. The
3-level panarchy model has bidirectional causation
among micro-meso and meso-macro
levels.[15] Our
multilevel model will, for the present, have only two levels, as we have
explained above on page 9.
As we
have said, our empirical studies imply that processes that are internal to
states are often the causes of upsweeps.
The dynamics of rebellions need to be included in the iteration model as
a cause of evolutionary transformation. The
spiral model will include clusters of rebellion and revolutions that occur at
the level of whole world-systems – so-called world revolutions. The expansion
of economic exchange reduces the role of raiding and warfare but does not
eliminate these, at least so far.
As
with the panarchy model, cycles occur in both the
within-polity and the system-levels raising the issue of synchrony across
polities and in whole systems. In the panarchy model,
the interactions of different levels are important — the process of “revolts”
from the bottom and the process of “remember” from the top. We want to specify
these connections but will begin by building a model for each level and then
connecting them. In the panarchy model system
transformations are mainly caused by processes within the smaller systems that
exceed the ability of the larger system to regulate, resulting in
transformations. Our multilevel model
will leave the issue of the origins of transformations open and will consider
the possibility that conditions emanating from the whole system could also
cause transformations.
The panarchy model shows a transformation of the system, but
the model does not necessarily indicate the resulting cycles of the system size
(or rise and fall of a system). The
iteration model connects it with another cycle of rise and fall of
polities/cities that are resulting from the iteration cycles. Series of empirical studies (Chase-Dunn et
al. 2006; Inoue et al. 2012; Inoue et al. 2015; Inoue et al. 2016) suggest the
systemic transition of size of polities, including collapse of the polities and
rise of them to form further connected world regional systems.
The
multilevel spiral model will include variable characteristics that operate
within polities and variable characteristics that operate in sets of polities
or in the whole system of interacting polities. The main variables we are
trying to explain are proxies for sociocultural complexity and hierarchy and
these can be operationalized both within polities and in whole interpolity systems.
We are primarily interested in the evolution of whole interpolity systems.
The Revised Iteration Model
The
whole-system variables are:
1. Total Population Growth Rate
2. Resource availability (food,
energy, size of the economy, etc.)
3. Population Pressure (relationship
between population size and available resources)
4. Epidemic Diseases
5. Non-anthrogenic
Climate Worsening
6. Environmental Degradation (includes
anthropogenic climate worsening)
7. Emigration
8. Circumscription
9. Warfare (level of interpolity conflict)
10. Technological Development (includes production, distribution
(transportation) and organizational techniques)
11. Interpolity trade
12. Non-Core Development (includes
non-core marcher and specialized trading polities)
13. Interpolity Hierarchy (degree of power
concentration in the interpolity system)
14. Interpolity
Complexity (interpolity division of labor and
specialization)
Figure 6: Spiral System-Level Model
The Revised Secular Cycle Model:
Add trade, climate, diseases. Other stuff suggested by panarchy, diamond and Lieberman and ibn Khaldun, and
Wilkinson. Make the dep vars right.
The
within-polity independent variables are:
16. Population growth rate
17. resource availability (arable
land, size of the economy, etc.)
18. population pressure
19. epidemics
20. external trade
21. climate change
22. environmental degradation
23. emigration and immigration
24. warfare
25. magnitude of inequality of
incomes and wealth
26. elite size
27. intraelite competition
28. political instability and
conflict
29. state legitimacy
30. state fiscal health
The Interactions Between the Within-Polity and
Whole System Models
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[1] Classical historian Ian
Morris presents an excellent review of the tumultuous trajectory and a well
thought out defense of sociocultural evolution as an idea in the introduction to his
operationalization of 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] Chase-Dunn and Inoue (2019) present a
motivation and inventory of the cases of whole interpolity
systems based on the ideas of David Wilkinson.
[4] In the modern global system much of the
bulk goods network has become global, catching up in spatial scale with the
networks that were larger than the bulk goods network in earlier regional
systems.
[5]
But even in systems
such as East Asia, where the core repeatedly returned to the same geographic
region – the valley of the Yellow River --
peripheral and semiperipheral marcher states
were important drivers of sociocultural evolution.
[6] 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). We are now studyin
both sweeps and swings (Chase-Dunn, Inoue and Welch 2018).
[7] Most of our estimates of the
territorial sizes of large polities come from the work of Rein Taagepera 1978a, 1978b,1979,1997).
[8] Most of our estimates of the population
sizes of largest cities come from Modelski (2003).
[9] 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/research/citemp/citemp.html
[10] When a conquering polity is peripheral
within a regional system we designate this as a peripheral marcher state. The
term we use to combine peripheral and semiperipheral
states is “noncore.”
[11] Recall that world-systems
are defined as nested systemic interaction networks.
[12]
Because of its complex holistic features and relatively abstract concepts the panarchy model has been difficult to test (Odom et al. 2015).
[13] Gotts
(2007) presents a useful summary and critique of the panarchy
approach and its overlaps with, and possible usefulness for, the study of the
evolution of world-systems.
[14] Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) were
inspired by the theorizing of Johnson and Earle (1987).
[15]
In panarchy,
the interactions among different levels are either micro-meso
or meso-macro. Micro-macro interactions are not
considered (Gotts 2007).