I had meant to cc this to WSN but didn't, and have since added to it
anyway....
Christian Harlow writes:
>My first questinn is actually a request to hear from anyone who has read
>anything else that might support or refute Frank and Gills claim to a World
>System Rhythm.
>I was also wondering just what other people think about the theoretical
>validity of this concept. Is there a material way to validate such a
>thesis...if not how should we test it?...
I did an article which incidentally suggests a validation method, describes a
database, and carries out a test. "Decline Phases in Civilizations, Regions
and Oikumenes", _Comparative Civilizations Review_ Fall 1995, 33-78.
This appeared first as an ISA (International _Studies_ Association) paper in
1992, with this overall abstract:
Data on city sizes for the last four millennia are consistent with the
proposition that macrosocieties with world economies and world politics
("civilizations") show long-term phases of alternating economic growth and
stagnation or decline. However such phases come against the background of a
strong secular uptrend; their durations are somewhat irregular;
intercivilizational collisional effects interrupt, interact with, and obscure
them; some such phenomena appear attributable to intracivilizational regions,
or to supracivilizational oikumenes (world economies without world politics,
integrated by trade but not by war and diplomacy). Nonetheless, macrosocial
decline phases do exist, and their causes are accordingly of theoretical
interest.
There are a few pages on the Gills and Frank phases in particular, which I
can send out if there's in fact any interest.