Re: your mail

one way would be to wait to see what happens around 2030 and to evaluate 
which of the predictors events  confirm. my guess is that none of the
above. maybe by then cyberspace will include St. Peter's purly gates, so 
you can inform me and others there.
g/On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Robert Allen
Denemark wrote:

> Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 12:26:22 -0500 (EST)
> From: Robert Allen Denemark <denemark@UDel.Edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Colleagues;  
> 
>      I am currently working of a 'revise and resubmit' of a paper that
> contrasts traditional international politics with world system (broadly
> defined, both with and without the hyphen) treatments.  I trash
> traditional studies in favor of those that are historically informed, non
> State-centric, non-Eurocentric, and transdisciplinary.  I then turn to the
> question of criticisms of world system work, which include charges of
> determinism and indeterminance.  I find little support for charges of
> determinism, but real concern over indeterminance.
> 
>      Indeterminance exists when different theories predict the same
> outcome for different reasons.  I highlight predictions of war-pronness
> during the period from 2030 to 2050 by Modelski and Thompson, Arrighi,
> Wallerstein, and Joshua Goldstein.  Each has different reasons for making
> this prediction, and some of them are contradictory.
> 
>      The editor wants me to address ways in which to solve this problem.
> More traditional social science treatments that would have us search for
> microfoundations are not particularly helpful.  First, they counsel that
> we start from individual preferences and incentives when I argue we want
> to start from system level attributes. Second, in that these are complex
> phonemona they contain some of the attributes of chaos - making it quite
> difficult to trace outcomes back to individual incentives or events.
> 
>      I have a few ideas, but none are particularly satisfying.  How might
> we go about designing studies to decide which of a set of different
> analyses that come to the same conclusion is best?
> 
>      Any and all help will be appreciated.
> 
>       Best,  Bob Denemark  
>              Political Science
>              University of Delaware  
> 
> 


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