Scale Transitions and the Evolution of Global Governance since the Bronze Age
* Article / Chapter: Scale Transitions and the Evolution of Global Governance since the Bronze Age. Christopher Chase-Dunn, Richard Niemeyer, Alexis Alvarez & Hiroko Inoue. Chapter 13 of the book: Systemic Transitions. Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009. doi
URL = https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230618381_13#citeas
Part of the The Evolutionary Processes in World Politics series book series (EPWP)
Abstract
"All systems of interacting polities oscillate between relatively greater and lesser centralization as relatively large polities rise and fall. This is true of systems of chiefdoms, states, empires, and the modern system of the rise and fall of hegemonic core states. The literature on modern power transitions needs to be considered in an anthropological temporal and spatial framework of comparison in order to explain both the rise and fall of transitions and the long-term evolutionary trends of complexity and hierarchy-formation. In the long-term trend polities have increased in population and territorial size since the Stone Age, and the total number of polities on earth has decreased as the average polity has gotten larger. These trends have been somewhat masked in recent centuries because the processes of decolonization and the emergence of nation-states out of older tributary empires have increased the number of smaller polities. But the general trend toward larger polities can be seen in the transition from smaller to larger hegemonic core states (from the Dutch, to the British to the United States), and in the emergence of international political organizations and an expanded and active global civil society that participates in contemporary world politics."