Research Catalog

Title

Leading sectors and world powers : the coevolution of global politics and economics / George Modelski and William R. Thompson.

Author

Modelski, George.

Publication

Columbia, S.C. : University of South Carolina Press, [1996], ©1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Thompson, William R.

Description

xv, 263 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

• The idea that political and economic power moves in coordinated cycles has long intrigued political scientists and political economists, for if a pattern exists in the rise and fall of international political power, a model explaining this pattern gains predictive qualities. In Leading Sectors and World Powers, George Modelski and William R.
• Thompson venture beyond previous attempts to explain why major powers rise, fall, and fight about their changing status to establish an explicit connection between war, economic innovation, and world leadership. They argue that surges in economic innovation, which in turn are tied to global war, determine leadership in the global system.
• . Modelski and Thompson base their theory on the coordination of long cycles (phases of world order and decay punctuated by intensive bouts of global war) and K-waves (cycles delineating the wax and wane of leading industrial sectors). They contend that K-waves appear in paired sets correlated to long-cycle shifts in political power.
• Modelski and Thompson conclude by discussing the nature and timing of the next K-wave/long cycle peak, commenting on the relevance of it for U.S. industrial policy and speculating on the possibility of evolving away from this pattern in the near future.

Series Statement

Studies in international relations

Uniform Title

Studies in international relations (Columbia, S.C.)

Subjects

• World politics
• International economic relations
• Long waves (Economics)

Note

• Erratum slip inserted.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-251) and index.

Contents

1. Problem and Premises -- 2. The Confused State of the Literature -- 3. A Critique of the Literature -- 4. Long Cycles, War, and Long-term Economic Growth -- 5. Do K-Waves and Long Cycles Coevolve? -- 6. Leading Sectors in the Global Economy: Fifteenth to Twentieth Centuries, K-Waves 9-18 -- 7. Testing for Coevolution -- 8. An Enlarged Framework -- 9. Sung China and the Evolving Global Economy: Tenth to Twelfth Centuries, K-Waves 1-4 -- 10. Renaissance Italy: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries, K-Waves 5-8 -- 11. The Nineteenth K-Wave and No Global War?

ISBN

1570030545

LCCN

95004372

OCLC

ocm32313478

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries