George Modelski
Biographic Data
| ID | 119797 |
|---|---|
| NAME | George Modelski |
| GIVEN NAMES | George |
| FAMILY NAME | Modelski |
| SIGNATURE | MODELSKI G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Washington |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 401 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1960 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
George Modelski
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeorge Modelski died in 2014 at the age of 88. He was Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington. Born in Poland, Professor Modelski has taught at universities in Europe, Australia, and North America. His research interests include long-term historical processes, world systems evolutions, and macro-world organization. In 1968, Modelski was the first academic to use the term ‘…
The Australian National University's Department of International Relations: The early years
This article is a contribution to the re-evaluation of the formative years of the emergent international relations discipline. Work on this topic, extensive over the past decade and a half, has overturned a number of the foundational myths of the global discipline, especially regarding the period between the two world wars. The literature on international relations in Australia, slow to reflect this re-evaluation, generally still locates the firs…
Ages of Reorganization: Self-organization in the World System
Dark ages is a familiar, if untheorized, term of world history. We propose to generalize that concept, and to reinterpret it as "ages of reorganization." We do this by viewing the two major periods of past dark ages as phases of world community formation—this being one of a cascade of processes that make up world system evolution. This reconceptualization allows us to see contemporary developments as the onset of another millennial age of readjus…
The Portuguese as System-builders in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: A Case Study on the Role of Technology in the Evolution of the World System
World system evolution may be viewed as a cascade of multilevel, nested, self-similar and Darwinian-type processes poised on the boundary between order and chaos that allows for innovation. A framework developed by Devezas-Modelski opens the door to conceptualizing globalization as part of that evolutionary cascade, and as a process of system-building of which the Portuguese enterprises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provide an illumina…
Long-Term Trends in World Politics
A revisit, and an extension, of the paper From Leadership to Organization: The Evolution of Global Politics, originally presented at the University of Zurich in 1993. Three long-term processes: the evolution of global politics (or political globalization); the rise and decline of world powers (the long cycle of global politics); and the emergence of the world system, have been reviewed and updated
World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change
List of figures List of tables List of contributors An Introduction to World System History: Toward a social science of long-term change Robert A. Denemark, Jonathan Friedman, Barry K. Gills and George Modelski Part 1: General Perspectives on World System History 1. The Five Thousand Year World System in Theory and Praxis Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills 2. World System Evolution George Modelski 3. Civilizations, World Systems and Hegemonies…
Democratization in long perspective” revisited
The Long and the Short of Global Politics in the Twenty-first Century: An Evolutionary Approach
Forecasting the future of world politics requires both some acquaintance with possible alternatives, and a definite theoretical foundation. We first consider five other sets of arguments (associated with Waltz, Huntington, Kennedy, Fukuyama, and Wallerstein), and use them, collectively and individually, as contrasts with our own positions. Based on an evolutionary perspective that emphasizes the mechanisms of variation, selection, cooperation, an…
Ancient world cities 4000–1000 BC: Centre/hinterland in the world system
(1999). Ancient world cities 4000–1000 BC: Centre/hinterland in the world system. Global Society: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 383-392
Leading Sectors and World Powers: The Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics
Evolutionary Paradigm for Global Politics
The evolutionary paradigm for global politics here presented consists of four key propositions: (1) The global political system is a population of policies or strategies; (2) global politics constitutes a complex system that evolves in specifiable conditions; (3) accounting for global political evolution is a four-phased learning process whose key operators are variation (innovation), cooperation, selection, and reinforcement; and (4) global poli…
Evolutionary Paradigms in the Social Sciences
Change usually occurs imperceptibly and out of sight, so that it becomes hard to grasp and think about in a systematic fashion. We are most effectively alerted to the fact of change when its pace accelerates, and in particular when change manifests itself in the form of crises. The recent collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe is one such sign of crisis, because for a time that system stood for one of the directions of social change, …
Approaches from an International Relations Tradition
Approaches from an International Relations Tradition Get access George Modelski, George Modelski University of Washington, United States Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar David Wilkinson David Wilkinson University of California-Los Angeles, United States Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mershon International Studies Review, Volume 38, Issue Supplement_2, October 1994, …
Long cycle critiques and deja vu all over again: A rejoinder to Houweling and Siccama
In response to Houweling and Siccama (1993), twenty‐two assertions about the long cycle perspective are delineated and discussed. Sixteen are judged to be wrong. Four are only partially correct or misleading when taken out of context. While criticism can be quite useful, this critique appears to have little merit. Keywords: long cyclesglobal wartransitions
The Social Origins of Democratic Collapse; The First Portuguese Republic in the Global Economy
Is world politics evolutionary learning
The claim is advanced for recognizing evolutionary learning as the generative principle of world politics. Immanuel Kant was the first to specify a "natural" process leading toward "perpetual peace." The long cycle, seen as the process of structural change. is explained with the help of a Parsonian learning model and a social evolutionary model and is argued to be coupled with the Kantian process. The long cycle defines the agenda for change in t…
Economics
The World Powers: The Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States
Of the four world powers since 1494, Portugal, admittedly, is the most controversial case. The preceding chapter, as a consequence, devoted considerable space to its case for oceanic leadership in the sixteenth-century global political system. Great Britain, the United States and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, are much less controversial. Therefore it is not surprising that each of these three states has had a great deal written about t…
Seapower and Global Politics
The purpose of this book is twofold: (i) to bring together, under one cover, the basic data on the strength of the world’s major navies between 1494 and 1993, and (ii) to shed light upon the exercise of leadership in global politics in the same time-span. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The Long Cycle of World Leadership
The long cycle of global politics refers to the process of fluctuations in the concentration of global reach capabilities which provide one foundation for world leadership. Given the basic geographical nature of the world — great masses of land separated by large bodies of water — and the technological history of the modern, post-1500 era, a primary capability for global reach has been and continues to be seapower. Previous chapters have discusse…
The Future of Seapower
In this chapter we shall briefly recapitulate and highlight the evidence that has been put together in this survey, and end with a discussion of the likely role of seapower in global politics in the decades ahead. Granted that seapower has had a great past; but what about its future? These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The World Powers: Was Portugal the First World Power?
Just as the last two chapters have painted the big picture of long cycles in their unfolding over the centuries, the present chapter singles out for special and detailed attention one single world power, namely Portugal, whose standing appears to be the least secure and the most questionable. To that end it asks the important question: which was the power that was prominent in the management of the global system at the very onset of that system? …
Rules for Counting Warships, 1494–1860
Earlier mention has been made in Chapter 2 of the analytical convenience provided by the tendencies toward standardising warships which resulted in the development of the ship-of-the-line, the capital warship of the mid-seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth centuries. Nevertheless, this period constitutes less than half and closer to a third of the five centuries in question. Clearly, the operationalisation procedures will have to go be…
The Other Global Powers: France, Spain, Russia/the Soviet Union, Germany, and Japan
The last two chapters have described the winners in the 500-year struggle for naval predominance and political-military ascendancy in the global system. In the present chapter, the focus shifts to the ‘also-ran’ competitors for global power — France, Spain, Russia/the Soviet Union, Germany, and Japan — who lost or — at least in the case of the Soviet Union — who have yet to win their struggles with the world powers. We shall consider in order of …
The Non-global Powers
At various points in earlier chapters, it may have seemed as if we knew the identities of the global powers throughout the half millenium, 1494–1993, even before the data collection process was initiated. There is some truth to this impression but not as much as one might expect. Not surprisingly, we did have definite expectations about which states would be most likely to qualify and which ones would not. Long cycle theory, for example, has been…
The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State
Let us define a cycle as a recurrent pattern in the life (or functioning) of a system. The concept implies that over a certain period of time the system, in some meaningful sense, returns to its starting point, that it regains a state occupied at an earlier stage. If such behavior is demonstrably regular and if recurrence takes place in a pattern that is potentially predictable, such behavior may appropriately be called cyclical or periodic. Cycl…
Seapower in Global Politics, 1494–1993
Is world politics evolutionary learning
The claim is advanced for recognizing evolutionary learning as the generative principle of world politics. Immanuel Kant was the first to specify a "natural" process leading toward "perpetual peace." The long cycle, seen as the process of structural change. is explained with the help of a Parsonian learning model and a social evolutionary model and is argued to be coupled with the Kantian process. The long cycle defines the agenda for change in t…
Kautilya: Foreign Policy and International System in the Ancient Hindu World
Kautilya is believed to have been Chanakya, a Brahmin who served as Chief Minister to Chandragupta (321-296 B.C.), the founder of the Mauryan Empire. Chandragupta gained his first successes, soon after the death of Alexander the Great, in campaigns against some of the satraps the Macedonian conqueror had established west of the Indus. He then turned against the Nanda Empire and succeeded in destroying it. The victory over the Nandas and his subse…
Evolutionary Paradigm for Global Politics
The evolutionary paradigm for global politics here presented consists of four key propositions: (1) The global political system is a population of policies or strategies; (2) global politics constitutes a complex system that evolves in specifiable conditions; (3) accounting for global political evolution is a four-phased learning process whose key operators are variation (innovation), cooperation, selection, and reinforcement; and (4) global poli…
Evolutionary Paradigms in the Social Sciences
Change usually occurs imperceptibly and out of sight, so that it becomes hard to grasp and think about in a systematic fashion. We are most effectively alerted to the fact of change when its pace accelerates, and in particular when change manifests itself in the form of crises. The recent collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe is one such sign of crisis, because for a time that system stood for one of the directions of social change, …
Leading Sectors and World Powers: The Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics
Understanding Global War
While the problem of war in general deserves continuing scholarly attention, it seems appropriate to single out the systemwide—that is, global—war for intensive analysis as the kind of war that poses the gravest threat of catastrophe. Such a war can best be understood as an integral part of a long cycle, a recurring pattern in the development and operation of the global layer of the international system. From this perspective the design of a solu…
Democratization in long perspective” revisited
The Promise of Geocentric Politics
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
International Relations and Area Studies: The Case of South-East Asia
Long-Term Trends in World Politics
A revisit, and an extension, of the paper From Leadership to Organization: The Evolution of Global Politics, originally presented at the University of Zurich in 1993. Three long-term processes: the evolution of global politics (or political globalization); the rise and decline of world powers (the long cycle of global politics); and the emergence of the world system, have been reviewed and updated
Agraria and Industria: Two Models of the International System
Ever since the invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century, men have reflected upon the profound transformations being wrought in their societies by what soon came to be called the Industrial Revolution. In their own fields, historians, economists, sociologists, military specialists, and Marxist philosophers have all traced the effects of industrialization, and some of them—particularly those interested in and aroused by war—have perc…
Long Cycles in World Politics
Global Conflict Intensity and Great Power Summitry Behavior
Despite the significance of Great Power summitry to the maintenance and evolution of world politics and order, little attention has been allocated to this central phenomenon. One earlier exception (Galtung, 1964) did find that the volume or restrictedness of summitry (1941–1961) was associated with two key properties of the global system: polarization and predictability. However, a close examination of this study reveals serious problems vis-à-vi…
Multinational Business: A Global Perspective
Journal Article Multinational Business: A Global Perspective George Modelski George Modelski Department of Political Science, University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 16, Issue 4, December 1972, Pages 407–432, https://doi.org/10.2307/3013607 Published: 01 December 1972
Communism and the Globalization of Politics
Journal Article Communism and the Globalization of Politics Get access George Modelski George Modelski University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 12, Issue 4, December 1968, Pages 380–393, https://doi.org/10.2307/3013524 Published: 01 December 1968
The Long and the Short of Global Politics in the Twenty-first Century: An Evolutionary Approach
Forecasting the future of world politics requires both some acquaintance with possible alternatives, and a definite theoretical foundation. We first consider five other sets of arguments (associated with Waltz, Huntington, Kennedy, Fukuyama, and Wallerstein), and use them, collectively and individually, as contrasts with our own positions. Based on an evolutionary perspective that emphasizes the mechanisms of variation, selection, cooperation, an…
Comparative International Systems
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Ancient world cities 4000–1000 BC: Centre/hinterland in the world system
(1999). Ancient world cities 4000–1000 BC: Centre/hinterland in the world system. Global Society: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 383-392
Australia and Seato
Australia is a nation small and vulnerable enough to need great power guarantees of territorial integrity, yet at the same time strong and stable enough to constitute an asset in any joint undertaking. The quality of being a small power dependent on the support of the great powers Australia shares with the countries of Southeast Asia, and in particular with the Southeast Asian states linked up with the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO).…
The Australian National University's Department of International Relations: The early years
This article is a contribution to the re-evaluation of the formative years of the emergent international relations discipline. Work on this topic, extensive over the past decade and a half, has overturned a number of the foundational myths of the global discipline, especially regarding the period between the two world wars. The literature on international relations in Australia, slow to reflect this re-evaluation, generally still locates the firs…
Long cycle critiques and deja vu all over again: A rejoinder to Houweling and Siccama
In response to Houweling and Siccama (1993), twenty‐two assertions about the long cycle perspective are delineated and discussed. Sixteen are judged to be wrong. Four are only partially correct or misleading when taken out of context. While criticism can be quite useful, this critique appears to have little merit. Keywords: long cyclesglobal wartransitions
Structural Trends in World Politics
The most elementary data about the essential properties of the global political system are scarce even today. Among the consequences of this lack of information are the abstract and sometimes unreal character of discussions in this field and the failure to test generalities against knowledge of long-term trends. Particularly significant in this context are time series of certain basic properties of the world political system. Population, which is…
Australia and Seato
Australia is a nation small and vulnerable enough to need great power guarantees of territorial integrity, yet at the same time strong and stable enough to constitute an asset in any joint undertaking. The quality of being a small power dependent on the support of the great powers Australia shares with the countries of Southeast Asia, and in particular with the Southeast Asian states linked up with the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO).…
Agraria and Industria: Two Models of the International System
Ever since the invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century, men have reflected upon the profound transformations being wrought in their societies by what soon came to be called the Industrial Revolution. In their own fields, historians, economists, sociologists, military specialists, and Marxist philosophers have all traced the effects of industrialization, and some of them—particularly those interested in and aroused by war—have perc…
International Relations and Area Studies: The Case of South-East Asia
Comparative International Systems
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The study of alliances: A review : George Liska, Nations in Alliance: The Limits of Interdependence Robert E. Osgood, Nato: The Entangling Alliance Donald S. Zagoria, Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956-61
Kautilya: Foreign Policy and International System in the Ancient Hindu World
Kautilya is believed to have been Chanakya, a Brahmin who served as Chief Minister to Chandragupta (321-296 B.C.), the founder of the Mauryan Empire. Chandragupta gained his first successes, soon after the death of Alexander the Great, in campaigns against some of the satraps the Macedonian conqueror had established west of the Indus. He then turned against the Nanda Empire and succeeded in destroying it. The victory over the Nandas and his subse…
Seato: Six Studies
The Socialist Commonwealth of Nations
Communism and the Globalization of Politics
Journal Article Communism and the Globalization of Politics Get access George Modelski George Modelski University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 12, Issue 4, December 1968, Pages 380–393, https://doi.org/10.2307/3013524 Published: 01 December 1968
Simulations, "Realities," and International Relations Theory
The Promise of Geocentric Politics
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Australia and the Colonial Question at the United Nations
Multinational Business: A Global Perspective
Journal Article Multinational Business: A Global Perspective George Modelski George Modelski Department of Political Science, University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 16, Issue 4, December 1972, Pages 407–432, https://doi.org/10.2307/3013607 Published: 01 December 1972
Theory and World Politics. Robert J. Lieber
Structural Trends in World Politics
The most elementary data about the essential properties of the global political system are scarce even today. Among the consequences of this lack of information are the abstract and sometimes unreal character of discussions in this field and the failure to test generalities against knowledge of long-term trends. Particularly significant in this context are time series of certain basic properties of the world political system. Population, which is…
Global Conflict Intensity and Great Power Summitry Behavior
Despite the significance of Great Power summitry to the maintenance and evolution of world politics and order, little attention has been allocated to this central phenomenon. One earlier exception (Galtung, 1964) did find that the volume or restrictedness of summitry (1941–1961) was associated with two key properties of the global system: polarization and predictability. However, a close examination of this study reveals serious problems vis-à-vi…
The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State
Let us define a cycle as a recurrent pattern in the life (or functioning) of a system. The concept implies that over a certain period of time the system, in some meaningful sense, returns to its starting point, that it regains a state occupied at an earlier stage. If such behavior is demonstrably regular and if recurrence takes place in a pattern that is potentially predictable, such behavior may appropriately be called cyclical or periodic. Cycl…
Understanding Global War
While the problem of war in general deserves continuing scholarly attention, it seems appropriate to single out the systemwide—that is, global—war for intensive analysis as the kind of war that poses the gravest threat of catastrophe. Such a war can best be understood as an integral part of a long cycle, a recurring pattern in the development and operation of the global layer of the international system. From this perspective the design of a solu…
Long Cycles in World Politics
The World Powers: The Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States
Of the four world powers since 1494, Portugal, admittedly, is the most controversial case. The preceding chapter, as a consequence, devoted considerable space to its case for oceanic leadership in the sixteenth-century global political system. Great Britain, the United States and the United Provinces of the Netherlands, are much less controversial. Therefore it is not surprising that each of these three states has had a great deal written about t…
Seapower and Global Politics
The purpose of this book is twofold: (i) to bring together, under one cover, the basic data on the strength of the world’s major navies between 1494 and 1993, and (ii) to shed light upon the exercise of leadership in global politics in the same time-span. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The Long Cycle of World Leadership
The long cycle of global politics refers to the process of fluctuations in the concentration of global reach capabilities which provide one foundation for world leadership. Given the basic geographical nature of the world — great masses of land separated by large bodies of water — and the technological history of the modern, post-1500 era, a primary capability for global reach has been and continues to be seapower. Previous chapters have discusse…
The Future of Seapower
In this chapter we shall briefly recapitulate and highlight the evidence that has been put together in this survey, and end with a discussion of the likely role of seapower in global politics in the decades ahead. Granted that seapower has had a great past; but what about its future? These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The World Powers: Was Portugal the First World Power?
Just as the last two chapters have painted the big picture of long cycles in their unfolding over the centuries, the present chapter singles out for special and detailed attention one single world power, namely Portugal, whose standing appears to be the least secure and the most questionable. To that end it asks the important question: which was the power that was prominent in the management of the global system at the very onset of that system? …
Rules for Counting Warships, 1494–1860
Earlier mention has been made in Chapter 2 of the analytical convenience provided by the tendencies toward standardising warships which resulted in the development of the ship-of-the-line, the capital warship of the mid-seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth centuries. Nevertheless, this period constitutes less than half and closer to a third of the five centuries in question. Clearly, the operationalisation procedures will have to go be…
Political science (42 works) · Law (38 works) · Politics (30 works) · History (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Economics (20 works) · Sociology (18 works) · History (16 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works)