Bøger af William R. Thompson

The three main levels of analysis in international relations have been the systemic, the national, and the individual.  A fourth level that falls between the systemic and the national is the region.  It is woefully underdeveloped in comparison to the attention afforded the other three.  Yet regions tend to be distinctive theaters for international politics.  Otherwise, we would not recognize that Middle Eastern interstate politics somehow does not resemble Latin American interstate politics or interstate politics in Southern Africa (although once the Middle East and Southern Africa may have seemed more similar in their mutual fixation with opposition to domestic policies in Israel and  South Africa, respectively). This book, divided into three parts, first makes a case for studying regional politics even though it must also be appreciated that regional boundaries are also hazy and not always easy to pin down empirically.  The second part examines power distributions within regions as an important entry point to studying regional similarities and differences.  Two emphases are stressed.  One is that regional power assessments need to be conditioned by controlling for weak states which are more common in some regions than they are in others.  The other emphasis is on regional power hierarchies.  Some regions have strong regional hierarchies while others do not. Regions with strong hierarchies operate much differently from those without them in the sense that the former are more pacific than the latter.  The third part of the book focuses on regional differences in terms of conflict behavior, order preferences, rivalries, and rivalry termination.

Strategic rivalries are contests between states that view one another as threatening competitors and treat each other as enemies. Overall, the emphases of the book are split between demonstrating the utility of distinguishing among rivalry types and examining selected rivalry dynamics.

An exploration of the evolution of warfare in human history. It provides insight into the perennial questions of why and how humans fight. Beginning with the origins of warfare among foraging groups, it draws on empirical data to enhance our understanding of how war began and how it has changed over time.

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.