International Political Science Review 2003 Doran 13 49

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Economics, Philosophy of History, and the ''Single Dynamic'' of Power Cycle Theory: Expectations, Competition, and Statecraft
Charles F. Doran International Political Science Review 2003 24: 13 DOI: 10.1177/0192512103024001002 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ips.sagepub.com/content/24/1/13
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International Political Science Review (2003), Vol 24, No. 1, 1349 I. POWER CYCLE THEORY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Economics, Philosophy of History, and the Single Dynamic of Power Cycle Theory: Expectations, Competition, and Statecraft
CHARLES F. DORAN
ABSTRACT. What matters in the structural dynamics of any political or economic system is the contradiction between absolute and relative trends. The single dynamic of power and role, of state and system, encodes the perspective of statecraft in the trends and shifting trends of relative share. The tides of history shift counter-intuitively, creating enormous uncertainty, inverting future expectations about role and security, and disrupting the normal stability of statecraft. Power cycle theory reconciles realism and idealism in conceptualizing foreign policy role as coequal in significance with power in a legitimate world order. A dynamic equilibrium requires reciprocal adaptation to structural change, and it is explicitly non-hegemonic. This article establishes the philosophical foundations of power cycle theory as a theory of competition actualized in productive interaction. Keywords: Competition Dynamic equilibrium Power cycle Role System structure World order War
To understand power is to understand its limits (the bounds on relative growth), its issues (the legitimacy and adjustments of systemic role), its surprises (discontinuous expectations at points of non-linearity), and hence the shocks and uncertainties and sense of angst (or injustice, albeit often contrived) conducive to violence. Structures, and changing structures, of the international system establish opportunities and constraints for statecraft. These constraints place a real and unavoidable limit regarding the possible and the likely in world politics, a limit to the degree of structural disequilibrium any system can tolerate without causing statecraft to fracture. Power cycle theory unites the structural (state and system) and behavioral (power and statecraft) aspects of world politics in its single dynamic of
0192-5121 (2003/01) 24:1, 1349; 028609 2003 International Political Science Association SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
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International Political Science Review 24(1)
power and role. It explains the evolution of systemic structure, and the concerns of statecraft, via the cyclical dynamic of state relative rise and decline. Whether a state has yet to develop economically or is already developed, whether a state is an importer of security or a great power, whether a state primarily views the system through a regional or a global lens, whether a state is a new entry into the global trading system or an experienced participant in globalizationit is traversing a cycle of relative power and role vis-a-vis a system of states, both regionally and globally.
Introduction: The Concerns of Statecraft

Power cycle theory addresses, within a single conceptual framework, the preoccupations and uncertainties of the post-Cold War world with implications for both international security and the international political economy. The single dynamic of changing systems structure encodes the perspective of statecraft in the trends and shifting trends of the component state power cycles. Tied to change on a state power cycle are the states expectations and anxieties regarding its future security and foreign policy role. Asia is undergoing tumultuous structural change similar to that which Europe experienced a century ago: fastergrowing China and India may force Japan to peak in relative power, perhaps leaving Japan with foreign policy expectations yet unfulfilled, certainly altering the security framework. Russia is slowly trying to climb out of the abyss, while Europe builds a supranational economic entity around itself, each exploring foreign policy options appropriate to the new structural reality. A coherent understanding of structural dynamics is imperative if statecraft is to navigate peacefully through the shifting tides of history at the regional and systemic levels. As a foundation for analysis, power cycle theory is open and receptive to elaboration by other theories such as international and domestic regime theories (Haggard and Simmons, 1987; Ruggie, 1992), the democratic peace (Doyle, 1986; Russett, 1993), rational choice (Powell, 1994; Friedan, 1999; Monroe, 2001), bounded rationality (Anderson and McKeown, 1987), and prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Cashman, 1997; James and Hebron, 1997). Grounded in the approach to world politics known as realism, power cycle theory also incorporates elements of idealism and constructivism, and rejects some realist assumptions and arguments. While power cycle theory is innately a theory of international relations (IR), it draws upon and at the same time provides a bridge (Kratochwil, 1994; Halliday, 1996; Moravcsik, 1997) to the study of both history and economics.
Foreign Policy Role: The Coordinate Concept that Amends Realism

What are the concerns of statecraft? Weber (1954) always placed his concern regarding power relations in the context of political legitimacy. As Toynbee (1961) noted, past civilizations collapsed because the governing elite lost its sense of political legitimacy and tried to rule by domination alone. So world order from the power cycle perspective is based on the principle of legitimacy associated with a pluralistic understanding of a dynamic equilibrium encompassing both power and foreign policy role. Power cycle theory reconciles realism and idealism in conceptualizing foreign policy role as coequal in significance with power in matters of statecraft. Both role
DORAN:
Economics and Power Cycle Theory
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and power are necessarily relative (systemic); but role exists only if legitimized through systemic acceptance, whereas power expresses itself through unilateral action and as control. A liberal concept of legitimate world order requires reciprocal rather than one-sided adaptation of foreign policy roles to the rise and decline of state power (Doran, 1971: 21, 31). Lacking such a coordinate concept of foreign policy role, classical realism could never resolve the problem of peaceful change in terms of a dynamic equilibrium because, to the realist, ultimately what is always being bargained, and balanced, is power itself. Yet, foreign policy role (encompassing both participation and status) is the medium of exchange or bargaining substance whereby structural change can be assimilated and world order legitimized. Role is the behavioral component of statecraft over which governments both fight and may find compromise. When statespersons contemplate the future trend of state power, they form expectations regarding the states entire future foreign policy role, not only its security (which is non-negotiable). The trajectory, dynamic, and meaning of history thus come together in the dual character of its single dynamicof state and system, of power and roleexpressing the reality of statecraft.
The Quintessential Problem of International Relations

World War I and its aftermath made conscious the need for IR as an entirely new field. In terms of causation, the Great War seemed to be overdetermined in the prior historical context: the imperialist grab for colonies, machtpolitik, Germanys meteoric industrial and military growth and the fears it created throughout Europe, the increasing ineffectiveness of both Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman order maintenance in the Balkans, Germanys intense ambitions for Geltung, Annerkennung, Gleichberechtigung, and yet its Gefahr, its fear of impending Russian growth, encirclement, and attack. But there was something more fundamental at work in that period of history. Underlying all of these causal factorsfrom the perspective of conservative, liberal, and Marxian scholars alikewere the differential rates of economic growth that had altered the structure of the system. Mackinder (1919: 12) observed that the great wars of history . . . are the outcome, direct or indirect, of the unequal growth of nations, and Lenin (1917) condemned these differential growth rates as causally destructive (Gilpin, 1981: 93, 76). Economic and political analysts knew they must examine economic growth itself to understand what impels change in relative strength and why these structural changes are so traumatic. Liberal thinkers asked what kind of adjustments would resolve the foreign policy strains and antagonisms created by rapid and monumental changes in power relationships.
Kuznets: Levels and Variability of Rates of Growth

For the economist (Kuznets, 1930: 34), the task was to understand what causes non-uniform acceleration and retardation of industrial growth within single countries or within single branches of industries (on a world scale). Such very focused economic questions guided Kuznets 1930 analysis of the statistical data for individual nations in the historical records on production and trade, suggesting significant leads as to the study of comparative rates of growth (49), which over two decades later he put forward in a series of articles entitled Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations. In the first installment,
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I. Levels and Variability of Rates of Growth (Kuznets, 1956: 194, 27; referenced in Doran, 1971: 177), he showed that large absolute differences in rates of growth among countries can lead to displacements in relative magnitude among countries . . . within rather short periods, altering their rankings. Continuing this line of argument about change in relative magnitude, Kuznets remarks indicate that at least by 1956 he was not unaware of the implications of this finding for international politics.
Since international relations are greatly affected by shifts in the relative economic magnitude, and hence in power, of countries, one can argue that the very rapidity of modern growth is in a sense a cause of the rapidity with which relative power positions of countries change; and hence possibly of difficulties in adjusting international relations to these shifts in underlying economic power . . . . It will not be long before the political and power relationship based on this initial inferiority begins to show signs of strain . . . . In short, one may argue that when growth is rapid and the pace of human history, itself a cause of rapid shifts, is fast, adjustments are more difficult than when rates of growth are moderate and the whole pace of change, internal and external, is slower (Kuznets, 1956: 27, emphasis added).
Kuznets showed theoretically and empirically what Mackinder and others had claimedhow the differing levels and rates of growth of states ultimately caused their relative power rankings (one aspect of systems structure) to change. Like Rostow and other economic historians, he emphasized the utility of quantitative economic history for the broader issues of historical change. But Kuznets was ever the economist, examining only how the absolute capability dynamics for each nation cause, and are impacted by, the changes in those rankings. Hence, his measure of relative is sensitive only to the absolute gap between the economic magnitudes of two nations (the absolute gains represented in Figure 1B(b)), and whether the absolute trajectories are converging or diverging. (There is no critical behavior in the dynamics of that measure over time.) Relative power in international relations is a conceptual sphere removed from the absolute output of interest to the economist. Yet only the dynamic of such IR-sensitive relative power (Figures 1A and 1B(a)) speaks to the issues of international politics to which he alluded: the changing structure of the system bounding international relations and, in particular, the quintessential problem of adjusting international relations to shifts in relative economic magnitude.
Systems Structure and the Dilemma of Peaceful Change

Attempting to learn from the failure to adjust international relations to changing systems structure prior to World War I (when declining France, Britain, and Austria-Hungary refused to yield status and diplomatic perquisites to ascendant Germany, much less a legitimate participatory role), the next generation of European and American leaders made the opposite mistake in trying to correct for their earlier errors of statecraft (see section VI). At the height of global crisis in the 1930s, concerns about morality and justice and the dilemma of peaceful changewhen to accommodate and when to opposebecame the focus of international lawyers and foreign policy analysts, who watched in horror as policies of appeasement fed the fuel of aggression that culminated in World War II. The debate about norms and legal regimes was overtaken by events,
DORAN:
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because the underlying structural problemhow to reconcile changing power with legitimate interestswas never solved. The field of IR continued this historically sensitive study of the dynamics of international relations in what might be called the structural mainstream (Kaplan, 1961). Alker (1966: 627) emphasized the need to combine inductive historical sociology and scientific theorizing, quoting the philosopher of science Ernest Nagel (1963): [The] mere fact that a system is a structure of dynamically interrelated parts does not suffice, by itself, to prove that the laws of such a system cannot be reduced to some theory developed initially for certain assumed constituents of the system (Alker, 1966: 645). The conceptualization of the single dynamic amidst a study of diplomatic history in 1964 proceeded in tandem with the broader efforts in the field of IR to understand system as a structure of dynamically interrelated parts. Systems structure was defined as the distribution and hierarchy of power by Hoffmann (1968: 17), or equivalently as the distribution of capabilities across the units by Waltz (1979: 60), operationalized as percentage share of systemic power by Choucri and North (1971) and by Singer and associates (1972). Waltz (69) recognized that this definition of systems structureexpressed interchangeably as distribution of capabilities, systemic shares, and relative poweris necessary to bring off the Copernican revolution of systems level understanding (Hoffmann, 1960: 4). Keohane (1989: 61) emphasized that structural theory provides an irreplaceable component for a thorough analysis of action, forming the basis for the emergent paradigm shift even if a theory of IR must go beyond structural realism. Structure binds the present to the past without foreclosing agency from exercising the autonomy of which it is capable (Dessler, 1987; Krasner, 1999).
Philosophy of History and the Single Dynamic

A study of diplomatic history provided the impetus to power cycle theory, for it raises the question: What are the shifting tides of history that are so traumatic in statecraft? Preoccupations with the philosophy of history established the foundations of the single dynamic of structural change (Doran, 1969, 1971).
Trajectory of Statecraft: Basis of Change (Evolving Power Potentials)

After Kant and Hegel, westerners, already disposed to think in non-cyclical terms historically, found faith in a positive, progressive, incremental, and cosmopolitan trajectory for history appealing indeed. The argued inevitability of progress, despite war and outbursts of inhumanity, is what drives liberalism and democracy. To discern a trajectory of history and its meaning requires multiple time perspectives (Doran, 1971: 3). Braudel (1949), building on the expansive visions of Febvre and Bloc, was preoccupied with temporality in history. He identified the event as a journalistic short span very much on the narrative surface of history, conjuncture as an interval of 20 to 50 years that could be genuinely cyclical and that lay at a deeper interpretive level, and the longue dure as a span of several centuriesthe deepest interpretive level where the structures that propel history, like the deep undercurrents of the ocean, may be discerned. The work of Max Weber and historical sociology was most central, in particular through protgs like Carr, Aron, and Dehio, for stimulating a conceptualization
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that placed power at the core of historical trajectory. Power associated with the state was subject to systematic inquiry. During the 1950s, as Kuznets was explaining and justifying the nation state as the unit of economic analysis, and GNP as the yardstick of economic growth, IR scholars were confronting the same issues of scope and indexation in conceptualizing appropriate yardsticks (and alternative metersticks) for power in international politics (Doran, 1991: 4758). Acknowledging that national power must include national will, strategic skill, and political coherence, Knorr (1956) argued that it is largely derived from the states resource base, without which there is no power or role. Thus, both actualized and latent capabilities are necessary to create and sustain a nations long-term growth in power and role. Encompassing state security and welfare, national capability can be effectively indexed with a bundle of indicators robust across states and, properly qualified, across time (Singer and Small, 1972). Indicators of power must reflect the size and development of the state on economic and military variables appropriate to the given system and interval of history. Although experts disagree in defining power, they are able to rank states consistently and independently in terms of how powerful the states are perceived to be. Without such intuitive ranking of perceived power, policy-makers could not plan and implement policies rationally. These perceived rankings of who has power are stable across cultures and are highly correlated with national capability (Doran, et al., 1974, 1979; Stoll and Ward, 1989). How does the material resource base of power change over time? Economists and economic historians have addressed extensively the dynamics of absolute economic growth both theoretically and in comparative historical terms (see references in Doran, 1971). Already generalized across states and periods of history by Kuznets (1930), Rostow (1960), Cameron (1961), and Kindleberger (1964) was the fact that the trajectory of absolute economic output follows the so-called S-curve traced by the logistic function. But power is relative, and lacking was any assessment of relative growth dynamics. Here the field of IR had to confront the fact that the term relative denotes a comparison which can be either a signed difference or a ratio of the things compared, and the further complication of determining the appropriate reference group: Relative to whom? is the essential question. As indicated above, structural theorists rejected the dyadic measureboth the absolute gap important in balanceof-power calculations, and Kuznets ratio important in economic growth (also used in transition theory)as too coarse (unprocessed) to measure interstate relations, instead defining systems structure in terms of distribution and percentage share. But the question remained: If the systems structure truly affects the reality of international political behavior, some IR-sensitive measurement involving the relative power scores should register this unique effect by some clearly identifiable difference from what one would expect when examining the absolute scores in isolation. Position in the hierarchy, transition, and deconcentration processes are just as easily attainable from the absolute scores, and thus give no clues to how systems structure affects the foreign policy behavior of its member states. On the other hand, when relative power is considered dynamically over lengthy time periods, the unique effect of systems structure on the nature and behavior of the units is finally able to be measured. The dynamic of relative power over lengthy time periods is the only measuring stick able to capture that which is unique and determinative about systems structure. The true impact of systems structure on international political behavior lies in the full dynamic of the state power cycle (Doran, 1991: 5458).
DORAN:
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In capturing the appropriate intervals of history, the dynamic of relative power can be theoretically conceptualized, quantitatively indexed, and empirically tested. Both cyclical and evolutionary notions of historical trajectory are intrinsic to the single dynamic of changing systems structure (see section IV). An important influence on the power cycle understanding of statecraft, the study of diplomatic history under Rodolfo Mosca in Bologna in 1964 provided this author with the Continental perspective of European diplomacy and how it evolved since the origins of the modern state system, an important complement to the governance perspective prevalent in the writings of English-speaking analysts following E.H. Carr.
Historys Dynamic: Mechanisms of Change

The historical dynamic of statecraft confronts the question whether war was a necessary instrument to restructure world power in the historical periods of systems transformation. The thesis that systems transformation is a structural discontinuity caused by major war is at the heart of much IR theory. According to Liska (1968: 59), the evolution of a European or any other international system is the story of conflicts which create the system and then later lead to its destruction. Thompson (1988: xii) states that global war emerged as a systemic mechanism for resolving policy-leadership disputes in the later fifteenth century. Since then, the mechanism continued to evolve. Hegemonic stability (Gilpin, 1981), power transition (Organski and Kugler, 1980), and long cycle (Modelski, 1978) theories also identify major war as the vehicle whereby a new systemic hierarchy is born. According to power cycle theory, causation went in exactly the opposite direction, from structural transformation to war. A discontinuity of structure (inversion in the prior trend) and associated foreign policy expectations caused the massive warfare. War is not necessary for systemic changeand hence power cycle theory could not be based philosophically either on existing cyclical conceptions of history or on the Marxian negation of opposites, each of which posits that peaceful change is not possible. Attempting to formulate an historical dynamic which did not require war as the mechanism of systemic change (so that peaceful change is possible) and yet admitted evolutionary and cyclical change, power cycle theory (Doran, 1969; 1971: 211) postulated two general mechanisms of change in the international system that could effect evolutionary developments (complementarity and competitiveness) and two that could lead to cyclical repetition (cooperation and competition). These principles of change were drawn from the sociopolitical behavior of individuals and groups . . . which underlie the historical process (1971: 2n). Complementarity is a process in which governments interact, each contributing something the other does not possess, or does not possess in sufficient quantity or with sufficient fit. Combination of these separate infusions of idea or substance moves the process forward. Competitiveness is a process in which governments clash behaviorally or attitudinally in such a way that something is negated or eliminatedsomething perceived to be inefficient or unjust, unhelpful or redundant, or otherwise an obstacle to the forward movement of joint enterprise. Competitiveness makes use of the opposing strengths of another actor to eliminate the problematic nature of ones own institutions, laws, or behaviors. Member states may at times have to raise the status of justice and lower that of
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efficiency as elements in this process (Doran, 1971: 6). Operating side by side, complementarity and competitiveness facilitate the progressive dynamic of history. In contrast, cooperation is alone not very productive of change. Just as Carr criticized the notion of the harmony of interests as dangerously misleading and unproductive of useful change, so cooperation where there is no possibility of mutual additions or eliminations from the interaction (for instance, the repeated attempts at collective intervention in the 17th through 19th centuries) is bound to be disappointing. Likewise, competition where there is no possibility of eliminating contradictions within the institutions, laws, or behaviors of either actor is merely destructive rivalry. This is the kind of rivalry that existed prior to the middle of the 17th century on virtually an annual basis between the noble factions of rival citystates and principalities. No useful accommodation emerged from these empty clashes of ritualized violence. Nor is anything gained for the systems forward and upward trajectory from the competition for share that merely redistributes proportions of the whole. But complementarity and competitiveness make the resulting cyclical path of state rise or decline (reflecting the states competitiveness in the system), the very essence of systems structure, and of structural evolutionand hence at the very heart of the historical trajectory of international politics and statecraft (again, Figures 1 and 2). Doran (1971: 5961) explains how these long-term organic changes (essentially cyclical with respect to the system) have vital evolutionary consequence: for the rise of potential hegemonies, for the emergent systemic threat, and (ideally) as a guide to policies of systemic adjustment to alleviate strains arising from changes on the cycles.
History can thus be seen as a composite of the two types of manifested reality, the cyclical and the evolutionary, one driven by competition and cooperation, the other propelled by competitiveness and complementarity. Neither type of reality exists in isolation, just as neither principle (nor its corrupted subform) has a pure embodiment in the normal behavior of states. Yet one can conceive of cyclical and evolutionary manifestations graphically as a periodic curve (representing cyclical movement) located on an oblique line (representing evolutionary development) extending away from the origin at an angle greater than zero degrees but less than ninety degrees (Doran, 1971: 11).
Thus, complementarity and competitiveness conjointly explain the movement of history along its trajectory, including the absolute economic growth patterns of states comprising the systemthe differential absolute levels and rates of economic growth which together comprise the aggregate system. Their subforms, cooperation and competition for share (proportion)regardless of whether the aggregate is increasing (as in Figure 1A, top right), constant, or decreasingyield the resultant cyclical redistribution of these shares (proportions) in history (Doran, 1991: 6364). Together these four mechanisms of change account for the single dynamic of world politics that brings together cycle and linear change in a positive, upward, reinforcing direction. They are the underlying processes driving movement on the state power cycles (changing systems structure). The power cycle thus combines both kinds of historical trajectory, the evolutionary and the cyclical, in a complex single dynamic of changing systems structure in which component states pass through a generalized cycle of rise, maturation, and decline in relative powera cycle that establishes the context for the states foreign policy behavior in history. What sets the cycles in motion?
DORAN:
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Principles of the Single Dynamic of Power Cycle Theory

The principles of the power cycle reveal the unique perspective of statecraft in the expectations, and unexpected non-linearities, of relative power change in contrast to the perspective of absolute trends. Deduced from thought experiments in 1964 about what drives systemic change, the principles of the power cycle explain how absolute growth differentials in the system create the rise and decline of states. Differing levels and rates of absolute growth among the states in the system set in motion a particular non-linear pattern of change on each trajectory of relative power. At base, shown schematically in Figure 1A, a states competitiveness in a systemthe direction of change on its power cycleis a function of how its absolute growth rate compares with the absolute growth rate of the system (the systemic norm). Two principles underlie this dynamic. (1) A states systemic share will increase when its absolute growth rate is greater than the systemic norm. Moreover, a single state growing faster than the systemic norm will initiate momentum of change on state power cycles throughout the system. (2) Even when the differing absolute growth rates remain unchanged, a states relative power growth will accelerate only for a time and then (at inflection point F) begin a process of deceleration, due to the bounds of the system (finiteness of systemic share), which brings about peaking (Z) and a turn into relative decline. Similarly, accelerating decline will (at inflection point L) begin to decelerate to a minimum level. Observe in Figure 1B(a) that even for a state with a constant absolute growth rate (hence a trend of ever increasing absolute gains), the very nature of relative share (between 0 and 100% of the system) forces the relative power trajectory (depicting relative gains) to shift from accelerating rise to deceleration towards a peak. In particular, after the inflection point, there is a qualitative shift in the systems structure that belies naive expectations drawn from the ever-larger absolute gains. Figure 1B(b) illustrates a yet more profound difference between absolute and relative power dynamics. A large state sees absolute gains that are much greater than the absolute gains of a smaller, faster-growing statebut the small state is increasing its relative share, pulling the larger state into relative decline (although still diverging in absolute terms). On the state power cycle, there are five critical points of sudden, unanticipated change at which the projection of future relative power, and hence of future security and foreign policy role, changes abruptly. Each of these critical points in the power cycle corresponds in the states experience to a time when the tides of history have shifted in the international system of interaction (Doran, 1991: 104106): birth throes of a major power (lower turning point beginning the cycle) trauma of constrained ascendancy (inflection point on the rising trajectory) trauma of expectations foregone (upper turning point) hopes and illusions of the second wind (inflection point on the declining trajectory) throes of demise as a major power (lower turning point at end of the cycle). Together the relative power changes on these component power cycles map the changing structure of the system. Recall that systems structure is a ratio of state relative to the system of competitors for power share. Over time, the changing systems structure reflects each states rise and decline in systemic share. According to the principles of the power cycle, this single dynamic of changing
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Absolute Capability Growth Rates Percent
C A B
Absolute Capability Level
Time Systemic Upper Bound Relative Capability Percent
Time
100% Absolute Capability Percent
Effective Upper Bound (due to competition for share)
Z F L
Time
Time
1A. The Dynamics of Absolute and Relative Capability: Principles of the Power Cycle (Changing Systems Structure). * Curves of absolute growth rate (depicted is an accelerating system): A: major power system; B: state B; C: entire system * Critical points: F: first inflection point; Z: zenith; L: last inflection point
Source: Doran (1971: 193). This figure appears as figure 3.1 in Doran (1991: 63).
FIGURE 1. Limits of Power: Bounds on Relative Growth
systems structure (roughly sketched in Figure 2 for the post-1500 historical state system) will reflect the trends of history and shifting balance of world forces experienced by statesmen and assessed in economic and diplomatic history. The tides of history follow the paths of ascendancy and demise and the shifting trends at critical points of non-linearity on the component state power cycles. Power cycle theory thus discloses the reason for the shocking surprises that ensue from differential growth and that periodically traumatize history. At each time point in history, the single dynamic records each states clearly defined past trajectory, and its likely but yet-to-be-determined future trajectory, of power and role vis-a-vis that system. It thus reveals at each step how statesmen would perceive the states past and future evolution as a major player in the system. The power cycle is a state image in the sense of Boulding (1956) and Kelman (1965: 25), a conception encompassing specific memories and
DORAN:
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Largest State: Absolute Growth (Trend of Absolute Gain in Level)
Large State Corresponding Relative Growth (Trend of Gain in Relative Share)
Small State (growing faster)
(a)Conflicting Messages of Absolute and a) Conflicting Messages of Absolute and Relative Growth after Inflection Point Relative Growth after Inflection Point.
(b)The Tiny Absolute Gains that Win b) The Tiny Absolute Gains that Win Relative Share "Relative Share"
1B. Delusions of (a) Huge Absolute Gains and (b) Absolute Divergence. Assumes constant rate of absolute growth (no decrease or increase in % growth rate), so that the trend of absolute gain shows continuing increase in gain, but the trend of gain in relative share shifts from increasing to decreasing gain. FIGURE 1. (continued)
expectations as well as perceptions of the present.1 It also thereby meets Collingwoods (1956: 282) requirement that the analyst of history achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing. With future projections of power and role embedded at each historical point in the cycle, this uniquely international political dynamic captures the concerns of statecraftthe expectations, and unexpected non-linearities, of relative power change that so greatly impact state behavior. Power cycle theory is thus a decision theory responsive to structural change (Levy and Collis, 1985; Levy, 1987; Cashman, 1993: 269). What happens at a critical point is a profound change in foreign policy expectations, indeed a complete inversion in the trend of expectations (a change in the slope of the relative power curve, depicted for the first inflection in Figure 3A). This inversion in thinking marks a sharp break with the past, a discontinuity in how the state views future options. The first inflection and upper turning points trigger doubt as to whether the state can assume all of the foreign policy goals it may have envisioned for generations (Figure 3B). This inversion in the trend of expectations comes as a shock to the foreign policy elite, who must suddenly confront both ineluctable limits and monumental uncertainty. The further the state looks into the future, the larger the disparity between future reality and its prior foreign policy expectations (Figure 3C). The more far-sighted the policy planning, the greater the error of judgment that suddenly confronts decision-makers.
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Ottoman Empire
United States
Hapsburg Empire
France Netherlands Sweden Britain 1500 Russia/Soviet Union 1575 1650 1725 Prussia/Germany 1800 Japan 1875 China 1950 1993
Percent Shares of Power in the Central System for Leading States (the decline of the Venetian Empire during the 16th century is not depicted).
Source: Conceptualized by Doran (1965; updated 1981; 1989; 1993), based on estimations for the period 15001815, and data for the years 18151993.
FIGURE 2. Dynamics of Changing Systems Structure 15001993
DORAN:
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Before C.P. After C.P.
Relative Power
time A. A. Inversion in the Prior Trend of Future Foreign Policy Expectations: From Ever Increasing to Decreasing
Relative Power
time B. B. Shock of Sudden Discovery of Inverted Trend: Trauma of Constrained Ascendancy
Relative Power
Relative Power
Power
Role
time
t1
t2 t3
time D. D. Lag of Role behind Power: Ricocheting Concern for Systemic Adjustment
C. Shock of Foreign Policy and Security C. Re-evaluation: Continuing Reductions
Source: Figures A and D in Doran (1989: 376), and Doran (1991: 9899). Figure C in Doran (1991: 98).
FIGURE 3. Crisis of Foreign Policy Expectations at First Inflection Point
Three processes underlie the causal impact of the critical point on major war. First, the cognitive shock of a critical point is itself destabilizing. With the tides of political momentum suddenly shifting, proving the states future security projections dangerously misguided, the critical point becomes a wrenching invitation to anxiety, belligerence, and overreaction. Gone are the familiar foreign policy anchors for state and system. Second, adjustment to structural change at the critical point is strained by existing powerrole gaps, which are suddenly squeezed to the surface of foreign policy consciousness and appear formidable
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indeed as the state and system try to cope with the shifting tide (Figures 3D, 4A). Powerrole gaps aggravate the tension and uncertainty at the critical point because they raise the stakes. Third, increased inelasticities regarding future security and role lead to an inversion of force expectations that accelerates the movement to war. Figure 4A depicts bargaining between state and system in terms of the power a state attains (in rough analogy to supply) and the role that the system is willing to ascribe to the state (demand), where the price is the probability of war (Doran, 1972, 1974). [But beware extending the analogy: for example, equilibrium occurs if and only if price (the probability of war) is zero.] In a critical interval, the diplomatic environment hardens; attitudes rigidify (inelasticities steepen), increasing the probability of war for a given powerrole gap. The normal and anticipated outcome is for equilibrium to be restored in terms of cooperative actions and responses. If impediments to adjustment emerge, freezing interest deficits and surpluses throughout the system, rational decision-making breaks down (Figure 4B). The uncertainties and shocks to foreign policy sensibility at a critical point cause both potential deterrer and aggressor to find acceptable or necessary a use of force previously considered unthinkable (Doran, 1991: 3642, 107112). This transmutation of mentality is analogous roughly to the inversion of demand and supply expectations in so-called inverted markets such as during the 1929 stock market collapse and the 1979 oil price run-up (Doran, 1980, 1991: 172176). Expansion to major war follows the Jervis (1976) and Mansbach Vasquez (1981) model of a conflict spiral via a cobweb process (Doran and Marcucci, 1990). Thus, in a critical interval, the short-term response to the loss of normalcy in the environment is a behavioral mechanism that is counter-intuitive (does not apply under normal conditions). States struggle for comprehension amidst discordant and seemingly contradictory realities. In these existential moments, with the ingredients necessary for rational choice absent, strategy is flawed. Power cycle theory exposes the dilemma that arises for rational choice when the agents long accustomed to rational decision-makingsuddenly are unable to meet the criteria for acting rationally, a condition labeled nonrationality (Doran, 1991: 2543; 2000c). In confronting the principles of the power cycle, the analyst discovers that the perspective of statecraftof relative (systemic structural) changeis indeed idiosyncratic, evoking a paradigm shift in understanding foreign policy behavior. Like the statesman, the analyst grasps the most important difference between absolute and relative capabilitythe nature of their paths over long time periodsand hence the full significance of systemic bounds. At critical points of unexpected non-linearity, where the tides of history suddenly shift, the expectations induced by continuing absolute trends no longer match the shifted trend in relative power. It is traumatic when a very small change on the states power cycle alters completely the direction of future expectations. It is traumatic when a meteoric rise in relative power suddenly peaks even as absolute capability makes its greatest gains. No theory of international politics can ignore this fundamental difference in trends and expectations, the conflicting messages and shocking surprises. No explanation of major war can dismiss this discordance in perspectives as a probable cause.
DORAN:

Achieved Power (State A) AP
27
Ascribed Role (System) AR
pt > 0
Interest Deficit
p=0
Percentage of Systemic Power and Role at Time t p=0

P E R
Interest Surplus pt > 0
AP
AR
4A. Equilibrium on the Power Cycle for State A and the System.
Source: Doran (1991: 37), based on Doran (1972, 1974).
AR
pt > 0 p=0 pt > 0
AP
A'R A" R
(a)Normal Operation a. Normal Operation
(b) Increased Inelasticity b. Increased Inelasticity of Role Ascription of Role Ascription
(c) Abnormal Operation: c. Abnormal Operation: Inversion Expectations Inversion ofof Expectations
4B. From Disequilibrium of Structure to Disequilibrium of Decision Process: The Mechanics of Crisis During Systems Transformation.
Source: Doran (1991: 38), based on Doran (1972, 1974, 1980).
FIGURE 4. The Crisis of Systemic (Mal)Adjustment: Inversion of Force Expectations
28
Power and Role, Structure and Agency

The principles of the power cycle, and their predictions, are quite in contrast to those of other structural theories (Figure 5). A crucial empirical test regarding the dynamics of change prior to World War I validates power cycle theory and underscores the paradigm shift in understanding that the theory entails. In other theories, expectations about the changing structure of the system precisely match extrapolation of the absolute capability trends (Mastery of Europe thesis). Only from the power cycle perspective, do the perceptions and concerns of contemporaneous statesmen look neither distorted nor incongruous (Doran, 1991: 7989).
Paradigm Shift: Seeming Puzzles of History Resolved

The empirically determined power cycles for Germany and Russia (Doran and Parsons, 1980) triggered much theoretical discussion among political scientists and historians. Substantively, the debate centers around the almost universal pre-1914 belief in inexorably increasing Russian power (Wohlforth, 1987: 380). Why did European decision-makers foresee great relative gains for Russia? Were the statesmen correct? What were the implications of rising Russian power for Germany, and hence for German behavior? These curves were provocative because, while they accurately captured the prewar trend (perceived and real) of Russia rising from its low point and Germany near its peak, they show Germany peaking in relative power well in advance of the war (Figure 5A), counter to accepted historical interpretation and common sense. The power cycle argument that expectations, and hence behaviors, are based on an extrapolation of existing trends became a focus of debate. Wohlforth emphasized the need to combine perceptual and structural explanations. But, just as he seemed ready to accept the full implications of his findingsnamely, that contemporaneous statesmen realized Germanys leveling out of relative growth he did a volte face, accepting the arguments put forth by Kennedy (1984) that the contemporaneous perceptions of rising Russian power were misperceptions and that Germany was still a rising power prior to the war. Kennedy supported his arguments with the giantpygmy thesis. Germanys power was so much greater than that of Russia, and its yearly increments were so much greater, that surely Germany did not consider Russia a threat. Kennedy examined production data on steel, coal, and other manufactures. So obvious was Germanys superior strength, and so obvious did the continued rise in Germanys relative power seem, that the statesmen must somehow have misperceived reality. He thus posed two puzzles that historians must seek to explain. Puzzle 1: Why was Russian power before 1914 so absurdly overrated? ... Did they not see that Russia, despite its lurch towards industrialization, was a military colossus but an economic pygmy? Puzzle 2: Which power, Russia or Germany, was objectively the most likely to alter the existing order in Europe? (Kennedy, 1984: 2829) Accordingly, regarding the implications for Germany of Russias rapid growth from such a low level, Kennedys answer was A. J. P. Taylors Mastery of Europe thesis that Germanys fears of Russia were exaggerated . . . In fact, peace must have brought Germany the mastery of Europe within a few years (1984: 29).
DORAN:

Mastery of Europe Thesis "Mastery of Europe" Thesis
29
1907
1913 1914
Power Cycle Theory

(Perceptions of Contemporaneous Statesman)
5A. Contrasting Interpretations of Germanys Relative Power Trajectory in the European System 18701914.
Source: Doran (1991: 81).
Absolute Trajectories in Pre-1914 Period
Expectations of Future Relative Power In Pre-1914 Period Transition Theory Power Cycle Theory
Germany Britain Russia
Germany Britain Russia Germany Britain Russia
Germany to reign as new topdog (Master of Europe)
Germany's shock Germanys shock of "shifting tides" shifting tides (peak and enter enter (peak relative decline) relative decline)
5B. Dyads in a Systemic World: Confronting the Principles of the Power Cycle.
Source: Doran (2000: 362); and Doran (1992).
FIGURE 5. Paradigm Shift: Resolving Puzzles of History by Confronting the Principles of the Power Cycle
The dual schematic (Figure 5B) reveals that historical interpretation of Germanys pre-war trajectory involves deeper conceptual issues and the dynamics of international politics. In other theories and common sense expectations about the changing structure of the system (center schematic) match those
30
induced by extrapolation of the absolute trends (far left). Up until 1900, perceptions of the absolute trends projected continued rise in German relative power for over three decades into the 20th century (Doran, 1991: 112). In contrast (schematic far right), the principles of the power cycle reveal how the bounds of the system suddenly and unexpectedly forced Germany to peak in relative power a decade prior to the war. Statesmen saw ever greater increments of absolute growth for Germany; but they also saw a sudden halt in its prior rapid gain in relative share. In the power cycle assessment, what most triggered German angst in 1914, and German bellicosity, was the sudden discovery that the tides of history had shifted against it. Accounts of diplomatic historians support the power cycle assessment. With no history behind it save forty years of unchallenged success in an undeviating advance to greatness (Seaman, 1963: 143), and trust[ing] in a current that would carry [them] to [their] goal (Dehio, 1962: 233), the German Foreign Office and General Staff were shocked to discover that German relative power had peaked. Despite its greatest absolute increases ever, its relative power was locked in a structural vise. Germany and all of Europe were aware of the underwater current, so counter-intuitive, that shattered expectations of a continued German rise on its power cycle. The tiny absolute increments of Russia, in accelerating economic take-off at the bottom of the system, were sufficient to halt Germanys ascent and force it onto a declining path. The problem for Germany was not misperception of its power level, but very clear perception of a sudden and completely unexpected and even counter-intuitive shift in historys prior trend of relative power change in the system. This terrible period of history begins to make some sense when the analyst experiences the conflicting messages and shocking surprises with which statesmen had to contend as Germany suddenly bumped against the upper limit of its relative power growth. In the hour of its greatest achievement, Germany was driven onto unexpected paths by the bounds of the system. The structural, perceptual, and behavioral aspects of causation must be assessed holistically for a full paradigm shift to the dynamic systemic view. When examined from the perspective of long-term changes in relative power, the giantpygmy argument and the mastery of Europe thesis are shown to be wrong. From the power cycle perspective, the perceptions of contemporaneous statesmen are neither distorted nor incongruous, but accurately reflect the reality of power trends and the unique concerns of statecraft.
Role, Power, and PowerRole Gaps

As explained above, role is coequal with power regarding what matters in statecraft, both national security and the liberal concept of a legitimate world order. While power constitutes the means, foreign policy role involves the concerns and ends of statecraft. Based in the reality of the push and shove of world politics, foreign policy role indexes the behavior and position of the state manifested in external relations. Distinct from power, role is in the long term affected by the trajectory of power. Like power, role is necessarily systemic: although determined primarily by what a government itself does, a role exists only if the other governments accept its exercise of that role. Strategy and bargaining (Figure 4) greatly impact this informal legitimization process. Consider the nuances and significance of foreign policy role involving Russia,
DORAN:
31
France, and Austria in 1852. Russia traditionally enjoyed the role of protector of the Balkan Slavs. Napoleon III of France pressed claims in the Ottoman as protector of Latin Christians. When Russias attempt to get equal acknowledgment of its position and claims was rejected by the Sultan, it suspended diplomatic relations with the Ottoman and expanded its territorial claims by occupying Moldavia and Wallachia. These actions led directly to the outbreak of the Crimean War. France had tried to usurp the Russian role. Other governments whose interests were threatened, especially Austria, were unable to salvage the Russian role, discourage the French acquisition of that role, smooth the transfer of the role, or prevent the relatively weakened Russia from expanding its role through aggression. Role thus is foreign policy behavior that the system has allowed the state to achieve (Holsti, 1991). Foreign policy role involves an acknowledged niche in which a country can use its power to obtain additional ends, in particular enhanced security. These behavioral niches change slowly over time in response to state purpose, strategy, capability, and the permissiveness of other actors in the system. How does foreign policy role change as power changes over broad periods of history? A states foreign policy expectations are tied to change on its power cycle, but power and role get out of sync because actors and system do not adjust readily to changes in relative power (Doran, 1989, 1991: 100103). On the upside of the power curve, the increase in power tends to exceed acquisition of role. The system is reluctant to yield role to the ascendant actor, or the rising state may prefer to postpone role gratification and responsibility until it could do so more easily (with greater confidence) and on its own terms (with less competition). On the downside of the curve, there is a tendency for role to exceed power, leading to overextension. Allies and dependent client states do not want the once-ascendant state to step aside, and elites accustomed to the benefits power bestowed do not want to yield role and face a different, more constricted, foreign policy setting. Long latent in statecraft, these powerrole gaps are shoved to the fore of diplomatic awareness and priority in critical intervals of suddenly altered security circumstance, greatly escalating the tension. They then abruptly demand adjustment. Within the dynamic context of power cycle analysis, the tension between power and role attains its fullest meaning and causal specificity regarding major war. Russia and Austria in 1852 were undergoing critical change in foreign policy outlook: Russia was experiencing the second inflection, and Austria had passed the upper turning point within the decade. When France sought to alter the status quo in the Ottoman, it thus unsettled two governments already attempting to cope with historys shifting tides. Under these circumstances of massive structural change and foreign policy reorientation for Russia and Austria, a role challenge accompanied by the shock of relative power loss provided the sparks that ignited war. The strain between power and role goes to the heart of the capacity to act in foreign policy. It is a structural disequilibrium conceptually distinct from (yet related to) the many variants of rank disequilibriumaspirations/achievements, power/status, achieved/ascribed power, hierarchic equilibrium (Midlarsky, 1988). The powerrole gap involves means (achieved power) versus attained interests or ends (ascribed role), and the adjustment between power and role is necessary to establish systemic equilibrium among all of the members (Doran, 1989, 1991: 134138). The rank models also lack specificity regarding timing of a conflict outcome. But, by assessing the many
32
sources of disequilibrium in the context of the power cycle dynamic, one can obtain a more encompassing notion of the requirements for equilibrium (Doran, 1974, 1980, 1989, 1991: 34; Doran, with Ward, 1977). The aspirations achievement disparity in Anderson and McKeown (1987) involves the inversion of expectations (trends) occurring at critical points on the power cycle itself; and the disequilibrium between power and role subsumes the powerstatus gap.
Systems Transformation: Historical Origin and Impact

When a number of states pass through critical points at about the same time in history (a period of systems transformation), long-standing contradictions in the system are exposed, and states throughout the system seek redress of their own perceived condition of internal disequilibrium. Assisted by Figure 2, consider the pattern of abrupt structural change and systemic tension in several historical examples of world war (Doran, 1971, 1991, 2000a). The tension came not so much from upward or downward mobility, but from a governments sudden discovery that its projected future security and foreign policy role had dramatically changed. Contrast the outlooks of Charles V and Philip II of Spain in the 16th century, following the Spanish Hapsburg peak in relative power circa 1580 (Doran, 1971: 65105). Although the Spanish-Austrian Hapsburgs remained the dominant power in Europe for decades, Philip II suddenly interpreted foreign policy quite negatively, expressing both paranoia and belligerence. Long-standing economic and financial policies had undermined Spains power base from within, accelerating its relative demise as much smaller states began to consolidate power. Only 8 years after this peak, in 1588, Spain struck out against the British fleet, and the fateful Protestant wind defeated its Armada. After a half-century of warfare, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) broke up the Hapsburg Complex, permitting the too-rapid rise of France on the world scene. Also problematic was the tardy transfer of prestige and role from the Hapsburgs to Sweden and Holland, who enjoyed a meteoric rise, and to France, consolidating its power under Richelieu. The massive changes in structure and challenges to role eventually strained the system at its core, resulting in the Thirty Years War. By ignoring the early 17th-century disparity between excess Hapsburg role and declining Hapsburg power, the system only encouraged an assertive Louis XIV to attempt to take by force what French ascendancy had not yet obtained through more benign means (109144). In the mid-17th century, passage of Louis XIVs France through a first inflection point, abruptly threatening slower relative growth, led to confrontations with Sweden (an erstwhile ally) and Holland (exhausted politically), each discovering that its relative power had peaked, creating severe problems of overextension. Meanwhile Prussia was rising in the heart of the central European system, and Britain, reconstituted, was enjoying a renaissance of power growth by the end of the 17th century, stimulating it to confront France directly with an army on the Continent. The wars of Louis XIV once again resulted from a systemic transformation that saw each of Europes major players viewing its own foreign policy role in highly altered and more troubled fashion. French power peaked sometime during the latter 18th century in the face of growing British industrial and naval strength. This transformation of the system which came on the heels of startling declines in power in northern and central Europe as well, and for the same reasons of lagging industrializationsaw a
DORAN:
33
belligerent France resisting its systemic fortunes under Napoleon (177188). The contrast between the sense of systemic responsibility (role) on the part of the declining Russians as expressed by Alexander I, and the belligerence (role) of the declining French under Napoleon, was an acknowledgment of the failure of Europe to assimilate dramatic structural change without major war. In these three world wars, the existing system of maintaining order collapsed under the weight of arrangements whose foundations had long since been eroded away (Doran, 1971). By 1885, the tides of history once again created a crisis for systemic adjustment. As argued in Doran (1989, 1991), the period 18851914 was a disequilibrated system in crisis, a system that finally collapsed in world war because an injurious combination of critical changes obscured the need for vertical corrections of role while it unduly increased confidence in short-term power balancing. The historical record in terms of what statesmen saw and how they reacted (Doran, 1991) is characterized by concerns about growing imbalances in power and role involving many states in the system (Figure 6A). World War I arose from an attempt by the system to constrain rising power rather than adjust to it. Faced by the rapid ascendancy of German power in the late 19th century, the other members of the European system banded together to try to offset the German advances in relative power. So meteoric was this vertical change that fear blinded the declining states to the need for a transfer of role and status. While they denied intent, the effect was to encircle Germany according to the traditional conception of the balance of power. It also made Germany increasingly restless and distrustful, and strained the system into excessive disequilibrium. War was felt to be unavoidable because the disequilibrium was endemic, and governments were not willing to make the necessary role adjustments (134140, 151153, 160165). Analysis of the type of critical point, the nature of the powerrole equilibrium, and whether or not the gap was being addressed (Figure 6B) reveals both the apparent rationality and yet the actual illusionary nature of many of these perceptions (Doran, 1991: 137138). Bent upon a larger international political role, Germany became a very dissatisfied actor, but it could wait for greater status and role so long as it could anticipate future relative power growth. Accelerated growth for Britain, Austria-Hungary, and France lessened their rate of decline (second inflection), supporting the illusion that adjustment was not necessary. Germanys rise bumped against the upper limit to its relative growth and, by 1914, was suddenly pulled into decline by Russias rapid growth rate. The tides of history had shifted against it while it was still severely role disequilibrated. This confluence of shifting tides exposed and tested the contradictions in the system; war became by default the only apparent instrument to release the severe structural strains. World War II followed from the allies attempt to learn from their past mistakes, and to correct the deficiencies of the balance of power, but it was a tragic misunderstanding of the dynamics of equilibrium (151165). They sought to correct the wrongs done to Germany prior to World War I by yielding position and role to Hitler. But by 1936, Germany was in aggravated decline in relative latent capability, notwithstanding its great absolute strength and lessened rate of relative decline. Germany could make no further claims on the system for a larger role or greater status. Moreover, Hitlers territorial demands were inherently aggressive and had to be confronted on these grounds alone. The correct strategic response to Hitler, evident from a larger concept of equilibrium, was a firm policy of balance and opposition. Appeasement was exactly the wrong policy.
34

Projection Before Critical Pt.
Aust-Hung, Britian, France Role Surplus (Decline to Inflection)
Possible Adjustments to Eliminate Gap Trauma of the Critical Pt.

Role Role Role
Role
Power
GAP
Power Power Feared: Role loss Attempted: Power growth
Power *Inflection pt. Illusion: Success
PowerRole Disequilibrium
Russia Role Deficit (Passage through Minimum)
Power
Power
Power
Power *Low pt.
Role
GAP
Role Feared: Declining power
Role Attempted: Role redress Power
Role Illusion: More redress needed
Power
Germany Role Deficit (Ascending to Peak)
Power
Power *High pt. GAP
Role
Role Feared by G, Attempted by Sys.
Role Role Attempted by G, Feared by Sys. Reality of Systemic Illusions: Only war can redress its gap
6A. Figure 6 A. PowerProjections, Adjustment Delusions. Power and Role and Role Projections, Adjustment Delusions Source: Doran, "Systemic Disequilibrium, Foreign Policy Role, and the Power Cycle," Source: Doran (1989: 395). Journal of Conflict Resolution (1989), p. 395
Relative growth advantage Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Gap being redressed Post-crit. pt. trajectory Decline Decline Rise Decline Decline Rise (Exit) Rise Decline Nature of disequilibrium Role surplus Power surplus Power surplus Role surplus Power surplus Power surplus Role surplus Power surplus Role surplus Apparent Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Real No No Yes No No No No No No
Year of Crit. Pt. 1882-87 1884-89 1894-99 1900-05 1902-07 1907-12 1910-14 1910-15 1911-16
Nation Austria-Hungary Italy Russia Britain Germany Italy Austria-Hungary

US
Type of Crit. Pt. I2 I2 L I2 H L L I1 I2
France
6B. Critical Points, PowerRole Gaps, and Adjustment Delusions.

Source: Doran (1991: 136).
FIGURE 6. Disequilibrated System in Crisis, 18851914
World War II showed that states ignore the balance of power at their peril (Lieber, 1991: 162163) and that illegitimate interests must never be appeased. World War I showed that states ignore powerrole equilibrium at their peril and that rising power cannot be halted. The bounds of the system constrain relative growth and future role opportunity, and when expectations long deferred suddenly are foreclosed, the urgent demand for redress of this injustice, and to relieve the structural disequilibrium, provokes the tragedy of world war.
DORAN:
35
World War I did not cause the relative decline of Germany any more than it toppled British dominance, structural changes long in the making. Thus, the notion that war was necessary to restructure world power in 1914 belies historical fact. Restructuring of power relationships was already ongoing. Role admittedly was more dilatory, and the war accelerated role changebut not in the direction the parties intended. Role shifted to the Soviet Union and the United States rather than to either the initial belligerents or the defenders of the old order. Major war neither precipitated the important changes in power nor was a reliable purveyor of role.
The Bounds on Machtpolitik: Equilibrium and Systemic Adjustment

The Great War was an aberration, not only not essential to structural change, but a consequence of the failure to adjust to the rapid structural changes in time. The cause of the war was failure to accommodate Germanys rise with legitimate role adjustments before it was too late, before the bounds of the system shattered its expectations of continued rise and future opportunity for role gratification. Kupchan (1994: 14) describes this failure as elite vulnerability. To understand the limits and surprises of power change is to recognize that a legitimate and just solution to the dilemma of peaceful change is possible. Governments must understand that the bounds of the system, competition from even the smallest competitor for share of power and role, will force even the most vigorous rising state to peak in power share and, ultimately, to enter relative decline. Then, rising states will avoid fantasies (based on obvious absolute trends) of unlimited growth and eventual dominance, and they will not defer role gratification on the mistaken assumption that they will be able to make it up in the future. Declining states will resist the temptation of pre-emptive attack to halt that rise (a so-called preventive war that is illegitimate and will fail in the long run), and they will not deny increased role to the rising state out of fear that it will overwhelm and dominate all. Powerrole gaps can remain hidden under the cloak of statecraft for quite a long time; in consequence they are the more explosive when they are revealed. Machtpolitik can be contained, and security ensured amidst structural change, by a dynamic equilibrium involving both balance and accommodation of legitimate contributory roles, properly timed to changing power cycles (Doran, 1991: 166190).
Dynamic Equilibrium
Power cycle theory is one of many efforts to conceptualize a dynamic equilibrium in the context of rising and declining states, but the mechanisms of equilibrium are quite different. Gilpin (1981), in line with Carr (1939) and Bertrand Russell (1952: 106), offers a concept of equilibrium that focuses upon governance and requires a benevolent hegemon. Equilibrium for Rosecrance (1963: 220232) involves a homeostatic regulator that varies with the type of international system, but provides the stability inherent in each system. Liska (1957) conceives of equilibrium as the unilateral effort by each state to achieve a type of Pareto-optimal relationship between its relative power and certain values such as security, welfare, and prestige. Equilibrium for Mandlebaum (1987) is achieved by a cartel (Concert) of leading states who collude by constraining output (power share) so as to raise price (mutual security). The assumption that an organization of great powers could work out the conditions of balance through negotiation, rather than through the rough and
36
tumble of competition, is appealing. But states are unable to constrain change in power share, let alone negotiate such change, except regarding actualized military variables. Moreover, the cartel model necessarily considers the rising state as a price cheater which will not cooperate with the other oligarchs in manipulating market share in the interest of higher profits. Such a model thus seems to deny the systems responsibility to adjust to the natural rise and decline of states. Potential rising states like Germany were expected to brake their desire for a larger role in the system, just as states like France, Britain, and Austria-Hungary were expected to hang onto theirs regardless of how the structure of power might be changing. In contrast, power cycle equilibrium prescribes a dual approach to order maintenance. Assimilation to structural change involves adaptation which is reciprocal rather than one-sided political change (Doran, 1971: 21). Both the system (declining states) and the rising state (potential aggressor) are expected to adapt. Both foreign policy role and power are expected to be involved in the maintenance of equilibrium. To ensure stability amidst structural change, dynamic equilibrium must precede and complement the balancing process (Doran, 1969: 2). The balance of power is static, operating on a flat chessboard where the number of players, the rules, and the moves are all known: any attempt to upset the balance (aggression) will be offset by short-term shifts among the other players. But the rise and decline of states twists and distorts the chessboard such that the game can no longer be played. If attempted amidst such structural distortion, the balance of power would send off the wrong signals, attempting to bolster long-term decline in power and to halt long-term ascendencyin effect, resisting rather than adapting to the structural change. Hence, the balance of power alone was inadequate to ensure peaceful change. By establishing foreign policy role as coequal in significance with power in matters of statecraft, and as evolving as part of the single dynamic of structural change, power cycle theory makes possible a broader concept of dynamic equilibrium keyed to structural change. Dynamic equilibrium exists when foreign policy roles have been able to adjust to the warps in the power relationships caused by changes on the state power cycles. Conversely, failure of foreign policy roles to adjust to power changes creates a structural disequilibrium, a strain between power and roles throughout the system that goes to the heart of the capacity to act in foreign policy. A dynamic equilibrium involves learning to apply the correct strategy of balance and opposition, or of adaptation and accommodation, depending on structural trends, the nature of demands on the system, and powerrole gaps (Doran, 1991: ch.7; Stein, 2001). Would-be aggressors must always be balanced and opposed regarding aggression and illegitimate interests. The system must also be prepared to adapt and accommodate to the legitimate, non-aggressive expectations of a rising state for enhanced roles and responsibilities, which requires the declining state to be willing, and allowed, to reduce responsibilities. This is not to say that systemic adjustment will be easy. Inertia of role change is even greater than that of power, and it can confound even the most accommodating system of states. Since structural change is usually linear, continuing prior trends, the presence of powerrole gaps does not become an issue until the gaps are quite large and/or one or more states experience a sudden inversion in the trend of future security expectations (critical point). Since enhanced security is always at the heart of strategy and bargaining whereby states seek a legitimized role, role gaps can be ignored if security is not threatened. Conversely, equilibrium
DORAN:
37
is most difficult to achieve, and most necessary, when structural change is suddenly non-linear, sharply altering future foreign policy roles and security for all states in the system. The lesson of history is that by then it may be too late.
Rational Choice and Strategic Bargaining

As argued above, power cycle theory exposes the dilemma that arises for rational choice when agents, long accustomed to rational decision-making, are unable to meet the criteria for acting rationally. The dilemma is not that the agents choose not to be rational, but that the agents suddenly confront a situation in which the criteria for being rational are not present (Monroe, 2001). A condition in which strategy is necessarily flawed because the ingredients essential for rational choice are absent has been labeled nonrationality (Doran, 1991: 2543; 2000c). Criteria which give rise to such conditions of nonrationality are intrinsic to the single dynamic. At a critical point, a sudden and ineluctable discontinuity of strategic expectations may outweigh the struggle to act rationally. The conditions that have long guided rational foreign policy strategy are no longer valid. The states entire future foreign policy outlook has changed direction. States struggle for comprehension amidst discordant and seemingly contradictory realities. In these existential moments, the ingredients necessary for rational choice are absent, and strategy is flawed. The abnormal mechanism of inverted force expectations initiates a conflict spiral and the consequence again and again has been major war. The single dynamic thus confronts rational choice models of major war and, inevitably, those models confront the single dynamic. For example, Fearon (1995) and Powell (1996) assumed that, prior to the war, Germany was aware of its peaking in relative power and fearful of Russias rising power. Fearon deduces that private information is key to the decision for war. The principles of the power cycle reveal that the assumed knowledge of relative decline was in fact an abrupt, immense, and shocking surpriseafter a decade of conflicting messages regarding the future trend of relative power, and amidst the greatest absolute growth in its history. As late as 1905, expectations were that German relative power would continue to rise for at least another 30 years (Doran, 1991: 112). The vigorous prior trend of relative power increase was so discordant with the abrupt halt of that trend, and in contrast to the continuing dynamism in absolute growth, that this puzzle of history challenges historians and political scientists to this day (Doran, 1991: 7989). Another rational model, for instance, argued the superiority of its index of power because it agreed with the Mastery of Europe thesis that Germany had not peaked, in contrast to data on Germanys power cycle that deviate inexplicably from the trend at the end of the period prior to the war (Nieu, et al., 1989: 301). How can rational models and strategic bargaining assess these discordant realities experienced by decision-makers as they confront the shifting tides of history (Morrow, 1989; Nicholson, 1992; Lake and Powell, 1999)? How can Powells formal model account for the fact that expectations are altered abruptly at the critical points when awareness of decline suddenly dawns, so unexpectedly and counter-intuitively (Doran, 1999), and what are the implications for appeasement in that model? Similarly, Kim and Morrow (1992), assessing the setting of a rising state and a declining state moving toward and beyond transition, conclude that the likelihood of major war is greatest as the challengers rate of relative growth declines (Bueno de Mesquita, 2000: 467). This point is the rising states first inflection
38
point! As argued in Doran (1989), there is nothing perceptually or mathematically unpredictable about the movement of a dyad toward transitionso that Bueno de Mesquitas (1978, 2000) scepticism about the existence of structural change that is not predictable does apply to the claims of transition theorywith the sole exception of the occurrence of a critical point on the power cycle of one (or both) of the states in the dyad prior to transition (hence that scepticism is unwarranted regarding the structural change posited in power cycle theory). Houweling and Siccama (1991) confirm the finding that a transition predicts to major war only in the presence of a critical point, so that the transition theory is misspecified; it is the sudden inversion in the trend of the rising states relative power trajectory that explains the war outcome. Powells (1996) assessment of systemic disequilibrium treats states as bargaining over territory as in classical realism (rather than role, as in power cycle theory), but his conclusion that the initial beliefs and initial offers are determinative of the war outcome demonstrates the importance in the single dynamic of the sudden discovery of an altered future security environment. Rational decision-making must confront again the bounds of the system, the shifting tides and the undercurrents running against the absolute trends. Again, the principles of the power cycle contain the causal mechanism underlying the decision for war.
The Power Cycle and Kindlebergers National Cycle

Kindleberger (1996: 2526) speculates about the existence of a national cycle in a book entitled World Economic Primacy 15001900. What is the relationship between the hypothesized national cycle and the relative national power cycle, which he also mentioned but did not discuss? Kindleberger states that the national cycle reflects the general process of change in absolute growth indicated roughly by the S-curve, where decline reflects the diminishing marginal returns of a large or aging economy. The economic indicators he examines are very broad, including GNP, per capita income, technological change, productivity, demographic variables, and military variables. Even for GNP alone, variations in the height and length of the diminishing marginal returns of the national cycles are profound. Kindlebergers national cycle thus does not itself reflect the relative power trajectory of power cycle theory. Confusion arises because he addresses the question of which state has economic primacy at any given time, and the question of how such economic primacy passes from one state to another in history. These are questions about relative position and change, and Kindlebergers assessments are based on an intuitive comparison of the absolute growth patterns of the states. Hence, when Kindleberger speaks comparatively, he is speaking about relative power as reflected in the state power cycle. Given the huge variation in the national cycles of absolute growth, those less knowledgeable would have difficulty indeed trying to derive the implications for relative power change even though all the data required are contained in the absolute scores on the national cycles. Power cycle theory enables analysis to compress all of this information into the various state power cycles comprising the system. And the theory warns analysts of the conflicting messages and surprises inherent in the relative power trajectory, of the structural undercurrents which confound even the strongest absolute growth. Logically, one can pass from Kindlebergers national cycle to the state power cycle if the analysis (1) encompasses all the basic economic plus military variables,
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and (2) considers each country relative to its principal competitors at each timepoint in history. It was in assessing the patterns of population, industrial, and military growth for European countries in the 17th through the 19th century that power cycle theory found its first empirical support, the first indication empirically of the contradiction between the vigor of absolute growth and the onset of relative decline (Doran, 1971: 127133, 176179), namely Frances turn into relative decline in population during the greatest population expansion in her history in the late 18th century.
The Single Dynamic in Economics and Political Economy

In its theoretical assessment of the absolute and relative dynamics of economic growth, power cycle theory advances understanding of both the dynamics of competition and the behavioral responses to its discordant realities and sudden non-linearities. All the analytic paths of research in a field ultimately accumulate around a limit point of understanding, at once more focused, more encompassing, and more nuanced (Doran, 1991: 1516). In this age of globalization, the ability to discern nuance is ever more important as the security and welfare concerns within multiple regions increasingly ratchet to the top of the international system and to the top of strategic priority (Alt and Chrystal, 1983; Caporaso and Levine, 1992; Gilpin, 1987). (1) The principles of the power cycle express the dynamics of competition, with broad applicability. They are principles of change in any finite system, explaining how absolute growth patterns in the component parts change the structural relations of the whole. Equivalent descriptors for the power cycle dynamic include changing relative power, or single dynamic, or competition in a finite system, or logistic growth in a finite system, or competition for percent share, or structural bounds on statecraft (Doran, 1991). To confront the principles of the power cycle is to confront the principles of competition for share. The trend line (slope) reflects current competitiveness. Expectations regarding future share change abruptly and irreversibly at critical points in the dynamics of competition. Thus, the shocks and surprises of non-linear change, the counter-intuitive effect of systemic bounds, are likewise experienced by firms, industries, and any entities competing for market share. These non-linearities and shocks are not apparent incan even contradict the patterns, trends, and growth cycles discernible in absolute output; and they would likely cause similar problems of adjustment. Moreover, the power cycle theory notion of competition rejects the destructive mechanism of zero-sum behavior and social-darwinism (Pearl, 1924) wrongly attributed to power relationships. Competition for share is guided by principles of competitiveness and complementarity, the dynamic elements of productive interaction that shape changing structure in any social system (see section III). In likewise rejecting social-darwinism as pernicious, theories of cooperation sometimes reject the notion of competition itself. But even though firms in joint ventures can and do cooperate, can there be a successful general economic theory of cooperation? Such cooperation, as has been pointed out (Lipson, 1984; Stein, 1990; Milner, 1992), when generalized, always leads to collusion. Collusion causes inefficiencyand rigidity. In contrast, competition (power relationships) can be salutary and productive as well as descriptively valid. Joseph Nye, in a brilliant insight about world politics, observed that in USCanadian relations, although power exists in the relationship, the use of force does not (1976: 399). Hence,
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interdependence is not the absence of power relationships so much as the absence of force relationships, across a prodigious range of issues, between certain governments, as the concept of the democratic peace has more broadly contended (Doyle, 1986; Russett, 1993). A theory of competition guided by competitiveness and complementarity undergirds a framework of productive interaction in economics and world politics. This pluralistic conception of international political economy is at odds with the hegemonic model (Katzenstein, 1983). Consider the creation of the euro. In the hegemonic view, each European currency was being Germanicized, and the Bundesbank had become the European central bank. In the power cycle view, each individual currency, including the deutschmark, was being Europeanized. A greater share of the EU-member GDP exists outside Germany than within. This is a distinction with a difference, as the individual European finance ministers supporting the euro-project would attest. Consider arguments linking usage of a key currency to the dominant trader-investor in a region. Institutional accessibility and common usage may make a currency appear dominant locally, but much more determines currency usage patterns than the locus of trade. On a global basis, there will be a multiple of key currencies used. In the world of international finance, the flexible and multiple character of key currency usage will be even more evident as bundles of currencies are commonly exchanged. (2) Power cycle theory discloses many counter-intuitive aspects of relative power change. A large state (firm, industry) whose absolute growth rate is smaller than that of its competitors so weights the systemic norm that it (a) increasingly is competing against itself for share much more than against other states (firms, industries); this explains how relative share can drive absolute growth behavior, which in turn can erode competitiveness and impact the future trajectory (Doran, 1991: 220226). Recall the economics of America at high noon. Since greater increments in absolute output provide very little or no gain in market share, this change in expectations leads the state (firm, industry) to abandon the strategy of maximizing competitive edge. Not able to expand market share, it shifts to a mentality of trying to protect that share or to extract monopoly rents from that share. It becomes oligopolistic not so much by choice as by circumstance. At the same time, that large state (firm, industry) so weights the systemic norm that it (b) can long maintain systemic share; this explains the complacence that long attended diminished US economic competitiveness. But once relative decline sets in, the same absolute growth rate differentials will yield accelerating decline, explaining the imperative for US economic resurgence. Similarly, expectations that Japan would continue to rise on its power cycle, replacing US leadership, were based on extrapolation of absolute trends, reminiscent of the Mastery of Europe expectations regarding Germany in the early 20th century. But the principles of the power cycle show that the expectations induced by absolute trends do not hold. The tiny increments of a faster-growing small economy, Russia vis-a-vis Germany circa 1900 and China vis-a-vis Japan today (Figure 7), are sufficient to force the much larger economy toward its peak in relative share (Doran, 1991: 232236). Nonetheless, Japans role in dynamic equilibrium continues to be pivotal (see Inoguchi, this issue). (3) The logistic of absolute growth for a given state does not underlie and does not explain the logistic relative power dynamic of that state (Doran, 1991: 1014 and ch.3). Even as a state is experiencing very rapid absolute growth on a given indicator (product sector) so that its absolute trajectory is nowhere near the upper end of the logistic, the state may have peaked and entered decline in its relative
DORAN:

Future Percentage Shares US 40% 30% 20% 10% 2030 0% 1986 J SU C
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Trillions (1986 USdollars) (1986 US Dollars) 16 14 US 2.0% 4.0% 12 J SU 1.5% 10 C 7.0% 8 6 4 2 0 1986 2000 2010 2020
50%
2000
2010
2020
2030
Trillions (1986 USdollars) (1986 US Dollars) 16 14 US 2.5% 4.0% 12 J SU 1.5% 10 C 7.0% 8 6 4 2 0 1986 2000 2010 2020
50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 2030
Future Percentage Shares US J SU C
0% 1986
2000
2010
2020
2030
Trillions (1986 USdollars) Trillions (1986 US Dollars) 18 16 US 3.0% 14 J 4.0% 12 SU 1.5% 10 C 7.0% 8 6 4 2 0 1986 2000 2010 2020
Future Percentage Shares 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 2030 0% 1986 J SU C US
2000
2010
2020
2030
Continuation of Present Trends in Absolute Growth of GNP: The Japanese Rise will not Continue. Source: Doran (1991: 235). Rosecrance (1990: 39) provided the starting values and growth rates (2.5% for US). FIGURE 7. Systemic Bounds on Japanese Growth: Competitor Taking Shares is China, Not US
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trajectory on that same indicator. This was precisely the situation of Germany in the decade prior to 1914 on a number of key economic indicators. And it was the reason for choosing the accelerating absolute growth rate curves (Figure 1) depicted in the first publication of power cycle theory (1969, 1971). Hence, although rapid shifts in comparative advantage give rise to intense economic conflict between rising and declining economies (Gilpin, 1987: 112, 56), focus on the logistic effect of absolute growth can distort the issue of where on the logistic of relative power each economy really is. Declining rate of absolute industrial growth may account in part for Britains decline in relative power at the end of the 19th century (Yoon, 1990), but it cannot account for Germanys logistic peak in relative power well before the war. How the accelerative phase of economic growth will affect a states power cycle trajectory depends greatly on its timing vis-a-vis the set of competitors for share. In the Asian subsystem today, the huge variation in size and wealth of the major states suggests that their rates of growth in per capita income and economic productivity will have significant differential effects on their power cycles (Doran, 2000b: 1924). (4) Thus, the principles of the power cycle help focus and clarify the debate regarding absolute and relative gains (Stein, 1990; Grieco, 1993). In addition to the obvious discordance between ever increasing absolute gains and ever declining relative (market share) gains to a logistic asymptotic level (the systemic bounds on its relative growth), Figure 1B marks the first inflection point where the trend of relative gains first begins to counter the trend of absolute gains (where the bounds of the system first impact the growth of relative gains). The tremendous strength of systemic bounds in constraining relative growth after the first inflection point cannot be overstated. Consider Germany (Prussia) at an earlier interval on its power cycle, enjoying soaring absolute gains and ever increasing relative gains in the European system until it inflected just before the Franco-Prussian war. After the war, the Prussian gain relative to France continued to lessen, notwithstanding the fact that Prussia had gained and France had lost resources of increasing importance to Frances industrial development! In the prior decade, Alsace-Lorraine had quadrupled its output of iron ore, its share of French production growing from about 10 to over 30 percent (Landes, 1969: 226227). Bismarck attacked France and acquired new resources, but these huge absolute gains could not halt Germanys declining relative gains (Doran, 2000a: 359361). Power cycle theory shows not only that absolute and relative gains are ineluctably tied to each other. Even success in maximizing absolute gains cannot guarantee commensurate relative gains, or relative gains at all. (5) Such discordant messages between absolute and relative gains (losses), and the sudden shifts in the trend of market share, create a widespread and deepening sense of insecurity, perhaps never so great in history as for the disequilibrated European system of 18851914. Consider the behavioral response to the complexities of absolute and relative gains when the tides of history are shifting and the system reverberates with demands for systemic adjustment. What takes hold is the logic of inverted force expectations, a counter-intuitive behavioral mechanism (that does not apply under normal circumstances) leading to aggressive competition as actors exaggerate the gains from force use and depreciate the costs. Attitudes rigidify as fear and uncertainty preclude a return to the rules of normal behavior that prevailed in the long prior interval of more muted structural change. Power cycle theory divides history into two totally different decision environments determined by the nature of structural change. In normal periods, when structural change
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is essentially linear, a sense of assuredness about the direction of power trends (future expectations) creates a sense of political predictability and calm, a rather certain political environment in which firms can make investment and production decisions with comparative trust and confidence. In critical periods of abrupt nonlinear change, when governments and firms are no longer able to project trends reliably, they look inward, become wary and defensive about the external environment and prone to risk-aversion. Amidst severe uncertainty and strain, a cognitive concern with relative gains would affect strategic logic in much of commerce as well as politics (Aggarwal, 1985), possibly inducing protectionist activism or even trade wars (Gowa and Mansfield, 1993; Roy, 1998). The relative gains at issue here are not only the market share gains of the state (firm, industry) compared with its own absolute gains from the political or commercial transaction. Here the full range and complexity of the absolute and relative dynamics throughout the system of interaction must come into playas indicated in Doran (1971: 47) and in the model encompassing the absolute and associated relative levels, trends, and gaps for the set of units within a single functional relationship (Doran, 1974). There are many types of relative gains about which justice must equilibrate. Here the signed difference definition of relative becomes just as important as the ratio meaning of relative in systems share, especially when the absolute trajectories continue to diverge as in Figure 1B(b) (Doran, 1991: 54): Absolute differences do matter for the great concerns of welfare also tied to differences in absolute levels and rates (Snidal, 1991; Landes, 1998). Thus, the richpoor gap model, so subject to confusion regarding growth rates, gaps, and gains, can be clarified in the context of the single dynamic. Globalization highlights the conflicting messages of absolute and relative growth dynamics.
Additional Research Questions

Lateral Pressure. Choucri, North, and Yamahage (1992) theoretically and empirically show how lateral pressure extends influence outward beyond the territory of the state. How is this horizontal dimension of state power and role linked to the power cycle dynamic across time and across countries? When is such extension of influence legitimate (systemically accepted and non-coercive, guided by reciprocally beneficial principles of complementarity and competitiveness) foreign policy role rather than power expressed in control? Dynamic Equilibrium in the Latter 20th Century. To what extent does the struggle to define new roles (Doran, 1991, 1996; Schmidt and Doran, 1996; Schmidt, this issue) amidst structural change, via principles of complementarity and competitiveness, explain the successful maintenance of world order in the generation of a new system? Deterrence. Perhaps allies (Huth, 1994) at critical points are most vulnerable to external challenge and least successful there in deterring aggression. Perhaps the location of aggressors on their power cycles may explain when they are more or less likely to yield in the face of a deterrence effort (Doran, 1991: 176). Changing Industrial Structure, Trade and Corporate Alliances. Yoon (1990) examines the relative impact on industrial structure, late in the cycle, of home industry
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investment migrating abroad to seek greater trade opportunities. Sands (2003) applies power cycle theory to assess the changing structure of the automobile industry and its impact upon commercial and trade policy advocated by the North American automobile companies. Kozintseva (2003) explores the implications of the principles of the power cycle (competition for share) for the alliance behavior of high technology and information technology firms. Alliance. Chiu (this issue) reinforces the findings of Siverson and Starr (1991) on diffusion. But how does the power cycle help unravel the puzzle regarding when alliances contribute to peace (Walt, 1987) and when they only contribute to territorial security? Findings by Vasquez (1993) suggest that alliance behavior is highly differential. Equilibrium strategy is likely to be central to this conundrum. Replications and Other Extensions. Houweling and Siccama (1988, 1991) initiated a very important chain of research that confirmed the finding that transitions predict to major war only in the presence of a critical point. Anderson and McKeown (1987), Spiezio (1993), and Schampel (1993), examining militarized disputes, and James and Hebron (1997), using disputes and international crisis behavior data, expand the application of the theory to a wider range of international conflict. In this issue, power cycle theory is applied to regional systems by Parasiliti (Middle East), Kumar (Asia) and Geller (nuclearized Asia). Needed is an international regime based on moderate realism which allows for peaceful change.
Structural Change and Dynamic Equilibrium in 21st-century Asia

Power cycle theory claims that the nature of dynamic equilibrium must change as the contours and membership of the central system change. Asia is the region where the greatest movement on the power cycles of leading states will take place, and where some of the greatest structural shocks will occur. It is thus in Asia, in the 21st century, where power cycle analysis holds perhaps its greatest implications for future world order. A dynamic equilibrium is necessary to ensure security amidst so much structural change, and such lethal weaponry. This dynamic equilibrium does not just rely on the flat balance of power chessboard of alliance behavior, such as that in South Asia between Pakistan and China or between India and Russia. A dynamic equilibrium internal and external to South Asia must take into account the movement up and down the power cycles of each state and the impact such movement has on the foreign policy role each government is attempting to play. Just as India and China would like to play larger roles outside the region, Pakistan would like to play a larger role within the region. While defending territorial security, can order management internal and external to South Asia arrange for such adjustment and adaptation in terms of foreign policy role? What happens to Russias and to Japans power and role (Inoguchi) matters greatly to dynamic equilibrium. Will Russia recover as spectacularly as did Japan in the 194560 interval (Schmidt)? Long sensitive to concerns about too much or too little Japanese power, governments like Indonesia find that with an increase in Chinese relative power and the possible peaking of Japanese relative power, the matter of a dynamic equilibrium of power and role within the region carries new and immediate policy implications. Issues such as the reunification of Korea, and
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the peaceful coexistence of Taiwan and China, at present are not primarily the preoccupation of the regional balance between China and Japan. US involvement is a kind of safety-valve for regional tensions. But were Chinese power to increase rapidly at the cost of that of Japan, or were Chinas rise to be slowed by faster growth of India and Russia, both the regional and global equilibrium would suddenly change. According to power cycle theory, such a structural situation is not unlike that in Europe a century ago. So long as the US, Japan, the EU, and Russia are careful not to neglect their own security, the system can assimilate the rise of China by giving it a benign, constructive role in international organizations, allowing integration and exposure to democratization to have its ameliorating internal effects, and yielding to China some of the status that it so relishes. On the other hand, as was true for Germany before 1914, a tight alliance around China would feed its sense of paranoia regarding encirclement and could not halt its incipient rise. The bounds of the system will do thatand will make purposeful exclusion from a constructive role a recipe for catastrophe.
Note
1 In Kelman (1965) see, in particular, essays by Kelman (quoted), by Deutsch and Merritt, and Scott.
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Biographical Note
CHARLES F. DORAN is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Washington, DC, directing both the International Relations Program (Global Theory and History sub-field) and the Center of Canadian Studies. A Senior Associate at the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the North American Committee. ADDRESS: SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, 1740 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC, 20036, USA [email: charlesdoran@att.net].

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

Introduction: The Concerns of Statecraft

Foreign Policy Role: The Coordinate Concept that Amends Realism

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Economics and Power Cycle Theory

The Quintessential Problem of International Relations

Kuznets: Levels and Variability of Rates of Growth

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

Systems Structure and the Dilemma of Peaceful Change

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Economics and Power Cycle Theory

Philosophy of History and the Single Dynamic

Trajectory of Statecraft: Basis of Change (Evolving Power Potentials)

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

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Economics and Power Cycle Theory

Historys Dynamic: Mechanisms of Change

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

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Economics and Power Cycle Theory

Principles of the Single Dynamic of Power Cycle Theory

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

Absolute Capability Growth Rates Percent

Absolute Capability Level

Time Systemic Upper Bound Relative Capability Percent

100% Absolute Capability Percent

Effective Upper Bound (due to competition for share)

FIGURE 1. Limits of Power: Bounds on Relative Growth

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Economics and Power Cycle Theory

Largest State: Absolute Growth (Trend of Absolute Gain in Level)

Large State Corresponding Relative Growth (Trend of Gain in Relative Share)

Small State (growing faster)

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

FIGURE 2. Dynamics of Changing Systems Structure 15001993

Economics and Power Cycle Theory

time B. B. Shock of Sudden Discovery of Inverted Trend: Trauma of Constrained Ascendancy

C. Shock of Foreign Policy and Security C. Re-evaluation: Continuing Reductions

FIGURE 3. Crisis of Foreign Policy Expectations at First Inflection Point

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

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Economics and Power Cycle Theory

Ascribed Role (System) AR

Percentage of Systemic Power and Role at Time t p=0

Interest Surplus pt > 0

(a)Normal Operation a. Normal Operation

(b) Increased Inelasticity b. Increased Inelasticity of Role Ascription of Role Ascription

FIGURE 4. The Crisis of Systemic (Mal)Adjustment: Inversion of Force Expectations

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International Political Science Review 24(1)

Power and Role, Structure and Agency