著者

田中 明彦

出版者

財団法人 日本国際政治学会

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1986, no.82, pp.94-115,L10, 1986-05-17 (Released:2010-09-01)

参考文献数

80

被引用文献数

1

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Recent theoretical efforts in international relations focus increasingly on building grand and dynamic theories with major emphasis on cycles in addition to trends. This essay is to critically review an important part of these recent efforts: long cycles both in economic sphere as well as in political-military sphere and their linkages. First, recent researches in the Kondratieff waves are briefly summarized as those emphasizing on (a) technological innovations, (b) capital accumulation, and (c) resource abundance and scarcity. Second, George Modelski's “long cycles” theory is examined with particular emphasis on how it treats economic-political linkages. Third, a brief summary of the Wallersteinian “world-system” approach is given. How it relates long cycles in economics (the Kondratieffs) with the rises and declines of hegemony is the case in point. I summarize Bousquet's attempts to critically examine Wallerstein and others' early effort and to reconstruct it focusing on technological innovations. I suggest that current efforts in long cycles both in economic and political spheres have strong similarities with such early works by Toynbee and Akamatsu in the 1930s and 1940s. Recent efforts have clear advantages in research environment both in terms of increase of increase of empirical data and availability of computers, however. I argue, however, that more conceptual clarity and sophistication is necessary if the current efforts are to go beyond a simple revival of the research a half century ago.