The Power Configurations of the Central Civilization/World System 1500-200 BC: Slouching Toward Hegemony.

This paper is the eighth in a series in which the political careers of civilizations/world systems receive snapshot codings of their overall power structures at feasible intervals. The narratives are produced by collating histories with large frames of reference. The codings are done using a nominal variable, polarity, with seven available values. Previous articles in the series have examined the Indic system 550 BC--AD 1800, the Far Eastern 1025 BC--AD 1850, the Southwest Asian c. 2700--1500 BC, the Northeast African c. 2625--1500 BC. The Northeast African and Southwest Asian systems and sequences merged c. 1500 BC to form the Central system. Previous papers have coded this system from 1500 BC to 300 BC. The current paper narrates and codes the century from 300 BC to 200 BC at 10-year intervals, and examines the entire period from 1500 BC to 200 BC in various ways. The current paper narrates and codes the century from 300 BC to 200 BC at 10-year intervals, during which the system ended a long run of multipolarity, and transitioned to unipolarity (polar state: Rome). In this century, imperialism, balance of power, cold war and containment are all notably present. Various patterns are also discerned for the entire period from 1500 BC to 200 BC: multipolarity and unipolarity, prevail throughout, with a slight trend toward unipolarity; configurations tend strongly to persist from one observation to the next, with some very long "runs"; breaks in a run tend to take the form of "leaps"; and Toynbee's "Helleno-Sinic model" of a civilization that oscillates between greater and lesser degrees of centralization better fits the data than a model of progress toward increasing centralization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]