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Plunging to Leviathan?: Exploring the World's Political Future
Can we predict the world's political future? The surprising wealth of research critiqued in this book suggests that earlier assessments of world trends pointed too pessimistically toward the likelihood of a future repressive world-state. Offering an impressive analysis of long-term historical patterns, population, and social changes, Graber presents a fresh look at current trends. His long-term evidence shows why the League of Nations and the United Nations are to be taken seriously as new postconquest models of political evolution. The tables, data, review, and critique of previous historical research make this an essential guide to scholarly understanding of our political future.
- GenresPolitics
136 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2005
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October 30, 2022
A neat, if relatively loose prediction of the world long into the future as more and more states become more globalized.
It was a fun read.
However, while there is much breadth in this work, there seems to be little depth. From the occasional factual error (ranging from the mild, such as calling Sima Qian "Ssǔ-Ch'ien", to the more objectionable, such as implying that America did not have any imperial holdings from 1911 onwards, or that they were at least trying to clean their hands of it, which was far from the case.), to the numerous, lengthy personal asides about the author's failed attempts at numerically analyzing the data and his celebratory lunch when he finally worked it out, there was much that could've been cut out for the sake of actually getting to the point.
That being said, as an exercise in predicting the future, it's definitely much more rigorous than the other examples I've read so far, and it at least applies scientific rigor to the analysis of polities and their formings, breakings up, and their gradual progression. While the results themselves may not be agreed with, the methods and the range of scholarship the author shows the reader is something to appreciate.
It was a fun read.
However, while there is much breadth in this work, there seems to be little depth. From the occasional factual error (ranging from the mild, such as calling Sima Qian "Ssǔ-Ch'ien", to the more objectionable, such as implying that America did not have any imperial holdings from 1911 onwards, or that they were at least trying to clean their hands of it, which was far from the case.), to the numerous, lengthy personal asides about the author's failed attempts at numerically analyzing the data and his celebratory lunch when he finally worked it out, there was much that could've been cut out for the sake of actually getting to the point.
That being said, as an exercise in predicting the future, it's definitely much more rigorous than the other examples I've read so far, and it at least applies scientific rigor to the analysis of polities and their formings, breakings up, and their gradual progression. While the results themselves may not be agreed with, the methods and the range of scholarship the author shows the reader is something to appreciate.
Displaying 1 of 1 review