Is a World State Just a Matter of Time? a Population-Pressure Alternative

Abstract

Previous efforts to forecast political evolution have been atheoretical extrapolations, with time itself the only independent variable. A mathematical population-pressure theory of political evolution is summarized and applied to two new time series for 20th-century polities—one for the number of states as traditionally identified and a second for the number of “states” when the League of Nations and the United Nations (but not their members) are considered autonomous political units. The number of states unexpectedly increased in proportion to global population density (N= 32.85 × p^1.018 for population in billions); the number of “states,” however, as theoretically expected, decreased in proportion to it (N= 89.30 ÷ p^1.186 ). A future population of, say, 10 billion accordingly is predicted to consist of 342 states and 6 “states.”