![]() Political scientists at their annual conventions and related meetings are very comfortable discussing economic power or military might, but not demographic power or ‘youth bulges’. While changes in power, such as relative economic power, are well studied in international politics, power is conceived as economic or military, not population. Interestingly, military leaders such as Eisenhower or, more recently, the head of the CIA Michael Hayden have been more aware of possible interrelationships between population and conflict. Organski, population is rarely acknowledged at all by the major theorists of international politics ( Morgenthau 1948 Organski 1958 Organski et al. Indeed, with the notable exceptions of Hans Morgenthau and A. polarity or alliance behaviour) that preclude population. Shunning the life sciences costs political scientists a better understanding of political behaviour ( Thayer 2004 b Barkow 2006).Ĭonflict is typically studied through the lens of domestic (such as regime type or militarism) or systemic factors (e.g. For traditionally trained social scientists, the biological is taboo, and population is thus neglected. Population, and insights from the life sciences more broadly, fall outside the standard social model forcefully advanced since Durkheim-social facts may only be explained by other social facts ( Barkow et al. The reason why says much about the health of the study of international politics. Yet, the relationship between population and war is not one of them. Political scientists are open to many theoretical and methodological approaches to the analysis of war. ![]() The tectonic plates of population change are shifting underneath the feet of political scientists, and the resultant analytical and policy earthquakes will remake the features of international politics in this century. Just as an earthquake compels one's attention whether one is a geologist or not, population change will be the earthquake in the study of international politics that compels the attention of the discipline. For political scientists, studying the relationship between population change and war is a bit like geological change-not immediately important and so it is infrequently noticed. ![]()
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