corroboration where history has failed to oblige. Power transition is not unique in
this respect. Realism more generally may be to some degree self-fulfilling. Security
discourses in China and elsewhere in Asia – much more than in Europe – tend to
take realism’s fundamental propositions as verities. It would be ironic if US–China
relations deteriorated because each power based its expectations on how the other
will behave on theories that lack empirical validation.
Notes
1 Aaron L. Friedberg, ‘The future of United States–China relations: is conflict inevitable?’,
International Security, 30 (2), Fall 2005, pp. 7–45.
2 Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 4.
3 A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger(Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980).
4 A.F.K. Organski, World Politics(New York: Knopf, 1958), pp. 315–16.
5 Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, p. 19.
6 A.F.K. Organski, World Politics(New York: Knopf, 1958), pp. 364–67.
7 Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, pp. 19–20.
8 Ibid., p. 61.
9 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in International Relations(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981).
10 Ibid., p. 186.
11 Ibid.,Relations, p. 187.
12 Ibid.,pp. 191–93.
13 Ibid.,p. 198.
14 Ibid.,p. 200.
15 John R. Oneal and Margit Bussmann, ‘Do hegemons distribute private goods?’, Journal
of Conflict Resolution51 (1), 2007, pp. 88–111.
16 Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, p. 19; See also Ronald L. Tammen et al.,Power
Transitions: Strategies for the 21st Century(New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000), pp. 6–8.
17 Gilpin, War and Change in International Relations, p. 144.
18 Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and William C. Wohlforth, The Balance of Power in
World History(New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), p. 231.
19 Walter D. Connor, ‘Dissent in Eastern Europe: a new coalition’, Problems of Communism
29 (1), January/February 1980, pp. 21–37; Philip Windsor, Change in Eastern Europe
(London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1980).
20 Hans Mommsen, The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy, trans. Elborg Forster and Larry
Jones (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
21 Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, p. 44.
22 Henk Houweling and Jan G. Siccama ‘Power transition as a cause of war’, Journal of
Conflict Resolution32 (1), 1988, pp. 87–102; de Soysa, Oneal, and Park, ‘Testing the
transition theory with alternative measures of power’; Oneal, de Soysa, and Park, ‘But
power and wealth are satisfying’.
23 Lemke and Reed, ‘Power is not satisfaction’, pp. 511–16.
24 Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger, p. 19. See also Tammen et al.,Power Transitions,
pp. 6–8.
25 Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939(Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1973); Robert Keohane, After Hegemony(Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1984 ).
26 de Soysa, Oneal and Park, ‘Testing the transition theory with alternative measures of
power’.
27 Organski and Kugler, The War Ledger.
28 Missing data were filled by interpolation.
230 A critical analysis of power transition theory