Levy, Jack. Power Transition Theory and the Rise of China.
In: Ross, Robert S, and Feng Zhu. China’s ascent: power, security, and the future of international politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.
"I argue that applications of power transition theory to the rise of China are compromised by the failure to recognize both the theoretical limitations of power transition theory and the contextual differences between a potential Sino-American transition and past power transitions. I give particular attention to the theory's focus on a single international hierarchy and its lack of a conceptual apparatus to deal with global-regional interactions, which are important because China is more likely to pose a threat to US interests in East and Southeast Asia than to US global interests, at least for many decades" (11).
Reviews Organski's contribution to power transition theory. "Organski and his colleagues measure productivity in terms of GDP/capita. Their aggregate measure of power is the product of GDP and political capacity. If a great power increases in strength to the point that it acquires at least 80 percent of the power of the dominant state, it is defined as a 'challenger' to the dominant state and to that state's ability to control the international system" (13).
"It is the combination of parity, overtaking, and dissatisfaction that leads to war, though power transition theorists have been inconsistent regarding the precise relationship among these key causal variables. In the most recent statement of the theory, it appears that dissatisfaction and parity each approximate a necessary condition for war between the dominant state and the challenger" (14).
"Thus, population has a critical impact on power in the long term; economic growth has a large impact in the medium term; and political capacity has its greatest impact in the short term" (16).
"The question, according to power transition theory, is not whether China will eventually overtake the United States, since that is practically inevitable once China completes its modernization and moves up its growth trajectory, but rather when and with what consequences. Power transition theorists equivocate in their discussion of the timing of the transition but not about the conditions determining whether the transition will be peaceful or warlike" (16).
"Power transition theory posits that national power is a function of population, economic productivity, and the political capacity to extract resources from society and transform them into national power. Thus in most applications of the theory national power = population * GDP/capita * political capacity. One problem with the emphasis on population and GDP is that while GDP captures quantitative changes in the growth of the economy as a whole it does not fully capture qualitative changes int eh form of technological innovations that generate new leading economic sectors and trigger paradigmatic shifts in economic production" (18).
"To summarize, although power transition theory suggests that China's overtaking of the United States is both inevitable and imminent sometime within the next generation, a focus on the leading economic sectors and technological innovations that drive them suggests a more cautious attitude in predicting a Sino-American power transition" (20).
"To summarize, although power transition theory claims to provide a theory of great power war at the top of the international hierarchy, a look at its application to historical cases reveals that in important respects the theory mis-specifies the causal mechanisms leading to war" (30).
