The Global Crisis

This article begins from a review of various approaches to global modeling, concluding that, by reducing our world to physical and economic categories alone, one cannot explain the workings of the world system. Any adequate global model, it is argued, must also account for social and political forces. The author views integrated global modeling as a multidisciplinary effort which must develop a symbiosis of physical/economic and social/political categories. Toward this end, the fulcrum of politics and decisionmaking in a global setting is examined, and an analytical model of world politics based on four key-forces is suggested. On the basis of this model, principles of political forecasting at the global level and three possible scenarios for the year 2000 are discussed.