(Page 2 of 22) - Bayesian Decision-Makers Confront the Power Cycle: A Formal Model authored by Doran, Charles F.. and Doran, Kirk.

A Very Brief Statement of What Power Cycle Theory IS

As established by power cycle theory, the “power cycle” is the generalized path of a state’s relative power
change over long time periods, reflecting at once the changing structure of the system and the state’s rise
and decline as a major power in that system. The power cycle encompasses each state and the system in a
“single dynamic” of changing systemic share among states comprising the system (Figure 1A), as
defined more precisely below. Together, the relative power changes on the component power cycles map
the changing structure of the system across long periods of history (Figure 2). What is more, each state’s
future power and role projections (expectations) are embedded in the evolving contour of its power cycle,
as is the possibility that power and foreign policy role can get out of sync.

Power cycle theory establishes the “fundamental principles of the power cycle” that explain how absolute
growth differentials in the system set the cycles in motion and create the rise and decline of states.

Even

more strikingly, these principles reveal the unique “perspective of statecraft” in the trends and shifting
trends (the expectations and unexpected nonlinearities) of relative power change in contrast to the
perspective of absolute trends. Power cycle theory thereby unites the structural (state and system) and
behavioral (power and statecraft) aspects of world politics in its “single dynamic” of power and role.

In exposing contradictions between absolute and relative power dynamics, the theory establishes the
conflicting reality of each for international political behavior. Indeed, it argues theoretically, and
demonstrates empirically and in history, that the state can be pulled onto unexpected paths by the bounds
of the system, that the undercurrents of competition can counter and overwhelm even the strongest surge
in absolute power growth. Even in the hour of its greatest achievement, a state can be pulled into relative
decline by the tiny increases in absolute power of a much smaller but faster growing state.

Power cycle theory has many aspects, uniting structural and perceptual change in an encompassing theory
of international political behavior and general international equilibrium. We will here briefly summarize
aspects relevant to the purpose of this paper.

The theoretical, historical, and empirical demonstration that states indeed pass through cycles of relative
power across long time intervals also showed that these cycles correspond to the asymmetric logistic,
homologous to the growth (decline) of populations in limiting environments. An international system
contains 100 percent shares of power, and each state at each point in time possesses a fraction of these
shares. It is the “bounds of the system,” competition for share among the component states in the system,
that constrains the relative growth of each state, creating a structural undercurrent that contours the shape
of foreign policy possibilities as it pulls the component states through their power cycles. Thus, foreign
policy role follows the pattern of relative power change, normally with a lag, and is the “currency” of
international politics.

The theory presents argument and evidence that critical points of abrupt, unpredictable change occur at
certain times on this curve (inflection and turning points) where everything changes in structural terms for
state and system. In traversing a critical point on its power cycle, a state experiences the tides of history
shifting its relative power trajectory, inverting the trend of its change in systemic share.

At the lower turning point beginning the cycle, the state experiences the “birth throes of a major power,”
a youthful dynamism that may induce foreign policy imprudence. At the inflection point on the rising
trajectory (Figure 3, assessed below), the state experiences the “trauma of constrained ascendancy,” the
first shock to its heady growth. At the upper turning point, it experiences the “trauma of expectations
foregone” – the sudden discovery that its long period of relative power growth has peaked, that for the
first time in its history it must confront relative decline. At the inflection point on the declining
trajectory, the state experiences the “hopes and illusions of the second wind,” where improvement in its
rate of decline encourages the state’s foreign policy in a direction opposite to that of its continuing
downward trajectory. And at the lower turning point at the end of the cycle, the state is confronted with