Decline of Empire: The Internal Explanation

In: Administration & society, Band 26, Heft 1, S. 78-98

Abstract

Although the American decline has frequently been depicted as the result of economic disinvestment, military overextension, and the like, this article suggests that America's decline results from increasingly fragmented political institutions. Citing organization theory research documenting structural tendencies toward decentralization, and the writings of Toynbee, Spengler, and others who have identified decline with institutional fragmentation, the author argues that the U.S. government has recently undergone dysfunctional structure decentralization. Additionally, it suggests that America's institutional fragmentation restricts the government's ability to comprehend the issues it faces, because contractually induced analytic cognitions now overwhelming aggregationally induced synthetic cognitions.