How orders rebuild after they fragment

The index reads a country at a moment. This study reads the opposite motion over the long run: how political orders reunite after they break apart. It covers 30 political systems (25 core cases plus 5 comparison cases), from Tawantinsuyu and the Zulu Kingdom to the European Union.

A note on where this lives. This study is part of a separate fragmentation research program. It is conceptually related to the Modernization Index but computed entirely separately. It is not part of any country's MI score.

Four pathways and their duration

Each reunification is placed in one of four pathways. The classification depends on how established the earlier system was and how quickly reunification happened. The average duration of each pathway is the study's main descriptive result:

Construction

n=13

119year average

Integration built from shallow or fragmented predecessors. Examples include China, the EU, the Inca, Silla Korea, and Meiji Japan.

Restoration

n=5

131year average

A deep prior order rebuilt largely as it was, with few institutional features changing. Middle-Kingdom Egypt is one example.

Negotiation

n=4

308year average

A deep order reunited slowly through bargaining rather than conquest. This pathway had the longest average duration in the sample.

Redesign

n=3

149year average

A deep order quickly rebuilt in a new institutional form, with many features changing. Argentina and Brazil are examples.

Bargained reunifications lasted about 308 years on average, against about 119 to 149 years for construction, restoration, and redesign. The sample is small, but the difference is substantial.

Relationships in the sample

Correlation −0.84

Established systems changed less. The more integrated the earlier system was, the fewer institutional features changed during reunification. This relationship is strong in the study sample (p < 0.001).

Correlation about 0.83

Slower reunification changed more. Among well-established systems, slower reunification was associated with a larger loss of the old system's integration. Gradual bargaining changed more of the earlier arrangement than a rapid rebuild did.

76%

Warning signals appeared in 76% of core cases. Declining administrative performance, weakening coordination, or falling legitimacy appeared before the system came apart.

coordination problems

The most common reason for failure. When these orders came apart, they most often did so because the parts could no longer coordinate, rather than because one part was conquered.

The cases support the idea that reunification can change institutional form. They do not support a one-way process in which systems only become more integrated. Some became less integrated during reunification.

Cases in the study

The 25 core cases span roughly four millennia and every inhabited continent:

China · European Union · United States · France · Spain · Germany · Italy · Japan · Argentina · Brazil · Australia · Canada · Netherlands · Switzerland · Ethiopia · Vietnam · Poland-Lithuania · Russia (Muscovy) · Silla Korea · Mughal India · Maurya India · Safavid Persia · Middle-Kingdom Egypt · the Inca (Tawantinsuyu) · the Zulu Kingdom.

How the pieces fit together →State of the world →How the country score works →