The rise and fall of nations is a compulsory course that world-leading powers can never afford to neglect. It's observed that the relations between major powers, while contested on a global scale, are ultimately decided by domestic governance. The emergence and end of the Cold War, which reshaped the world order, were both triggered by the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, which stands as the most recent major case studies in the history of national rise and fall.
At the onset of the Cold War, George Kennan pointed out in his "Long Telegram" to the U.S. Department of Defense that the key to America's rivalry with the Soviet Union lay in maintaining the vitality of its own society. Kennan's prediction about the outcome of the Cold War came true. Consequently, the West fell into the ahistorical logic of the "End of History" thesis, equating America's victory with a specific social system.
Riding on the momentum of victory in the Cold War and coupled with the dominance of the new institutional economics over the world's intellectual market, Western countries have habitually viewed the rise and fall of nations through an institutionalist lens and affixed ideological labels to the systems of various countries.
However, this approach neither explains the divergent fates of different countries under the same system (such as the United States and the Philippines, China and the Soviet Union) nor accounts for the disparate economic situations of the same country implementing an identical system in different historical periods (such as China before and after the reform and opening-up drive). Institutionalism is incapable of solving the mystery of "social vitality" that dictates the rise and fall of nations.
Unlocking the "black box" of national rise and fall requires a new research unit. In contrast to the highly ideological institutionalist interpretations, the research unit of organizational degree derived from the organizationalist approach is far more capable of explaining the disparities in national development.
Organizational degree is an objective entity that exists at the "actual existence" level. In the history of nations, the evolution of human civilization has been a process advancing from non-organization to organization, from simple organization to complex organization, and from low organizational degree to high organizational degree. What Western political science refers to as modernization is essentially a high-organization process featuring the centralization of public authority from polycentrism to monocentrism, with nation-building serving as a key milestone in this modernization drive.
Therefore, the objective "organizationalism" aligns more closely with historical reality than the subjective "institutionalism", and organizational degree is naturally a research unit that allows for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Based on this newly identified research unit of organizational degree, this study conducts macro-comparisons of grand history and macro-structures, and its core arguments are as follows:
First, why has China been able to lead the world for a long time? As early as the Qin and Han dynasties, China accomplished the construction of an organized state and thus reaped the organizational dividends, which enabled it to take the lead in the world for nearly 2,000 years.
Organization means that, in an era where organizational differentiation and non-organizational elements keep emerging, a state must not only maintain holistic organizational vitality, but also avoid the excessive disembedding of itself. A country with a higher level of organization is more likely to mobilize resources from all sides to achieve national strength and prosperity than other countries in the same historical period—this constitutes the "organizational dividend".
Second, the great East-West competition in terms of organizational degree. In fact, the "unprecedented transformation in three thousand years" was an organizational impact exerted by Europe's military-fiscal states on China's ritual-governed centralized state. The new-type organized states in the West surpassed China's 2,500-year-old ritual-governed centralized organizational form in terms of organizational degree, and took a leading position in international competition for a long period of time.
After the Qin and Han dynasties, China, on the one hand, overcame the feudal system by virtue of a centralized authority based on the prefecture-county system and bureaucracy; on the other hand, it curbed organizational differentiation through the ritual-based order underpinned by Confucian cultural ethics, thereby shaping a ritual-governed centralized tianxia (all-under-heaven) state.
By contrast, modern European states gradually shook off the shackles of religious and feudal pluralistic powers. Driven by the dual pressures of warfare and capital accumulation, they succeeded in building new-type organized states. "War makes states, and states make war"—thus were born military-fiscal nation-states. It is evident that military-fiscal states boasted a higher degree of organization and stronger competitiveness.
Third, the global competition in terms of organizational degree. In the wake of the two World Wars, the waves of national liberation and democratization, modeled on Western countries, gave birth to a large number of "modern states"—namely, "weak states embedded in strong societies".
The organizational forms of different countries are constrained by their historical endowments (historical ontology) and thus exhibit distinct disparities. As a result, a great many Third World countries merely possess the external trappings of Western organized states, while in reality they still grapple with ineffective organization—a predicament stemming from the continuity of their historical endowments.
In contrast, China's party-centered system has built a new type of party-state with the political party as the core entity, based on the organized state legacy of old China. The organizational principle of democratic centralism has enabled this party-state to achieve a higher level of organization than military-fiscal states, endowing it with greater competitiveness. It has thus embarked on a path to prosperity and strength through the adjustment and balancing of its internal organizational structures.
This is not only the reason behind China's emergence as a prominent player among developing nations, but also constitutes the organizational foundation for China's stronger governance capacity compared with Western countries.
Fourth, path dependence and the organizational trap. An organized state requires the dialectical unity of integration and diversity, as well as order and vitality. However, due to historical path dependence, organizational forms rooted in different historical endowments tend to develop in a one-sided manner. This eventually throws the organized state off balance and even triggers its disintegration—a scenario known as the organizational trap.
For centralized organized states such as the Soviet Union, the trap lies in excessive centralization and over-dense organizational structures. For decentralized organized states such as the United States, the trap manifests as de facto feudalism caused by excessive fragmentation. The political evolutions of the Soviet Union and the United States serve as two illustrative cases of the organizational trap.
Fifth, the balance between order and vitality is the path to a nation's sustained success. Neither organizational dividends nor the organizational trap is one-dimensional; they are relative. The relative strength of organization determines a nation's rise and fall.
To overcome the organizational trap, for China—a country with a centralized tradition—it is necessary to transcend the organizational trap to prevent over-dense organization, seize historical initiative to eliminate factors that hinder organizational vitality, and enhance social vitality. For Europe and the United States, which have decentralized traditions, the primary tasks are to curb the erosion of state power by excessively fragmented organizations, overcome the social structure of de facto feudalism, and maintain political centralization.
The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has seized historical initiative, continuously deepened reforms, and actively made adjustments, striving to achieve a dynamic balance between order and vitality—and this constitutes the fundamental path to a nation's sustained success.