Bipolarity and Bipolarization in the Cold War Era

Abstract

There is little consensus and some degree of confusion over the meanings of the polarity and polarization concepts. An argument is advanced for viewing these phenomena as distinctly separate with polarity referring to the distribution of power among states and polarization referring to the tendency for actors to cluster around the system's most powerful states. An analysis of indicators constructed to operationalize the two concepts reveals that the global political system was characterized by military bipolarity throughout the 1948-1973 period but that the level of bipolarization gradually declined from "high" to "moderate" to "low" until 1972, at which point the constructed indexes indicate the absence of bipolarization. These findings confirm the paper's premise that the condition of bipolarity need not imply the presence of bipolarization.