Typologizing change in the evolution of world politics

Social change is an all-pervasive characteristic of the social world, and thus, the kinds, numbers, and “sizes” of changes form a central characteristic of any social system. But given the fact that there are multiple different types of change, ranging from short term to long term, and from a limited relevance in interaction settings up to relevance on the level of society, what is change, and how can we theoretically analyze such diverse types of change? Building on IR literature that takes a historical/historical sociological approach, as well as on historical and sociological approaches, we introduce a conceptualization of change that, first , proposes to distinguish between the social scale of change (in terms of its factual and social extension) and the layers of time of change (in terms of its temporal extension) to grasp different instances of changes. While this analytical coordinate system is comprehensive in terms of accommodating all kinds of changes, we argue, second , that based on this categorization, we can identify four “most likely” types of change that expand regarding their social extension and durability: we distinguish between “simple” change, change within a system, change of a system, and world societal change . In the third step, we demonstrate that instances of change are in permanent flux, expanding and shrinking socially and temporally. We illustrate the value of our simultaneously constant and dynamic conceptualization with the example of COVID-19.