DECLINE OF EMPIRE - THE INTERNAL EXPLANATION

Although the American decline has frequently been depicted as the resu lt of economic disinvestment, military overextension, and like, this a rticle suggests that America's decline results from increasingly fragm ented political institutions. Citing organization theory research docu menting structural tendencies toward decentralization, and the writing s of Toynbee, Spengler, and others who have identified decline with in stitutional fragmentation, the author argues that the U.S. government has recently undergone dysfunctional structure decentralization. Addit ionally, it suggests that America's institutional fragmentation restri cts the government's ability to comprehend the issues it faces, becaus e contractually induced analytic cognitions now overwhelming aggregati onally induced synthetic cognitions.