ABSTRACT

The pioneer of quantitative imperiological research, and even now the unsurpassed leader, is American-Estonian political scientist Rein Taagepera. After completing his physics studies in the US and Canada, Taagepera worked for some time as an industrial technology researcher with the DuPont Corporation. Political scientists are most familiar with Taagepera's highly valued work on the quantitative indexes that measure various aspects of electoral systems, and their impact on political processes. Taagepera's first publication as a political scientist was also the first attempt to apply quantitative methods in imperiological studies. In truth, scholars determined to conduct such hologeistic research do not have to analyse data about all the cases of this population. By Taagepera's criteria, China during the times of the Qin and Han dynasties (300 BC–early third century AD) was the same empire. He describes in the same way the relation between the polities ruled by the Xia and Shang dynasties in the second millennium BC.