American Sociological Review 2016, Vol. 81(3) 608–615 © American Sociological Association 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0003122416641372 http://asr.sagepub.com Reply to Li and Hicks We do not think that the analysis offered by Li and Hicks (hereafter, LH) makes a con- vincing case for world polity theory. Theo- retically, they effectively reduce the world polity argument to a weakened version that does not account for the rise of the nation- state to global hegemony but merely focuses on the effects of such hegemony. Moreover, the empirical analyses that support this weak version do not hold up to scrutiny; they are not robust to slightly different and substan- tially more meaningful model specifications and are sensitive to sample definition. To summarize, LH make the following points, which we will address in order. First, they argue that historical institutionalism does not explain why the nation-state model—rather than city-states or empires—became dominant in the modern world, while world polity theory does. Second, they maintain that to test world polity theory in line with its own premises, we need to look at the postwar period, because it is only after World War II that the nation-state model became part of the hegemonic world culture propagated by international organiza- tions such as the United Nations. Reducing the empirical universe to the years since 1945, LH find that the prospect of nation-state creation increases as the number of nation-states in the world increases (indexing how far the nation- state has already become part of world culture) and the more memberships in international government organizations (IGOs) the imperial center holds (indexing exposure to world cul- tural templates). Third, they point out that an additional factor should be considered in the empirical analysis, for which no data were available at the time the original article was written: the international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) that sow world politi- cal templates into local soils, helping the idea of national independence grow. STRONG AND WEAK WORLD POLITY THEORY Before we address these points, an important theoretical issue needs to be discussed, that is, how to specify the empirical implications of world polity theory. We suggest distinguishing between a weak and a strong version. The strong version—as introduced in Meyer and colleagues’ (1997) classical text—argues that from the early Renaissance onward, a world cultural model emerged, reinforced later on by the enlightenment, defining the guarantee of individual liberty, national independence, rational government, popular sovereignty, and equality before the law as templates for legiti- mate government. Originally limited to the West, this template assumed an independent causal force “since at least the 17th century” (Meyer et al. 1997:163, 173). It pressured, in other words, existing states of the Old World to conform to this template. After World War II, these cultural templates became truly global in reach and forced the rest of the world into its mold. To put it simply, world polity templates caused the creation of nation-states throughout 641372ASR XX X 10.1177/0003122416641372American Sociological ReviewWimmer and Feinstein 2016 a Columbia University b University of Haifa Corresponding Author: Andreas Wimmer, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 606 West 122nd Street, New York, New York 10013 E-mail: andreas.wimmer@columbia.edu Still No Robust Evidence for World Polity Theory Andreas Wimmer a and Yuval Feinstein b at COLUMBIA UNIV on June 3, 2016 asr.sagepub.com Downloaded from