The article is designed as a starting point for the study of cycles and phases of the global social, economic, and political system over the longest of historical terms. It explores continuities, consistent patterns, their genesis and development over time. The rise and decline of various powers and areas, and the implications of that process are given concerted attention of the Western and Russian authors. The present paper is prepared as an entry-point into the discussion on the social science-based conception which yields a number of conjectures about the shape and timing of world system change. The paper will analyze a periodization of world history viewed as a sequence of major changes in world institutional arrangements. Modern evolutionary theories closely connect historical events, sociology, culture and technology. Particular attention is paid to the work of the American scientist of Polish origin G. Modelski. The concept of the world system, according to Modelski, world history is represented as the stages of the evolution of the world system. Constructing the matrix of the evolution of world politics, Modelski refers to the history of city-building in Northern Italy and argues that Venice served as a prototype of a global power and a bridge to the transition to a new phase of world politics. According to the concept of the long waves of world politics put forward by G. Modelski, they coincide with the phases of the rise and decline of global leaders. Other Western authors come to similar results on the problems of factors and prerequisites for the emergence of world leaders in different historical epochs. Particular attention is paid to the periodization of the global historical process of the Russian scientist Sergei Kapitza, taking logarithmic Time-2 into account. The appearance of cities and writing, in turn stimulated new departures in society, sparked technological and scientific innovation. Any global process of human development includes, according to Modelski, three directions - the process of democratization of international relations, the evolution of world politics and the evolution of the global economy. All these directions are part of the worldwide evolution process. Prototypes of the processes of democracy could be observed in China during the period of the Sung (Song) in the 1100's and in the cities of Northern Italy around the 1300's. The “liberal-maritime alliance” between Britain and Holland and the religious turmoil of the European Reformation, centering upon the Dutch Republic laid the foundations for the cumulative growth of a nucleus of a global system. In the process of global development of mankind, a unipolar, but multipolar world is being formed. At the same time hegemony assumes the privileged position of one large and several smaller leaders at the expense of more effective accumulation of advantages. Deep analysis of system processes in the world system and a new approach to global problems are necessary in the era of spatial and temporal changes and transition from chaos to a rational management of the future of mankind.