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Geographic perspectives on world-systems theory.

• Colin Flint Colin Flint Department of Political Science, Utah State University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.196
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017

World-systems theory is a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis. “World-system” refers to the inter-regional and transnational division of labor, which divides the world into core countries, semi-periphery countries, and the periphery countries. Though intrinsically geographical, world-systems perspectives did not receive geographers’ attention until the 1980s, mostly in economic and political geography. Nevertheless, geographers have made important contributions in shaping world-systems perspectives through theoretical development and critique, particularly in the understanding of urban processes, states, and geopolitics. The world-systems theory can be considered as a sub-discipline of the study of political geography. Although sharing many of the theories, methods, and interests as human geography, political geography has a particular interest in territory, the state, power, and boundaries (including borders), across a range of scales from the body to the planet. Political geography has extended the scope of traditional political science approaches by acknowledging that the exercise of power is not restricted to states and bureaucracies, but is part of everyday life. This has resulted in the concerns of political geography increasingly overlapping with those of other sub-disciplines such as economic geography, and, particularly, with those of social and cultural geography in relation to the study of the politics of place.

• world-systems theory
• political geography
• social analysis
• urban processes
• geopolitics
• human geography
• economic geography
• cultural geography

Introduction

World-systems theory is a body of knowledge built upon the foundations of the Annales school of history, a perspective that emphasizes the importance of broad social structures spanning long periods of history and their impact upon everyday life (Braudel 1973 ; 1984 ). The Braudelian perspective was adapted by Immanuel Wallerstein in a series of theoretical papers in the 1970s, complemented by an ambitious multi-volume history of the capitalist world-economy. Wallerstein’s publications were supported by the creation of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations at SUNY-Binghamton in 1976 , and the establishment of the journal Review in 1977 . World-systems theory transcended disciplinary boundaries, and identified the scale of social change as the historic social system. Wallerstein’s histories and theoretical contributions focused upon the expansion of the capitalist world-economy from its origins in the mid-1400s. Geographers were initially attracted to world-systems theory because it offered a theoretical framework in a discipline that was, at the time, largely atheoretical. In addition, world-systems theory seemingly promoted geographical questions in two ways: space and scale. Space was integral to the theory in the identification of unequal economic relationships that created patterns of global inequality, or a new theoretical way to explain “underdevelopment.” The question of scale was made explicit by the work of Peter Taylor and his situation of local and national political events within the overarching structure of the capitalist world-economy.

These two avenues to geography were addressed implicitly and, at the outset, explicitly by human geographers in the early 1980s. The theoretical contribution was seized upon and promoted understandings of the mutual construction of politics and geography: or the understanding that political actions necessarily constructed spaces and spaces mediated political actions. For example, nation-states are politically constructed spaces. Another example would be the way in which spaces of formal or informal imperialism partially define the forms of political activity that occur within them. As human geography became more theoretical, beginning in the 1980s, the mutual construction of space and society became axiomatic, despite variations in theoretical frameworks. The main issue explored in this essay is how the initial introduction of politically constructed spaces by world-systems theory became to be critiqued as overly structural.

World-systems theory (Wallerstein 2004 ) was integral to the revival of political geography in the 1970s and 1980s (Taylor 1981a ; 1982 ; Shelley and Flint 2000 ). However, over time the theoretical development of the subdiscipline prioritized critiques of structural models resulting in a diminished role for world-systems theory in framing political geographic analysis (Cox et al. 2008a ). Contemporary political geography has become dominated by approaches that emphasize contingency, agency, and the scale of the everyday rather than the structures, historical processes, and macro-change that dominate world-systems theory. Ironically, the current emphasis upon the mutual social construction of politics and geography is also the essence of the frameworks adopted by Peter Taylor in his development of a world-systems theory political geography. The key difference is that world-systems theory starts with a structural perspective rather than an immediate and actor-based view.

This essay discusses the role of world-systems theory in catalyzing political geography and the subsequent critiques toward the former’s structural focus. Developing an organizing thread that highlights the socially constructed geographies in the world-systems theory framework, the roles of scale, hegemony, political actors, states, and world-cities are discussed in detail. The essay concludes with a consideration of the continued relevance of a world-systems political geography as a heuristic device despite its recognized limitations as a theoretical framework. The focus of this essay is restricted in two ways. First, it emphasizes Anglo-American geographic scholarship, though this is a true reflection of the center of gravity of the world-systems approach to geography. Interestingly, the perspective gained little currency in French or German academic geography or in other parts of the world. Second, the essay addresses topics that are of most interest to international studies scholars and, simultaneously, derived from the scholarship of Peter Taylor; the intellectual driving force behind the world-systems revitalization of political geography.

World-Systems Theory and the Resurgence of Political Geography

The contemporary vibrancy of political geography cannot be doubted. The very presence of the subdiscipline in the International Studies Association Compendium is testimony to its visibility, as are the slew of volumes synthesizing contemporary research (for example see Agnew et al. 2007 ; Cox et al. 2008b ), and the strength of the Political Geography and Geopolitics research journals. However, it was only quite recently that the picture was much bleaker. The oft-quoted lament of political geography being a “moribund backwater” (Berry 1969 ) is a pointed but accurate reflection of the intellectual irrelevance of the subdiscipline after World War II. Political geography in the 1950s was framed by functional theories of the state that left no room for contested politics and their role in constructing space (Hartshorne 1950 ). The resurgence of political geography came in the 1980s, and much has been written about the transition and subsequent vitality (Johnston 2001 ).

The point I wish to stress here is that world-systems theory played a significant role in the resurgence of political geography. For the first few years of the renewed interest in political geography, world-systems theory was a central organizing framework, either explicitly or implicitly. The revival of political geography was sparked by interlinked changes in academia and society. Human geographers had become frustrated with the blandness and lack of social processes and structure in the quantitative studies that had led the field from about the 1960s in the discipline’s “Quantitative Revolution” (Johnston and Sidaway 2004 ). Geographers, along with other academics, were taking a “radical turn” through the application of Marxist approaches (Harvey 1973 ). Also, the social turmoil of inner-city riots and the opposition to the Vietnam War were imposing upon human geographers the need to mobilize theoretical frameworks that could inform real-world conflicts (Flint 1999 ). The time was ripe for the escape from the apolitical, functional, and state-centric restrictions of postwar political geography.

Scholars such as Kevin Cox ( 1973 ) and David Harvey ( 1973 ) focused upon adding a geographic perspective to the works of Karl Marx and contemporary interpretations of his texts. On the other hand, Peter Taylor defined another pathway for political geography, one that was informed by the writings of Immanuel Wallerstein and the Annales school. The appeal of world-systems theory for Taylor was not only its radical agenda, but its role as a framework that enabled a new form of political geography (Taylor 1982 ). First, world-systems theory provoked discussion of a scale other than the state through the concept of the historical social system, specifically the capitalist world-economy. Second, the concepts of core, periphery, and semi-periphery promoted inclusion of the traditional geographic concern of areal differentiation (Terlouw 1992 ; Dezzani 2001 ).

World-systems theory enabled geographers to address the global scale again, something that had been difficult in the wake of tainted prewar geopolitical approaches (Dodds and Atkinson 2000 ). It also provided a sense of process to political geography. The dynamics of the capitalist world-economy, through the application of the concept of Kondratieff waves, were identified as the driver of political actions (Taylor 1985 ; Flint and Taylor 2007 ). Kondratieff waves are recurring fifty year long cycles comprising a period of global economic growth and a following period of stagnation and restructuring. The periods of growth are related to the adoption of new economic innovations and the periods of stagnation exhibit intensified politics of redistribution and interstate and interfirm competition. The result was a political-economic logic for political geography that situated political actions and events within the space–time context of the dynamics of Kondratieff waves and position within the core–periphery hierarchy. An important component of this perspective was that states were one form of political actor, or institution, rather than the raison d’être of the discipline, as they had been in the functionalist theories of the 1950s.

Taylor promoted a political geography perspective on world-systems theory through a series of academic articles, discussed below, as well as his seminal textbook, Political Geography (Taylor 1985 ; Flint and Taylor 2007 ). In addition, initial work on political geography was often, though not exclusively, framed by world-systems theory. For example, the geography of violence and premature death (Johnston et al. 1987 , and updated by van der Wusten 2005 ) and elections were analyzed through a world-systems perspective (Taylor 1986 ; 1991a ). Furthermore, the establishment of the resurgent subdiscipline’s new flagship journal, Political Geography , in 1982 contained a research agenda written by the editorial board that included the language of the world-systems perspective. Without doubt, world-systems theory was an essential, though not the only, catalyst in the regeneration of political geography, with Peter Taylor the foremost contributor.

The Resurgence of Political Geography and World-Systems Theory

Political geography’s resurgence further developed through engagement with a variety of different philosophical and theoretical perspectives. Contemporary political geography engages feminist and queer theories, as well as a host of perspectives, such as actor-network theory, that fall under the broad umbrellas of postmodernism and poststructuralism (Agnew et al. 2007 ). Not only has this displaced world-systems theory from the core of the subdiscipline’s theoretical framework, but it has encouraged an active critique of the tenets of a world-systems informed political geography. Three avenues of critique will be discussed below: structural determinism; the identification of geopolitical agents; and focus upon representation in critical geopolitics (Kuus 2009 ).

The space–time matrix outlined by Taylor ( 1985 ) became symptomatic of wariness with a theoretical perspective that was labeled as structurally deterministic. Despite the valiant attempts of Peet ( 1998 ) to explain the complexity and contingency of structures, and Sayer’s ( 1992 ) attempt to define philosophical realism as the appropriate framework for geography, the disapproval of structural determinism became the rallying call of a second wave of political geographers of a variety of stripes. World-systems theory was a particularly easy target because of the prominence of Kondratieff waves in the framework, and the rigid timing, and hence classification, of developments and cycles within repeating twenty-five year periods. Furthermore, the classification of political events such as wars (Johnston et al. 1987 ) and elections (Taylor 1986 ) depending upon their location in the core–periphery hierarchy gave apparently little room for the increasing focus on political contestation and contingency.

A related critique stemmed from Skocpol’s ( 1977 ) argument that world-systems theory, and by extension related political geographies, had marginalized the agency of the state. Despite the irony that it was the recognition of political structures other than the state that was world-systems theory’s appeal to political geography, critiques such as Skocpol’s developed into a stance that world-systems theory drew attention away from actors and agency. Augmenting the critique of structural determinism, political geographers developed humanistic, phenomenological, and feminist approaches to emphasize a host of geopolitical actors (Johnston and Sidaway 2004 ). The new focus on the multiple identities and contingencies of geopolitical actors jarred with the world-systems identification of just four key institutions (households, states, classes, and race/ethnicity) and what could be interpreted as their functional roles (Wallerstein 1984 ). Ironically, the attempt to rescue geography from its postwar functionalist rut through the application of world-systems resulted in a critique of structurally defined functionalism, though at least a healthy dose of theory had been added.

The third basis for the marginalization of world-systems theory was the “representational turn” of human geography. Launching from the work of Foucault and the concept of discourse, the representation of geopolitics, rather than an analysis of events themselves, came to dominate the sphere of political geography interested in international relations (Ó Tuathail 1996 ). Such an approach rejected “meta-narratives” such as those provided by world-systems theory, and instead emphasized the deconstruction of existing texts.

In combination, the three avenues of critique led to the wane of world-system theory’s influence upon political geography. Focus upon agency and representation, and the broader emphasis upon social constructivism and contingency were dramatically opposed, according to the consensus of opinion, to the axioms of world-systems theory (Harvey 1985 ; Agnew 2005 ). Indeed, what had once been a fertile organizing framework, the space–time matrix, became identified as a deterministic straitjacket. The temporal dynamics of Kondratieff waves and the ready resort to a broad areal definition of core and periphery made for easy, and to a large degree justifiable, allegations of determinism. However, as I hope to show in the remainder of this essay, much of the political geographic application of world-systems theory was social constructivist in nature, sensitive to the complexity of geopolitical actors, and aware of contingency.

World-Systems Theory and Political Scales

From the outset of his engagement with world-systems theory Peter Taylor made geographic scale the centerpiece of political geography (Taylor 1981b ). His seminal work arguably positioned the politics of the social construction of scale as the core process of the resurgent subdiscipline. However, the further stages of the resurgence developed a critique of Taylor’s scalar framework including what have become unquestioned interpretations of the “reified” or “preexisting” nature of Taylor’s scales (Marston 2000 ). As I will show, these critiques miss the point of the framework and political processes Taylor was highlighting. Taylor’s scales are socially constructed, but in the tradition of world-systems theory the historical span is grand and beyond the immediacy that dominates contemporary political geography.

Taylor’s ( 1981b ) scales of political geography, with their cryptic but meaningful labels, are the local scale (the scale of experience), the nation-state scale (the scale of ideology), and the global scale (the scale of reality). The local scale is envisioned as the everyday setting of life, or the geographic situation or place in which events occur and life is experienced. The definition of this scale reflects the perceived importance of the politics of place (Agnew 1987 ), recognizing that places filter information and mediate possible political actions. More provocatively, the global scale was labeled the scale of reality to reflect the structural emphasis of world-systems theory. The extent of the social system equates to the geographic scope of the capitalist world-economy (global since the end of the 1800s). Hence, the geographic scope of political and economic processes is traced, ultimately, to the global scale. However, there is also a political motivation to call the global scale “reality.” From a Marxist position, acts of anti-systemic politics should target the scale at which economic processes operate. If, as world-systems theory claims, the scope of economics is global then political movements should target the global too.

The scalar mismatch between the global scope of economic processes and the state focus of political action is behind Taylor’s labeling of the state as the scale of ideology. Politics has, according to Taylor ( 1987 ; 1991b ), become trapped at a scale that limits transformational possibilities. The scale of the state is ideologically dominant as it has become to be understood as the necessary institution to control if political aims are to be achieved. However, Taylor questions this dominant argument and sees the identification of the state scale as the key political target as an ideological hoax. Anti-systemic movements have been sidetracked into seeking control of a scale other than the one at which economic processes ultimately operate. For example, the “socialist” policies of North Korea are seen as a nuisance rather than a challenge to the capitalist world-economy. Also, the anti-systemic politics of international Bolshevism that led to the Russian revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union quickly became restricted under the heading of “socialism in one state” (Taylor 1992 ).

Underlying all these definitions is an implicit sense that the scales of the capitalist world-economy are socially constructed, though Taylor did not explicitly use this language as it only came into vogue later. The global scale, synonymous with the scope of the capitalist world-economy, is the product of the myriad actions of individuals, firms, households, states, etc. (though admittedly world-systems theorists lay themselves open to charges of structural determinism by not outlining the structure–agent interactions). In fact, it may be argued that key agents at the global scale, such as multinational companies and global institutions (e.g., the UN) are critically ignored. Most importantly, a particular political geography has been constructed in which multiple political units (states) exist within the scope of a single economy. Such a geographic mismatch between political control and the scope of economic processes is unique to the capitalist world-economy (Flint and Taylor 2007 :12). In previous historical social systems (mini-systems and world-empires) the extent of political and economic processes was the same.

The identification of political geographic scales was a key contribution to a burgeoning political geography. The three-scales framework offered a means to contextualize or situate political behavior within broader processes. However, the structural emphasis of this framework led to subsequent theoretical critique (Marston 2000 ). Taylor’s three scales were deemed too structurally deterministic and inadequate tools to analyze the complexity of political agency. Instead of seeing political behavior as a product of the processes of global capital accumulation, subsequent theorists of scale saw political scales as being constructed from the bottom up as contingent strategies by political actors responding to social and cultural situations rather than just economic ones. The economic and structural functionalism of world-systems theory went out of vogue.

The critique of Taylor’s three scales was understandable and constructive on the whole, but failed to address the macro-analysis of social construction that was at the heart of the framework. Rather than seeing the scales as a means to classify political behavior within places solely in terms of the ups and downs of the capitalist world-economy, the framework defined the elements of a social system that separated the scale of political action (the state) from the scale of economic activity (the world-economy). The structural and functionalist elements of this insight undermined the key implications that this scalar separation had for understanding political agency.

The connection between global structures and individual and state behavior is illustrated in theories of hegemony based upon world-systems theory. The specific study of hegemony illustrates how a world-systems framework has renewed the approach to the longstanding topic of geopolitics. Specifically, world-systems theory has been used to situate classical geopolitical theorists as well as state policies and everyday economic and social practices in broader processes.

Contemporary political geography has a complicated relationship with the topic of geopolitics (Dodds and Atkinson 2000 ). Geographers have used world-systems theory in the subdiscipline’s project to situate classical geopolitical theories in order to make sense of the content within particular geohistorical contexts. This approach has allowed the theories of Sir Halford Mackinder and General Karl Haushofer , for example, to be understood as perspectives and agendas from particular countries in particular geopolitical situations. The theoretical steps toward this analysis were built from a structural focus on Kondratieff waves as the economic pulse of the capitalist world-economy to include shifts in general economic orientations (e.g., free trade versus protectionism) and, finally, specific policies. Hegemony, or the process of the rise and fall of one dominant state in the capitalist world-economy, was the overarching concept that connected these questions.

The political geography of Kondratieff waves and the related space–time matrix has specific explanatory value with regard to hegemonic powers, and is of particular benefit in understanding hegemony as a process (Flint and Taylor 2007 :52–7). The economic innovations that drive new Kondratieff waves have been geographically clustered. Or, to put it another way, they have been captured within the borders of one state. Over time, that state has been able to utilize relative monopoly of that innovation to generate an economic foundation that has launched its rise to power. A sequential domination in the spheres of production, trade, and finance was identified by Wallerstein ( 1984 ) as the basis for hegemony. The geographic emphasis, or contribution, is to point out that the foundation is an economic geography of innovation, initially, and subsequently a political geography of attempting to retain location of the innovation within the borders of one state, to trump competitors and imitators.

The simple recognition of the geography of economic innovation within Kondratieff waves was exploited to create what Taylor called the paired-Kondratieff model of hegemony emphasizing the political–economic dynamics of hegemony (Flint and Taylor 2007 :54). The meta-geography of one world-economy and multiple territorial states interacts with the rather anarchic processes of economic innovation and competition to establish a pattern of trade policies. Simply, states that are growing new industries will be protectionist to nurture this base, especially in the face of stronger economies. However, if the new industries successfully form the basis for a new hegemonic power, the hegemonic state will advocate a global regime of free trade so as to exploit its dominance in global production and reap the rewards. If successful, the hegemonic state’s trade dominance will lead to its financial domination. However, the free-trade regime facilitates competition from other states that are able to copy the initial innovations, and often improve upon them (US cars and the later wave of Japanese brands being a good example). The outcome is a decline in economic superiority that will result in a return to protectionist policies as the hegemonic state tries to retain economic strength in the face of competition.

The paired-Kondratieff model is an application of world-systems theory that remains open to challenges of structural determinism. Indeed, the agency of governments, businesses, and social movements in creating free-trade or protectionist regimes is absent from this model. The benefit of the model is a contextualization of individual and group activities. It situates policy debates about trade, for example, within the structural setting of a country’s hegemonic rise and fall. Furthermore, the model “places” geopolitical theorists within global dynamics of hegemonic competition. For example, Sir Halford Mackinder ’s geopolitical theory, written by a member of the ruling elite of a declining hegemonic power, gave priority to a protectionist imperial bloc that reflects the expectations of the paired-Kondratieff model (Flint and Taylor 2007 :57–9). In a similar fashion, the geopolitics of economic relations advocated by Isaiah Bowman reflects the expectations of a rising hegemonic power’s construction of a global free-trade regime.

Taylor’s ( 1990 ) Britain and the Cold War , a study of the political debates within Great Britain at the end of World War II, was a detailed attempt to situate geopolitical decision making within the context of global dynamics derived from a world-systems analysis understanding of hegemony. Taylor begins this book with a structural viewpoint. In aggregation, the foreign policy calculations of individual countries, called geopolitical codes, create a relatively permanent global structure, called a geopolitical world order. The Cold War is identified as a geopolitical world order in which identification of allies and enemies, territorial spheres of influence, and the means of conflict are understood and practiced for a period of time. Though stable for a few decades, geopolitical world orders unravel in what are called geopolitical transitions. For example, the speed with which the Soviet Union and its satellite states changed from being intractable enemies of the West to allies and member of NATO and the European Union was dramatic.

The timing of geopolitical transitions and the form and life span of geopolitical world orders was related to the process of hegemonic rise and fall. The Cold War geopolitical world order was a manifestation of the United States’ incomplete hegemonic power as its role remained contested by the Soviet Union. To maintain the coherence of the cyclical interpretation, the end of the Cold War is interpreted as the inability of the US to maintain its hegemonic regime. The Cold War is seen as part of the geographical organization that underpinned US hegemony, so its termination is interpreted as a manifestation of its decline in power. The contribution of Britain and the Cold War was the discussion of domestic politics, especially debates within Britain’s Labour Party, which defined the role the country would play in the geopolitical world order of US hegemony. Instead of being deterministic, Taylor posits options that Britain faced in defining its geopolitical code. The decision to ally with the United States in an anti-Communist front was made after intense and dramatic debate within the political elite. Though the options of political actors were constrained by the structural setting of British hegemonic decline, US hegemonic rise, and Soviet challenge, the content of Britain’s geopolitical code was a matter of choice. The contribution of the book is that the choice is best understood within the context set by the structural dynamics.

Taylor’s study of hegemony continued with the publication of two related books, The Way the Modern World Works ( 1996 ) and Modernities ( 1998 ). These studies discuss the role of hegemonic powers identified in shaping the economic and social practices of everyday life in the capitalist world economy. The three hegemonic states and the related years of maximum influence and power were The Netherlands (mid-1600s), Great Britain (mid-1800s), and the United States (mid-1900s). Taylor argues that each of these states defined what it meant to be modern through their innovation of economic practices, such as the British factory system, social practices like US suburbia, and culture, e.g., the art of Rembrandt. For the period of US hegemony, the innovative Fordist system produced consumer durables, including automobiles, and created the modern social landscape of the suburb, which was broadcast across the globe in Hollywood and television images of the “good life.” To be modern required an emulation of hegemonic practices, dubbed the “prime modernity” (Taylor 1998 ), which helped diffuse US norms and practices across the globe, though not in an uncontested manner (Flint 2001b ). In an echo of the Braudelian perspective that launched world-systems analysis (Braudel 1973 ; 1984 ), Taylor’s work on hegemonic modernities requires consideration of normal everyday practices and the manner in which they create and maintain broader structures. In this case, the practices of suburban life are both the product and building blocks of US hegemony within the capitalist world-economy. Taylor’s analysis of modernities also highlighted the place-specific setting of these everyday activities: Amsterdam, for example, was a “laboratory” for modern practices with people from all over the world, including Peter the Great, traveling to the place that epitomized what it meant to be modern.

Taylor and other geographers have not just used the concept of hegemony to look back at past political geographies. The United States has been identified as “the last of the hegemons” (Taylor 1993 ; Flint 2001c ; Wallerstein 2003 ) in an argument that suggests that the processes of globalization established within the period of US hegemony have so undermined the autonomy and power of sovereign states relative to global economic processes that in the future no one state will be able to capture the economic power that is the foundation of hegemony. Simply, the argument states that US hegemony has deterritorialized politics and economics to such an extent that a state could no longer territorialize power to establish itself as hegemony. However, this interpretation is countered by the concept of financialization (Arrighi 1994 ), which argues periods of financial flows (that we have labeled “globalization”) were common in the final phases of previous hegemonic powers. According to Arrighi, the deterritorialization we are experiencing now is a manifestation of the decline of the contemporary hegemonic power, the US, rather than the erasure of the possibility of future hegemonic powers.

There is one aspect of this debate that is worth further consideration. The ideology of US hegemony is “the American dream,” a story of how everyone can share the good life if they practice the right (hegemonic) rules and norms. This was a radical shift from the ideology of Britain’s preceding hegemony, which was built upon a rigid class-based division of labor and differential possibilities for consumption. British culture is devoid of the “self-made man” stories that are a staple diet in the US. However, the structural necessity of the core–periphery hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy, and the ecological impossibility of our planet sustaining the consumption levels associated with US suburbia, suggests that maybe a new hegemony is impossible as it cannot supersede the promises of a new modernity made by the US. Alternatively, if there is a new modernity defined by a new hegemonic power it might have the tough task of proclaiming who should have (and have not) the material benefits of the capitalist world-economy. The geography of that hegemonic regime would be one that purposefully demarcated social and territorial settings of inclusion and exclusion.

The concept of prime modernity connected the everyday and mundane practices associated with, for example, suburbia with interstate competition and the long-term processes of hegemony. Hegemony became a process involving a number of geopolitical actors, from suburban households to powerful states. Hence, we turn to another contribution of a world-systems political geography, the identification of multiple geopolitical actors.

Geopolitical Actors

Contemporary political geography has emerged strongly from the poststructuralist turn in the social sciences. Poststructuralism catalyzed human geographers’ move away from a focus upon the state as both unit of analysis and key actor. Political geographers, especially, faced a legacy of state-centric analysis that had naturalized the state as an autonomous and unitary actor (Kuus and Agnew 2008 ). From the very outset, world-systems theory was driven by the recognition that the state was not the ultimately meaningful unit of analysis (Wallerstein 1979 ). Most social science equated the state with society in a noncritical manner (Wallerstein 1991 ). World-systems theory conceptualized the basic unit of analysis, or the unit of social change, as the historical social system: mini-systems, world-empires, and the capitalist world-economy. The modern state is one of four key institutions within the capitalist world-economy. The state becomes a socially constructed institution within a broader social structure: it is an element of social change rather than a synonym for society.

The four key institutions of the capitalist world-economy are states, households, classes, and “peoples” (the latter comprising races, nations, and ethnicities). Each of the institutions reflects the manifestation of a different sphere of politics in the capitalist world-economy, though of course they are tightly related. A political geography of the capitalist world-economy demands an understanding of the multiple politics of the multiplicity of actors in the system. In other words, there is an opportunity to explore a nonstate-centric and multi-actor politics within the capitalist world-economy. On the other hand, a critique of the world-systems approach is its definition of these institutions, and their associated politics, in a functionalist and deterministic manner. This important critique will be addressed after discussing the usefulness of the institutional politics framework.

The four institutions of the capitalist world-economy allow for the conceptualization of fourteen political geographies (Taylor 1991c ). First, there are four intra-institutional politics:

Intrastate politics, or competition over the control of government.

Intra-people politics, manifesting themselves as the politics of defining goals and techniques (for example, regional autonomy versus national independence).

Intra-class politics is also a matter of strategy (such as revolution versus reform).

Intra-household politics manifests itself in gender and generational politics and is highlighted by feminist analysis.

Second, there are four inter-institutional politics:

Inter-state politics, or foreign policy.

Inter-people politics, or racialism and nationalism.

Inter-class politics, or the focus of Marxist scholarship and politics.

Inter-household politics, manifest in local politics over access to resources and services.

Third, are the six politics between institutions:

State–people politics, or more commonly known as the construction and maintenance of nation-states.

State–class politics, for example the manner in which political parties have evolved to manage different societal claims to the control of the state apparatus.

State–household politics, manifest as rights and welfare politics.

People–class politics, which has particular implications under contemporary globalization as workers of different nationalities are pitted against each other and often within the same sovereign space.

People–household politics reflects the disputes around cultural issues, especially those that propose normative views of family structure.

Class–household politics, especially the struggles that emerge from the feminization of the workforce in what have been traditionally male preserves and the interrelationship between changes in the workplace and gender roles in the family.

The fourteen politics are only briefly outlined here, but they serve to illustrate an important point regarding the framing of questions through the traditional practices of social science disciplines. The existence of disciplines serves to compartmentalize these politics as separate struggles or issues. For example, political science lays claim to studying intrastate politics while the separate field of international relations studies interstate politics. Sociology would seem the discipline to provide knowledge about class politics, but this too would be split between those studying class and those studying gender (households) or race (“peoples”). Not only does the fourteen-politics framework expose the poverty of separating politics in this way, but it also exposes the limited number of politics that are usually analyzed. For example, there is much more research conducted on interstate politics than there is on, say, people–class politics.

The contribution of the fourteen-politics framework is its placement of politics largely ignored by social science on an equal footing with dominant topics. Research questions regarding, for example, people–household politics rather than inter-class politics allow the research subjects to be seen as more complex actors than in singular frameworks. In other words, a striking worker may be seen as more than just a member of the proletariat, but as a mother, of a certain generation, in a particular family setting, and of ethnic, racial, and national identity. Research open to the different crosscutting politics would be more likely to identify the identities and politics most important to the actors themselves, rather than those defined by a series of separate academic frameworks.

The benefits of the fourteen-politics framework are relevant to those studying, ostensibly, states. The use of geographic scale, discussed earlier, in conjunction with the fourteen politics requires a movement away from methodological nationalism and the accompanying assignment of the state as a singular actor and an expression of the state as the manifestation or effect of multiple political agents. The fourteen politics requires consideration of a multi-scalar political geography in which the competing goals and identities of actors are framed by their multiple struggles within, or as, the four institutions. Saying “within, or as” acknowledges the utility of conceptualizing institutions in some analyses as actors while seeing other institutions as disaggregated and contested. For example, studying NIMBY politics regarding the international disposal of nuclear waste could focus on the mobilization of households in neighborhood politics, in a manner that disaggregates the local state but not the households. Alternatively, the agenda chosen by neighborhood organizations may best be understood by disaggregating the household politics of gender and generation. The bottom line is that the fourteen geographies derived from the institutional politics facilitate a flexible research agenda that allows for concentration upon particular politics within particular institutions as best suits the question. The possibility is also provided to approach the same issue through a variety of institutional politics or, in other words, different lenses.

A key implication of the fourteen institutional politics is a counterintuitive interpretation of the role of the state in anti-systemic politics. To borrow Taylor’s ( 1991b ) phrase, the state is Quisling (the term Quisling has become synonymous with “traitor” in some cultures because of Vidkun Quisling’s role as Minister-President of Norway in World War II and his collaboration with the Nazis). Class politics and anti-imperialist politics have long operated under the assumption that their goals can be best achieved by seizing control of the state apparatus. The working classes have organized political parties with the aim of winning elections and controlling the government, or sought to achieve the same goal through revolution. The irony is that either strategy is likely to result in failure as controlling the state apparatus does not change the political structure of the capitalist world-economy. The same can be said for anti-colonial politics, which has sought to gain emancipation from domination through national self-determination. The global South is comprised of states that are nominally independent but still constrained by the core–periphery structure of the world-economy.

Seeing the state as Quisling requires reference back to Taylor’s three scales and the structure of the capitalist world-economy as a single economic unit comprised of multiple political entities, namely states. The scope of the social system is the capitalist world-economy, and it is at that scale that processes ultimately operate. Hence, political change should be targeted at this same scale. Taking control of the state apparatus, by reform or revolution, allows a political movement to attempt to use state borders to ameliorate a state’s position in the world-economy. However, the essential structure of the social system remains unchanged. The state is conceived of as Quisling because it betrays the goals of political movements. It provides the illusion of progressive change through seizing government control while the system-wide structures generating inequality and difference remain. A historic example is the transition of the Bolshevik revolution from an international agenda to change the historical social system to the Stalinist project of socialism in one state. In the language of Peter Taylor , the international socialist revolution was initially aimed at the scale of the social structure but its goals were betrayed by subsequent targeting of the control of the state apparatus rather than changing the historical social system.

Beginning in the 1990s, decentering the state has become more commonplace in social science, perhaps with the exception of quantitative IR studies. For example, Hardt and Negri’s ( 2000 ) definition of empire depicted a world society of many intersecting transnational institutions that bypass states and, apparently, offer venues for progressive politics. Hardt and Negri’s global view mirrors contemporary theoretical discussion of the state in which the state itself is seen as a disaggregated set of institutions rather than a coherent or monolithic singular institution (Mitchell 1991 ; Jessop 2001 ). In light of these theoretical developments, the identification of the state as an institution in and of itself in world-systems theory is in danger of becoming anachronistic. On the other hand, identifying the state as the scale of ideology was a very timely and insightful contribution.

The initial strengths of the world-systems view of the state were to identify it as one of many arenas of politics and to situate it within the broader structure of the capitalist world-economy. However, in the contemporary poststructuralist environment of social science the world-systems approach to the state comes across as functionalist and rigid. The state is assigned a role of facilitating capital accumulation, through its ability to fracture antisystemic movements and offer capitalists quasi-monopolies, and this limited role varies from state –to state only in terms of a three-way category of core, periphery, and semi-periphery. Contemporary social science focus upon difference and contingency does not see explanatory value in functional and structural views of the state.

Perhaps it is not surprising that most geographic work using world-systems theory did not focus upon the state. One exception is in the subfield of electoral geography, in which world-systems theory was used to situate or contextualize intrastate politics within the broader structures of the capitalist world-economy. The seminal work was by Taylor ( 1984 ; 1986 ), who discussed the evolution of the system of political parties that became established in Europe within the processes of the wider social system. The term “politics of failure” was used to explain the lack of politics in the periphery of the world-economy (Osei-Kwame and Taylor 1984 ). The flow of profit and resources from periphery to core in the capitalist world-economy leaves little ability for governments in the former to build upon campaign promises and legitimate their rule. Hence, polities in the periphery are usually nondemocratic and require either an authoritarian government to secure control or are blighted by frequent changes in government by coup. In those peripheral countries where elections do take place, the nature of the electorate is unstable as new promises must be made to new constituents at each election. For example, the longevity of Congress party control in India from 1952 through 1977 displayed such a fluid pattern as the party was abandoned by its voters in previous elections and constructed a new geography of support (Flint and Taylor 2007 :229–33). In another study Flint ( 2001a ) situated the electoral rise of the Nazi party through its ability to create a national agenda that appealed to a number of constituencies experiencing economic stresses that were traced back to the dynamics of the capitalist world-economy.

However, overall the functionalist approach to the state has limited political geographers’ adoption of world-systems theory. In general, most political geography has taken a step back from the grand and global schema that would make world-systems theory an appropriate choice. Instead, the focus is upon the micro-scale of “everyday experiences” and the prosaic influence of the state (Painter 2006 ). Politics is increasingly identified as contingent and best addressed at scales that illustrate individual interactions with political structures. In this intellectual climate it is perhaps not surprising that political geography has utilized the broad scope of world-systems theory to explore alternative frameworks or meta-geographies.

Revisualizing the World Political Map

The term meta-geography refers to an overarching geographical structure or pattern and the related normative understanding of how things “should be” spatially organized. With regard to political geography, the combination of the real and the perceived is centered upon the Westphalian system of states, that are perceived as the “obvious” and “correct” way to organize politics through the broad acceptance of the ideology of nationalism (Taylor 1994 ; 1995 ). In turn, this meta-geography has framed mainstream social science by promoting methodological nationalism, which itself has established an analytical framework that has reinforced the perception of states as sovereign containers of society. This dominant view of the way the world is organized has been eroded recently through the twin concepts of globalization and transnationalism.

It is not the purpose of this essay to fully explore the rich literature underlying these two concepts. Instead, the related concept of global city (Sassen 2006 ) has been used as a basis for a large analytical project that is organized by world-systems theory. The Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) laboratory at the University of Loughborough ( www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc ) has led the way in creating databases and conducting analyses that utilize a meta-geography of connectivity between cities rather than the territoriality of states. Much of this project has been devoted to collecting data on economic linkages between cities. This was an important step in creating a new meta-geographic framework as statistics are based upon the content of a geographical unit (census tracts or states) rather than the ties between entities, though the dyadic organization of IR databases such as the Correlates of War project are important exceptions. Beginning by counting the number of offices of globally operating service providers (financial services, advertising companies, specialized lawyers, etc.), the project classified cities into a global hierarchy. Subsequently, the connectivity between cities was calculated so that the meta-geography organizing the capitalist world-economy was one of nodes (the cities themselves) and linkages (the intra- and interfirm connections between offices).

The initial phases of the GaWC project were necessarily data driven (see a full list and chronology of publications at www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/publicat.html ). However, from this foundation has come a reinterpretation of political geography that blends the agency of firms, governments, and NGOs with the structure of the capitalist world-economy (Taylor 2005 ). By analyzing three sets of city networks (diplomatic offices, NGOs, and UN agencies) the pattern of global intercity interaction reveals the processes that simultaneously maintain the Westphalian system and the core–periphery hierarchy facilitating capital accumulation while also enabling transnational politics with antisystemic potential. The intersection of these three networks results in a certain amount of mutual constitution but also antagonism as they strive for alternative geographies (state sovereignty and transnationalism). The constraints and possibilities of such interactions are situated within the structures of the capitalist world-economy, but without eliminating their transformative potential. The activities of these different sets of actors are framed by different political geographic goals, but as an analytical focus the work of GaWC is encouraging scholars to frame their analyses within a meta-geography of networks rather than territorial states.

The empirical project centered upon GaWC can be interpreted as the political geography of world-systems theory further developing understanding of the core–periphery hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy, and another operationalization of the duality of agency and structure. Taylor’s three scales of political geography situated everyday experiences within the broad processes and structure of the capitalist world-economy. Subsequent analysis of electoral politics attempted to do the same thing. Theoretical explorations of the state and the politics of the institutions promoted, through the labeling of the state as the scale of ideology, a realization of the problems of identifying states as the key political actor. The result has been a return to an empirical project that frames the everyday actions of firms and organizations within particular cities as the agency that maintains and, to some degree, transforms the structures of the historical social system.

Whither World-Systems Analysis?

The future of world-systems theory as a useful framework for the geographic study of international relations rests on a paradox. If current theoretical developments in the social sciences continue the future appears bleak, but compelling real-world events and trends seem to fit expectations drawn from world-systems theory: for example, contemporary discussion of protectionist policies and questions of challenge to the US’s hegemonic position. The poststructural doctrines of contingency and fluidity run counter to the structural imperatives that are the foundation of world-systems theory. Furthermore, the formal hypothesis construction of quantitative IR is incompatible with such a historically deterministic framework (Popper 1957 ). An outgrowth of Marxist thought, world-systems theory appears irrelevant to, for example, theories of the state (Jessop 2001 ) or democracy (Laclau and Mouffe 2001 ) that are framed by the operation of capitalism but avoid a structuralist or deterministic framework.

Despite these challenges, the imprint of world-systems theory upon human geography has been profound. The work of political geographers such as John Agnew and Stuart Corbridge ( 1995 ) resonated with world-systems theory’s focus upon the global scale, as well as the idea of the US as hegemonic, or primary, state in a competitive system of states (Agnew 2005 ). David Harvey ’s critique of world-systems theory as functionalist was to some degree accurate, but his work on contemporary US policy is, at the least, in the spirit of world-systems theory, and arguably illuminates similar structures and practices (Harvey 2003 ). The political geography approach to world-systems theory has framed questions of economic development implicitly even as its explicit presence has waned.

However, perhaps “real-world” events may reinvigorate a world-systems theory approach to political geography. The contemporary social context of US-led war across the globe, consistent disparities of wealth across the globe, and economic downturn and competition were the staples of world-systems theory that underpinned its initial appeal in the 1970s and 1980s. The space–time matrix that was a key component of introducing world-systems theory to political geography offers an interpretation of contemporary economic restructuring. The contemporary economic, political, and military challenges to the US may also be interpreted through the paired-Kondratieff model of hegemony discussed earlier. More specifically, does a political–economic context in which the Economist ( 2009 ) can decry “The Return of Economic Nationalism” and news commentators spout comparisons of today with the Great Depression (Gross 2008 ) promote the need for a historical model such as world-systems theory with its emphasis upon cycles?

This essay suggests that the answer is “perhaps.” As a heuristic device the questions that can be posed by considering the dynamics of Kondratieff waves and hegemonic cycles and the structure of the core and periphery hierarchy are most useful. The goal should not be to focus upon the inevitability of events that the historicism of the framework promotes. For example, how long will the next B-phase, or depression, last, or does the financial crisis of 2009 suggest that the mechanism of Kondratieff waves, and its associated timing, has broken down altogether? Instead, the benefit can be to assume a tendency toward economic stagnation and restructuring after a period of growth and ask questions about contemporary politics based on “what if” scenarios. For example, if the next Kondratieff wave will be based on a new regional concentration of a new technology, which region and what technology? Or, do the R&D policies of, say, India, China, the European Union, and the United States suggest a greater competitive advantage for one of these actors compared to the others? With regard to hegemonic cycles, an assumed tendency to increased political challenge poses questions regarding the broader meaning of the global war on terror and whether it suggests US weakness or strength and continued leadership (Flint 2005 ).

However, it must be acknowledged that world-systems theory is a poor analytical framework to study social processes. The ability to generate testable hypotheses from world-systems theory is limited (Popper 1957 ), though Chase-Dunn’s ( 1989 ) attempt was valuable but did not produce a body of research. The emphasis of the theory upon macro-processes that are historically and functionally deterministic precludes research designs that are based upon the potential variation in the behavior of social actors. In fact, Popper’s critique is that the historicism of a theory such as world-systems either precludes an investigation of social choices or is so all-encompassing that any behavioral pattern can be explained one way or the other.

The strength of world-systems theory lies in its ability to portray a broad temporal and spatial scenario, one that situates apparently isolated events and actors within broader processes. This Braudelian goal of understanding the immediate and everyday actions and options of actors was the beginning point for world-systems theory (Braudel 1973 ; 1984 ). It also underlies Taylor’s goal of a political geography of different experiences and opportunities for individuals within different geographic settings. However, over the course of the development of world-systems theory the macro became more emphasized than the micro or meso. Perhaps this is inevitable as it is, primarily, a historical and structural framework. On the other hand, perhaps we are doing the actors we want to study a disservice by denying structural constraints. Of course, critics would say the exact opposite: that a structural model defines and determines actors unfairly, by letting the model dictate the meaning of their actions rather than acknowledging their reflexivity. And yet, in a world where gross disparities in wealth remain despite numerous theories and programs of “development,” a world in which the global South remains dominated by the institutions of the rich and powerful countries, a world in which one country has the power to project military power and set the global agenda, and a world in which challenges to that one country in terms of political extremism, terrorism, insurgency, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency create such mayhem and misery it would be rash to diminish the role of core and periphery structures and hegemonic powers in shaping the opportunities and constraints faced by individuals, households, states, and “peoples.”

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Links to Digital Materials

Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. At www.binghamton.edu/fbc , accessed Apr. 14, 2009. The Fernand Braudel Center is the intellectual home of the world-systems theory project. The website offers newsletters, conference reviews, and discussions of ongoing research.

Journal of World-Systems Research. At www.jwsr.ucr.edu/index.php , accessed Apr. 14, 2009. The Journal of World-Systems Research highlights the diversity and vibrancy of world-systems theory research.

Globalization and World Cities Research Network. At www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc , accessed Apr. 14, 2009. For a specific insight into geographic research using a world-systems approach, the GaWK research network site gives access to papers and databases. Though based at Loughborough University in the UK, it provides links to world city research projects across the world.

Acknowledgments

Thanks go to Ron Johnston and Herman van der Wusten for their helpful comments and insights. I also thank Peter Taylor for his contributions to human geography and my own career in particular.

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Globalization from a World-System Perspective: A New Phase in the Core?A New Destiny for Brazil and the Semiperiphery

• Kathleen C. Schwartzman University of Arizona

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World-System Theory by Christopher Chase-Dunn , Marilyn Grell-Brisk LAST REVIEWED: 26 November 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 26 November 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0272

The world-system perspective emerged during the world revolution of 1968 when social scientists contemplated the meaning of Latin American dependency theory for Africa. Immanuel Wallerstein, Terence Hopkins, Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank, and Giovanni Arrighi developed slightly different versions of the world-system perspective in interaction with each other. The big idea was that the global system had a stratified structure on inequality based on institutionalized exploitation. This implied that the whole system was the proper unit of analysis, not national societies, and that development and underdevelopment had been structured by global power relations for centuries. The modern world-system is a self-contained entity based on a geographically differentiated division of labor and bound together by a world market. In Wallerstein’s version capitalism had become predominant in Europe and its peripheries in the long 16th century and had expanded and deepened in waves. The core states were able to concentrate the most profitable economic activities and they exploited the semi-peripheral and peripheral regions by means of colonialism and the emergent international division of labor, which relies on unequal exchange . The world-system analysts all focused on global inequalities, but their terminologies were somewhat different. Amin and Frank talked about center and periphery. Wallerstein proposed a three-tiered structure with an intermediate semiperiphery between the core and the periphery, and he used the term core to suggest a multicentric region containing a group of states rather than the term center , which implies a hierarchy with a single peak. When the world-system perspective emerged, the focus on the non-core (periphery and semiperiphery) was called Third Worldism. Current terminology refers to the Global North (the core) and the Global South (periphery and semiperiphery).

Karl Marx’s theory of the contradictions of capitalist development ( Marx 1967 ) was expanded by the world-system theorists to a global scale. While Marx focused mainly on capitalist industrialization and class relations within core European states, the world-system perspective developed in Wallerstein 1974 sees the core/periphery hierarchy as a central structure for capitalism. What had occurred in the non-core was peripheral capitalism and it was necessary for the reproduction and deepening of capitalism. Marx had defined capitalism commodity production based on wage labor. The world-system theorists have argued that modern slavery and serfdom constituted forms of peripheral capitalism. The Marxist view of modern societies in constant tension between the owners of the means of production (capitalists) and labor (workers/proletariat) resulting in class conflict is expanded to the whole system, except that labor relations in the non-core involve a greater degree of coercion. World-system analysis constitutes a significant modification of traditional Marxist principles that includes the non-core as a systemic aspect of capitalism. Lenin’ s theory of imperialism as a stage of capitalism was rewritten to emphasize the importance of imperialism as a systemic feature of capitalist development since the emergence of the modern core/periphery hierarchy in the 16th century ( Lenin 1939 , originally published in 1916). Bukharin’s discourse on imperialism on capitalism and world-economy marked an important precursor that focused on flows of value from peripheral/colonial countries to the core capitalist countries ( Bukharin 1972 , originally published in 1929). While Lenin saw this relationship of extreme exploitation (imperialism) by the core of the non-core in the capitalist system as the “highest stage” of capitalism, world-systems analysts view imperialism as a central feature of capitalism’s constant, though evolving structure of inequality particularly through Arghiri’s theory of unequal exchange ( Arghiri 1972 ). Although cycles in production have always existed, for world-system analysts, economic cycles are endemic to the modern capitalist system. The world-economy cycles through periods of growth and expansion (A-phase) and periods of stagnation (B-phase), which is primarily explained through the work of Nikolai D. Kondratieff ( Kondratieff 1935 ), Joseph Schumpeter ( Schumpeter 2006 , originally published in 1939), and, later, Ernest Mandel ( Mandel 1975 ). The Kondratieff long waves or K-waves, which last from forty to sixty years, are driven by the appearance of new technologies, leading to economic expansion and their exhaustion leading to periods of slow growth. Karl Polanyi’s depiction of cycles of marketization followed by periods of reregulation was also an important influence on world-system theorists ( Polanyi 1944 ). Fernand Braudel’s focus on the long-term structures of historical development and the importance of cities, agriculture, and climate in the interaction networks of the Mediterranean Sea constitutes another major influence of the emergence of the world-system perspective ( Braudel 1972 ).

Arghiri, Emmanuel. Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade . New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972.

This book is an examination of unequal exchange, namely the maintenance of core position through wage suppression in the periphery, that is a key aspect of world-system structure.

Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II . 2 vols. New York: Harper and Row, 1972.

This text is a major influence on the world-systems perspective given its focus on long-term structures of historial development.

Bukharin, Nikolai. Imperialism and World Economy . New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972.

Originally published in 1929. An important precursor to the world-systems perspective, this is a study of the internationalization of capital and examines the flow of value from the colonies and peripheral countries to the core states.

Kondratieff, Nikolai D. “The Long Waves in Economic Life.” Review of Economic Statistics 17.6 (1935): 105–115.

DOI: 10.2307/1928486

This artice explains economic cycles of growth, expansion, and stagnation endemic in the world-system.

Lenin, Vladimir I. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism . New York: International Publishers, 1939.

Originally published in 1916. A precursor to world-systems analysis, this book discusses imperialism as the highest stage in capitalism, particularly because of the level of exploitation of peripheral/colonial countries by the core.

Mandel, Ernest. Late Capitalism . London: New Left, 1975.

This book serves as a history of capitalism and its expansion through unequal exchange.

Marx, Karl. Capital I . New York: International Publishers, 1967.

Originally published in 1867. An essential text to understanding class relations.

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time . New York: Rinehart, 1944.

This book presents the development of the modern market society, with cycles of expansion, followed by periods of reregulation.

Schumpeter, Joseph A. Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process . Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino, 2006.

Originally published in 1939. In this book of economic history analyzes the critical role of innovation with regards to economic cycles and transformation.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World System . Vol. 1, Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century . New York: Academic Press, 1974.

This is the seminal work on the world-systems perspective.

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• Published: 01 September 2017

China and global economic stratification in an interdependent world

• Marilyn Grell-Brisk 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  3 , Article number:  17087 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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This article examines the contemporary rise of China and its new role on the global stage within the context of semiperipheral mobility. Unlike earlier discourse on the rise of China that revolved around questions of hegemonic ascent, the focus here is on the impact of China’s advancement within the structural confines of the modern capitalist world-economy. What happens when a country like China, which makes up close to 20% of the world’s population, moves from peripheral state to semiperipheral state in a short period of time? Immanuel Wallerstein had argued that stratification of the world-economy took the shape of a three-layered structure with majority of the world’s population at the bottom, a decidedly smaller middle stratum, and a small percentage at the top of the hierarchy. Through an examination of global economic stratification from 1990 through 2015, China’s movement into the semiperiphery is shown to dramatically change the shape of this three-layered structure. This change that sometimes causes the distribution to appear quad-modal or multimodal is primarily because of the movement of more of the world’s population into the middle stratum of world-economy. This massive movement toward the middle is unprecedented. Furthermore, this new shape of the stratified world economy, will create an increasing amount of pressure on the countries in the middle that may translate into open military aggression and/or at the same time, a rise in regional and multilateral organizations such as the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

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In April and September of 1974, Immanuel Wallerstein published two articles that expounded on two fundamental tenets of what would later be called World-Systems Theory. In Dependence in an Interdependent World: Limited Possibilities of Transformation within the Capitalist World Economy Wallerstein argues that, for political and politico-economic reasons, the modern capitalist world-economy requires the existence of the semiperiphery, a middle stratum between the core and the periphery. In The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis , he further explains that the semiperiphery is an absolute necessity for the proper functioning of the modern capitalist world-economy and even for a world-empire with a redistributive economy. This three-layered structure, he argues, is the “normal condition” of the world-economy and when this “ceases to be the case, the world-system disintegrates”. Obviously, Wallerstein has since refined his ideas regarding world-systems theory. However, the concept of the trimodal structure remains essential and fundamental to his theory of the world-system. In this article, the primary concern is with the impact of the rise of China on this three-layered structure.

Some of the initial dialogue regarding the rise of China dealt with whether China would be able to break free of the peripheral status (which was accorded it by Babones and Alvarez-Rivadulla, 2007 ) or its semi-peripheral status (which was accorded it by Wallerstein, 1974(c) ; Chase-Dunn et al., 2000 to name a few), to become a competitor to the United States’ diminishing hegemonic status ( Gulick, 2004 ; Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, 2004 ; Gulick, 2007 ; Tabb, 2008 ; Panitch, 2010 ; Gulick, 2011 ), and/or serve as a new model for capitalist growth ( Ramo, 2004 ). However, this article seeks to go beyond the question of hegemonic ascent and focus on the trimodal world-economic structure itself. What happens when a country like China which makes up close to 20% of the world population moves from peripheral state to semiperipheral state in a matter of a decade—decade and a half? Would it structurally legitimize and stabilize the world-system or would it wreak havoc? Arrighi (1994 , 2007) or could it possibly cause systemic chaos or a complete reorganization of the system as suggested by Arrighi and Silver (1999) .

This article demonstrates that the rise of China has drastically changed the shape of the stratified world-economy in that it is no longer a classic trimodal distribution (small core, slightly larger semiperiphery, and most of the world in the periphery). Instead, much of the world’s population (at the country level) has moved to the center. This in turn has created and will continue to produce a new type of pressure on the world-system. With overcrowding in the middle stratum, China and those is the middle, may be forced to move away from a doctrine of cooperation to one that is more aggressive or even confrontational.

During its rise to economic prominence China sought global legitimization through various means most unambiguously with the obligatory signing of the One-China policy. More recently, it has done so through the establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), marshalling the support of initially reticent Western governments. Although many saw the AIIB was an affront to Bretton Woods Institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China was in fact acting within the rules of the existing system but clearly demonstrating its commitment to a multipolar world. Of note too, is the fact that China has outspent all countries in the semiperiphery, including all its BRICS counterparts (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in military expenditure. Furthermore, its obdurate stance regarding the South-China Sea has become quite problematic in the region especially given its increasing military budget. China appears to be inching toward a more aggressive stance to protect the gains it has made within the last several decades. While it is often fool-hardy to make predictions about the world-system, I would venture to state that systemic crisis will continue and a peaceful reorganization of the system may not be likely.

The article is organized as follows: First, there is a discussion of Wallerstein’s understanding of the semiperiphery which he saw as a stabilizing factor in the world-system followed by a brief explanation of the method and data used in our study. Then, some general findings are presented and an in-depth discussion that situates China in the stratified world-economy is subsequently provided. After the presentation of the findings, there is an examination of those findings within the context of Wallerstein’s conceptualization of the semiperiphery. The article concludes with some thoughts on macro-political-economic trends.

The semiperiphery in the world-economy

At the time of Wallerstein’s writings, there were two schools of thought –modernization theorists and dependency theorists— that attempted to make sense and understand the ways in which “development” was occurring in the world and more importantly how and why the capitalist world-system was stratified in such an unequal manner. Both modernization and dependency theorists pursued a highly dichotomized discourse in which countries tended to be categorized as either backwards or modern; or either rich or poor. Modernization theorists understood the division in the world-economy to be based on whether a country could be considered modern/advanced or traditional/backwards. Modernity was attained through industrialization and for many like Rostow (1959 , 1960) , Great Britain was held as the quintessential modern state. Additionally, modernization and industrialization were equated with “development”. For modernization theorists, any intermediate position between modernity and backwardness was transitory. Moreover, the whole process of industrialization could be jumpstarted through various means such as the transfer of technology and through direct capital investment. Dependency theory, which largely emerged out of discourse generated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (UN ECLAC) as a counter to modernization theory, focused primarily on the exploitative nature of the division of the world-economy. Countries were either developed or undeveloped but development or under-development was based primarily on a country’s position of center or periphery in the world economy. Dependency theorists (such as Raúl Prebisch and later Andre Gunder-Frank) saw a highly unequal global economy where countries at the center exploited those at the periphery for natural resources and raw materials to maintain the center’s wealth and position as well as to keep the peripheral countries in their place. They acknowledged that some countries could find themselves in between center and periphery but the structural pull toward center-ness and peripheral-ness was such that any intermediate position was a transitional one. Underdevelopment itself, was therefore a by-product of the modern capitalist order ( Gunder-Frank, 1979 ).

Wallerstein agreed with dependency theorists on the unequal-ness of the world-economic system; but went a step further concluding that this inequality was a necessary condition of the modern capitalist world-economy. Unequal exchanges were “necessary for the expansion of a world market if the primary consideration is profit. Without unequal exchange, it would not be profitable to expand the size of the division of labor. And without such expansion, it would not be profitable to maintain a capitalist world-economy, which would then either disintegrate or revert to the form of a redistributive world empire” ( Wallerstein, 1974a : 5). However, Wallerstein’s real breakthrough was his conceptualization of the semiperiphery and its crucial role in the modern world-system. Unlike the dependency theorist who saw countries either at the stage of core-ness or peripheral-ness, and the modernist who saw countries as either fully mature or totally backward, Wallerstein held that many countries in the world-system were, permanently or for an extended time period, in an intermediate position—the semiperiphery. For Wallerstein, this persistent global structural stratification went beyond rich-poor comparisons. This semiperiphery was neither, as the dependency theorists saw it (a transitional point) nor as the modernist theorists saw it (a residual effect of the world-system). And, most importantly, the semi-periphery was a permanent fixture of the modern world-system.

In the world-system, core countries are those that benefit significantly from the surplus derived from global commodity chains while peripheral countries see no benefit. The economic activities of core countries are capital-intensive as opposed to the labor-intensive ones of peripheral countries. The core engages in reproductive accumulative strategies as opposed to the primary accumulation strategies of peripheral countries. Unequal exchange then is enforced by the strong states on the weak ones; that is by the core on the periphery. In the world-system, the semiperiphery acts as a stabilizing fixture, engaging in an equal amount of core and peripheral activities, leading them to benefit just enough from global commodity chains to avoid falling back into the periphery but not enough to move into the core. Furthermore, the semiperiphery is both the exploiter and the exploited.

Wallerstein provides economic-historical evidence for the emergence of the semiperiphery and the trimodal modern capitalist world-economy and claimed that there were limited possibilities for transformation within the system. To put differently, unlike the modernization theorists whose solution for development is through rapid industrialization, Wallerstein sees a more rigid system with the ability to move from one sector (for example, semiperiphery to core) to another as extremely challenging. And Wallerstein is correct. In fact, there is a diminishing return with industrialization. As more countries in the world embraced industrialization as a means of moving out of the peripheral zone, the pay-off became less significant. In the case of Latin America, it is particularly striking that both import substitution industrialization and primary/secondary export industrialization, which Wallerstein argues were possible means to move ahead in the world-economy, were ineffective. Still, Wallerstein acknowledges that states are able to move from one position to another in the world-economic hierarchy over time. He writes, “the fact that particular states change their position in the world-economy…[however] does not itself change the nature of the system… the key factor to note is that within the capitalist world-economy, all states cannot “develop” simultaneously by definition , since the system functions by virtue of having unequal core and peripheral regions” ( Wallerstein, 1975 : 24).

After establishing the existence of the semiperiphery, in Rise and Future Demise , Wallerstein discusses the three mechanisms responsible for the stability, proper functioning and very survival of the trimodal world-system. This includes (1) concentrated military strength of the dominant, (2) widespread commitment to the system, and (3) a system that is three layered in structure). In Dependence in an Interdependent World he spends a significant amount of time discussing this third mechanism (why the capitalist world-system needs the semiperiphery) and provides two reasons for this: (1) economic reasons and (2) political-economic reasons. These stabilizing features of the modern capitalist world-system which lie in the semiperiphery, and China’s role in this, is the focus of this article, which will be addressed shortly.

Approach and data

In their 1986 inquiry into the stratification of the world-economy Giovanni Arrighi and Jessica Drangel rather effectively, provided empirical evidence to support the general existence of the three-layered structure over a 50-year time period. Their ability to adequately track and glean broad systemic changes between 1938 and 1983 is the catalyst for this study and a starting point to ask specific questions regarding drivers of contemporary systemic change. The use of the Arrighi and Drangel method in this study to determine global economic-stratification is by no means a rejection of the other empirical studies ( Snyder and Kick, 1979 ; Arrighi and Drangel, 1986 ; Kentor, 2000 ; Babones, 2005 ; Mahutga and Smith, 2011 ) into the subject. In fact, all these studies, including this one, can be seen as enriching the sub-field and generally should be seen as complementary and engaging. For this study, the Arrighi and Drangel method is used to determine global economic stratification for the period 1990 to 2015—a period of time that is equated with the effective rise of contemporary China.

Empirically demonstrating trimodality (periphery-semiperiphery-core) over time is essential to World-Systems Analysis but this has been a source of consternation for World-systems theorists and analysts. In fact, even Wallerstein (1974a) was cognizant of this challenge illustrated by his very own query “how can we tell a semiperipheral state when we see one” (5). He did not believe the answer lay in focusing on any one type or particular product since a peripheral product today could end up being a core product tomorrow and vice versa. This is especially true today with the rapid flow of technology across national borders. So, Wallerstein (1974b) suggested observing “the wage patterns and margins of profit of particular products at particular moments of time.” Theoretically, this makes sense but poses special empirical challenges. The same is true of Chase-Dunn’s (1984 , 1989) suggestion in which he writes that “only carefully operationalized empirical research on changes over time in the global distribution of military power capabilities, state access to resources and level of economic development can resolve this problem” ( Chase-Dunn, 1989 : 79). Footnote 1 Furthermore, for Chase-Dunn, the lines clearly demarcating core, semiperiphery and periphery were not as rigid and was in fact quite fluid.

As indicated above, Arrighi and Drangel (1986) did take on the challenge of ascertaining empirically whether the three-layered structure of the world-economy persisted over time. They devised a simple and clear method that produced complex and interesting results. Their approach was to use gross national product (GNP) per capita as a proxy for measuring a state’s mix of core-peripheral activities in the world division of labor. They explain, “core activities command aggregate rewards that incorporate most, if not all the overall benefits of the world division of labor, whereas peripheral activities command aggregate rewards that incorporate few, if any, of those benefits… The differences in the command over total benefits of the world division of labor must necessarily be reflected in commensurate differences in the GNP per capita of the states in question” ( Arrighi and Drangel, 1986 : 31). The key to their argument is that if command over total benefits of the world division of labor represents where one falls in the global economic hierarchy, then the GNP per capita is a reasonable measurement to determine stratification.

In their study, Arrighi and Drangel use world population as a function of GNP per capita from 1938 to 1983 to test for the stability and persistency of the semiperiphery over time. For the most part, they found trimodality to exist within the capitalist world-system throughout the time period under review with some years such as 1983 and 1938 as clearly trimodal and other years such as 1965 and 1970 to be less so. Taylor (1988) , tested the robustness of the Arrighi and Drangel study by keeping the GNP per capita proxy and changing the “areal base of the data”. That is, instead of aggregating the population data based on nation states/countries, state boundaries were removed and the population rearranged into cells of approximately equal populations. Taylor’s “cell” grouping method is based on Cole’s (1981) alternative non-state world population data. Taylor found that despite the extreme spatial reorganization of the population data, trimodality persisted.

For Arrighi and Drangel, the GNP per capita was the closest proxy to representing a country’s overall benefit from the world division of labor. The gross national income (GNI) per capita is used in this study. GNI unlike GNP measures a country’s entire economic growth, and considers income and taxes earned both at home and abroad. It is important to note that in this study, the World Bank’s GNI per capita data using the Atlas Method (the purpose of which, according to the World Bank is to minimize exchange rate fluctuations in cross-country comparisons) is employed.

There are two reasons for using GNI per capita in the study. The first being that the linkages between nation states, corporations, and peoples in the world-economy have become more profound and complex because of globalization and transnationalization in particular (see Robinson, 2004 , 2010 ). The second reason is that countries in the periphery and semiperiphery (the main economic regions on which this article focuses), place a strong emphasis on remittances. For China, overseas remittances have always been important but was significantly affected when United States officially banned in December 1950 ( Peterson, 2012 ). However, according to the World Bank’s remittances data, in 1990, China received US$175 Million in remittances. By 2000 that figure was at 5,237 Million and the estimate for 2010 is 51,300 Million and a significant portion of its GDP ( World Bank Development Prospects Group, 2011 ).

All the data comes from the World Bank and the period of study spans 1990 to 2010. Like Arrighi and Drangel the log of the GNI per capita is used, not only because of the skewed nature of the raw GNI per capita data but also because the primary interest is in the relative rather than the absolute differences amongst countries. The fact that the GNI is calculated using the Atlas Method in USD also allows for the measurement of differences in command over world economic resources rather than differences in standards of living.

Each country’s population is plotted as a percentage of total world population by its log GNI per capita in intervals of one-tenth. The (population) distribution is then smoothed by a three-interval moving average. It is important to note that time (the period 1990–2010) and not geographic space (countries in the study on a year to year basis) is held constant because the study is mostly concerned in movements in the periphery and semiperiphery and there is a general paucity of data for those countries. Therefore, for any given year, all the data points are retained if both population and GNI per capita information is available. Furthermore, since the total population is being examined as a function of GNI, logically, the total world population for any given year in the distribution is based only on the total population of the countries included in the study for that given year.

At the beginning the study, the assumption is that of a trimodal distribution but with the understanding that it may not always hold. The priority is to examine the peripheral and semiperipheral economic zones. To track which countries (and here the focus is on China) moved from one zone to another, a cutoff point for each economic zone (that is, periphery, semiperiphery, core) is initially established. This is done by first determining the median point (or median cluster of countries) in the distribution for each year. Then, the local minima in the immediate right and left of the median is determined. Those are the cut-off points for the semiperiphery for that specific year. So, for example, in 1990, the median cluster was 3.45 and the semiperipheral economic zone would be countries falling within the 3.15 to 3.65 cluster; to the right of that would be the general core zone and to the left of that the general periphery zone (see Fig. 1 ). This also means that it is possible that a country could remain in one particular economic zone from 1 year to another, but the shape of the distribution and where each country falls in that distribution might change. Starting in 2001, the distribution becomes chaotic with instances of more than one local minima to the left and right of the median point. In those cases, the lowest of these points is used as the cut-off points for the semiperiphery as shown in Fig. 1 for the 2010 and 2015 distributions. 2

Cut-off points for economic zones for the years 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2015.

During the early years of the study’s time period, the findings support a trimodal distribution consistent with Wallerstein’s World-Systems theory; over time, the shape of the distribution veers away from trimodality and toward a quad-modal or generally multi-modal distribution. This movement away to what looks like a multi-modal distribution is even more obvious given the cut-off points imposed throughout the study. Still, this enables us to visually see that much of the messiness in the distributions especially in the 2000s involves a pronounced and general move to the middle. China, which experienced significant economic growth well into the 2000s, is a major driver of this change, irrespective of the global economic recession which began circa 2007. Within this context, the central concern of this paper, which is to engage with and reconcile Wallerstein’s statements regarding the impossibility of the modern capitalist world-system without a semiperiphery and the legitimizing role of the semiperiphery, is pursued. The results of the study force us to stop and re-examine some basic principles of world-systems theory.

China and the stratification of the world-economy

As can be seen in the 1990 distribution of Fig. 1 , the distribution of the world-economy started out with a classic three-layered structure. Majority of the world is in the periphery and therefore, had the least amount of command over global economic resources. In this first year, not only is China (with 21% of the world population in the study) included in the periphery, but so is India (making up 16% of the world population), and almost all Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. In fact, both China and India are in the same cluster along the distribution (the middle point of the semiperipheral peak) with five Sub-Saharan countries and Guyana.

It is also quite apparent (see Fig. 2 ) that the world’s economic power and influence lay in the core and with a very small percent of the total world population. This, is of course not all that shocking but the numbers are still quite stark. The rest of the world’s population was still working through the residual and actual effects of the world-economic crises of the late 1970s, which one can argue lingered on well into the early 1990s when our study begins. Footnote 2

Country positions in the world-economy for the year 1990. Map generated using the study’s data and MS Excel Power Map Add-On.

Noteworthy in this initial distribution in the stratified world-economy is India’s presence with China in the same cluster of countries. These two populous countries are flanked by SSA countries and Bangladesh to the left and more SSA countries plus Pakistan and Sri Lanka to the right. These are all countries with elevated population figures. Most of these states were desperately dealing with continued economic crises and beginning to implement various economic policies to cope with those crises. Many, submitted to the more powerful core by adopting neo-liberal programs in their domestic policies and international relations agendas.

However, within a 5-year period the classic trimodal distribution of the world-economy changes rapidly and dramatically. But the defining year is 1996, when although majority of the world’s population is in the periphery, the periphery is divided into two distinct blocs with India on one side and China on the other. And in 2001, the year after China enters the semiperiphery, the classic trimodal distribution becomes fully undone as witnessed in Fig. 3 .

China moving out of the periphery into the semiperiphery.

In the last three years of the study, an attempt is made to test this movement away from trimodality by applying a 6-degree polynomial regression function (which for all intents and purposes should capture trimodality) to the distributions. The end results were abysmal R -squares of approximately 0.4, 0.36 and 0.48. This change in the distribution is rendered more obvious when the initial 1990 trimodal setting of peripheral and semiperipheral points are held constant. In Addition, it is found that over the study’s time period, a considerable amount of the world’s population moved in the direction of the semiperiphery. This became clear as the study progressed and in 1999, there were eight more countries in the semiperiphery than the periphery. For the first time, in 2000 there is a significantly larger number of countries in semiperiphery than in the periphery (see Fig. 4 .) and China’s role in this is quite critical as it too, enters the semiperiphery.

Country positions in the world-economy for the year 2000. Map generated using the study’s data and MS Excel Power Map Add-On.

Taking the entirety of the study’s time-span, it is obvious that changes are occurring throughout the global economic distribution, particularly in terms of the upper and lower bounds of the semiperipheral distribution. However, most of the significant changes in global stratification is occurring in the peripheral and semiperipheral zones. It is in those zones that you see multiple modes forming, shifting, and disappearing. Yet, on some level though, this is to be expected. Those with economic power (the core) will pursue policies to maintain the power structure of the status quo. Furthermore, to some extent, Chase-Dunn (1989) , Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) and Chase-Dunn and Grell-Brisk (2015) have all argued that the semiperiphery has always been the seedbed of change in the world-system. Chase-Dunn and Grell-Brisk, for example, maintain that a significant portion of socio-historical systemic transformation happened within the semiperiphery and sometimes even in the periphery and that this is in part because of uneven and combined development that occurs within particular world-systems. It has been argued too, that semiperipheral states and regions are more likely to implement risky new technologies ( Toynbee, 1946 ) and invest in organizational innovation ( Lattimore, 1980 ).

Overall, the study highlights the significant shift from a largely classic trimodal or three-layered structure to something more akin to a quad-modal or generally multi-modal structure. This happens as China slowly divorces itself from the initial clusters that included India, and other South Asian countries. Of course, given the population sizes of both China and India, any movement they make in the world-economic distribution would be significant. But, even by 1993, China was already no longer in the same cluster of countries as India with both countries sitting at the top of the peripheral zone peak with India to the left and China to the right. In the mid-nineties and early 2000s both China and India were seen as having the potential to exert significant influence on the global stage. Yet, China is generally seen as having established a larger role in the global economy than India. And although this might seem obvious, by the end of the 2000s China had outperformed India almost 3:1 in terms of GNI per capita and GDP per capita.

In broader political economic terms, China was able to expand in a way India could not for a number of reasons. The economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping and continued under Jiang Zemin which produced unprecedented growth rates for China, included an initial decentralization and privatization measures. Hung (2016) has argued that the economic reforms should be periodized between those of the 1980s and 1990s since they were so distinct (the first being more market-oriented and the second being more statist). He also argues that these reforms thrived because of the effective groundwork laid by Mao Zedong. While I would not dispute Hung’s argumentation, I maintain that the end result is practically the same—economic reforms leading to success and economic growth for China in the 1990s.

On the other hand, India’s politico-economic reforms of 1991 were not as effective, producing instead, a continued rise of the elite contrary to the public call for the opposite and a concurrent de-peasantification which contributed to rising inequalities. Kumar (2000) has argued that events such as the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), one of India’s largest trading partner at the time, and the first Gulf War, contributed to India’s liquidity crisis circa 1990. However, unlike China, much of India’s economic reforms in 1991 were driven by structural-adjustment-type initiatives encouraged by the IMF and World Bank. Industry, trade, and financial sectors along with exchange rates and the capital market were all liberalized and opened ( Kumar, 2000 ) with the support of the World Bank and IMF in an effort to solve India’s balance of payment crisis and its declining international credit rating. Some such as Kohli (2006) , Nagaraj (2003) , DeLong (2001) , and Rodrik (2002) have argued that the reforms were ineffective or a complete failure. Others like Panagariya (2004) believed that more systemic economic changes implemented in the nineties proved better for the Indian economy. Reasonably, China was already attracting several magnitudes more in FDI than India in the early 1990s along with a considerably larger percent of its GDP in exports and imports in goods and services than India. And China’s economic growth was driven by an export-oriented model. Obviously, in both the China and India case, there are also other socio-political issues at play but at the end of the day, it is China that steadily rose up in the stratified world-economy.

Remarkably, it is not until 2000 that China finally makes it into the semiperipheral economic zone. Given its incredible economic growth spurt and changing role in the global economy, one would have expected China to have jumped by leaps and bounds into the semiperipheral economic zone. Yet its movement into the semiperiphery, as can be seen in Fig. 5 ., is steady and moderate, highlighting the ever-real difficulty and challenge that many peripheral and semiperipheral countries face in terms of upward mobility. It is not until 2006 that China appears to be fully part of the larger middle stratum and continued to rise in the hierarchy all through the end of the study in 2015.

China and India’s movement within the stratified world-economy.

This challenge of upward mobility in the world-economic hierarchy is even more pronounced in the case of India. While China jumped two plot points (two full country clusters) ahead by 1995, India remained in the same cluster as it was in 1990. India has moved up in the global economic hierarchy but has never moved out of the peripheral economic zone.

China’s march into the semiperiphery

In thinking about the results of the study, and Wallerstein’s claims about the structure of the world-system, the first thing that comes to mind is Arrighi’s (1994) assertions that given the population of China, any dramatic economic rise would be subversive to the world-system. He writes that “given China’s demographic size, its economic expansion is far more subversive of the global hierarchy of wealth than all of the previous East Asian economic “miracles” put together” (382). And “accommodating the upward mobility of a state that by itself accounts for about one-fifth of the world population is an altogether different matter” (382–383). Arrighi was fundamentally right. As seen in the study, the very shape of the distribution changed with the economic rise of China. This goes back to Wallerstein’s statements on the trimodal distribution which is meant to be interrogated here but leads back to Wallerstein’s own question. “How then, can we tell a semiperipheral state when we see one? To which I would add, based on Wallerstein’s criteria from those two initial articles in 1974, how well does or can China fit the role of semiperipheral state? This also raises questions about the stability of the three-layered structure.

I will start by examining the mechanisms that Wallerstein states are necessary for the political stability of the system. The first of which is the concentration of military strength in the hands of the dominant. As Wallerstein (1974c) and several others including Chase-Dunn have pointed out, a country’s military power can go a long way in coercing cooperation and submission. In fact, when thinking of world-systemic hegemony or domination, military power is typically an important feature. All three hegemonies of historical capitalism—Dutch—British—United States—were military powerhouses. Despite questions about the effectiveness of the United States’ military, no one can ignore that its military spending/budget is three times more than the second largest military budget in the world—China.

While Wallerstein does not mention the function of military capacity in the semiperiphery, given its role of exploited and exploiter, one can deduce that a semiperipheral country must also have a strong military. The main challenger to the United States’ domination after the Second World War was the Soviet Union, which incidentally was also in the semiperiphery for most of the Cold War, spent almost as much, if not more money on its military as the United States (Stokholm International Peace Research Institute, Ostrom and Marra, 1986 ; Higgs, 1988 ). China is nowhere near those levels but it is still outspending all other major countries in military expenditures. In November of 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a major overhaul to its military to make it more combat ready and better prepared for military operations outside its national boundaries that included increasing its military budget (Bloomberg News). And while China’s announced in March of 2016 that it would increase its military spending, the total percentage increase is less than the last 6 years.

One can interpret China’s continued increasing military spending, as a commitment to the stable exploitative nature of the modern capitalist world-system ( Mearsheimer, 2014 ) but China’s continued choice of soft-power in its relationships with the Global South paints a different picture. Still, there is no reason for a semiperipheral state like China not to increase its military, and given the general move toward the middle in terms of global economic stratification, China could simply be feeling the pressure of a crowded semiperiphery. In fact, how China chooses to use its ever-growing military apparatus will determine either this commitment to the system or a push for radical systemic change. A commitment to the system does not necessarily mean acquiescing to the United States and other core countries. In fact, this could entail China asserting its ideas (such as its state-based market economics) and itself within the semiperiphery and periphery in much the same way that the United States forced its ideas of market-based economics and democracy unto Latin America and the Middle East through overt and covert military action. One could argue that China has already laid the groundwork for this type of behavior within South-East Asia and Africa, but China has preferred other means to influence these regions. Furthermore, forcing a multipolar world through military engagement is not the same as deserting the world-system. In fact, I would argue that a multipolar world could relieve some of the political-economic pressure from the overcrowding in the semiperiphery albeit without the military interventions.

The second mechanism which allows for the relative stability of the world-system is the pervasiveness of an ideological commitment to the system as a whole. This means the full support of the countries in the world-system that believe “their own well-being is wrapped up in the survival of the system” ( Wallerstein, 1974b ). I would argue that the entire post-Mao period has been an example of this commitment. The economic reforms which started with Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin opened China to the rest of the world and ushered in unprecedented economic growth. Since, China’s pseudo-capitalist economic system has been named “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” and “state-based capitalism.” Here, Wallerstein’s argument that nationalization or socialization of all productive enterprises within the bounds of a nation-state is not enough to identify that state as outside the bounds of the capitalist world-system, is quite relevant. “As long as these nations remain part of a capitalist world-economy, they continue to produce for this world market on the basis of the same principles as any other producer” ( Wallerstein, 1974a ). It is therefore easy to see that China through its economic system would be committed to the modern capitalist world-system and contribute to its continued stability and persistence. In fact, scholars such as Hung (2015) and Kumral and Karatasli (2015 , 2017) have also argued that China wants and needs to maintain the status quo and the current world-economic structure. That is not to say that Chinese leaders themselves have not called for a multipolar world or for a system where economic power and influence is not concentrated in the Global North. China is heavily invested in the capitalist world-system as it exists. China wants to be part of world-economy but wants a world-system it deems more beneficial to it—and sometimes for the rest of the world.

The third mechanism that Wallerstein (1974b) documents, which creates political stability and durability of the modern capitalist world-economy is the system’s three layered structure which he claims, is its “normal condition”. He explains that “neither [military] force nor ideological commitment… would suffice were it not for the division of the majority (my italics) into the lower stratum and a smaller (my italics) middle stratum. Whatever way one interprets the results of this study in terms of macro-economic trends (taken up a little later), the results do show that the middle stratum of the world-economy is growing; meaning that more and more of the world population (at the national level) is finding itself in the middle. However, I would argue that this does not necessarily mean a complete collapse of the trimodal/three-layered structure. Only the shape of the distribution of the stratified world-economy will be different.

This brings us to the role of the semiperiphery. For Wallerstein (1974b) , given the small middle stratum, their role would involve some form of inadvertent policing of the system. The small middle is both the exploited (by the core) and the exploiter (of the periphery) making it harder for a coordinated revolt against the core. Wallerstein (1974a) explains that the capitalist world-system needs a semiperipheral sector for two reasons: the first being political and the other politico-economic. The political reasons go back to Wallerstein’s idea of “cultural stratification” ( Wallerstein, 1974b ). This means that given the highly unequal nature of the system, a bipolar world would be prone to revolts and volatility. A small semiperiphery would help to stabilize the system because the countries in this middle stratum have a tendency to think of themselves as primarily better off than the periphery ( Wallerstein, 1974b ). The implication here is that if peripheral countries rose in rebellion against this highly unequal system, the semiperipheral countries would identify with and advocate for the position of the core countries.

Firstly, not only has this study demonstrated an increasingly larger semiperiphery, but the major driver of this change—China—for the most part, takes a completely different attitude toward the periphery and other semiperipheral states. Whether or not one believes it to be true or sincere, China’s foreign policy attitude toward other developing or underdeveloped countries has mostly been one guided by post-colonial solidarity and its principles of equality and mutual benefit, diversity, practical results, common progress and so on. Naturally, this doctrine of cooperation is couched in China’s own desire to continue to climb up in the global political-economic hierarchy. Arguably, it maintains that extreme inequality is not necessary to moving ahead. Since November of 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping have in fact been touting the idea of a multipolar world in which global power is more diffuse. This does not mean a rejection of the basic capitalist world-economy. It simply means that China is interested in a system where power is shared amongst more countries or blocs of countries.

Within the last two decades, there has been an increasing amount of multilateral cooperation between not only semiperipheral states (such as the creation of the BRICS and the BRICS’s own bank, the creation of the AIIB) but also across semiperipheral and peripheral states such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), and the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). In today’s world-economy, Wallerstein’s “cultural stratification” reasoning, may be less convincing. Still, there has also been a proliferation of these regional and multilateral organizations as a necessary adaptation to the changing form of stratification in the world-economy. It appears that semiperipheral and peripheral countries are acutely aware of the ongoing changes in the world-system and have determined it best to protect their own interest but with the understanding that regional and multilateral alliances matter.

As far as the politico-economic reasons for the periphery, in the first case, Wallerstein (1974a) argues that the absence of a single political authority made it impossible to legislate the general will of the world-system or curtail the capitalist mode of exploitative production. However, the wage-productivity squeeze in the core, in part because of their strong state machineries, forces capitalist to shift focus to the semiperiphery. Wallerstein (1974a) further argues that, given that semiperipheral states trade or seek to trade with both core and periphery, their economic decisions tend to conform more to state based methods of market control. One can concede here that China more than conforms to this politico-economic semiperipheral role. China has kept strong state control and management of its economy since the 1990s ( Hung, 2015 ) including its currency.

By the late nineties and early 2000s when it became clear to the world that China had to be taken seriously at the global level, China had already clearly benefited from this wage-productivity squeeze especially because of its “state-based capitalism” but also because of its large, healthy, and educated population. Many including Lindbaek (1997) , Glyn (2006) , and Foster et al. (2011) referred to China as being the world provider of a “reserve army of labor” particularly given China’s exceedingly sizeable population. Lindbaek (1997) claimed that, on the labor supply side of globalization, China “clearly had a reserve army of labor” that would be “released gradually” keeping the wage differential between developed and lesser developed countries high. According to Foster et al. , given China’s large labor supply, wages could be suppressed leading to vast amounts of profits for multinational corporations, but also provide a competitive edge for China over other areas of the Global South with massive amounts of low-wage workers.

For others, a significant percentage of China’s population could invariably be seen as a latent reserve army of labor and they attributed China’s rapid economic expansion in the mid 1990s to this phenomenon. Of course, this very idea, like all things Chinese, is also the source of much debate and scrutiny. This seemingly unlimited supply of labor to be tapped into for the non-agrarian industry allowed China a competitive edge in the global value chain. Hung (2016) , asserts that China’s “reserve army of labor” developed as a result of Maoist era health and education policy (resulting in a large population of educated and healthy workers); the unique Chinese system of hukou (that bureaucratically kept the rural workers in the countryside); and the leeching of power from “township and village enterprises” (that took away the livelihood and earning potential of the rural workers). All these facts helped create an atmosphere in which China could benefit significantly to the wage-productivity squeeze.

Although Wallerstein’s arguments regarding the role of the semiperiphery and the countries within may hold true even today, one must also note here that the politico-economic landscape has been considerably transformed and modified by transnationalization, the extent of which Wallerstein could/had not anticipated. The emergence of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) has certainly had an effect on the lack of a single political authority to regulate the capitalist world-economy. Robinson (2004) has argued that the TCC has transcended nation-state boundaries and despite being in competition amongst themselves for cheap labor and access to the means of production have managed to work together to maximize their profits. The implication of an existing TCC is two-fold. First, through the TCC, a single global political authority could emerge. However, this political authority would only seek to curtail the capitalist mode of exploitative production only if the negative effects were so great as to result in plummeting profits.

Despite the fact that the rise of China has changed the shape of the distribution, I would anticipate the persistence of the capitalist world-economy. China does not seek to fundamentally transform the system. Everything China has done, from opening its market, to its major economic reforms and most recently, a supposed move toward domestic consumption to stimulate economic growth ( Canton, 2015 ), has been with the goal of profiting from the world-economic system as it stands. It has pursued a strategy that seeks a relative advantage to “develop”. Hung (2016) has argued that China will most likely not continue to grow as spectacularly as it did in the nineties and first half of the 2000s. He contends that optimistically, China could stabilize economically and grow at a steady pace or alternatively, it could slide back into economic decline and backwardness. Given the strength of China’s ties with the core and its supposed move to a market directed at domestic consumption, China will hopefully remain somewhere in the middle. It is also possible that its many geopolitical moves around the Global South, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America could boost its chances of remaining in the middle stratum.

China’s engagement especially with Sub-Saharan Africa, has implications for the stratified world-economy in terms of unequal exchange and exploitation. In classic world-system analysis, a large periphery is necessary since it is not only exploited by the core, but also by the semiperiphery. Majority of the peripheral countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa—a region that China has spent significant time and resources designed at developing a well-established relationship. This means that China has the advantage of prime access to much of the periphery. Still, this also allows China the unique opportunity to implement alternative modes of accumulation that are less destructive than the current neoliberal order promoted by the West.

Final remarks on macro-political-economic trends

Operationalizing the empirical measurement of the semiperiphery has always been a point of contention in world-systems analysis. This study takes one approach and method. We believe that with this method can reasonably help shed light on questions dealing with the general distribution of the contemporary global-economy. Karatasli (2017) developed an enhanced version of the Arrighi and Drangel approach to study global economic wealth distribution. His study begins from 1500 to 2008, and for the period of his study which overlaps with ours, he found a general transformation of the world-system into a quatro-modal distribution. Karatasli argues that the world-system has undergone several similar such transformations—first being bi-modal, then trimodal and finally quarto-modal—thus implying that there is a strong possibility based on historical evidence for the stability of this quarto-modal type of distribution. However, as observed in this study, with both China and India, along with several SSA countries moving toward the center, it is more likely that the world-system will return to a tri-modal distribution, albeit one with a larger middle stratum and two smaller extreme points.

Arrighi and Silver (1999) put forth a series of hypothesis regarding the US’s hegemonic transition period, one of which was that the bifurcation of military and financial capacity under US hegemony was unique. This bifurcation, they argued, would not reduce the chances of a possibly long period of hegemonic crisis and systemic chaos. I agree, and maintain that this study, in part, demonstrates not only continuing systemic and hegemonic crisis but also, that the current world-economic distribution, with so much of Asia in the middle stratum, is a result of this bifurcation of US military and Asian financial capabilities.

As previously intimated, this larger middle stratum, could have a crowding effect with geopolitical implications. China’s increased influence in the global economy has allowed it to also increase its military spending (although a distant second, second nonetheless to the United States’ military budget). Although China has not used its military for covert operations that involve overthrowing and installing governments, like the United States did during the beginning and especially at the height of its hegemonic domination, it does appear to be emboldened by its military capacity and taken more aggressive positions. Not only, has it begun to sell and provide military weapons to regions in conflict in the Global South (such as Sudan), it has also heightened its military presence in traditional areas of conflict such as the South China Sea. The geopolitics of the South China Sea is extremely important vis-à-vis this increasing middle stratum of the world-economic system. China’s hardline view regarding its claim to sovereignty of strategic islands in the region, and its unwillingness to submit to international rulings on the conflict, places it at odds with some of its semiperipheral peers and their allies, and even Japan ( De Castro, 2013 ; Xu, 2014 ; Yuzawa, 2014 ).

The Philippines took its case against China’s continued claims to the South China Sea to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) Tribunal. In mid-July 2016 in Philippines v. China , the court found that China’s “historic rights” claim to waters beyond its territorial sea had previously been relinquished, that China’s interference in Filipino fishing and oil exploration violated Filipino sovereignty, and that China’s “artificial islands” were was also in violation of its obligation not to irreparably damage the marine environment ( Batongbacal, 2016 ; Daiss, 2016 ). In its July 13, 2016 press release, Fitch Ratings—one of the Big Three credit rating agencies—noted that importance of the geopolitics of the South China Sea, claiming that the US’s declining influence in Asia plus with China’s efforts to expand its presence in the region was “fundamentally changing the region’s security paradigm” ( Fitch Ratings, 2016 ). Furthermore, that shifts in the regional balance of power meant geopolitical risks that had the “potential to cause significant economic and political instability.” China’s reaction was one of anger claiming that the PCA’s decision was “naturally null and void” and the People’s Daily editorial declared that “the Chinese government and the Chinese people firmly oppose the ruling and will neither acknowledge it nor accept it.” While China has not responded by military invasion or open war, it has made a point of displaying its military capacity by engaging in military drills in the South China Sea. Christopher Bodeen reported in the Navy Times that just days of the PCA ruling, China closed part of the South China Sea for military exercises ( Bodeen, 2016 ).

Despite its potential for and sometimes overt efforts at asserting its military dominance amongst peripheral and semiperipheral countries, China has continued its use of soft-power to strengthen its ties with the rest of the Global South. This is quite consistent with its maintenance of the world-system’s status quo ( Kumral and Karatasli, 2017 ). The emergence of multilateral organizations within the Global South and China’s seemingly acceptance of them supports this view. China may however, find itself at a crossroad in the near future. It has always called for a multipolar world even as the semiperiphery becomes more crowded. Still, other countries in the semiperiphery are also trying to demonstrate their own power and prominence in the world-system, highlighting the fact that moving up and down the world-system hierarchy is also dependent on the nature of the relationship established between states (see Babones, 2005 ).

This is particularly so with Russia. Russia, unlike China has used overt military action in recent years—in Georgia (beginning 2008) and Ukraine (beginning 2014), and continues overt and thinly veiled covert military operations in both areas. Unlike China, Russia has called for a bipolar world, one in which it could share power with the United States (although one could argue about the veracity of Russia’s call for “shared” power and the implications of this). I would argue that Russia’s recent behavior in the world-system can also partially be seen as a response to and geopolitical consequence of the reshaping of the stratified world-economy. For the last two and a half decades, China has risen in global prominence economically and politically. Its sphere of influence is not only in South Asia, but also Africa and Latin America. China created the AIIB (which appears to be more successful than the BRICS Bank) to help mitigate the risks involved in investing and providing foreign aid in peripheral and semiperipheral countries. Meanwhile, although Russia did not fall into semiperipheral status, it did lose, or rather Kremlin saw the fall of, the USSR. Now, Russia’s newfound admiration for America and its new anti-China government is perplexing. Still, one can trace modern Sino-Soviet discord as early as the 1950s and the Bandung Conference as the point at which China sought to influence and assert itself, amongst the peripheral states, as the rightful alternative to the existing core establishment. How China responds to Russia’s aggressive posture in the semiperiphery and the US’s inability to deal with its diminished hegemonic status remains to be seen. In today’s high-tech military world, only time will tell. And as Arrighi and Silver (1999) rightly stated, non-catastrophic transition to a new world order is dependent on US’s “adjustment and accommodation to the rising economic power of the East Asian region” (289). I would add, that more than anything, multipolarity is needed to secure a peaceful system.

This article has demonstrated that the shape of the distribution of the stratified world-economy has changed dramatically but believe this is indicative of continued systemic crisis not a necessarily full transformation to a different mode of distribution. I argue that although the shape of the distribution sometimes appears quad-modal or multimodal, primarily because ofChina’s movement within the distribution, that what we are actually witnessing is the movement of more of the world’s population into the middle stratum of world-economy. This massive movement toward the middle is unprecedented. However, despite the appearance of quad-modality or multi-modality, the system will eventually readjust back to a trimodal distribution but will look different; that is, there will be a medium periphery, large semiperiphery, and small core. I also argue that because of this new shape of the distribution, there will be an increasing amount of pressure on the countries in the middle that may translate into open military aggression and at the same time, a rise in regional and multilateral organizations such as the AIIB, ALBA and AFTA.

In this article, the focus has been primarily on the changing modes of distribution as it relates to China and the semiperiphery. Equally important, are the implications for the periphery. With a much smaller periphery, how does unequal exchange play out? What will exploitation within the world-system look like with this diminished periphery? Will this drive up the value of primary resources that are generally found in the periphery? How can peripheral countries turn this into an advantage to attract either more foreign direct investment or foreign aid? Can they use their diminished status to ramp up the industrialization process and what are the ecological ramifications?

There is still much research to be done with regards to the role of China in the changing stratification in the world-economy especially vis-à-vis those countries at the bottom of the world-economic hierarchy. There is room for more research not only on the diminished periphery but also for the implications for the core given that this study also shows that some core countries are slowly falling into the semiperiphery such as Greece and Portugal. Additional research might address some of these issues but could also include how to interpret results such as the ones found in this study and address questions of operationalization and empirical measurements to determine world-economic stratification.

Data availability

The data used in this study is based on a World Bank dataset download of 13 October 2016. This includes the GNP per capita data and world population data. Since the World Bank is continuously updating its datasets, this particular download is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

How to cite this article : Grell-Brisk M (2017) China and global economic stratification in an interdependent world. Palgrave Communications . 3:17087 doi: 10.1057/palcomms.2017.87.

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Footnote 3

Chase-Dunn was at the time responding to Daniel Chirot’s (1977) claim that decolonization eliminated the periphery. Chase-Dunn agrees that although some formerly peripheral countries did become semiperipheral, core states had in fact gained additional power.

Academics have used countless time-frames to determine the major global economic crises from the 1970s to present. For example, José Tapia (2013) has argued that there have been five distinct crises of the world economy—mid 1970s, early 1980s, early 1990s, early 2000s, and the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Others such as Michael Roberts (2015) have argued that in the late 1970s there was a global recession in 1974 a double-dip recession in 1980 and a Long Depression beginning in 2007. Many more have described the global economic woes in terms of the global debt crisis of the 1970s, the saving and loan crisis of the 1980s and the recession which began circa 2007. However, what still remains is that in 1990 when our study begins, majority of the world’s population was in the peripheral zone and majority of the world economic power rested with a few countries in the core.

The method for determining the general economic zones is applied consistently throughout the study. When multiple modes begin to appear, the method’s limits are tested but remain fairly robust except in two extreme cases—2004 and 2007—where the number of clusters within the semiperiphery contracts significantly. This is because of the fact that the lowest local minima to the left are fairly close to the median. Therefore, in 2004 the lower bound is 3.35 (compared to 2.95 in 2003 and 3.05 in 2005) and in 2007, the lower bound is 3.55 (compared with 3.15 in 2006 and 3.25 in 2008).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Beverly Silver, Daniel Pasciuti and Sahan Savas Karatasli for their support while at the Arrighi Center for Global Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This article is based on the author’s time as part of the Global Inequality and Development Research Working Group at the Arrighi Center whose members have worked on other aspects of the changes in the stratified world-economy (Sahan Savas Karatasli, Sefika Kumral, Daniel Pasciuti and Beverly J. Silver (2017) “World Hegemonies and Global Inequalities”, chapter 2 in Mapping a New World Order: The Rest Beyond the West, edited by Vladimir Popov and Piotr Dutkiewicz, pages 23–37; Daniel Pasciuti and Beverly J. Silver (2013). “Developmentalist Illusion Redux?” Paper presented at the Political Economy of the World System Conference, University of California, Riverside, April 12–13, 2013).

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World Systems Theory – Definition, Examples, Critiques

The world systems theory states that the world exists as a single socio-economic system made up of a core, periphery, and semi-periphery. In this system, “surplus value” is transferred from the periphery to the core.

To better understand the world systems theory, it is helpful to begin with its components. These are three areas of the world:

• Core Areas – A small set of technologically advanced and industrialized capitalist nations/regions characterized by higher incomes, large tax bases, and high standards of living. In the 21st century, the developed countries that form the G-7 group, along with China can be considered the core of the world-system.
• Periphery Areas – Poor countries that primarily subsist by exporting primary products such as agricultural produce and natural resources to the core countries. The periphery is characterized by a small tax base, low incomes, and low levels of human development index. In the 21st century, much of sub-Saharan African, parts of Latin America and Central Asia can be considered the periphery.
• Semi-Periphery Areas – These countries act as the periphery to core countries, and as a core to the countries on the periphery. Typically, such countries are regional powers with moderate levels of development indices and growing capitalist economies.   In the 21st century, countries such as India, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Israel, Nigeria etc. can be considered the semi-periphery of the world-system.

Definition of World Systems Theory

Below is the classic definition of the world system by Wallerstein (1974):

• A world system is a “multicultural territorial division of labor in which the production and exchange of basic goods and raw materials is necessary for the everyday life of its inhabitants.”

Coccia (2019) defines the world systems theory as:

• “World-systems theory is a socioeconomic and political approach that explains the economic development and dynamics of capitalistic world economy analyzing the mechanisms of international market trade, economic division of labor between core and periphery regions, and interests of capitalist class in markets.”

Origins of the Theory

The world systems theory was proposed by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein in the 1970s as an alternative to the then popular modernization hypothesis , which Wallerstein criticized on three grounds:

• It was built using only the nation-state as the unit of analysis.
• It proposed that there existed only one path to development for all states – the one followed by the developed countries. It was believed that the poor countries of today are simply primitive versions of the rich countries, and if they were to follow the same trajectory as that of the rich countries, would eventually become developed too.
• It did not take into account transnational structures such as large business corporations that influence the development of states.

Wallerstein believed that the modernization theory, and other such models were the product of nineteenth century ways of thinking that believed in compartmentalizing knowledge. Which meant that such an approach could only look at the problems of development and underdevelopment through the lens of either developmental economics or political science.

What Wallersein proposed instead was a unified system approach that did not limit itself to any one subject or approach for analyzing global issues but combined the spheres of society, economy, and politics.

Examples of World Systems Theory

1. The Knowledge Economy

‘Knowledge economy’ is a term used to describe economies marked by a high level of technical and scientific innovation in which employment demands high levels of technical and scientific knowledge.

Such an economy stands in contrast to primary economies based on agriculture or resource extraction, and manufacturing economies that are based on skilled or unskilled manual labor.

Jobs in a knowledge economy tend to be weighted towards the finance, technology, and services sector.

In the present world-system, the developed countries have a predominant position in the knowledge economy, with almost all leading technology and financial sector corporations located in developed countries or the core of the world-system such as the US, Canada, the UK etc.

The markets for knowledge economy products often tend to be in the peripheral or semi-peripheral countries. For instance, companies such as Facebook and WhatsApp have most of their users in countries such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Bangladesh, etc.

This global knowledge economy is not solely based on classification by nation-states alone, for within the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries there exist regions that are integrated within the global capitalist system.

For instance, cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai in India are recognized as global hubs of Information Technology (IT) and finance, even though they are located within a semi-peripheral country.

Thus, rather than there existing a simple dichotomy of core and periphery countries, the application of the world-systems theory to the knowledge economy reveals a far more complex and interconnected world-system.

2. The Politics of Climate Change and Carbon Emissions

The politics of climate change are characterized by an unequal exchange. The core countries have historically extracted more of the earth’s natural resources including fossil fuels that contribute to global warming and have used more of the earth’s capacity to act as a heat sink.

For example, we now know that the USA’s CO2 emissions are greater than that of all of the African continent combined, or that India has one of the lowest per capita levels of CO2 emissions in the world at 1/19th those of Canada.

The world-systems theory tells us that countries or regions that form the core of the world-system have higher CO2 emissions and must consequently have a greater share in the responsibility to combat climate change as compared to countries or regions that fall in the periphery.

3. Hidden Hunger and the Packaged Food Industry

Hidden hunger is a form of malnutrition in which populations suffer from deficiency of micronutrients and vitamins, even though there may not appear to be any evident starvation.

Hidden hunger mostly results from consumption of empty calories found in packaged food and sweetened beverages.

While the global packaged food giants concentrated in the “core” countries, their products find big markets in the “periphery” countries.

It has been documented that 18 of the 20 most severely affected countries by hidden hunger are in sub-Saharan Africa, while the remaining two are in the South Asian nations of India and Afghanistan (Muthayya et al.,2013).

1. It Explains Internal Inequalities

Since the world systems theory does not take the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis, it helps explain internal inequalities within nation-states better than other development theories such as the modernization theory or the dependency theory .

For instance, India, a country in the semi-periphery of the world system is home to more than 200 million people living in poverty as defined by the World Economic Forum, while at the same time having the third highest number of billionaires in the world (177), after only the US and China.

Application of the world systems theory helps us understand that there are several regions within the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries that are deeply integrated with the global capitalist structure. The regional hubs within nations serve as the core to the peripheries located within the same countries.

This demonstrates a much more complex and nuanced model of global inequalities than simple classifications of first world and third world countries or developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries that other models provide.

Exploitation of a periphery by a core does not happen at the level of nation-states alone; a core within a country can also exploit a periphery within the same country leading to sharp regional inequalities.

2. Human-centric Rather than System-centric

The world systems theory conceptualizes the entire world as one unified system rather than made of different systems and structures. In the words of Frank & Gills (1993) it allows us to see ‘a common river and unity of history in a single world system [that is] multicultural in origin and expression’.

3. Cross-domain Applicability

The world systems theory can be applied to a number of fields including gender studies, ethnic and racial discrimnaiton studies, political geography, international relations to name a few.

For instance, a gender studies analysis of the world system reveals the manner in which women’s labor is exploited within a capitalist system controlled by men. Nash (1988), in an analysis of the Iranian carpet making industry has shown how carpet making households led by men were located in a periphery relative to the core regions of the developed world to which these carpets were exported. Within the household however, much of the carpet-weaving work was carried out by women while the men controlled the finances, replicating the core-periphery relationship, this time within the household, and with a highly gendered aspect to it.

Criticisms of World Systems Theory

1. Insufficient Grounding in Empirical Data

Because of its wide scope, empirically grounded studies justifying the hypotheses of the world systems theory are still emerging. The theory has been critiqued for presenting too many broad generalizations and not presenting a falsifiable hypothesis.

2. Overemphasizing the Role of Globalization and Capitalism

The world systems theory, in putting forward the notion of a unified world connected by networks of global capital, makes two assumptions that do not always hold true – one of globalization and the other of the inevitability of capitalism.

For instance, Balkilic (2018) has shown how local dynamics in the coffee plantations of the Caribbean developed independently of any global influences. Similarly, several countries such as Bhutan still remain outside the purview of the global capitalist system.

3. Ignores Socio-cultural Causes of Underdevelopment

Even though the world systems theory claims to be a unified approach combining the spheres of economy, politics, and society, it ends up relying too heavily on economic causes of underdevelopment while ignoring others such as culture, religion, tradition, etc.

For instance, the Indian caste system does not have any economic basis, being grounded in scriptural and traditional origins. Yet, it is widely acknowledged to be a system that kept millions oppressed and deprived. (Fuller 1973).

In fact one of the reasons Marxist theories failed to find much support in India was their insistence upon class as the primary system of oppression , when in fact, caste played an equally important, if not greater role, in India’s underdevelopment.

Not to be Confused With…

The dependency theory.

The dependency theory is a theory in economics that is a predecessor and an immediate influence on the world systems theory. The theory took birth in 1949 from the work of the Argentinian economist Raul Prebisch.

It directly critiqued the postulate of the modernization theory which stated that the underdeveloped countries of today are just a primitive version of the developed countries, and provided enough stimulus in the form of investment and technology transfer, can be put on the path to development.

Prebisch challenged this hypothesis by claiming that such investments and infusion of capital into underdeveloped countries only serve to further their dependence on foreign capital.

Prebisch was the first to use the terms core and periphery to describe this relationship – a terminology that Wallerstein later built upon for his own world systems theory. Prebisch was particularly interested in the curious case of Argentina, that, beginning the 20th century as one of the richest countries in the world on account of its strong agrarian exports, failed to keep pace with other rich countries of Europe and North America, eventually sliding into a seemingly interminable cycle of economic stagnation and political crisis.

However the world systems theory differs from the dependency theory in that it rejects Presbisch’s formulation of nation-states as the primary unit of analysis. As Wallterstein explained, core and periphery can exist within the same country too.

Wallerstein also devised a three-tiered model comprising a core, semi-periphery, and a periphery as opposed to Prebisch’s binary division. Finally, Wallterstein intended his formulation to be an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world, whereas Presbisch’s work was a theory in macroeconomics.

Balkiliç, O. (2018). Historicizing world system theory: Labor, sugar, and coffee in Caribbean and in Chiapas . Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences . 17 (4), 1298–1310. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/543464

Coccia M. (2019) Comparative World-Systems Theories. in Farazmand A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance . New York: Springer.

Frank, A.G. & Gills, B.K. (1993) The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? London: Routledge.

Fuller, C. (1973). Caste and class, or the anthropology of underdevelopment. Cambridge Anthropology, 1 (1), 1-9.  https://www.jstor.org/stable/23816332

Muthayya, S., Rah, J. H., Sugimoto, J. D., Roos, F. F., Kraemer, K., & Black, R. E. (2013). The global hidden hunger indices and maps: An advocacy tool for action. PloS one , 8 (6), e67860. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0067860

Nash, J. (1988). Cultural parameters of sexism and racism in the international division of labor.  Racism, Sexism, and the World-System, Studies in the Political Economy of the World System , 11-38.

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Exploring variations in the implementation of a health system level policy intervention to improve maternal and child health outcomes in resource limited settings: A qualitative multiple case study from Uganda

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Background Despite growing literature, few studies have explored the implementation of policy interventions to reduce maternal and perinatal mortality in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Even fewer studies explicitly articulate the theoretical approaches used to understand contextual influences on policy implementation. This under-use of theory may account for the limited understanding of the variations in implementation processes and outcomes. We share findings from a study exploring how a health system-level policy intervention was implemented to improve maternal and child health outcomes in a resource limited LMIC. Methods Our qualitative multiple case study was informed by the Normalization Process Theory (NPT). It was conducted across eight districts and among ten health facilities in Uganda, with 48 purposively selected participants. These included health care workers located at each of the case sites, policy makers from the Ministry of Health, and from agencies and professional associations. Data were collected using semi-structured, in-depth interviews to understand uptake and use of Uganda’s maternal and perinatal death surveillance and response (MPDSR) policy and were inductively and deductively analyzed using NPT constructs and subconstructs. Results We identified six broad themes that may explain the observed variations in the implementation of the MPDSR policy. These include: 1) perception of the implementation of the policy, 2) leadership of the implementation process, 3) structural arrangements and coordination, 4) extent of management support and adequacy of resources, 5) variations in appraisal and reconfiguration efforts and 6) variations in barriers to implementation of the policy. Conclusion and recommendations The variations in sense making and relational efforts, especially perceptions of the implementation process and leadership capacity, had ripple effects across operational and appraisal efforts. Adopting theoretically informed approaches to assessing the implementation of policy interventions is crucial, especially within resource limited settings.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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This study was undertaken with no funding.

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I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

Ethics approval for this study was sought from the Health Sciences Research Ethics Board (HSREB, IRB 00000940) Delegated Review of the University of Western Ontario. Additional ethical approval was sought from the School of Medicine Research and Ethics Committee, Makerere University College of Health Sciences (REC REF No. 2018-018), the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (HS 2393) and the Ugandan Ministry of Health (ADM 130/313/05). Participation in the study was completely voluntary and written informed consent was sought at all times. Study participants were assured of privacy and confidentiality and approved the use of information for improving public health, clinical practices and policy implementation. The manuscript does not include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants.

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

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A GIS-based catastrophe approach for optimal site selection for installation of solar power plants, East Azerbaijan province case study, Iran

• Research Article
• Published: 14 May 2024

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• Marziyeh Esmaeilpour 1 &
• Mansour Kheirizadeh Arouq 2  

Due to depletion of fossil fuels and environmental issues, renewable energy consumption is increasingly growing. Solar energy as the most abundant renewable energy source available is becoming more popular around the world. In the current study, the optimal sites for solar photovoltaic power plants in East Azerbaijan province, Northwest Iran, were investigated. A total of 17 variables were categorized into four groups: climatic, geomorphological, environmental, and access-economic. In order to integrate the variables, a model based on catastrophe theory in the context of GIS was applied. The relative importance and weight of the criteria are computed based on the internal mechanism of the catastrophic system, thus greatly reducing subjectivism and uncertainties of the decision-making process. Five optimal sites located in the western part of the province within the counties of Malekan, Bonab, Ajabshir, Shabestar, and Tabriz were identified as suitable sites for the construction of solar photovoltaic power plants, where there are ideal conditions in terms of many environmental-human variables such as high potential of solar energy, high sunshine hours, low relative humidity, suitable slope, poor vegetation, distance to protected areas, proximity to the population centers, excellent access to the roads and to the main power lines.

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Esmaeilpour, M., Kheirizadeh Arouq, M. A GIS-based catastrophe approach for optimal site selection for installation of solar power plants, East Azerbaijan province case study, Iran. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33639-6

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