Chaos or ReOrder? The Future of Hegemony in a World-System in Upheaval
01/12/05 16:48 Filed in: publicatons
Journal of World-Systems
Research. 2005. 11(2): 209-38
Observing the
latest trends of a rise in interest in the
development of power distribution in a world-system
created and dominated by states but increasingly
challenged as such, this paper takes a deeper look
at the historical evolution of this system, its
current transformation, and likely future
development. After a brief discussion of prevalent
concepts of world(-)system development and its
sociopolitical control, this work offers an
evolutionary perspective to place current changes
of power and its distribution in the dynamic
long-term development of global system formation.
It then presents alternative visions of the future
development of political and economic hegemony. It
concludes that a further rise in instability of
global political power distribution accompanied by
a likely challenge to existing distributional
patterns has a high probability of occurrence.