Five Linked Crises in the Contemporary World-System

Abstract

This essay uses the evolutionary world-systems perspective to address questions about the current crises in the global system. This approach analyzes the structure and changing institutional nature of the whole world-system over the past 500 years, with attention to comparisons with earlier regional world-systems (Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2013). The main idea is that the waves of global integration have been driven by system-wide class and national struggles in which the elites of core states contend with one another and the most successful are those that can effectively deal with the resistance from below. This has produced a spiral of capitalism and socialism that has been connected with the rise and fall of hegemons.