Contemporary Semiperipheral
Development:
the
Regimes and the Movements
World
Social Forum, Porto Alegre 2005
Christopher Chase-Dunn
Institute for Research on World-Systems
University of California-Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
v. 2/21/13 9144 words
Paper
to be presented at the Santa Barbara
Global Studies Conference session on "Rising Powers:
Reproduction or Transformation?" February 22 – 23, 2013. Thanks to Alessandro Morosin,
E.N. Anderson, Hiroko Inoue and Alexis Alvarez for help with some of the results
reported in this paper. This is IROWS
Working Paper #78 available at https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows78/irows78.htm
Abstract: This paper discusses the potential for
rising national regimes, coalitions of national states and transnational social
movements to transform the global capitalist system into a more humane and
democratic human society within the next fifty years. The discussion uses an
evolutionary and world historical approach to the problem of contemporary
transformation and reproduction. The issue of subimperialism
and the transformational potential of semiperipheral
polities is discussed. Several possible future
scenarios are considered with regard to the role that rising semiperipheral regimes and transnational social movements might
play.
The evolutionary
world-systems perspective uses comparisons across different kinds of
world-systems and an evolutionary perspective on the modern world-system since
the 13th century to comprehend the nature of the current
world-historical period and the probabilities of different sorts of
reorganization that could occur within the next several decades. As with most
world-system studies, we focus on the forest rather than the trees. We also
compare different kinds of forests to one another and study how they have evolved
over long periods of time. One of the
big ideas that has emerged from this comparative and evolutionary perspective
in the notion of “semiperipheral development” -- the
idea that semiperipheral polities often contribute to
social change by implementing organizational and ideological forms that
facilitate their own upward mobility and that transform the logics of social
reproduction and development. This paper considers the question as to how
contemporary semiperipheral national regimes and alliances
of these with one another, and transnational social movements that are mainly
based in them -- might either reproduce the existing institutions and structures
of the capitalist world-economy or transform the global system into a
qualitatively different, more egalitarian world society. In order to
intelligently comprehend the possibilities for the next several decades we need
to compare the current world historical situation with earlier conjunctures
that were somewhat similar, but also importantly different. Sorting out the
differences as well as the similarities is a crucial task for these purposes.
Of
relevance to the task undertaken here is recent research on empire and city upsweeps
and semiperipheral development[1],
studies of global inequality, competing conceptualizations of the semiperiphery, studies of the emergence of progressive
regimes and anti-systemic movements since the 1980s, studies of emerging
networks of transnational social movements, processes of contemporary global
party formation and comparisons with earlier periods of world revolution.
The Evolutionary World-Systems Perspective
Hall and Chase-Dunn (2006) have modified
the concepts developed by the scholars of the modern world-system to construct
a theoretical perspective for comparing the modern system with earlier regional
world-systems. The main idea is that sociocultural evolution can only be
explained if polities are seen to have been in important interaction with each
other since the Paleolithic Age. Hall and Chase-Dunn
propose a general model of the causes of the evolution of technology and
hierarchy within polities and in linked systems of polities (world-systems). [2]
The most important idea that comes out of this theoretical perspective is that
transformational changes tend to be brought about by the actions of individuals
and organizations within polities that are semiperipheral
relative to the other polities in the same system. This is known as the hypothesis
of semiperipheral development.
As
regional world-systems became spatially larger, and the polities[3]
within them grew and became more internally hierarchical, interpolity
relations also became more hierarchical because new means of extracting resources
from distant peoples were invented. Thus
core/periphery hierarchies emerged as some societies developed effective
methods for transforming pillage into exploitation. Semiperipherality
is the position of some of the polities in a core/periphery hierarchy. Some of
the polities that were located in semiperipheral
positions formed larger chiefdoms, states and empires by means of conquest (semiperipheral marcher polities). And specialized trading
states in semiperipheral locations between the
tributary empires promoted production for exchange in the regions in which they
operated. So both the spatial and demographic scale of political organization
and the spatial scale of trade networks were expanded by semiperipheral
polities, eventually leading to the global system in which we now live.
The modern world-system came into being
when a formerly peripheral and then semiperipheral
region (Europe) developed a regional core of capitalist states that were
eventually able to dominate the polities of all the other regions of the Earth.
This Europe-centered system was the first one in which capitalism became the
predominant mode of accumulation, though semiperipheral
capitalist city-states had existed since the Bronze Age in the spaces between
the tributary empires. The Europe-centered system expanded in a series of waves
of colonization and incorporation (See Figure 1). Commodification in Europe
expanded, evolved and deepened in waves since the 13th century,
which is why historians disagree about when capitalism became the predominant
mode. Since the 15th century the modern system has seen four periods
of hegemony in which leadership in the development of capitalism was taken to
new levels. The first such period was led by a coalition between Genoese
finance capitalists and the Portuguese crown (Arrighi
1994). After that the hegemons have been single nation-states: the Dutch in 17th
century, the British in the 19th century and the United States in
the 20th century (Wallerstein 1984a). Europe itself, and all four of the modern
hegemons, were former semiperipheries that first rose
to core status and then to hegemony.
Figure 1: Waves of Colonization and
Decolonization Since 1400- Number of colonies established and number of decolonizations (Source of data: Henige,
1970)
In between these periods of hegemony were
periods of hegemonic rivalry in which several contenders strove for global
power. The core of the modern world-system has usually been multicentric,
meaning that a number of sovereign core states ally and compete with one
another. Earlier regional world-systems sometimes experienced a period of
core-wide empire in which a single empire became so large that there were no
serious contenders for predominance.
This did not happen in the modern world-system until the United States
became the single super-power following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989.
The sequence of hegemonies can be
understood as the evolution of global governance in the modern system. The
interstate system as institutionalized at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is
still a fundamental institutional structure of the polity of the modern system.
The system of theoretically sovereign states was expanded to include the
peripheral regions in two large waves of decolonization (see Figure 1),
eventually resulting in a situation in which the whole modern system became
composed of formally sovereign national states. East Asia was incorporated into
this system in the 19th century, though aspects of the earlier East
Asian tribute-trade state system were not completely obliterated by that
incorporation (Hamashita 2003).
Each of the successive hegemonies
was larger as a proportion of the whole system than the earlier one had been.
And each developed the institutions of economic and political-military control
by which it led the larger system such that capitalism increasingly deepened
its penetration of all the areas of the Earth. And after the Napoleonic Wars in
which Britain finally defeated its main competitor, France, global political
institutions began to emerge over the tops of the international system of
national states. The first proto-world-government was the Concert of Europe, a
fragile flower that wilted when its main proponents, Britain and the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, disagreed about how to handle the world revolution of
1848. The Concert was followed by the League of Nations and then by the United
Nations and the Bretton Woods international financial institutions (The World
Bank, the International Monetary Fund and eventually the World Trade
Organization).
The political globalization evident
in the trajectory of global governance evolved because the powers that be were
in heavy contention with one another for geopolitical power and for economic
resources, but also because resistance emerged within the polities of the core
and in the regions of the non-core. The series of hegemonies, waves of colonial
expansion and decolonization and the emergence of a proto-world-state occurred
as the global elites contended with one another in a context in which they had
to contain strong resistance from below. We have already mentioned the waves of
decolonization. Other important forces of resistance were slave revolts, the
labor movement, the extension of citizenship to men of no property, the women’s
movement, and other associated rebellions and social movements.
These movements affected the
evolution of global governance in part because the rebellions often clustered
together in time, forming what have been called “world revolutions” (Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein
1989).[4]
The Protestant Reformation in Europe was an early instance that played a huge
role in the rise of the Dutch hegemony.
The French Revolution of 1789 was linked in time with the American and
Haitian revolts. The 1848 rebellion in Europe was both synchronous with the
Taiping Rebellion in China and was linked with it by the diffusion of ideas, as
it was also linked with the emergent Christian Sects in the United States. 1917
was the year of the Bolsheviks in Russia, but also the Chinese Nationalist
revolt, the Mexican revolution, the Arab Revolt and the General Strike in
Seattle led by the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States. 1968
was a revolt of students in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Red Guards in
China. 1989 was mainly in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but important
lessons about the value of civil rights beyond justification for capitalist
democracy were learned by an emergent global civil society. The current world revolution of 20xx
(Chase-Dunn and Niemeyer 2009) is an important context for the questions about semiperipheral development that are the main topic of this
paper.
The big idea here is that the
evolution of capitalism and of global governance is importantly a response to resistance and rebellions
from below. This has been true in the past and is likely to continue to be
true in the future. Boswell and Chase-Dunn (2000) contend that capitalism and
socialism have dialectically interacted with one another in a positive feedback
loop similar to a spiral. Labor and socialist movements were obviously a
reaction to capitalist industrialization, but also the U.S. hegemony and the
post-World War II global institutions were importantly spurred on by the World
Revolution of 1917 and the waves of decolonization.
Core/Periphery Hierarchy and Semiperipheral
Development
As implied above, core/periphery
hierarchies are not, by definition, a characteristic of all world-systems in
the evolutionary world-systems perspective.[5]
Rather institutionalized domination and exploitation of some polities by others
emerged with the invention of institutions and organizations that allowed some
polities to exploit and dominate distant other polities. Core/periphery
hierarchies have emerged. And the nature of core/periphery interactions has
changed with the invention and development of military technologies, military
organization, communications and transportation technologies and economic and
religious institutions that conceptualize and regulate competitive and
cooperative relations among polities.
The notion
of the “semiperiphery” is a relational concept. Semiperipheral polities are in the middle of a
core/periphery hierarchy, but what that means depends on the nature of existing
organizations and institutions and the forms of interaction that exist within a
particular world-system. Semiperipheral marcher
chiefdoms are necessarily somewhat different from semiperipheral
marcher states and semiperipheral modern
nation-states. The evolutionary
world-systems perspective points to the similarities as the basis for the claim
that studying whole world-systems is necessary in order to explain
socio-cultural evolution. But this does not tell us what semiperipherality
is in any particular world-system. For that we have to know the nature of those
institutions that regulate interactions in the particular system. And
successfully playing the game of upward mobility that involves challenging the
core powers, moving up in the system and sometimes transforming the very nature
of the whole system, is an even more complicated matter involving innovation
and the implementation of new technologies, ideologies and forms of
organization. It is important to mention that not all semiperipheral
polities are agents of transformation. Some act to reproduce the institutions
that are predominant. But a semiperipheral location
is fertile ground for those who want to implement organizational, ideological or
technological changes that are transformative.
Our study
of large expansions of the territorial sizes of empires (Ahmed et al 2013) shows that over half these
empire upsweeps in five world regions since the Bronze Age were
the result of conquest but semiperipheral
marcher states. These upsweeps are the
historical events that account for the long-run trend toward larger polity
sizes. Semiperipheral development does not explain
them all, but it explains enough of them to substantiate the claim that world-systems
must be compared in order to explain major long-term trends in sociocultural
evolution.
Figure 2: A core/periphery hierarchy
Some
observers have claimed that the world is now flat because of globalization. But
studies of global inequalities do not find a strong trend toward a flatter
world. Even with the rapid economic growth of China and India in the past few
decades, the global stratification system has not become significantly more
equal (Bornschier 2010). The large international
differences in levels of development and income that emerged during the
industrial revolution in the 19th century continue to be an
important feature of the global stratification system. Others have claimed that
globalization and “the peripheralization of the core”
evident in the migration of industrial production to semiperipheral
countries has eliminated the core/periphery hierarchy. Deindustrialization of
the core and the process of financialization have had
important impacts on the structure of core/periphery relations, but it is
surely an exaggeration to contend that the core/periphery hierarchy has
disappeared. Certainly U.S. economic hegemony is in decline and there are newly
arising challengers from the semiperiphery. But recent
upward and downward mobility has not appreciably reduced the overall magnitude
of inequalities in the world-system.
The
proponents of a global stage of capitalism have often focused on an allegedly
recent emergence of a transnational capitalist class. William Carroll’s (2010)
research shows how transnational interlocking directorates and political
networks have changed over the past several decades to link wealthy and
powerful families in Europe with those in North America and Japan. Though a few
individuals from semiperipheral countries have
managed to join the club, it remains mainly the province of big property owners
from core countries. William Robinson (2008) has also focused attention on how
the conditions of workers and peasants have been transformed by capitalist
globalization, and he contends that a global class structure is emerging that
will have consequences for the future of class relations and world politics.
The
concepts of a transnational capitalist class and the further transnationalization of workers and peasants are important
ideas, and they may also be usefully employed to examine relations among elites
and masses in earlier centuries as well. There has always been a
world-system-wide class structure. Immanuel Wallerstein
(1974:86-87) analyzed the class structure of the Europe-centered world-system
of the long sixteenth century. Samir Amin (1980) explicitly studied the global
class structure before globalization became an important focus of study. In the centuries before the most recent wave
of globalization there have been several important efforts by both capitalists
and workers to coordinate their actions internationally. The global class
system remains importantly impacted by the global North/South stratification
system despite greater awareness of global interactions and the strengthening
of transnational social movements.
Semiperipheral
development has sometimes, but not always, led to the attaining of core status
and hegemony in a core/periphery hierarchy and at other times it has only
contributed to the development and spreading of new forms of interaction that
eventually led to systemic transformation. These successful semiperipheral marcher states that produced large empires
by means of conquest were often also implementers of new “techniques of power”
that made larger systems more sustainable. The semiperipheral
capitalist city-states that accumulated wealth by means of production and trade
diffused commodity production to wide regions, providing incentives for
subsistence producers to also produce a surplus, and inventing writing and
accounting systems and forms of property and organization that sometimes
diffused to the commercializing tributary empires to which they were semiperipheral. Some semiperipheral
polities innovate new technologies, ideologies or forms
of organization, but new ideas also come from core areas where there are bigger
information network nodes. But semiperipheral
polities are more likely to take the risk of investing resources in new
techniques, ideas or organizational forms.
They implement new stuff, while older core polities get stuck in the old
ways. What will be the systemic consequences of the actions and developments of
contemporary semiperipheral peoples?
Classes and Core/Periphery Hierarchies
Chase-Dunn
and Hall (1995) have noted that the relationship between the class structures
of core and peripheral polities have changed with the emergence of a
predominantly capitalist world-system. In tributary world-systems, in which
accumulation was primarily based on the use of state power to extract taxes and
tribute, core polities tended to be more internally stratified than non-core
polities were. The centers of agrarian empires were large capital cities in
which a small military and religious elite dominated
and exploited a large mass of clients and peasant farmers. Non-core societies
tended to have less inequality because their settlements were smaller and their
class structures were less stratified. Those in the periphery had tribes or chiefdoms
organized around kinship. Semiperipheral polities had
a recently emerged ruling class that was still not that different from the
non-elite families. This relatively lessor degree of inequality in non-core
polities facilitated group solidarity (asabiyyah) and
was an important reason why semiperipheral marcher
states were able to conquer older core states that had greater inequality and
less solidarity (Chase-Dunn and Anderson 2005).
With
the emergent predominance of capitalism the relationship between core/periphery
relations and class structure changed. Now core polities tended to have less
inequality because a large middle class developed, producing a diamond-shaped
class structure ♦. Non-core
polities tended to have more inequality because a small
elite dominates and exploits a large mass of poor peasants and poor urban
residents, producing a pyramid-shaped class structure ▲. This stabilizes the system to some extent
because now core powers have greater internal stability than non-core powers.
But semiperipheral development continues because
economic development is uneven. The relationship between class structure and
the core/periphery hierarchy continues to be important. Now the core/periphery
hierarchy crosscuts the class structures within polities. In the core a
relative harmony of classes is based on having a larger middle class and on the
ability of core elites to reward subalterns with the returns to imperialism. In
the periphery class conflict is also undercut by the core/periphery hierarchy
to some extent, because some elites side with the masses against colonialism
and neo-colonialism. But in the modern semiperiphery
class conflict is not suppressed by the core/periphery hierarchy. On the
contrary, class conflict is exacerbated because some elites have both the
opportunity and the motive to adopt policies such as economic nationalism that
are intended to move the national economy up the food chain of the global
economy, while other elite factions prefer the status quo. Movements supported
by workers and peasants can more often find allies among the elites. This
explains why antisystemic movements were able to
attain state power in semiperipheral Russia and China
in the 20th century (Chase-Dunn 1998, Chapter 11).
The
Contemporary Core/Periphery Hierarchy
The social science literature on measuring the
relative positions of national societies in the larger core/periphery hierarchy
continues to be contentious. Is there really a single dimension that captures
most of important distinctions between national societies with regard to
economic, political, military and cultural power, or is the core/periphery
hierarchy multidimensional, and if so what are the most important dimensions?[6]
Arrighi and Drangel (1986)
argued that the semiperiphery is a discrete economic
stratum that is separated by empirical gaps from core and peripheral zones. They contend that GNP per capita is by itself
an adequate measure of position in the world-system, and they find empirical
gaps in the distribution of national GNP
per capita that are said to be the boundaries between the core and the semiperiphery and the semiperiphery
and the periphery. Babones (2005) also finds these
gaps in the international distribution of levels of economic development (GNP
per capita).
But another way to look at the core/periphery
hierarchy is as a multidimensional set of power hierarchies, that includes
economic, political and military power forming a continuous hierarchy that is a
relatively stable stratification hierarchy in the sense that most of national
societies stay in the same position over time, but that also experiences
occasional instances of upward and downward mobility? From this perspective the
labels of core, periphery and semiperiphery are just
convenient signifiers of relative overall position in a continuous hierarchy
rather than truly discrete categories. Semiperipherality
is just a rough appellation for those that are rather more in the middle of a
continuous distribution of positions.
There are likely to be important different ways to be semiperipheral depending on where a national society
is on the different hierarchical dimensions. And these differences may be
related to how a national society, or the movements that are based in these
national societies, behave in world politics? I contend
that the question of cutting points between allegedly discrete core, peripheral
and semiperipheral zones is largely a matter of
convenience in what is, in the long run, a continuous set of distributions. In
order to produce a map that shows where the semiperipheral
countries are it is necessary to adopt cutting points, but it is not necessary
to claim that there are empirically discrete positions within the global
hierarchy.
Jeffrey Kentor’s
(2000, 2008) quantitative measure of the position of national societies in the
world-system remains the best continuous
measure because it includes
GNP per capita, military capability, and economic dominance/dependence (Kentor
2008). I have trichotomized Kentor’s
continuous indicator of world-system position into core, periphery and semiperipheral
categories in order to do research and to produce the kind of map shown in
Figure 3 below. The core category is nearly equivalent to the World Bank’s
“high income” classification, and is what most people mean by the term “Global
North.” The “Global South” is divided into two categories: the semiperiphery
and the periphery. The semiperiphery
includes large countries (e.g. Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, India, China) and smaller countries with
middle levels of GNP per capita (e.g. Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa,
Israel, etc.). 
Figure 3: The global hierarchy of national societies: core, semiperiphery and periphery in 2000 (Source of data: Kentor 2008) Countries and cutting points are listed in Table 1 in the Appendix
Figure 3 depicts the global hierarchy of national societies
divided into the three world-system zones. The core countries are in dark
black, the peripheral countries are gray, and the semiperipheral
countries in the middle of the global hierarchy are in crosshatch. Several terms have been used in recent popular
and social science literatures that are approximately equivalent to what we
mean by the semiperiphery: Newly Industrializing Countries (NICS),
“emerging markets,” and most recently BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and
South Africa). In Figure 3 it is visually obvious that North America and Europe
are mostly core, Latin
America is mostly semiperipheral, Africa is mostly
peripheral and Asia is a mix of the three zones.
As we have said above, the evolutionary world-systems perspective contends that
semiperipheral
regions have been unusually fertile locations where social organizational forms
that transformed the scale and logic of world-systems have been implemented. The
hypothesis of semiperipheral development suggests
that close attention should be paid to events and developments within the semiperiphery,
especially the emergence of social movements and new kinds of national regimes.
The World
Social Forum (WSF) process is conceptually global in extent, but its entry upon
the world stage as an instrument of the New Global Left has come primarily from
semiperipheral
Brazil and India. The “Pink Tide” process in Latin America, led by Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, has been constituted by the emergence of both reformist
and antisystemic national regimes in fourteen out of
twenty-three Latin American countries since the Cuban Revolution (Chase-Dunn
and Morosin 2013). We want to pay special attention
to these kinds of phenomena and to their interaction with one another because
of the hypothesis of semiperipheral
development.
Wallerstein’s development of the concept of the semiperiphery has often implied that the main function of
having a stratum in the middle is to somewhat depolarize the larger system
analogously to a large middle class within a national society (e.g Wallerstein
1976). This functionalist tendency has
been elaborated in the notion of “subimperialism”
originally developed by Ruy Mauro Marini (1972) and
more recent discussed by Patrick Bond (2013) in his analysis of the BRICS. This approach focusses on the instances in
which semiperipheral polities have reinforced and
reproduced the existing global structures of power. Bond’s study of
post-apartheid South Africa’s “talk left, walk right” penchant is convincing.
But he may underestimate the extent to which the emergent BRICS coalition is
counter-hegemonic. The discussion of the need for an alternative to the U.S.
dollar in the global economy and the proposal for a new development bank for
the Global South have had an unsettling effect on the powers-that-be in
Washington and New York even if Bond makes little of these challenges. As we
have said above, semiperipheral development is not
carried out by all semiperipheral polities. It is undoubtedly
the case that the very existence of polities that are in between the extremes
of the core/periphery hierarchy tends to hide the polarization that is a
fundamental process in many world-systems.
But the fact that emerging powers are increasingly banding together and
promulgating policies that challenge the hegemony of the United States and the
institutions that have been produced by the European and Asian core powers
indicates that semiperipherality does not just
reproduce the existing global hierarchy.
The question for the New Global Left is how to encourage the potential
for constructing a more egalitarian world society. Bond is certainly right that
the transnational social movements need to push the BRICS to more effectively address
the fundamental problems of ecological crisis, global inequality and global
democracy.
The Challengers: Counter-hegemonic, reformist and
anti-systemic
There
are several different kinds of significant contemporary challengers to the
powers-that-be in the world-system. The question of reproduction vs.
transformation requires understanding the different kinds of challengers. Here we follow Jackie Smith and Dawn Weist (2012) in distinguishing between counter-hegemonic
movements, regimes and coalitions that opposed U.S. hegemony but are not
politically progressive (Iran, North Korea, Al Qaeda and the subimperialist actions of some of the BRICS). [7]
Among regimes, movements and
coalitions that are progressive we distinguish between those that are
reformists and those that are antisystemic. Our study of Latin American regimes
(Chase-Dunn and Morosin 2013) makes a distinction
between reformist regimes that have adopted some socially progressive policies
or taken some anti-neoliberal international positions and antisystemic
regimes such as most of the members of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America. [8] Smith
and Wiest (2012:10) define antisystemic
as follows: ‘“Antisystemic movements” include a
diverse “family of movements” working to advance greater democracy and equality
(Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein
1989). According to Wallerstein, “to be antisystemic is to argue that neither liberty nor equality
is possible under the existing system and that both are possible only in a
transformed world” (1990:36).’
Thus we have three categories for
organizing a discussion of challengers: counter-hegemonic, reformist and
anti-systemic. Some of the challengers
to global neoliberalism and the hegemony of the United States are not
progressive. Thus the New Global Left
must distinguish between its allies and those political actors that are deemed
to not be progressive. And among the
latter there may be some that can be worked with on a tactical basis or
convinced to pursue more progressive goals.
International geopolitics is a game
that state regimes need to play. The logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my
friend” is hard to escape when one is in charge of national defense. This is the main factor behind the phenomenon
of “strange bedfellows,” as when Hugo Chavez pals around with Iran’s Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
Regarding the hypothesis of semiperipheral development and the Pink Tide phenomenon in
Latin America, we found that both semiperipheral and
peripheral countries were equally likely to have moved toward either reformist
or anti-systemic regime forms in the last few decades. But when we examine the
timing of these moves we find that it was the semiperipheral
countries that were the most likely to have initiated these changes (Chase-Dunn
and Morosin 2013: Tables 2-4). Latin America as a whole has had more of
these progressive challenging regimes because there has been a regional propinquity
effect, and because it Latin American the non-core “backyard” of the global
hegemon (the United States). Latin
America is has a larger proportion of semiperipheral
countries than do other world regions.
It should also be noted that the
spread of the trappings of electoral democracy to the non-core has provided
opportunities for progressive movements to peacefully attain power in local and
national state organizations. Salvador Allende’s election in Chile was an
example that was followed by the more recent electoral victories of populists
of various kinds in Latin America. The imposition of draconian structural
adjustment programs in Latin America in the 1980s and the rise neoliberal
politicians who attacked labor unions and subsidies for the urban poor led to a
reaction in many countries in which populist politicians were able to mobilize
support from the expanded informal sector workers in the megacities, leading in
many cases to the emergence of reformist and anti-systemic national
regimes. The establishment of relatively
institutionalized electoral processes in most Latin American countries has led the
World Social Forum to proscribe individuals who represent political groups that
advocate armed struggle from attending the WSF meeting as representatives of
those groups.[9]
But all this should not lead us to suppose that violence and military power are
no longer important in politics. The fate of Allende and of
the presidencies of Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti remind us that death
squads, the military, and foreign intervention remain as powerful factors.
The relationship between the
progressive national regimes and the progressive transnational social movements
has been contentious. Despite strong support from the Brazilian Workers Party
and the Lula regime in Brazil, the charter of the World Social Forum does not
allow people to attend the meetings as formal representatives of states. When Chavez and Lula tried to make
appearances at WSF meetings large numbers of movement activists protested. The horizontalists, autonomists and anarchists activists tend
to see those who hold state power as the enemy even if they claim to be
progressives. In some cases exceptions
are made, as when autonomists from Europe have provided support for Evo Morales’s presidency in Bolivia (e.g. López and Iglesias Turrión, 2006).
The World Social Forum (WSF) process
has itself been a complicated dance toward global party formation and the
construction of a new global United or Popular Front (Amin 2007; Chase-Dunn and
Reese 2007). Its charter prohibits the
WSF itself from adopting a program or policy stances. The WSF is supposed to be an arena for the
grass roots movements to use to organize themselves and make alliances with one
another. In practice this has led to
competition among the movements and NGOs for hegemony within a hoped for
emergent New Global Left. Studies of attendees at global World Social Forum
meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil and Nairobi, Kenya
reveal a multicentric network of overlapping
movements, in which four or five more central movements connect all the rest
with one another (Chase-Dunn and Kaneshiro (2009). Up until 2011 the World Social Forum process
had little participation from the Middle East.
The Arab Spring revolts got the attention of activists, and in March of
2013 the World Social Forum will be held in Tunis. The connection of the Arab
Spring revolts and continuing political contestation in Egypt with global
neoliberalism and austerity has been obscured by the struggle for national
democracy within the Middle Eastern countries and the rise of Islamist parties. But this larger connection is becoming more
visible with the emergence of anti-austerity movements in Greece, Spain (2nd
–tier core powers) and the United States, and the visibility of a Black Bloc in
Egypt (Levine 2013).
The
Next Three Futures: the movements and the regimes
Elsewhere Kirk Lawrence and I have discussed three
broad possible scenarios that depict in general terms what might happen in the several
decades (Chase-Dunn and Lawrence 2011; Lawrence 2012). We imagine the
possibility of another round of U.S. hegemony in which the United States
reindustrializes based on its comparative advantages in new lead high
technology industries and provides global order that accommodates rising powers
and challenging social movements. We
conclude that this scenario is unlikely to come about because of the continuing
political stalemate within the U.S. and growing resistance to U.S. unilateral
use of military power.
We also contemplate the possible emergence
of a democratic world government that would coordinate collectively rational
responses to population pressure, global climate change and ecological
degradation, global inequality and rivalries among national states and
transnational social movements. We see this as a possible outcome that might be
brought about if progressive transnational social movements could form a
powerful coalition and could work with progressive national regimes in the
Global South to democratize global governance and to organize a legitimate
authority with the capacity to help resolve the great crises of the 21st
century. This next phase could either
take the form of another systemic cycle of capitalist accumulation or it might
involve a qualitative transformation to a new world society based on forms of
socialism.
And we also contemplate “collapse”
in which continuing U.S. hegemonic decline, rising challenges from the BRICS, a
contentious multilateralism, conflictive action by both progressive and
regressive transnational social movements lead to high levels of conflict that
prevent coordinated responses to the emergent crises. This scenario could be
much like what happened in the first half of the 20th century, or it
could be worse because of the potential for huge destruction caused by more
lethal weapons and because of the more globalized extent of ecological
degradation. This is may be the most
likely scenario. But the other paths are not yet completely impossible.
Giovanni
Arrighi (2007), in his last book, Adam Smith in Beijing, discussed the
possible emergence of another systemic cycle of accumulation that is less
warlike and exploitative than the kind of capitalism that has risen out of the
Europe-centered world-system. Arrighi saw the rise of
China as providing a model of “market society” in which the power of finance
capital is balanced by the strength of technocrats who are able to implement
development projects that are kinder to labor and less driven by the military
industrial complex. China is not large enough economically, despite its immense
number of people, to become the next hegemon. And, as Arrighi
carefully explains, the current regime in Beijing has made great efforts to
avoid any discourse about hegemonic rise and global leadership. He persuasively
contends that the current Chinese leadership just wants a level playing field
upon which China can develop its economic potential. These leaders are also
quite sensitive and resentful of criticism from the West about the nature of
their political institutions. Arrighi, Andre Gunder Frank (1998) and many other academics in the West
now recognize the pervasive nature of Eurocentrism.
Our lack of knowledge about East Asian history has facilitated negative images
of East Asian backwardness, including the Marxian notion of “the Asiatic Mode
of Production” and these have served well as justifications for colonialism and
intervention. The apparent need of Western political leaders for a bogeyman
(now that Osama Bin Laden has been dispatched) understandably makes the Chinese
leadership nervous. The Chinese leaders are well aware that the racist imagery
of the Yellow Peril and China-bashing might again serve the agenda of Western
political leaders looking for a scapegoat for current or future catastrophes.
This
said, the New Global Left (Santos 2006) needs a good
analysis of the possible helpful, or not so helpful, roles that the Chinese
people and current and future Chinese governments might play in the coming
decades. Arrighi’s analysis implies that the
Chinese development path provides a useful example for the rest of the world,
and that the rise of China may help the rest of the world to reduce global
inequalities and to move toward a more sustainable and just form of political
economy.
Arrighi contends that contemporary China is
pursuing a model of market society that is similar in many ways to the paternalistic
commodifying “natural” path that Adam Smith saw in
earlier centuries. Arrighi’s contention that China
has not yet developed full-blown capitalism is largely based on Samir Amin’s
observation that the rural peasantry has not yet been dispossessed of land and
so full proletarianization has not emerged. One may
wonder whether or not dispossession of land is still a requisite of capitalism
in the age of flexible accumulation and outsourcing. Mike Davis (2005:97-100)
tells the story of the Bangkok-based Charoen Pokphand Company (CP), a
large-scale poultry producer who brought Tyson-style (American) industrialized
chicken production (the “Livestock Revolution”) first to Thailand and then to
China. Davis (2005:99) quotes Isabelle Delforge as
saying “With contract farming, large companies control the whole production
process: they lend money to farmers, they sell them chicks, feed and medicine, and they have the right to buy the whole
production. But usually the company is not committed to buy the chickens if the
demand is low. Contract farmers bear all the risks related to production and
become extremely dependent on demand from the world market. They become factory
workers in their own field.” Davis reports that, after starting in Shenzen, CP has built more than one hundred feed mills and
poultry-processing plants throughout China. This all sounds rather like
capitalism despite that farmers have not been dispossessed of their land.
Arrighi implied that the current Chinese regime
is relatively environment-friendly. Others contend that this was indeed the
case in traditional China, but not of the Communist regime. The Chinese
Communist Party’s (CCP) embrace of the family-owned automobile for the masses
could have at least employed California-style catalytic-converters fifteen
years ago, a proven technology for reducing auto emissions that would not have
added much to the cost of each car. Instead Chinese cities are choking on
automobile exhaust fumes. Decisions like that are both bad for the
environment and for the human population. Regarding greenhouse gas emissions,
Global South activists such as Walden Bello (2012) contend that China must be
included among the countries that should undertake rapid reduction in
emissions.
It
would seem logical that Arrighi’s depiction of
Chinese “market society” as a more sustainable and labor-friendly form of
society than that of the capitalist West implies that other nations should
emulate the Chinese model in order to deal with the issues of inequality and
environmental degradation that capitalist globalization has presented us with
in the 21st century. But Arrighi (personal
communication) denied that he was saying this. He pointed out that the
historical conditions that produced the institutional complexes and culture of
China today are impossible to replicate, and also that the world does not need
one model, but rather many approaches. And yet it is important to ask whether
or not the institutional elements that Arrighi found
in China are of use elsewhere in the efforts to construct more humane and
sustainable national societies and a democratic and egalitarian world society.
The
notion that China may be an exemplar of contemporary egalitarianism in
relations with the periphery would seem to be contradicted by the situation in
Tibet and by the reports of many observers of Chinese projects in Africa.
Progressive world citizens will not condone China-bashing,
and I agree with Arrighi that China is, and is likely
to continue to be, a somewhat more progressive force in world politics than
many other powerful actors. But what does the Chinese model of market society
imply for those who are looking for progressive alternatives to global
capitalism?
Arrighi’s (2007) effort to tease out the
combination of economic and political institutional forms that make the
difference between better and worse forms of modernity is a valuable start, but
needs to be further developed. The contemporary global justice movement that
perceives a “democratic deficit” in the existing institutions of global
governance and in many forms of representative democracy that exist within core
states is not likely to find much worth emulating in the paternalistic Confucianist state that the CCP regime seems to be
embracing. At the 2008 opening ceremony to the Beijing
Olympic Games Confucian harmony had erased all vestiges of the Chinese
Revolution except the red flag. Mao was gone. The class struggle was gone. The
heroic workers and peasants were gone. And so was the Red Detachment of Women.
The representation of modern China to the world was a vision of social harmony,
technological achievements of the traditional past, openness to the world, and
precise, large-scale drumming and tai chi. It was
Confucian harmony and the paternalism of the “grandfather state” devoid of any
alternative version of legitimate authority except national pride.
The
issue of democracy cannot be brushed aside as only a manifestation of
Eurocentric ignorance. It is unfortunate that the neoliberals and the
neoconservatives have used a discourse about representative democracy and human
rights to badger the Chinese regime, but this will not make the democracy
problem go away for the New Global Left.
And
the issue of institutional forms of property also badly needs to be addressed.
The CCP is promoting the rapid expansion of private property in the major means
of production and the reorganization of state-owned firms. But private and/or
state ownership of large firms are not the only options. Investment
decisions in large-scale undertakings could be shaped by market mechanisms,
thus allocating capital to firms that are productive and efficient, while
profits are distributed to all adult citizens (Roemer 1994). The role of the
state in this kind of market socialism is to redistribute shares to each
individual at the age of adulthood and to incentivize the protection of the
environment. In Eastern Europe most of the post-1989 experiments in
public ownership were carried out in the context of “shock therapy” in which
neoliberal economists engineered a transition from former state-led and
centrally planned economies to capitalism. Citizens were issued coupons, which
were then rapidly bought up by a new class of capitalists (usually former party
apparatchiks), thus proving that this kind of market socialism does not work.
But a country like China could carry out experiments with real market socialism
in which the whole public benefits from the profits of large firms while at the
same time using market mechanisms to allocate capital and labor. That would be
a kind of market society worth emulating.
Both a new stage of capitalism and a
qualitative systemic transformation to some form of socialism are possible
within the next several decades, but a new systemic cycle of capitalism is more
likely. The progressive evolution of global governance has occurred in the past
when enlightened conservatives implemented the demands of an earlier world
revolution in order to reduce the pressures from below that are brought to bear
in a current world revolution. The most likely outcome of the current
conjuncture is probably global Keynesianism in which enlightened conservatives
in the global elite form a more legitimate, capable and democratic set of
global governance institutions to deal with the problems of the 21st
century. If U.S. hegemonic decline is slow, as it has been up to now, and if
financial and ecological crises are spread out in time and conflicts between
ethnic groups and nations are also spread out, then the enlightened
conservatives will have a chance to produce a reformed world order that is
still capitalist but that meets the current challenges at least partially. But
if the perfect storm of calamities should all come together in a short period
of time (a single decade) the progressive movements and the progressive
non-core regimes would have a chance to radically change the mode of
accumulation to a form of global socialism.
References
Ahmed, Jared, Alexis Álvarez, E.N. Anderson, Elisse Basmajian, Dinur Blum, Hiroko Inoue,
Christian Jaworski,
Alina Khan, Kirk Lawrence, Andrew Owen, Anthony
Roberts, Panu
Suppatkul
and Christopher Chase-Dunn
2013 “Comparing World-Systems:
Semiperipheral
Development and Empire Upsweeps Since the Bronze Age” to be presented at the
American
Sociological Association annual meeting, New York City, August 9-13.
Amin, Samir 1980 “The class structure of the contemporary imperialist system.” Monthly
Review
31,8:9-26.
__________2007
“Towards the fifth international?” Pp. 123-143 in Katarina Sehm-
Patomaki and Marko Ulvila (eds.) Global Political Parties.
London: Zed Press.
Appelbaum, Richard P. and William I. Robinson (eds.) 2004 Critical
Globalization Studies. NY:
Routledge
Arrighi, Giovanni (ed.)
1985 Semiperipheral Development: The Politics of Southern Europe
in the Twentieth
Century Beverly Hills: Sage.
______________1994
The Long Twentieth Century London: Verso.
______________ 2006 Adam Smith in Beijing. London: Verso.
Arrighi, Giovanni, Terence K.
Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1989. Antisystemic
Movements. London: Verso
Arrighi, Giovanni and Jessica Drangel 1986 “The stratification of the world-economy: an
exploration
of the semiperipheral zone”Review 10,1: 9-74.
Babones, Salvatore J. 2005 "The
Country-Level Income Structure of the World-Economy."
Journal
of World-Systems Research 11:29-55.
Bello, Walden 2012 “The China Question in the Climate Negotiations: A Developing Country
Perspective”
http://lists.fahamu.org/pipermail/debate-list/2012-September/032039.html
Boatca, Manuela 2006 “Semiperipheries in the World-System: Reflecting Eastern
European and
Latin American Experiences” Journal
of World-Systems Research, 12,1: 321-346.
Bond,
Patrick 2013 “Subimperialism as lubricant of
neoliberalism: South African ‘deputy
sheriff’
duty within
BRICS” Paper
to be presented at the Santa Barbara
Global Studies Conference
session on "Rising Powers: Reproduction or
Transformation?" February
22 – 23, 2013
Bornschier, Volker. 2010. “On
the evolution of inequality in the world system” in Christian
Suter (ed.) Inequality Beyond
Globalization: Economic Changes. Social Transformations and the
Dynamics of Inequality. Berlin: World Society
Studies.
Boswell, Terry and Christopher
Chase-Dunn. 2000 The Spiral of
Capitalism and Socialism: Toward Global
Democracy.
Boulder, CO.: Lynne Rienner.
Carroll, William K.
2010 The Making of a Transnational
Capitalist Class. London: Zed Press.
Castañeda, Jorge G. 2006. “Latin
America’s Left Turn.” Foreign Affairs 85(3):28-43.
Chase-Dunn,
C. 1988. "Comparing world-systems: Toward a
theory of semiperipheral
development,"
Comparative Civilizations Review, 19:29-66, Fall.
Chase-Dunn,
C. 1980.
"The
development of core capitalism in the antebellum United States: tariff politics
and class struggle in an upwardly mobile semiperiphery" in
Albert J. Bergesen
(ed.) Studies of the Modern World-System. New York: Academic
Press.
Chase-Dunn,
C. 1990 "Resistance to imperialism: semiperipheral
actors," Review, 13,1:1-31 (Winter).
Chase-Dunn,
C. 1998 Global Formation: Structures of
the World-Economy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Thomas D. Hall 1995 "Cross-world-system comparisons: similarities
and
differences,"
Pp. 109-135 in Stephen Sanderson (ed.) Civilizations and World Systems
Studying
World-Historical
Change.
Walnut Creek, CA.: Altamira Press
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Kelly M. Mann 1998 The Wintu and Their
Neighbors. Tucson: University of
Arizona Press.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and E.N. Anderson (eds.) 2005. The Historical Evolution of World-Systems. London:
Palgrave.
Chase-Dunn, C. , Daniel Pasciuti, Alexis
Alvarez and Thomas D. Hall. 2006 “Waves of
Globalization and Semiperipheral
Development in the Ancient Mesopotamian and
Egyptian World-Systems” Pp. 114-138 in Barry Gills and
William R. Thompson (eds.),
Globalization and Global History London: Routledge.
Chase-Dunn, C. and Ellen Reese 2007 “The World Social Forum: a global party in the making?” Pp. 53-92 in Katrina Sehm-Patomaki and Marko Ulvila (eds.) Global Political Parties, London: Zed Press.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Matheu
Kaneshiro
2009 “Stability and Change in the contours of Alliances
Among movements in the social forum process”
Pp. 119-133 in David Fasenfest (ed.)
Engaging Social Justice. Leiden:
Brill.
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Terry Boswell
2009 “Semiperipheral devolopment and global democracy” PP
213-232
in Owen Worth and Phoebe Moore, Globalization
and the “New” Semiperipheries,
Palgrave.
Chase-Dunn, C. and R.E. Niemeyer 2009
“The world revolution of 20xx” in Mathias Albert, Gesa
Bluhm, Han
Helmig, Andreas Leutzsch, Jochen Walter (eds.) Transnational Political Spaces.
Campus Verlag:
Frankfurt/New York
Chase-Dunn, C. and Kirk Lawrence 2011 “The Next Three
Futures, Part One: Looming Crises of
Global Inequality, Ecological Degradation,
and a Failed System of Global Governance”
Global Society 25,2:137-153 https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows47/irows47.htm
Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Hiroko Inoue 2012 “Accelerating democratic
global state formation”
Cooperation and Conflict 47(2) 157–175. http://cac.sagepub.com/content/47/2/157
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Bruce Lerro
2012”Democratizing global governance: strategy and tactics” Pp.
39-64 in Tom Reifer
(ed.) Global Crises and the Challenges of
the 21st Century. Boulder, CO:
Paradigm
Chase-Dunn,
C. and Alessandro Morosin 2013 “Latin America in the World-System: World
Revolutions and Semiperipheral Development.” Paper to be presented at the Santa Barbara
Global
Studies Conference February 22 – 23, 2013
Chase-Dunn, C.
and Anthony Roberts 2012 “The structural crisis of global capitalism and the
prospects for world
revolution in the 21st century” International
Review of Modern Sociology 38,2:
259-286 (Autumn) (Special Issue on The Global Capitalist Crisis and
its Aftermath edited by
Berch Berberoglu)
Davis, Mike 2005 The Monster At Our Door: The Global
Threat of Avian Flu. New York: New Press
Frank, Andre Gunder 1998 Reorient:
Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley, CA.:University of
California Press.
Graeber,
David 2009 Direct Action: An Ethnography. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Hall, Thomas D. and C. Chase-Dunn 2006 “Global social
change in the long run” Pp. 33-58 in C.
Chase-Dunn and S. Babones
(eds.) Global Social Change.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Hamashita, Takeshi 2003
“Tribute and treaties: maritime Asia and treaty port networks in the era of
negotiations,
1800-1900” Pp. 17-50 in Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark
Selden (eds.) The Resurgence of East Asia. London: Routledge
Henige,
David P. 1970 Colonial Governors From
the Fifteenth Century to the Present. Madison, WI:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Hung, Ho-Fung (ed.) 2009 China and the Transformation of Global
Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Kentor,
Jeffrey. 2000. Kentor, Jeffrey.
Capital and Coercion: The Role of Economic and Military Power in the
World-Economy 1800-1990. New York: Routledge.
__________
2008 “The Divergence of Economic and Coercive Power in the
World Economy
1960 to
2000: A Measure of Nation-State Position” IROWS Working Paper #46
https://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows46/irows46.htm
Lawrence, Kirk 2009 “Toward a democratic and collectively
rational global commonwealth:
semiperipheral transformation in a
post-peak world-system” Pp. 198-212 in Owen Worth
and Phoebe Moore (eds.) Globalization
and the “New” Semiperipheries New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Levine, Mark 2013 “The revolution, back in black” Al-Jazeera Feb. 2
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201322103219816676.html
Lindblom, Charles and Jose
Pedro Zuquete2010 The Struggle for the
World: Liberation Movements for the
21st Century. Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Marini, Ruy Mauro 1972 “Brazilian sub-imperialism” Monthly Review 23,9:14-24.
Martin,
William (ed.) 1990 Semiperipheral States in the World-Economy New York:
Greenwood.
Petras, James. 2010. “Latin
America’s Twenty First Century Capitalism and the US Empire.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22223
Radice, Hugo 2009 “Halfway to
Paradise?
Making Sense of the Semiperiphery” Pp
25-39 in Owen
Worth and Phoebe Moore, Globalization
and the “New” Semiperipheries, Palgrave.
Reese,
Ellen, Mark Herkenrath, Chris Chase-Dunn, Rebecca Giem, Erika Guttierrez, Linda
Kim,
and Christine Petit 2007 “North-South
Contradictions and Bridges at the World Social
Forum”
Pp. 341-366 in Rafael Reuveny and William R.Thompson (eds.) North and South in
the Global Political Economy. Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell. university Press).
___________,
Christopher Chase-Dunn, Kadambari Anantram,
Gary Coyne, Matheu Kaneshiro,
Ashley N. Koda, Roy
Kwon and Preeta Saxena 2008
“Research Note: Surveys of World
Social
Forum participants show influence of place and base in the global public
sphere”
Mobilization: An International Journal.
13,4:431-445.
Robinson, William I
1996 Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US
Intervention and Hegemony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
——.
2008. Latin America and Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Unversity Press
——. 2010 “The crisis of global capitalism: cyclical, structural or systemic?” Pp. 289-310 in
Martijn Konings (ed.) The Great Credit Crash. London:Verso.
Roemer, John 1994. A Future for
Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Santos,
Boaventura de Sousa 2006 The Rise of the Global
Left.
London: Zed Press.
Sen, Jai and Madhuresh Kumar with Patrick Bond and Peter Waterman 2007 A
Political Programme for
the World Social Forum?: Democracy,
Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice
Movements. Indian Institute for
Critical Action : Centre in Movement (CACIM), New
Delhi,
India & the University of KwaZulu-Natal
Centre for Civil Society (CCS), Durban, South
Africa.
http://www.cacim.net/book/home.html
Smith,
Jackie and Dawn Weist 2012 Social Movements in the
World-System.
New York: Russell-Sage.
Wallerstein, Immanuel 1976 “Semiperipheral countries and the contemporary world crisis”
Theory
and Society 3,4:461-483.
_________________1984a “The three instances of hegemony in the history of the
capitalist
world-economy.” Pp. 100-108 in
Gerhard Lenski (ed.) Current Issues and Research
in
Macrosociology,
International Studies in
Sociology and Social Anthropology, Vol. 37. Leiden:
E.J.
Brill.
_________________ 1984b The politics of the world-economy
: the states, the movements, and
civilizations Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
________________ 2003 The Decline of American Power. New York: New
Press.
________________1990 “Antisystemic
Movements: History and Dilemmas.” In Transforming
the
Revolution: Social
Movements and the World-System, edited by Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi,
Andre
G. Frank, and Immanuel Wallerstein.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
_________________
2010
“Contradictions in the Latin American Left” Commentary
No. 287,
Aug. 15,
http://www.iwallerstein.com/contradictions-in-the-latin-american-left/
Worth,
Owen and Phoebe Moore (eds.) 2009 Globalization
and the “New” Semiperipheries. New
York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Appendix:
Table 1: Classifications of countries into
world-system zones
World Bank World-system
Classification Position
Global “North:
High income
Australia Core
Austria
Core
Belgium Core
Canada Core
Denmark Core
Finland Core
France Core
Germany Core
Greece Semiperiphery
Hong Kong (China) Semiperiphery
Ireland Core
Israel Semiperiphery
Italy Core
Japan Core
Korea (Rep.) Semiperiphery
Netherlands Core
Norway Core
New Zealand Semiperiphery
Portugal Semiperiphery
Spain Core
Sweden Core
Switzerland Core
Taiwan (excluded from all sources) Semiperiphery
United Kingdom Core
United States Core
Global “South”:
Upper-middle income
Argentina Semiperiphery
Chile Semiperiphery
Costa Rica Semiperiphery
Lebanon Periphery
Mexico Semiperiphery
Malaysia Semiperiphery
Panama Semiperiphery
South Africa Semiperiphery
Turkey Semiperiphery
Uruguay Semiperiphery
Venezuela Semiperiphery
Lower-middle income
Armenia Periphery
Bolivia Periphery
Brazil Semiperiphery
Colombia Semiperiphery
Dominican Republic Periphery
Ecuador Periphery
El Salvador Periphery
Iraq Periphery
Paraguay Periphery
Peru Periphery
Philippines Periphery
Low income
Bangladesh Periphery
India Semiperiphery
Kenya Periphery
Nepal Periphery
Pakistan Periphery
Sudan Periphery
Senegal Periphery
Vietnam Periphery
The
World Bank classification is based on the Gross National Income per Capita in
2004 (World Bank 2006; see also: www.worldbank.org/data/
The
world-system zone designation is based on Kentor’s
(2008) measure of the overall position in the world-system in 2000 CE The cutting
point between core and semiperipheral countries has
been set at 2.00. The cutting point between semiperipheral and peripheral countries at –0.89.