This is a general term in systems theory that refers to a socioeconomic system, encompassing part or all of the globe. It details the aggregate structural result of the sum of the interactions between polities (political entities). World-systems are usually larger than single states, but don’t have to be global. For example, the Westphalian System is the preeminent world-system operating in the contemporary world, denoting the system of sovereign states and nation-states produced by the Westphalian Treaties in 1648
Immanuel Wallerstein is the central figure when it comes to World-Systems Analysis. He developed this approach to understanding global history and social change, emphasizing the world-system, not individual nation-states, as the core unit of analysis.
Here’s a breakdown of Wallerstein’s key contributions to World-Systems Analysis:
Challenging Traditional Approaches: Wallerstein argued that traditional social science methods focusing on individual nation-states were too narrow. He advocated for a broader historical perspective that considers the interconnectedness of the world economy.
The Modern World-System: His core concept revolves around the idea of a single, integrated “modern world-system” that emerged around the 15th and 16th century. This system encompasses all the economic and political interactions happening globally.
Core-Periphery Model: Wallerstein further divided this world-system into three zones:
Long-Term Historical Trends: Wallerstein emphasized analyzing long-term historical trends and structural forces that shape the world-system, rather than focusing on isolated events or individual national histories.
World-Systems Analysis as a Knowledge Movement: Wallerstein went beyond just a theory. He envisioned World-Systems Analysis as a broader “knowledge movement” that challenged traditional disciplinary boundaries in social sciences and history. It aimed to integrate insights from various fields to understand the world as a complex interconnected system.
Dependency theory is the notion that resources flow from a periphery of poor and underdeveloped states to a core of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the world system. The theory arose as a reaction to modernization theory, an earlier theory of development which held that all societies progress through similar stages of development, that today’s underdeveloped areas are thus in a similar situation to that of today’s developed areas at some time in the past, and that, therefore, the task of helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market
This term, invented in the early nineteenth century, became very popular in the last decades of the twentieth century. It was used as the antinomy of state, contrasting the following terms:
le pays légal – the legal country, or the state vs. le pays réel – the reel country, or the civil society
le pays légal is not le pays réel