Geography Reference
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thus shifted the analytical focus of political economy from individual places
(e.g., nation-states) to the entire world, ushering in scalar transformation in
the way in which conceptual questions were posited, answers proposed, and
theories constructed. Unlike early dependency models, which froze core and
periphery into
fixed, eternal states, world-systems theory acknowledges the
mobility of individual places up and down the ladder of wealth and power,
although it typically represents this process as a zero-sum game, i.e., one
country's gain is another's loss.
Unlike earlier world empires, where a single political structure dominated
to appropriate the surplus value produced by places on the periphery (e.g.,
the Roman Empire), in a true world-system there is a single, worldwide
economic market but multiple political centers (even if power is unevenly
distributed among them). In the context of capitalism, the fundamental polit-
ical structure is the interstate system (not the nation-state), meaning that
there is no e
fi
ective way to control global markets. The political geography of
capitalism is thus not the nation-state, but the interstate system; indeed, the
very
ff
flexibility and viability of capitalism hinges on capital's ability to cross
national borders and pit places against one another. Various hegemonic
states succeed (to varying degrees) in imposing historically speci
fl
c “rules of
the game” over the world-system, but never attain complete domination.
Modelski (1978) periodized the emergence of the capitalist world economy
into distinct epochs, each of which was ruled by a hegemonic national power
that “set the rules of the game,” the dominant ideologies and enforcement
mechanisms that governed interactions among individual states (e.g., mer-
cantilism or free trade). Changes from declining to ascending hegemons were
typically accompanied by major wars, i.e., the use of violence when other
mechanisms failed. World-systems theorists also frequently point up the link
between the rise and fall of hegemons over time to long-term Kondratieff
fi
ff
waves of innovation and capital investment that spin of
ff
di
ff
erential e
ff
ects in
various parts of the globe.
The unevenness of capitalist societies within the world-system generates
a variety of labor relations. In the original formulation, the global spatial
division of labor was viewed as a rigid, functionalist trilogy of core, semi-
periphery, and periphery. Wallerstein maintained that in core countries,
“free” labor predominates, that is, waged labor at relatively high prices. In the
periphery, in contrast, labor is relatively unfree, with low wages and poor
working conditions. Historically, unfree labor included forms of slavery on
colonial plantations. The semi-periphery, which by de
fi
nition exhibits a mix-
ture of the characteristics of core and periphery, is de
ned by semi-free labor
conditions (e.g., in the Newly Industrializing Countries of Asia). Brenner
(1977), in a famous critique, maintained that this view de
fi
fi
nes capitalism on
the basis of exchange, not the commodi
cation of labor.
The structure of global time and space is absolutely central to the order of
world-systems (Wallerstein 1993). By theorizing interconnectedness at the
global scale, world-systems theory is useful in understanding how time-space
fi
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