bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mesoscale variability in the Arabian Sea from HYCOM model results and observations: impact on the Persian Gulf Water path
Authors: L'Hégaret P. , Duarte R. , Carton X. , Vic C. , Ciani D. , Baraille R. , Corréard S.
Published: September 2015

Abstract. The Arabian Sea and Sea of Oman circulation and water masses, subject to monsoon forcing, reveal a strong seasonal variability and intense mesoscale features. We describe and analyze this variability and these features, using both meteorological data (from ECMWF reanalyses), in situ observations (from the ARGO float program and the GDEM – Generalized Digital Environmental mode – climatology), satellite altimetry (from AVISO) and a regional simulation with a primitive equation model (HYCOM – the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model). The model and observations display comparable variability, and the model is then used to analyze the three-dimensional structure of eddies and water masses with higher temporal and spatial resolutions than the available observations. The mesoscale features are highly seasonal, with the formation of coastal currents, destabilizing into eddies, or the radiation of Rossby waves from the Indian coast. The mesoscale eddies have a deep dynamical influence and strongly drive the water masses at depth. In particular, in the Sea of Oman, the Persian Gulf Water presents several offshore ejection sites and a complex recirculation, depending on the mesoscale eddies. The associated mechanisms range from coastal ejection via dipoles, alongshore pulses due to a cyclonic eddy, to the formation of lee eddies downstream of Ra's Al Hamra. This water mass is also captured inside the eddies via several mechanisms, keeping high thermohaline characteristics in the Arabian Sea. The variations of the outflow characteristics near the Strait of Hormuz are compared with variations downstream.
Beyond Cycles of Hegemony: Economic, Social, and Military Factors
Authors: Goldfrank Walter L.
Published: September 2015

As we survey the changing world on the eve of the 21st century, scholars confront empirical puzzles and interpretive uncertainties. Those of us who identify with worldwide social and political movements seeking more democracy, more equality, more justice, and more rationality find ourselves at once free and daunted. We are free, finally, from the albatross of repressive party-states calling themselves "socialist," from the illusion that social-democratic welfare states are trending toward perfection, from the myth that national development in the Third World is closing the gap. And we are daunted by the double task of (1) reconstructing a strategy of global transformation and (2) making a viable movement out of the multiple oppositional fragments scattered about the global landscape.
Hegemonic Decline, West European Unification, and the Future Structure of the Core
Authors: Bornschier Volker
Published: September 2015

This paper queries the applicability of hegemonic cycle theories to the emerging structure in the core of the world political economy and argues that we are likely, following this period of relative decline in American hegemony, to witness the emergence of hegemonic social practices in the absence, however, of a hegemonic state. Contrasting new beginnings with past patterns, we will suggest arguments why history will not be repeated. Drawing on our research on the Single European Act (SEA), we argue that the bargain struck between the Commission of the European Union and West European transnational corporations, which culminated in the SEA, represents more than a decisive step towards economic and political union. We see it, more significantly, as embodying Europe's response to its declining position through an attempt to articulate a new societal model capable of successfully replacing the disarticulated post-WWII Keynesian social-welfare model, and of competing with the Japanese and American societal models. In the future, it is very unlikely that power among the actors in the Triad will be so unevenly distributed as to permit the rise of a new hegemonic state. While it would seem, judging from historical experience, that the presence of a hegemonic state was functionally necessary for the establishment of hegemonic social practices in the core, we argue that another mechanism has now moved to the forefront. Due to pressures generated through increasing economic globalization, linked to demands associated with the quest for legitimacy on the part of democratic governments, we foresee, following a period of increased economic competition, the convergence of social practices around a single societal model.
Is the World-System Approach Just a Global Perspective? The Connection Between Global and Regional Developments in Pre-Industrial France
Authors: Terlouw Kees
Published: September 2015

France is the only state who always belonged to the core of the world-system and never attained hegemony, nor declined into the semi-periphery. This paper focuses on the reasons for this relatively stable position in the pre-industrial world-system. Crucial is France's size and fragmented regional structure. These constraints prevented France from building on its favorable position at the inception of the world-system. France's development within the world-system was further retarded by the shift in the center of gravity and mode of transportation of the world-system. This interplay between general processes, at the level of the entire world-system, and the specific regional structure within France, demonstrates how the general processes of the world-system can be linked to the specific situation in a given country.
Evolutionism and its Critics
Authors: Sanderson Stephen  K.
Published: September 2015

Evolutionary theories have held a prominent place in the history of the social sciences. Although there are many kinds of evolutionary theories, the essential element that they hold in common is their assumption that history is more than just a series of particular and unique events. On the contrary, the evolutionist assumption is that history reveals a certain directionality in the sense that there are similar processes occurrin g at similar times, at various points throughout the globe. The best of thes e theories do not limit themselves to simply describing directional patterns, but go on to provid e some sort of model or causal explanation for the observed sequence or sequences .
Ties between Center and Periphery in the Scientific World-System: Accumulation of Rewards, Dominance and Self-Reliance in the Center
Authors: Schott Thomas
Published: September 2015

This study accounts for the organization of scientific research in networks of socio-intellectual tices that bind scientists into a community cultivating the scientific tradition. During the twentieth century the scientific community has become incrcasingly global both in the sense that its membership has spread world-widely and in the sense that its long-distance ties have intensified. The globalization of the community and its ties has been promoted by widely institutionalized arrangements, especially through the world's adoption of and belief in several scientific tenets: the universal validity of scientific knowledge, the ownership principle that knowledge should be the common property of humankind, and the political principle of granting autonomy to scientists for forming ties. The community and its network of ties form a hierarchy with centers attracting ties from peripheries. During the twentieth century the main center has shifted from Western Europe to North America while Eastern Europe has become less central, East Asia has become a bit central, and other regions have remained peripheral. A center attracts students from around the world for education, attracts scientists for conferences and visits, attracts deference from scientists throughout the world, exerts pervasive influence, is widely emulated, and is a desired source of recognition . In the global networks of ties, specifically of deference, influence, emulation and desire for recognition, there is an accumulation in the center of ties, both from within the center as an enhanced self-reliance and from the periphery as an enhanced centrality, exceeding the research performance at the center.
Globalization and Cross-Border Labor Organizing
Authors: Armbruster Ralph
Published: September 2015

The globalization of the world economy has opened up new possibilities for cross-border labor organizing. In fact, several U.S. unions are working together with unions from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Japan, South Korea, and many European nations. For example, over the last several years, UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees), the AFL-CIO, and the international garment workers trade secretariat have worked directly with maquiladora workers in Honduras and the Dominican Republic. These efforts led to the formation of several labor unions and the first contracts ever negotiated in the maquiladoras in the Dominican Republic. In addition, labor rights and solidarity organizations, like the Campaign for Labor Rights, Witness for Peace, and the US/Guatemala Labor Education Project (US/GLEP), along with many other groups, have also played key roles in the formation of maquiladora unions in Nicaragua and Guatemala.
Social Science and Latin America: Promises to Keep
Authors: Briceño-León Roberto , Sonntag Heinz R.
Published: September 2015

During his intellectual and academic life, Immanuel Wallerstein always makes contributions that are the subject of intense debate and controversy. Now he has given us, as an additional legacy to complete his four years of brilliant, hard, andwhy not?controversial work on behalf of our science as the President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), and as a contribution to commencing the 14th World Congress, another powerful provocation regarding the current state of the art of sociology, or better put, social science. He has done this with reference to the contributions sociological thinking has made, the challenges that social science has encountered, and the promises that social science should ful?ll. The provocation is broad and taken to its extreme.
Local Authorities as Peace Factors/Actors/ Workers
Authors: Gartung Johan
Published: September 2015

The world is a system, meaning inter-connected, with inter- connections among the inter-connections. But what are the inter-connected, related components, units, elements, in this set? Obviously they are the triad of modernity: states, corporations, civil societies, and their projections on the world scene, that is, the intergovernmental organizations, the transnational corporations, and the nongovernmental organizations (international civil society). Thoughtful students would ask, how about us, humans? The more ecologically minded will add non-human nature. But when prodded, what else is there in the world? very few come up with a rather obvious answer: the local authorities. And they are numerous, in the low millions, ranging from the megalopolis down to the smallest little municipality wherever.
Time, Space, and Their Knowledge: The Times and Place of the World and Other Systems
Authors: Therborn Goran
Published: September 2015

At two hours in length, Immanuel Wallersteins Presidential Address to the XIVth World Congress of Sociology in Montreal on July 26, 1998, was almost as that of a Secretary Generals Report. Although long, it nonetheless managed to spellbind a most undisciplined audience of innumerable factions through the speechs unique combination of audacity, erudition and circumspection. The theme and title were The Heritage of Sociology, The Promise of Social Science. The address was the outgoing Presidents conclusion to a worldwide congressional discussion he had initiated; however, neither the heritage of sociology nor the promise of social science is a ?nite inquiry. My contribution here is thus meant to continue that debate.
The Columbia Social Essayists
Authors: Bergesen Albert
Published: September 2015

Wallerstein came of age intellectually at Columbia University, where he was an undergraduate, graduate student and faculty member for a quarter of a century (1947-1971). While we often think of his work on African politics and his concern with third world development as precur-sors to world-system theory, a large part of his intellectual biography was shaped by those Columbia years. They mark the high point of a triple hegemony of university, city, and nation, as at this time Columbia was the leading university in the leading city of the hegemonic nation. It was a time before the 1960s when the New Left and Berkeley would challenge the centrality of New York and Columbia as undisputed centers of American social thought and it was before what would be called the policy intellectuals would emerge in Washington DC in the 1970s/80s. It was also a time before the great in?ux of federal money in the 1960s which spurred social research and lifted other universities to prominence. It was a time of what I will call The Columbia Social Essayists, referring to scholar/intellectuals such as C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell, Lionel Trilling, Richard Hofstadter and Meyer Schapiro.
Colonialidad del Poder y Clasi? cacion Social
Authors: Quijano Anibal
Published: September 2015

La colonialidad es uno de los elementos constitutivos y especí?cos del patrón mundial de poder capitalista. Se funda en la imposición de una clasi?cación racial/étnica de la población del mundo como piedra angular de dicho patrón de poder y opera en cada uno de los planos, ámbitos y dimensiones, materiales y subjetivas, de la existencia social cotidiana y a escala societal.Se origina y mundializa a partir de América.
Broadening and Deepening: Systemic Expansion, Incorporation and the Zone of Ignorance
Authors: Carlson Jon D.
Published: September 2015

I intend to address a critical element of world-systems theory, and in doing so illuminate some larger concerns with international relations theory in general. Speci?cally, I will be examining the concept of the external arena and its relation to the international system as an expanding whole. The goal is to re-think the incorporation of new regions (states and peoples) into the world-system in order to understand world-system processes more completely. This should be taken as a positive critique of both Wallersteins analysis of incorporation (European, state-centric, inside-out) and Halls analysis of incorporation (external, indigenous peoples, outside in).
Chiefdoms, States, Cycling, and World-Systems Evolution: A Review Essay
Authors: Hall Thomas D.
Published: September 2015

Why review a series of books and articles on the rise and fall of chiefdoms in this stetother than my obvious penchant for reading and writing about such topics? The brief answer is that the kind of cycling (rise and fall) that occurs in chiefdoms has analogues in state-based world-systems. In particular, the probabalistic nature of the transitions from chiefdom to state means that there are lots of near misses, or examples of failed transitions. The growing literature on such cycling suggests these transitions are the result of Braudelian conjuncturesall the right pieces falling into place at the right time and placebut nonetheless the result of systematic, or I argue world-systematic processes. Furthermore, initial evidence shows that ideology and individual actors play signi?cant roles in such transitions. Kent Flannery (1999) argues that structure and agency rather than being antithetical, are complementary. Via several examples he shows how in certain phases of chiefdom cycling space, or opportunity, is opened for especially potent actions by leaders, and for ideology to play a much stronger than usual role in social, political, and cultural change. Thus, examination of such events gives some insight into the roles of ideology and individuals in system transformation.
Global Energy Inequalities: Exploring the Long-Term Implications
Authors: Podobnik Bruce
Published: September 2015

This study examines the evolution of global energy inequalities over the modern period, with particular attention paid to the years 19581998. The analysis reveals that global energy inequalities were modestly reduced in the 1970s, as semi-peripheral nations increased their consumption of modern energy resources. However, an inten-si? cation of inequalities reasserted itself in the 1980s and 1990s, as the semi-periphery lost ground in relation to resurgent consumption in core nations such as the United States. The study argues that, in an increasingly bounded energy system, geopolitical, commercial, and social tensions will rise if fundamental inequa-ities in energy consumption are not addressed. Prospects for achieving reforms in the system over the medium term are evaluated at the conclusion of the study.
Population and Sample Selection Effects in Measuring International Income Inequality
Authors: Babones Salvatore
Published: September 2015

The issue of world income inequality has been debated widely in the literature. At issue is whether inequality has, on the whole, been increasing or decreasing over time. I reexamine results from Firebaughs (1999) seminal article on demographic e?ects on inequality, in which he found a 30-year plateau of world income inequality when countries are weighted based on their populations. In contrast, I show that the increasing integration of market economies over the past decades has been re?ected in dramatically increasing international inequality. Inequality as currently measured, however, may bear little resemblance to a naive under-standing of the term. I conclude with some preliminary ?gures from an alternate characterization of convergence and divergence, based on world-systems categories.
International Inequality in the Age of Globalization: Japanese Economic Ascent and the Restructuring of the Capitalist World-Economy
Authors: Ciccantell Paul S. , Bunker Stephen
Published: September 2015

This paper shows how Japanese ?rms and the Japanese state constructed a development model based on the steel industry as a generative sector that drove Japans economic ascent in the world-historical context of U.S. hegemony. We make three arguments in this paper. First, there is a new model of capital accumulation that does create new forms of social inequality by redistributing costs and bene?ts in very di?erent ways than earlier models. Second, Japanese ?rms and the Japanese state created this new model of capital accumulation and social inequality via mechanisms including joint ventures, long term contracts, and other forms of international trade and investment, not U.S.-based transnational corporations, as is usually assumed. Third, world-systems theory reconstructed through the lens of the new historical materialism explains this restructuring of the capitalist world-economy as the outcome of Japans economic ascent over the last ?fty years. Further, we argue that this new model of capital accumulation has had similar impacts on redistributing the costs and bene?ts of development between core and peripheral regions of the capitalist world-economy in a wide range of global industries. These strategies created a tightly linked set of technological and organizational innovations to overcome the natural and social obstacles to Japanese development, dramatically increase Japans international economic competitiveness by lowering production costs in all sectors of the economy, turn Japan into the worlds largest exporter of manufactured products, restructure a range of global industries, and recreate the world-system hierarchy in support of Japanese development. In particular, organizational inno-vations in the use of long term contracts and joint ventures in raw materials industries to foster global excess capacity and lower rents to resource extracting ?rms and states reallocated the costs of providing the material building blocks of Japanese development to the states and ?rms of its new raw materials periphery. This competitive advantage drove Japanese capital accumulation and economic ascent, and simultaneously drove underdevelopment in Japans periphery. These Japanese innovations became key elements of globalization as U.S. and European transnational corporations and states sought to compete with Japan. Joint ventures, long-term contracts, and other forms of inter?rm cooperation have replaced vertically integrated foreign direct investment, the earlier U.S. model of capital accumulation and international economic linkage, as the model for global industries.
Spatial Synchrony Among and Within World-Systems: Insights From Theoretical Ecology
Authors: Turchin Peter , Hall Thomas D.
Published: September 2015

This paper reports on research in population ecology and suggests ways it might be useful in explaining spatial dynamics of states, groups, and world-systems. In particular it focuses on how and why populations at opposite of ends of Afroeurasia come to rise and fall simultaneously over long periods of time. We call for exploration of research in population ecology for understanding world-system evolution and suggest directions for possible future research.
Review of "The Empire of Disorder", by Alain Joxe
Authors: Lizardo Omar
Published: September 2015

see text
The Political Economy of Raw Materials Transport from Internal Periphery to Core in the Early 20th Century US: The Calumet & Hecla Copper Companys Struggle for Market Access, 192239
Authors: Leitner Jonathan
Published: September 2015

The Calumet & Hecla Copper Company was a firm funded by core capital, but operating in an internal periphery (Michigans Upper Peninsula), and eventually subject to peripheral constraints, along with the constraints of the physical environment, the physical characteristics of copper, and a concentrating industrial structure itself due largely to the physical characteristics of other types of copper mined elsewhere in the world. I focus on the firms efforts to maintain market access in the face of both a restructuring copper industry, driven by the coming online of much larger, lower-grade deposits that required much larger aggregations of capital to extract and process; and a restructuring transport system, driven by coppers industrial restructuring, but also by the politics of core and periphery within the U.S., including the imperatives of transport capital that tied peripheral resources to core manufacturing industry. A number of world-systems works over the past decade have examined periphery-core resource transport, exploring its importance to historical capitalism via increasing the speed and scope of circulation, improving access to raw materials, and being a leading sector for rising hegemons, due to the ever-increasing need for raw materials entailed by economic ascent. The case examined here was part of the United States own core emergence and eventual hegemonic ascendance, which was largely based on its domestic raw materials and the internal transport lines that enabled core industry to gain cheap access to those resources.
Japan and the Changing Regime of Accumulation: A World-System Study of Japans Trajectory From Miracle to Debacle
Authors: Ikeda Satoshi
Published: September 2015

Japans trajectory under globalization is critically reviewed using the world-system perspective and the methodology of historical sociology. The Japanese miracle in the post-war period was a result of interplay between world-systemic opportunities and internal and regional institutional transformation. Japanese success invited US policy changes, ending the growth regime of accumulation in which state-led national economic development was pursued with distributional concessions given to workers. It is argued that misguided policies based on incorrect economic theories under the strong yen, pushed by the US since 1985, prepared a bubble that then burst. The institutions that had provided the Japanese miracle became the source of problems as Japan entered the debacle period in the 1990s. The Japanese debacle was part of the phenomenon of a prosperous US and the debacle of the rest. This development was a result of the change in the regime of accumulation from a growth regime to a distribution regime where the rentier class took control of distribution and the project of national economic development was replaced by the monopolistic competition of global corporations. For Japan, both traditionalism and neo-liberalism are dysfunctional. In the short run, Japan as a society needs to focus on survival and the maintenance of peoples living standards under the new rules of the accumulation game imposed by the US. In the medium run, Japan needs to challenge US dollar hegemony ushered in by the new rules. In the long run, the Japanese need to examine whether they should keep engaging in the game of capitalist accumulation.
Popular National Sovereignty and the U.S. Empire
Authors: Laxer Gordon
Published: September 2015

In the 1960s, the left branded US imperialism the major enemy of social justice in the world. Such talk faded after the war against Vietnam and almost disappeared after communism fell in Eastern Europe. Its not that the American brand of informal empire disappeared. It continued through US influences on other states policies, the sway of US corporations abroad on host governments, US military power, and the power of the Washington-based financial institutions. But, the discourse changed and raged around the softer term globalization. In the past few years, imperialism talk has roared back, led this time by the political right, who gave it a positive sheen. Some on the left have joined in too, in an exciting new literature, revising Marxist and Leninist critiques of imperialism. But, much of the political left and centre are still mired in aspirations for cosmopolitanism, which inadvertently obscure struggles for popular and national sovereignty. This paper examines the limits of cosmopolitanism for democracy, critiques the nature of US power, and discusses how a reasserted US empire has sparked the revival of nationalisms by looking at the cases of nationalism in the six top oil-exporting countries to the US. The paper concludes with inquiries into people-to-people internationalism and whether citizen-based democracy is possible without sovereignty.
From World System to World Society?
Authors: Martinneli Alberto
Published: September 2015

In the paper, I first argue that we live in a fundamentally interconnected global order, integrated by complex patterns of exchange, hierarchy and solidarity among multiple global actors which are increasingly aware of their interdependence and common fate. However, a universal world society does not exist yet. I then discuss the role played by international collective movements, non-governmental organizations and epistemic communities in shaping a transnational civil society and an international public space. And finally I evaluate the main factors either favoring or hindering the institutions and values of a system of global governance.
The Country-Level Income Structure of the World-Economy
Authors: Babones Salvatore
Published: September 2015

World-systems sociologists have long recognized a three-tier structure in the world-economy, which comprises peripheral, semi-peripheral, and core groups of countries. This paper introduces a new database tool for analyzing this structure of the world-economy in terms of national income, the Structure of the World-Economy (SWE) analytical tool. It can be used to chart the structure of the world-economy in terms of income per capita for any year from 1960-2000 based on parameters selected by the user. Results confirm the existence of a three-tier structure of the world-economy that is relatively stable over the period for which data are available. A continuous set of benchmarks for the boundary points separating zones of the world-economy are reported for the period 19752002, along with a brief analysis of national mobility across those boundaries. Only seventeen countries (out of 103) made lasting transitions between zones of the world-economy over the study period, mostly due to changes in the prices of natural resources. The results of this study suggest that development policy formation should focus more on the attainable goal of transitioning countries from the periphery to the semiperiphery of the world-economy, and less on achieving an absolute standard of developed or core country status.
A Compact Macromodel of World System Evolution
Authors: Korotayev Andrey
Published: September 2015

The fact that up to the 1960s world population growth had been characterized by a hyperbolic trend was discovered quite some time ago. A number of mathematical models describing this trend have already been proposed. Some of these models are rather compact but do not account for the mechanisms of this trend; others account for this trend in a very convincing way, but are rather complex. In fact, the general shape of world population growth dynamics could be accounted for with strikingly simple models like the one which we would like to propose ourselves: dN/dt = a (bK  N) N (1); dK/dt = cNK (2), where N is the world population, K is the level of technology/knowledge, bKcorresponds to the number of people (N), which the earth can support with the given level of technology (K). Empirical tests performed by us suggest that the proposed set of two differential equations account for 96.2 99.78% of all the variation in demographicmacrodynamics of the world in the last 12,000 years. We believe that the patterns observed in pre-modern world population growth are not coincidental at all. In fact, they reflect population dynamics of quite a real entity, the world system. Note that the presence of a more or less well integrated world system comprising most of the world population is a necessary precondition, without which the correlation between the world population numbers generated by hyperbolic growth models and the observed ones would not be especially high. In fact, our findings could be regarded as a striking illustration of the fact well known in complexity studies  that chaotic dynamics at the microlevel can generate a highly deterministic macrolevel behavior. Against this background it is hardly surprising to find that the simplest regularities accounting for extremely high proportions of all the macrovariation can be found just for the largest possible social system  the world system.
The World Distribution of Income and Income Inequality: A Review of the Economics Literature*
Authors: Heshmati Almas
Published: September 2015

This review covers a range of measures and methods frequently employed in the empirical analysis of global income inequality and global income distribution. Different determinant factors along with the quantification of their impacts and empirical results from different case studies are presented. A number of issues crucial to the study of global income inequality are also addressed. These are the concepts, measurement and decomposition of inequality, the world distribution of income and inequality measured at different levels of aggregation:global, international and intra-national. We analyze income at each of these levels, discuss the benefits and limitations of each approach and present empirical results found in the literature and compare them with those based on the World Income Inequality Database. Research on world income inequality supports increased awareness of the problem, its measurement and quantification, the identification of causal factors and policy measures that affect global income inequality.
Hêgemonía: Hegemony, Classical and Modern
Authors: Wikinson David
Published: September 2015

"Hegemony" is a term from the vocabulary of classical Greek history which was deliberately revived in the 19th century to describe a modern phenomenon. In its classical context, the clear denotation of hegemony is a military-political hierarchy, not one of wealth or cultural prestige; although both economic and cultural resources could serve to advance military-political hegemony, they were not at all of the essence. Hegemonic relations were conscious, and based upon complex motives and capacities. Individuals, peoples and states could desire, seek, struggle for, get, keep, lose and regain hegemony. Hegemony was sought or exercised over nations, over territories, over the land or the sea, or over tôn holôn, "the whole"; but "territories" turn out to be the states and nations thereon, "the land" and "the sea" actually meant "the mainland states" and "the island states," and tôn holôn was the world system, the whole system of interacting states. Hegemonic power relationships in the classical style are alive and well today; far from being time-bound, place-bound or culture-bound, hegemony in the classical sense is a transhistorical and transcultural fact that merits comparative-civilizational and comparative-world-systems study. While bilateral, alliance, and regional hegemonies are far more frequent both today and in the past, the most useful hegemony for study in a comparative civilizations/world systems context is systemwide hegemony: a unipolar influence structure that falls short of universal empire.
Bringing the Military Back in: Military Expenditures and Economic Growth 1990 to 2003
Authors: Kentor Jeffrey , Kick Edward
Published: September 2015

After the peace bonus era, global military expenditures have escalated sharply despite some worldwide declines in military personnel. Theories on the economic impacts of the military institution and escalated military spending greatly differ and include arguments that they either improve domestic economic performance or crowd out growth-inducing processes. Empirical findings on this matter are inconclusive, in part due to a failure to disentangle the various dimensions of military expenditures. We further suggest that modern sociology's relative inattention to such issues has contributed to these shortcomings. We explore a new dimension of military spending that clarifies this issuemilitary expenditures per soldier which captures the capital intensiveness of a countrys military organization. Our cross-national panel regression and causal analyses of developed and less developed countries from 1990 to 2003 show that military expenditures per soldier inhibit the growth of per capita GDP, net of control variables, with the most pronounced effects in least developed countries. These expenditures inhibit national development in part by slowing the expansion of the labor force. Labor-intensive militaries may provide a pathway for upward mobility, but comparatively capital-intensive military organizations limit entry opportunities for unskilled and under- or unemployed people. Deep investments in military hardware also reduce the investment capital available for more economically productive opportunities. We also find that arms imports have a positive effect on economic growth, but only in less developed countries.
Le Neoliberalisme a LEpreuve de la Crise des Subprimes
Authors: Gloria-Palermo Sandye
Published: September 2015

The aim of this article is to analyse the ideological impact of the current financial and economic crisis upon the neoliberal values which predominate since the end of the 70s. The specificity of this economic crisis leads to a process of questioning on these values. This is far from being insignificant because cultural hegemony is reached when value judgements transform into assertions perceived as unquestionable, universal and natural. Up to now, there is no such a thing as an ideological revolution because all the economic interventions are justified on the ground of pragmatism. But at least, the current crisis allows the fundamental assertions of neoliberalism to come back to their value judgment status. Another important consequence of the crisis is that alternative value judgements also gain in legitimacy and audience. These conclusions are reached through an analysis of the various interventions actually implemented by governments and central banks and through the presentation of a selection of representative alternative visions of the current financial capitalist order.
Transnational Class Formation? Globalization and the Canadian Corporate Network
Authors: Klassen Jerome , Carroll William K.
Published: September 2015

The issue of transnational class formation has figured centrally in recent debates on globalization. These debates revolve around the question of whether or not new patterns of cross-border trade and investment have established global circuits of capital out of which a transnational capitalist class has emerged. This paper takes up the notion of transnational class formation at the point of corporate directorship interlocks. Using Canada as a case study, it maps the changing network of directorship interlocks between leading firms in Canada and the world economy. In particular, the paper examines the role of transnational corporations (TNCs) in the Canadian corporate network; the resilience of a national corporate community; and new patterns of cross-border interlocking amongst transnational firms. Through this empirical mapping, the paper finds a definite link between investment and interlocking shaping the social space of the global corporate elite. Corporations with a transnational base of accumulation tend to participate in transnational interlocking. While national corporate communities have not been transcended, transnational firms increasingly predominate within them, articulating national with transnational elite segments. This new network of firms reconstitutes the corporate power bloc and forms a nascent transnational capitalist class.
Hydropolitical Complexes and Asymmetrical Power: Conflict, Cooperation, and Governance of International River Systems
Authors: Kehl Jenny R.
Published: September 2015

Hydropolitical complexes are emerging to negotiate water-sharing policies that promote politicalstability, regional security, economic prosperity, and environmental sustainability. Yet interstatedisputes are occurring within most hydropolitical complexes, and weak riparians are oftencoerced to agree to water-sharing policies that adversely affect them. This research examines thestrategies weak riparians use to assert leverage in international river basins with asymmetricalpower, and the success of those strategies in achieving cooperation versus conflict. Grounded inthe theoretical framework of hydro hegemony, hard power, and soft power, this study uses crossnational analysis to test the effects of geographic, military, political, economic, technological,and external influence on water governance in eight international river systems. The resultsdemonstrate that weak riparians mobilize the assets and capacities of external actors, such asdonor countries and the World Bank, to increase their leverage within hydropolitical complexes.The study finds that strategies to balance hard power are largely ineffective; they fail to achievecooperative water-sharing arrangements and often exacerbate conflict. In contrast, strategies tobalance economic power and soft power, such as market access and political legitimacy, aremore successful in promoting cooperation and preventing conflict in hydropolitical complexes.
Book Reviews
Authors: Whitaker Mark D.
Published: September 2015

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Complementary and Competitive Regimes of Accumulation: Natural Resources and Development in the World-System
Authors: Bonini Astra
Published: September 2015

During the post-war period, natural resource production has often been associated withperipheralization in the world-economy. This paper seeks to demonstrate that this associationdoes not hold when examined from a long-term perspective, and explains the conditions underwhich natural resource production can support upward economic mobility in the world-system.First, this paper provides evidence that the production of cash crops and resource extraction hasnot always equaled peripheralization in the world-economy, as demonstrated by, among otherthings, the upward economic mobility of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealandduring the nineteenth century. It then puts forth a new hypothesis that the existence ofopportunities for raw material producing countries depends on whether the hegemonic regime ofaccumulation at a given time structures the economy in a way that is either complementary orcompetitive to the economic development of raw material producing countries. By examining theBritish centered regime of accumulation during the nineteenth century, we find that it wascomparatively complementary to economic development in raw material producing countrieswhereas the twentieth century United States centered regime was comparatively competitive withraw material producers. Based on a comparison with Britain and the United States, the paperalso suggests that Chinas increasingly central role in the world-economy may be comparativelycomplementary to economic development in raw material producing countries.
Special Contribution: Interview with Immanuel Wallerstein Retrospective on the Origins of World-Systems Analysis
Authors: Williams Gregory P.
Published: September 2015

Nearly four decades ago, in 1974, Immanuel Wallerstein published the first volume of his magnum opus, The Modem World-System. That same year, Perry Anderson, British historian and editor of the New Left Review, released the first two installments of his own large-scale history on the origins of modernity. The coincidence of publication invited many scholarly comparisons of their macro-historical perspectives. It is noteworthy that both writers think in terms of totalities. To totalize is to insist on methodological holism. Wallerstein conceives of totality in terms of world-systems, while Anderson advocates for totalization. This is a meaningful contrast. World-systems are closed totalities in the sense that they are historical systems, with a beginning, an end, and identifiable geographical boundaries. Totalization is historically open-ended, and thus invites analyses, in Anderson's case, beginning in Antiquity and without a specified end. While they each write about the modern world, Wallerstein and Anderson conceive of that world in drastically different terms. Neither scholar, however, has asserted his view as a singular paradigm of social analysis. Wallerstein has instead claimed world-systems to be a "call for a debate about the paradigm."
Is Tariff Reduction a Viable Strategy for Economic Growth in the Periphery? An Examination of Tariff Interaction Effects in 69 Less Developed Countries
Authors: Kwon Roy
Published: September 2015

Conventional economic wisdom maintains that the reduction of domestic import restrictions assists in the development of less developed countries. But far from being a settled debate, the empirical research on tariffs and economic growth is much more controversial than is commonly recognized. In fact, so contentious and unsettled is this mode of inquiry that the research of some scholars directly contradicts the findings of others. In light of this difficulty encountered by researchers, the current study argues that the tariff~growth link is best analyzed by exploring the conditional effect of import restrictions on the development of low-income countries. Utilizing a panel dataset with information for 69 less developed countries, the results of this investigation show that tariff interactions with domestic investment and labor participation, respectively, augments the growth-generating impact of these variables. In addition, the constituent terms reveal that domestic investment and labor-force participation produces robust negative associations with economic growth when removing their tariff contingent effects. Taken as a whole, the evidence illustrates the value of exploring the indirect relationship between tariffs and economic growth as well as the potential usefulness of restrictive import policies for development in the periphery.
Hegemony and Humanitarian Norms: The U.S. Legitimation of Toxic Violence
Authors: Bonds Eric
Published: September 2015

Despite widespread beliefs that the United States has not used chemical weapons since the distant past of World War I, this study suggests a more complicated history by examining U.S. use of herbicides and incapacitating gases in the Vietnam War and its use of herbicides in the "War on Drugs." This article places such use of toxic violence within a context of U.S. hegemony, by which U.S. officials have used contested forms of violence to secure geopolitical goals, but have also been pressured to comply with humanitarian norms or-when there is a gap between norms and state policy-to do legitimating work in order to maintain domestic and international consent. Based on case study analysis of archival and secondary sources, this article identifies three main techniques U.S. officials use to legitimate contested forms of violence. These techniques are defensive categorization, humanitizing discourse, and surrogacy.
The War on Drugs in Colombia: The Environment, the Treadmill of Destruction and Risk-Transfer Militarism
Authors: Smith Chad L. , Hooks Gregory , Lengefeld Michael
Published: September 2015

Ecological damage, including global climate change, is commonly connected to practices and behaviors associated with economic activity and the Treadmill of Production (ToP). Less attention is paid to the connection between the military and environmental degradation, but recently the Treadmill of Destruction (ToD) has been documented as a global phenomenon with negative environmental effects. The ToD directly and indirectly contributes to environmental problems on many fronts, but one of the least obvious means by which the U.S. military influences the environment is through its policies supporting the "war on drugs. " The U.S. military aids Latin American countries, particularly Colombia, in the war on drugs in a number of capacities, including military support and training, weaponry, fumigation of crops, and logistical and surveillance support. The effort of the United States to curb the proliferation of illegal drug crops in Colombia is the most direct role that the military has played in this effort. Within the context of the "war on drugs" the United States is now engaged in risk-transfer militarism in which the consequences of this military action are borne by the Global South. We document the scope, magnitude, and consequences of the ToD in the war on drugs and the ways it negatively impacts the environment. Our argument reframes the ToD by emphasizing the role of risk-transfer militarism within the emergence of "new" wars as represented in the case of Colombia.
A World-Ecological Perspective on Socio-Ecological Transformation in the Appalachian Coal Industry
Authors: Marley Ben , Fox Samantha
Published: September 2015

This article discusses the exhaustion of socio-ecological relations in the coalfields of West Virginia. We use the term socio-ecological to signify "the interwoven character and the indispensable unity of social and natural life" (Araghi 2009: 115). In particular we use classic literatures on labor history in the coalfields of central Appalachia and contemporary studies of mountaintop removal to think about phases of socio-ecological relations of the coal industry. We argue for the interrelationality of the social and the ecological in place of conventional eco-M arxist approaches which treat these as relatively independent units. This enables us to situate nature as an active component of capitalist developmental processes. We argue that the exhaustion of socio-ecological relations in the coalfields of West Virginia is an outcome of material practices within the phase of extraction using mountaintop removal, historical changes in the conditions of production in the coalfields, and of new forms of competition from other regions and energy sources. We find that the relative exhaustion of central Appalachian coal is tempered by favorable international markets and a specialization in metallurgical coal.
Can Climate Activists’ ‘Movement Below’ Transcend Negotiators’ ‘Paralysis Above’?
Authors: Bond Patrick
Published: September 2015

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