Immanuel Wallerstein on the Cycle of Hegemony

Discussion

Duncan Law:

"In his major work, The Modern World-System, Wallerstein argues that the long-term dynamics of the capitalist world system can be analysed through the lens of ‘long waves’ (‘Kondratiev waves’) of global growth, stagnation and recession. These multi-decade economic cycles correspond also to multi-decade cycles of political transformation. Specifically, Wallerstein proposes a ‘cycle of hegemony’ that describes the rise and fall of hegemonic states within the system as a whole.

Since the creation of the capitalist world system in the ‘long 16th century’, Wallerstein argues, there have been only three hegemonic powers, and three periods of hegemony:

The United Provinces was the hegemonic power in the mid-seventeenth century, briefly, from 1648 to the 1660s. The United Kingdom was the hegemonic power for a slightly longer time in the nineteenth century, from 1815 to 1848, perhaps a little longer. The United States was the hegemonic power in the mid-twentieth century, from 1945 to 1967/1973. (Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750, p. xxiii)

For Wallerstein, the moment in which a state functions as a hegemonic power forms one stage of a recurrent four-stage cycle of hegemony:

If one starts the story when there is an uncontested hegemonic power, the first moment occurs in the period immediately thereafter. It is the moment of the slow decline of the hegemonic power, during which two powers emerge as contenders for the succession.

The moment after that is when the decline has become definitive. We can think of this second moment as one in which there is a ‘balance of power’ in the world-system. During this moment, the two contenders for hegemony struggle to secure geopolitical and world-economic advantage. The third moment is when the struggle becomes so acute that order breaks down and there is a “thirty years’ war” between the contenders for hegemony.

And the fourth moment is when one of the contenders wins definitely and is therefore able to establish a true hegemony – until, of course, the slow decline begins. (xxiii)

Now – it goes without saying that historical patterns only persist as long as they persist. There is no reason to assume that a pattern which has held in modern history to date – if it has – will necessarily continue in the future. And, indeed, Wallerstein himself appears to believe that we are currently in a transition from a capitalist world-system to some other, novel global political-economic structure. For Wallerstein, the most pressing political question is the nature of that emerging structure – will it take an emancipatory or oppressive form?"

(https://duncanlaw.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/cycles-of-hegemony/)