Hegemonic Transition
Discussion
Barry K. Gills:
"Previously, the term "transition" was usually reserved for change on a very broad sociohistorical scale. For historical materialists in particular, the most important transitions that shaped the course of world history were those between modes of production. I will argue that "hegemonic transition" is as useful a concept, if not more so, as transition between modes of production, or as "hegemonic succession" for understanding the patterns of change of accumulation, power, and world order throughout world history.
Taking this general point somewhat further, I would argue that it is possible to view all of international or world history as a series of hegemonic transitions entailing recurrent shifts in the locus of accumulation in the world economy. It follows from this hypothesis that these hegemonic transitions, or alternatively "center shifts," are a central form of historical change, i.e. as much a fundamental change as transitions between "modes of production," "historical social systems," or "civilizations" were previously presumed to be. Perhaps hegemonic transition and center shift are more real than transitions between the above, which exist primarily as analytical constructs, and therefore their boundaries are more easily identified.
If hegemonic transition is the central concept this implies a fundamental rethinking of the agencies of change in world history. It poses anew the problem of the relationship between "internal" "external" factors as explanations of historical change. This debate was already begun between "productionists" and "circulationists" some time ago. However, if the nature of the "international" or "external" arena is reconceptualized as a hierarchy of centers of accumulation in which the hierarchy of power is embedded, the debate could enter a new phase. It also re-poses the problem of the relationship between change "from above" and change "from below" in the social hierarchy.
My intention is to build upon the insights of Janet Abji-Lughod (1989), who argues that a world system is not always dominated by a single hegemon, but may be characterized by a number of coexisting core powers (or in my terms interlinked hegemonic powers) that via both conflictual and cooperative relations become increasingly integrated. To Abu-Lughod, therefore, "hegemonic transition" would not be best understood as a process of absolute rise and fall by states. Rather, she emphasizes relative position in a complex multilayered hierarchy. Over the course of world history some nations, or groups of nations, gain relative power vis-a-vis others. Thus they occasionally succeed in "setting the terms of their interactions with subordinates." This is a "rise." Conversely, the loss of such a (temporary) advantageous position is referred to by Abu-Lughod as a "decline" (Abu-Lughod 1989).
Within Abu-Lughod's formulation there is an implicit conception of movement up and down a complex, multilayered hierarchy of economic and political power in the world system. The hierarchy of political power is embedded or "nested" in a hierarchy of economic power embedded in the world economy. If we accept that there has been a world economy at Eurasian scale for far longer than the past five hundred years (Chase-Dunn 1989; Gills and Frank, chapters 3 and 5) then several other points follow. First it becomes possible to view hegemonic rivalries as a continuous process accompanying the development of the world economy. Secondly, it becomes necessary to distinguish between purely regional hegemony (the "empires") and world hegemony. I would argue that hegemony on the scale of the world economy, unlike the regional form of hegemonic power (and perhaps not even that), has never been held exclusively by a single power or its ruling/propertied classes. Rather, especially global or world hegemony is always shared hegemony, exercised through a complex network composed of class coalitions, and also alliances and other forms of association between states, including competitive ones.
The world system as a whole is certainly never simply dominated by one great hegemonic power, but rather is characterized by interlinking hegemonic powers - which are typified in their mutual relations by both competitive and cooperative interactions, i.e. "independence," "interdependence," and "dependence". Changes in the configuration of relations between these hegemonic actors can have a truly profound impact on the course of history and social development. This impact may be equal to or even greater than the impact of class struggle between the exploiter and the exploited classes (i.e. the accumulating and the producing classes). In fact, the outcome of class struggle may often depend ultimately on the outcome of these hegemonic struggles, at least as much, if not more, than the other way around.
This idea flows from a conception of the world system as an interlinked hierarchy of centers of accumulation, as opposed to a simple hierarchy of states and their power. For example, the Pax Americana is probably better understood as a complex coalition of classes and states in a shared global hegemony than as the overwhelming power of a single state (Gill 1990; Van der Fiji 1984). The consolidation of US hegemony after 1945 is accompanied by west European and Japanese economic power, of course, but also by European and Japanese political influence, operating largely in subordinated harmony with US power. This coalition operated in a context of global rivalry with the Soviet Union and other communist powers for hegemonic position. Likewise, British global hegemony in the nineteenth century cannot be properly assessed in isolation from the coexisting (global) imperia of other contemporary great powers and the specific relations established among the great powers within Europe after the Congress of Vienna. To venture much farther back in world history for a moment, our western view of the sole dominance of the Roman empire in the ancient world is fundamentally flawed by the prevailing Eurocentrism. In reality, the regional Roman imperium coexisted with other very powerful and wealthy hegemonic actors, such as the Parthians in Mesopotamia, followed by the Sassanid Persian empires, all of which were embedded in the same Eurasian-wide economic relations, which included Indian, Central Asian, and Chinese states and empires as well.
As an alternative conception to the single-hegemon-succession model, it can be argued that the world system as a whole goes through a cycle composed of periods when several hegemonic powers rise and coexist together, and periods when several hegemonic powers decline together or when hegemonic power is in disarray and competition and conflict increase, i.e. a period of general world political and economic crisis. These hegemonic power cycles seem to be correlated with long cycles of economic expansion and contraction (or at least slower growth or some form of dislocation). Gills and Frank (in chapter 5) trace the occurrence of these cycles back at least two thousand years. These are not simply parallel developments, but are synchronized. That is to say, there is a common causal link between them. My preferred hypothesis is that this link comes from their mutual participation in the world economy and in its single hierarchy of accumulation. However, though some hegemonic powers decline there are always ascending powers, even in periods of general crisis. Even the worst economic crisis, though it certainly brings about much political, social, and economic restructuring and a change of the geopolitical landscape, does not mean the disappearance of hegemonic power altogether. The world economy as a whole never ***, rather the ways in which it is constituted and the linkages through which it operates are I changed. This process favours some at a particular time while discriminating against others, and so on through time me world historical process to which I refer above is not merely a 1 rearrangement of players through time and space, but entails the restructuring of all the players as well as of the world system itself. It could be more broadly understood, as I have argued elsewhere, as a perpetual politico-economic process of mutual societal penetrations and transformations ... [in which] coexisting classes and states interlock in competitive/cooperative relationships of accumulation and rivalry. These relationships not only determine shifts in the "balance of power" or configuration of international hierarchy over time, but equally, if not more importantly, they constantly force restructuring on all of the classes, states, and societies imer-locked into these competitive/cooperative relationships. This constant process of societal restructuring should be recognized as the real subject matter of the discipline of international relations. (Gills 1993; see also Gills and Palan 1993)
From this (new) perspective, hegemonic transitions in the world system may be viewed as an unbroken series entailing cumulative development: but composed of both secular and cyclical change. Over the tongue duree, the long passage of sociohistorical time in which fundamental social structures are embedded, the world system expands spatially, for instance (a secular trend), while simultaneously undergoing internal restructuring (often of a cyclical character) or "deepening." The hegemonic transition is therefore not simply a repetitive cycle. At the beginning of each new historical period certain conditions will have changed that make it different from the preceding period. In particular, as the pace of technologicchange increases the difference between one hegemonic period and another may be considerable, despite other continuities.
For example, underpinning all hegemonic transitions is a secular developmental and underdevelopmental process which restructures the hierarchy of center-periphery relations, and center-center relations. This constant process of restructuring occurs locally, regionally, and now globally. There is an underlying process of capital accumulation on a world scale, which itself demands that certain types of restructuring occur in order for world accumulation to continue and expand. Therefore, secular developments in technology and the organization of the production system intertwine with cyclical rhythms of capital formation, and both with social and political developments. Mandel (1980) has examined in a very sophisticated manner the developmental logic of such interacting secular and cyclical patterns for the period of modern history since the 1780s. The long-term relationship of consumption to production, the rates of profit, investment, and exploitation, the technological cycles of innovation, the Kondratieff waves, and the form of social regulation, all appear in Mandel's examination of the development of modem capitalism. However, Mandel did not fully integrate the notion of hegemonic-power transitions ***** analysis. The locus of accumulation, and with it the locus of hegemonic power, shifts in response t6 all of these world historical forces above, operating in conjunction with one another.
I argue that the accumulation process is the ultimate driving force of hegemonic transition and thus of world order. This materialist analysis of the primacy of economic processes in the evolution of world order is not a "return" to past positions, but is even more relevant today than in the past. It stands in contrast to the explanations of a reinvigorated and redeployed idealist analysis of world order which explains macrohisiorical change as the working out of some great historical idea, such as "freedom," or more topically "democracy." If world history has any real "end" it is most likely the (capital) accumulation process itself, in whatever specific historical form. Hegemonic power is a means to that end. As the forms of accumulation change so do the forms of hegemonic power and thus the form of world order. I believe that the historical evidence shows that the sequence is ultimately in that order and not the other way around.
The second set of insights I wish to expand upon are those of Gilpin (1981) concerning the cycle of hegemonic rise and decline and the role of economic surplus. I hope the reader will pardon the exceptionally long quotation which follows, but it is necessary to do justice to the full range of Gilpin's formulation in order that I may later relate these points to the arguments above and those which follow. According to Gilpin (1981):
The territorial, political and economic expansion of a state increases the availablility of economic surplus required to exercise dominion over the system (Rader, 1971, p. 46.). The rise and decline of dominant states and empires are largely functions of the general and then the eventual dissipation of this economic surplus [p. 106]....
The type of social formation is extremely important because it determines how the economic surplus is generated, its magnitude, and the mechanism of its transfer from one group of society to another (Amin, 1976, p. 18); it influences the distribution of wealth and power within societies as well as the mechanism for the distribution of wealth and power among societies [p. 108]. ...
The distinguishing features of premodern and modern international relations are in large measure due to significant differences in characteristic social formations. The displacement of empires and imperial-command economies by nation-states and a world market as the principal forms of political id economic organization can be understood only as a development associated with the change from an agricultural formation to industrial formation [p. 110].
... the predominant form of political organization before the modern era was the empire ... the history of interstate relations was largely that of successive great empires. The pattern of international political change during the millennia of the premodern era has been described as an imperial cycle (Rader, 1971, pp. 38-68; Rostow, 1971, pp. 28-9). World politics was characterized by the rise and decline of powerful empires, each of which in turn unified and ordered its respective international system. The recurrent pattern in every civilization of which we have knowledge was for one state to unify the system under its imperial domination. This propensity toward universal empire was the principal feature of premodern politics.... The principal determinant of this cycle of empires was the underlying agriculture-based social formation... the size of the economic surplus from agriculture and imperial tribute was principally a function of the extent of territorial control. Therefore, other things being equal, the greater the territorial extent of an empire and of its political control, the greater the taxable surplus and the greater the power of the empire....
Although the generation of an economic surplus during the imperial era was dependent on agriculture, its distribution was frequently influenced by commerce and international trade ... the control of trade routes has been an objective of states and a source of great wealth and power. The great and enduring empires frequently have arisen at the crossroads of trade, and struggles over control of the principal arteries of commerce have been constant sources of interstate conflict. Changes in the control of these trade routes and changes in the locations of the routes themselves have played decisive roles in the rise and decline of empires and civilizations....
The cycle of empires was broken in the modern world by three significant interrelated developments: the triumph of the nation-state as the principal actor in international relations; the advent of sustained economic growth based on modern science and technology; the emergence of a world market economy. These developments reinforced one another and in turn led to displacement of the cycle of empires by the European balance-of-power system and, later, a succession of hegemonies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries [pp. 110-16].
Since it is my firm contention, following Ekholm and Friedman chapter 2 above and Silver (1985) that "capital" existed in the ancient economy in much the same form as later in world history, and that capital accumulation is the driving force of world-historical development (Gills and Frank, Chapter 3 above), it follows that the history of capital accumulation and e history of hegemonic-power transitions are inextricably linked not only r the modern world but throughout most of world history. Chase-Dunn (1989) already argued that "both political-military power and the propriation of surplus value through production and sale on the world key play an integrated role" in hegemonic-power cycles. But how far k in world history could this be said to hold true? Perhaps much farther k. than we are normally led to think is the case. Chase-Dunn explains *** the "low overhead strategy" of Venice, which was later emulated by Holland, Britain, and the USA, relies for its success on a decentralized political apparatus of domination which reduces the cost of administration pot empire, while surplus extraction is accomplished by trade. By contrast, high-overhead imperia which rely on a direct and centralized political apparatus of control and extraction of surplus via coercion/tribute are less : successful when in competitive relations with the low-overhead types.
We have been taught that ancient economy and empire were basically; about coercion, bureaucratic centralization, and tribute. I believe there is |much evidence to the contrary. Gilpin's statement suggests that the regional power dynamic of empire cannot readily be separated from the trade dynamic transcending regional territorial boun. Many important and the long-lasting hegemonic or imperial powers in world history depended not * only on the agricultural surplus or on direct extraction of the same, but crucially upon exchange of products via market relations conducted over long distances. That is, they were embedded in a world economy and their power position was interrelated with their economic position within it. States, even ancient ones, pursue wealth through the pursuit of sources of surplus, of which trade has always been a key, if not decisive, element.
Even the earliest cities ** Sumer prospered via long-distance trade, though they engaged in imperial rivalry and expansionism in order to protect or expand their vital trade. The example of the Minoan thalossoc-racy comes to mind as another ancient example of a centre of accumulation prospering not primarily through military imperium or territorial expansion but through long-distance trade. Even more so, the early trade cities of the Levant and later the Phoenician cities provide an example of ancient capital accumulation on the "Venetian" model that was very successful for many centuries. Many of the principal classical Greek cities also rose to economic prominence in a similar manner, and eventually in competition with the Phoenicians, both of the Levant and of Carthage. The Byzantine empire's strength probably persisted for so long due to the important role the metropole of Constantinople played in the world economy, because of the strength of its gold currency and its pivoal geopolitical location.
The lift could easily be expanded.
Perhaps it would be more correct to hypodtMBie that tribute has never been the sole, or the most effective or competitive, means of accumulation, but rather that it has always been trade and commerce which constitute the most significant means of accumulation. This significance lies in the key role that transfer of surplus via trade has in determining change in the hierarchy of accumulation and power, and also in stimulating social change (Denemark and Thomas 1988; Denemark 1990). Therefore, our both crude and incorrect inherited notions of ancient "command-economy" (Gilpin 1981: 112) and of "tributary" modes of production (Amin 1976, 1989), determined by coercion or political means of extraction (Anderson 1974), require significant reformulation.
Gilpin is perfectly right to argue that the rise and decline of empires, great states, hegemons, etc., is a function of the generation and dissipation of economic surplus. He is also right to imply that this is a principle which applies to all world history and not only to the modem world. The quotation above from Gilpin illustrates, if only implicitly, that both the "domestic" character of surplus extraction and the "international" arena of competition over control of the flows of trade are probably of equal historical and analytical importance when attempting to understand the patterns of hegemonic transition. Likewise, he is right to say that changes in the form the surplus takes and the method of its accumulation significantly influence the form of political power that dominates a historical period. Indeed, I would elevate this to a cardinal principle in the study of world history and world order.
If capital accumulation existed via trade even in the ancient world economy and this was a key element in continuous hegemonic rivalry processes, then Gilpin's sharp break between the premodem and modern forms of hegemonic power may not be quite so sharp after all. "Trading empires" are not rare in history, as we have seen, even in the premodern era. "Command economies" are not rare in modern history, indeed the twentieth century seems to have been a period of remarkable (temporary) revival of such economic systems - in direct competition with the trading nation-states which Gilpin identifies as the dominant modem form of hegemonic power. As in the past, the trading state of the twentieth century proved itself to be a superior form in competition with the command economy. Therefore, the putative historical break between the "cycle of empires" and the "succession of hegemonies" may not be quite as clear as Gilpin suggests.
The reason for the success of both premodem and modern trading states seems straightforward. Participation in world trade is participation in world accumulation. This participation greatly increases access to surplus being exchanged and thus offers the opportunity to capture more surplus than would be possible based on a purely self-reliant national economy. This has always been true. Likewise, participation in world trade is an avenue to acquiring technology and production techniques also not necessarily available to a closed, self-reliant economic system. It is likewise a stimulus to achieve superiorities in the production system which allow a state's exports to be competitive in other markets, including other core markets.
Even the so-called imperial command economies of the premodern era, and particularly their elite classes, on closer scrutiny, were most often simultaneously engaged in pursuit of wealth through trade. This was certainly true of the most ancient Mesopotamian empires beginning with the Akkadian, and of Assyria, Persia, Rome, Byzantium, the Arab caliphate and subsequent Islamic empires, Parthia, Sassanid Persia, Bactria, the Kushan empire, Tang and Song China, the Ottoman empire ... the list could go on. Therefore, the "propensity toward universal empire" should not be explained solely on the basis of the desire to expand territorially in pursuit of more tribute and tax revenue from the agricultural base. It can also be explained in many cases by a desire to control key trade routes, the source of key materials, and key cities which generate "liquid" revenue in monetary form.
So if there is an important premodern-to-modern historical break it may not be so much due to the existence or nonexistence of trade as a key element of the pursuit of power, but rather to a change in the character of that trade. Chase-Dunn argues that "the thing which distinguishes a capitalist world-economy from earlier world systems is the exent to which states in the core rely on comparative advantage in production for the world market instead of political-military power" (Chase-Dunn 1989: 111) Nevertheless, this statement would be difficult to defend even for the relatively "modern" mercantilist states of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which systematically deployed naval military power on a global scale to secure their share of surplus from world trade.
Change in the character of trade seems to reside first and foremost in the production system. The modern industrial change in the production system - made possible by advances in science and technology - led to a change in the form of surplus, or at least to a drastic change in the proportions being produced via agriculture and industry, which in turn led to a change in the forms of accumulation, increasingly via commodity exchange in price-setting markets and the wage-labor form at the point of production, and then in the form of state power, and thus to a change in the form of hegemonic power and world order. We have become very accustomed to referring to this modern historical period as "capitalism," or the "capitalist world-system," i.e. characterizing the historical period by a term for its dominant mode of production.
Though Gilpin and Chase-Dunn are right to highlight the importance of a switch from agricultural surplus and territorial expansion to modem industry, the spread of market relations, commodification, and wage labor, and the appearance of the modern nation-state, it is important to note that these modern forms never entirely displaced other coexisting forms of accumulation. Following Chase-Dunn (1989), it should be accepted that nonmarket variables are important to modem "capitalist" accumulation processes. "Capital" can be defined as a social relationship in which labor transfers a surplus to appropriating classes. These appropriating (accumulating) classes are composed both of owners of means of production and of political elites. The, the "capitalist class" can be either a private or a state elite which organizes production in order to appropriate surplus from labor. "States are part of the relations of production in capitalism" and "there are many degrees and forms of the commodification of labour" so that "the subjection of labour to the logic of profit-making... is accomplished by a variety of institutional means." "Real capitalism," and the accumulation of capital in it, includes both private and state "capitalists'" accumulating via the world market, and a mix of "competitive production of commodities and political-military power." The larger arena of "capitalism" allows various forms of commodified labor, not only the wage-labor form, and includes "geopolitics," i.e. the competitive quest for accumulation and military-political hegemonic power among states. Interestingly, "peripheral capitalism does bear a greater similarity to precapitalist societies based on the tributary mode of production than does core capitalsm" (Chase-Dunn 1989: 1-43, 121).
In my reading of world history, despite many apparent changes in modes of production, or modes of accumulation, the fundamental patterning of hegemonic transitions, i.e. consolidation and deconsolidation of hegemonic power, and the concomitant concentration and deconcentration of accumulation, seems to persist and indeed to transcend change in the mixture of modes. Let us briefly consider how modes of accumulation interface with hegemonic transition. Just as hegemonic power is better understood as a multilayered hierarchy rather than a unipolar dominance, so also modes of production or accumulation are better understood as a multilayered hierarchy, i.e. always being a complex articulation of modes.
I follow Geoffrey de Ste Croix (1981) and Ekholm and Friedman (chapter 2 above) in recognizing that all the primary forms of extraction of surplus known to the modern world were already in existence even in the ancient world. As discussed in chapter 3 above, in order to retain the notion of discrete modes of production, such as the slave mode of production, de Ste Croix developed an interesting formulation. He decided to characterize a mode as that through which the ruling elite derives the main pan of its surplus. This obviates the need for one mode to be overwhelmingly common in the social formation. It is only important that it be the form through which the elite derives the main source of its wealth from other classes. That is, it characterizes the key form of the transfer of surplus; the main form of the accumulation process in that socioeconomic formation at that period of history. It can and does coexist with many other modes. Taking this Respective even further, perhaps to its logical conclusion, I would argue that the notion of transition between discrete modes of production breaks down altogether. If the reality is always a mixture of many modes in a complex articulation then what actually takes place is a change in the composition of this mixture and the hierarchy within it, not a clean transition from one mode to another. The crucial change is at the top layer of accumulation. This form changes in correspondence with a host of social, political, military, technological, demographic, and other factors. But perhaps it is not only a matter of the historical form the surplus takes, but crucially, change in the distribution of surplus between fractions of the accumulating classes whch constitutes the ultimate key to understanding what drives hegemonic transitions.
If change in the configuration of modes is only one element, change in the configuration of power among the accumulating classes is another very important and too neglected dimension of historical transitions. Despite many changes in modes the fundamental patterning of hegemonic transitions seems to persist and remain a profound influence on the course of social history. The current confusion over whether the world is witnessing a transition from "socialism" to "capitalism" or may yet experience a transition from "capitalism" to "socialism" illustrates my point that perhaps what is happening in the world today would be better understood primarily as a hegemonic transition rather than primarily or solely a transition between modes of production. The same lesson applies to the earlier "transition" between "feudalism" and "capitalism." Chase-Dunn (1989) and Gills and Frank (chapter 5) criticize Wallerstein for regarding India and the Ottoman empire as separate world systems in the sixteenth century because they were allegedly not "capitalist" while the Eurocentered world economy was "capitalist." Wallerstein has substituted mode-of-production criteria for his material-exchange criteria, but by doing so has to reinterpret the very important and expensive trade relations among Europe, India, the Ottoin.ans, and also China. Far better to recognize that "Europe was never (or only briefly) a separate world-system according to the definition of material exchange networks. Rather, there has existed for at least two millennia a multi-centric Eurasian world-system" (Chase-Dunn 1989: 45).
As the present world situation clearly illustrates, a hegemonic transition is largely set in motion by shifts in the relative position of classes and states in the hierarchy of accumulation, but has profound effects on social development and is therefore by no means merely a rearrangement of players on a chessboard. Therefore, by focusing on hegemonic transition as the key concept of change in world history, we need not abandon the problems that modes-of-production analysis sought to address - namely how struggles over accumulation affect the course of larger sociopolitical and economic development in world history. The two are inseparable. "Modes" certainly exist, but they need to be (plocated in our scheme of social change, within a framework governed by patterns of interelite rivalry and the accompanying hegemonic transition."