World-Systems vs World-Empires

Typology

Jeremy Santora:

"World-systems are totalities defined by the existence of a “single division of labor and multiple cultural systems” (Wallerstein 1974b:390). They take two forms dependent on their political structure:

• world-economies or

• world-empires.

World-economies are characterized by a heterogeneous political structure, linked economically. They tend to be unstable leading either to their disintegration or transformation into a world-empire through conquest. World-empires, by contrast, are characterized by a single political structure which administers its internal economic operations in a redistributive and tributary manner."

(https://www.academia.edu/125747036/Lex_Capitalocenae_Cheap_Nature_and_the_Emergence_of_Legal_Naturalism_pre_publication_final_)