Global State Formation: For Whom?

Christopher Chase-Dunn

Institute for Research on World-Systems

University of California, Riverside

State Formation and the evolution of human institutionsWhat is a polity?: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states, empiresWhat is a state?: A “sovereign” organization with specialized

institutions of regional control (bureaucracies and armies).The growth of polities: rise and fall and occasional upward jumps.Hierarchies and Networks: pulsation and rise and fallComplex Chiefdoms, Early states, Empire formationExpansion of the Central World-SystemSemiperipheral capitalist city-statesThe Rise of the WestModern nation-states and capitalismWaves of economic and political globalizationThe rise and fall of modern hegemonic core powers: the Dutch in the

17th century, the British in the 19th century, the U.S. in the 20th century

Reproduction of the Interstate System and the long rise of a global state

Global Governance: The Concert of Europe; The League of Nations; The United Nations

Outline of the Talk:

Global Class FormationThe transnational capitalist class in the 19th and

the 20th centuriesTransnationalization of workers and citizens

The Globalization Project and the formation of capitalist transnational stateReconfiguration of national states and international institutions for the purposes of neoliberalism

Global Keynesianism: the Tobin Tax, etc. the World Economic Forum

Globalization from below: the World Social Forum

Waves of Globalization and Globalization BacklashGlobalization from Below vs. Anti-globalization

Anti-Systemic Transnational Movements: The Labor Movement; The Women’s Movement; Global Indigenism; The Environmental Movement

Semiperipheral Democratic Socialist RegimesSticky Wickets: Hegemonic Rivalry, Global Inequality, EcocatastropheToward Global Democracy

Rise and Fall of large powerful polities with intermittent upsweeps

Iterative Causes of City and State Growth

State and Market Formation

Semiperipheral Development

Semiperipheral Regions are Most Often the Sites of Innovations in New Institutions and Technologies that lead to Upward Mobility and/or Transform the Logic of Social Change

Types of Semiperipheral Societies:

Semiperipheral Marcher Chiefdoms: Patrick Kirch

Semiperipheral Marcher States

Semperipheral Capitalist City States

Semiperipheral World Regions: Europe

Modern Hegemons: Dutch, British, U.S.

Rise of the Central System

4000 BCE

2000 CE

Time

West East

Central PGN

Central PMN

East Asian PGN

Mongol Empire

East Asian PMN

East/West Pulsations and Merger

Resistance, World Revolutions and the Historical Development of World Orders

Waves of Colonization and Decolonization since the 16th century

David P. Henige, Colonial Governors

Core-Wide Empire vs. Modern Hegemony

US Hegemonic Decline

Globalization (two kinds)• The Globalization Project (market magic as political

ideology) • Structural Globalization (economic and political

transcontinental integration)• Waves of Structural Globalization:

– Nineteenth Century– Twentieth Century

1830

1836

1842

1848

1854

1860

1866

1872

1878

1884

1890

1896

1902

1908

1914

1920

1926

1932

1938

1944

1950

1956

1962

1968

1974

1980

1986

1992

S1

0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

Tra

de G

lob

alizati

on

Year

Average Openness Trade Globalization

(5 year moving average)

Trade Globalization

Since 1830

Global Class Formation

Transnationalization of ClassesThe Global Capitalist ClassTransnationalization of workers and peasantsTransnational Social Movements

Big Capitalists and Political Elites

Professionals and Managers

Workers and Peasants

Transnational Segment

Transnational Segment

Transnational Segment

World

Classes

Global Class Formation

World Regimes and World Revolutions

• World Regimes are hegemonic normative, legal and economic institutions that are the outcome of local and global struggles (geoculture)

• The World Revolutions of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries:– 1848- labor, socialism, religious nationalism,

utopian communism

– 1917 soviets and state communism

– 1968 the new social movements

– ???? Deglobalization and globalization from below

Environmental Protest in Korea

Globalization from Below and DeglobalizationCounter-hegemonic transnational movements:

The Labor MovementThe Women’s Movement

Global IndigenesThe Environmental Movement

Religious NationalismAnarchism

Local Sustainable Development

Forming alliances:Transnational coalitionsand world citizenship

The Semiperiphery: (Mexico, India, Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, China) as fertile space for transformational action

Sticky Wicket 1:Inequality and Chaos:

Increasing Global Inequalities

Vulnerability of Complex Systems

Global Justice and Productivity of Labor

Sticky Wicket 2:

• Environmental Disaster

The Biotech Century

Global Warming

• Global Impasse: the limits of the biosphere and the American model of development

Sticky Wicket 3:Hegemonic Rivalry and Core Wars of the Future

On to a Democratic and Collectively Rational Global

Commonwealth