CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Boland, Jamie |
|---|---|
| Title | World Systems Analysis Revisited: The BRICs and Shifting Global Centers |
| Summary | World Systems Analysis is a methodological tradition that examines the global system through long historical and sociological investigation, ultimately positing the hierarchical interrelation of all states in the capitalist world economy. This paper will attempt to supply a revisionary critique to World Systems Analysis by specifically critiquing the concepts of state hierarchies enshrined in core and peripheral distinctions. The paper will make the following three conceptual points. Firstly, the critique regarding core-peripheral distinctions will attempt to show how the suppositions of designating states into a hierarchical order within the conventional theory is not the best way to account for real differences in influence, size, and material power in the interstate system. Secondly, the increasingly dispersed regional diffusion of power leads to the conception of the centralizing tendency of powerful states within networks of overlapping dependencies. The third step argues for a renewed sense of underlying co-dependency of states as thereby highlighting how the competitive capture of capital flows is a better understanding of power. The dynamics of class interests and the logic of the system would thereby suggest that high development does not necessarily mean power or greater significance in the system, but rather the state with a better ability to attract and capture capital, to be nexus for the dynamics of the system, would be a better account of ‘core’. The use of the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—as case studies will be to elaborate on the empirical conditions in which this conceptual critique can contribute to a more developed understanding of the world system within the methodological framework of World Systems Analysis. |
| Supervisor | Astrov, Alexander |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/boland_jamie.pdf |
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