Original essays explore the periodic crises that seem to be a part of the very essence of the capitalist world-system. What is the nature of these crises and how do they threaten the hegemony of the powerful core countries? These questions are considered in five major analyses. Four essays are then devoted to examining the current crisis of the American economy. `...leaves the reader with far more insight into a far more serious set of problems...' -- Multinational Monitor, April 1984 `The book is invaluable for the insight it provides into factors leading to the world crises.' -- Southern Economist, 15 June 1985

Despite prognostications of the "end of history," the 21st century has posed new challenges and a host of global crises. This book takes up the current global economic crisis in relation to new and changing dynamics of territory, authority, and rights in today's global system. The authors explore long simmering conflicts in comparative perspective, including settler colonialism in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. They discuss indigenous struggles against environmental land grabs and related destruction of indigenous lands by the US nuclear weapons complex. The book uniquely considers the sacred in the context of the global system, including struggles of Latina/o farm workers in the U.S. for social justice and for change in the Catholic Church. Other chapters examine questions of civilizations and identity in the contemporary global system, as well as the role of world-regions.

“We live in paradoxical times. Traditionally, the West has led the world in theory and practice. Yet, recent developments, from COVID-19 to the storming of the US Capitol, show how lost the West has become. This loss of direction has deep roots. In their usual thoughtful and incisive fashion, Lim Mah-Hui and Michael Heng Siam-Heng, draw out the deeper origins of our current crises and show us a new way forward. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand our strange times." -- Kishore Mahbubani, founding Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, is the author of Has China Won? “A powerful and compelling critique of neoliberal globalization and its potentially devastating, but long underestimated, consequences for financial stability, the environment, social equity and democracy. COVID-19 has laid bare these dysfunctions and stresses. But this is not a pessimistic book. The authors argue, correctly, that we may be on the cusp of another Great Transformation. The choices we make today to make markets more resilient, improve social protection, and preserve our freedoms could lay the foundations for a sustainable globalization that works for future generations.” -- Donald Low, Professor of Practice in Public Policy and Director of the Institute for Emerging Market Studies, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology “This fascinating book highlights the interplay between financial and health crises that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed. Financialized capitalism is bad for the planet, bad for human health, and creates more unequal and insecure societies. The authors make a strong and convincing case for re-embedding markets into society and finance into the real economy.” --Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA “Lim and Heng’s ambitious volume argues that 2020 was the year of the global ‘perfect storm’ of multiple crises, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating financial, economic, socio-political and environmental breakdowns. They extend Karl Polanyi’s original insights to appeal for a sustainable global New Deal. While the reader may not agree with all their theses, the scope of their coverage and ambition will set the stage for debates over the annus horribilis.” -- Jomo K.S., Founder-chair, IDEAS www.network.ideas; former United Nations Assistant Secretary General "This book provides plenty of food for thought for many pondering if the COVID-19 crisis could lead to a major transformation of the global economic system shaped by unfettered market forces and policies of governments in their service."-- Yilmaz Akyuz, former Director, UNCTAD, Geneva

Uncertainty is the watchword of contemporary world politics. Monumental changes are occurring throughout the international system and statespeople are wrestling with peaceful solutions to the transformation in relative power of the USA, Soviet Union and China, Japan and in Europe. In this book, Charles Doran proposes a managed solution to peaceful change. He presents a bold, original and wide-ranging analysis of the present balance of power, of future prospects for the international system and of the problems involved in this transformation. Professor Doran demonstrates why such change has often been accompanied by world war, providing new insights into the causes of the First World War. But, he argues, systems change can be both peaceful and secure. Developing a theory of the power cycle, the author reveals the structural bounds on statecraft and shows how the tides of history can suddenly and unexpectedly shift against the state.

This groundbreaking collection on global leadership features innovative and critical perspectives by scholars from international relations, political economy, medicine, law and philosophy, from North and South. The book's novel theorization of global leadership is situated historically within the classics of modern political theory and sociology, relating it to the crisis of global capitalism today. Contributors reflect on the multiple political, economic, social, ecological and ethical crises that constitute our current global predicament. The book suggests that there is an overarching condition of global organic crisis, which shapes the political and organizational responses of the dominant global leadership and of various subaltern forces. Contributors argue that to meaningfully address the challenges of the global crisis will require far more effective, inclusive and legitimate forms of global leadership and global governance than have characterized the neoliberal era.

Despite prognostications of the "end of history," the 21st century has posed new challenges and a host of global crises. This book takes up the current global economic crisis in relation to new and changing dynamics of territory, authority, and rights in today's global system. The authors explore long simmering conflicts in comparative perspective, including settler colonialism in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. They discuss indigenous struggles against environmental land grabs and related destruction of indigenous lands by the US nuclear weapons complex. The book uniquely considers the sacred in the context of the global system, including struggles of Latina/o farm workers in the U.S. for social justice and for change in the Catholic Church. Other chapters examine questions of civilizations and identity in the contemporary global system, as well as the role of world-regions.

Global crises such as rising economic inequality, volatile financial markets, and devastating climate change illustrate the defects of a global economic order controlled largely by transnational corporations, wealthy states, and other elites. As the impacts of such crises have intensified, they have generated a new wave of protests extending from the countries of the Middle East and North Africa throughout Europe, North America, and elsewhere. This new surge of resistance builds upon a long history of transnational activism as it extends and develops new tactics for pro-democracy movements acting simultaneously around the world. In Social Movements in the World-System, Jackie Smith and Dawn Wiest build upon theories of social movements, global institutions, and the political economy of the world-system to uncover how institutions define the opportunities and constraints on social movements, which in turn introduce ideas and models of action that help transform social activism as well as the system itself. Smith and Wiest trace modern social movements to the founding of the United Nations, as well as struggles for decolonization and the rise of national independence movements, showing how these movements have shifted the context in which states and other global actors compete and interact. The book shows how transnational activism since the end of the Cold War, including United Nations global conferences and more recently at World Trade Organization meetings, has shaped the ways groups organize. Global summits and UN conferences have traditionally provided focal points for activists working across borders on a diverse array of issues. By engaging in these international arenas, movements have altered discourses to emphasize norms of human rights and ecological sustainability over territorial sovereignty. Over time, however, activists have developed deeper and more expansive networks and new spaces for activism. This growing pool of transnational activists and organizations democratizes the process of organizing, enables activists to build on previous experiences and share knowledge, and facilitates local actions in support of global change agendas. As the world faces profound financial and ecological crises, and as the United States' dominance in the world political economy is increasingly challenged, it is especially urgent that scholars, policy analysts, and citizens understand how institutions shape social behavior and the distribution of power. Social Movements in the World-System helps illuminate the contentious and complex interactions between social movements and global institutions and contributes to the search for paths toward a more equitable, sustainable, and democratic world. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

Crises in World Politics: Theory & Reality presents the study of international conflict. This book discusses the danger of crises to global and regional stability. Organized into eight chapters, this book begins with an overview of the key concepts of the inquiry, conflict, crisis, and war. This text then explores the four phases of an interstate crisis, namely, onset, escalation, de-escalation, and impact. Other chapters consider the unified model of crisis, which is applied to the Gulf Crisis-War of 1990–91. This book discusses as well the most intense military-security crisis in the 20th century, the dynamics of the process, and how the actors coped with their crisis. The final chapter summarizes the primary findings about models and concepts, and about each phase and its corresponding period at the actor level, namely, pre-crisis, crisis, end-crisis, and post-crisis. This book is a valuable resource for historians, policy makers, and social scientists.

From Greece scrambling to meet Eurozone austerity measures to America’s sluggish job growth, there is every indication that the world has not recovered from the economic implosion of 2008. And for many of us, the details of what led to the recession—and why it has continued—remain murky. Economic historian Larry Allen clears up the subject in The Global Economic Crisis, offering an insightful and nonpartisan chronology of events and their consequences. Illuminating the interlocked economic processes that lay beneath the crisis, he analyzes the changing nature of the global financial system, central bank policies, housing bubbles, deregulation, sovereign debt crises, and more. Allen begins the timeline with the economic crisis in Japan in the late 1990s, asking whether Japan’s experience could be an indicator of the outcome of the recession and what it can teach us about managing a sluggish economy. He then takes a comparative look at the economies of Brazil, China, and India. Throughout, he argues that many elements have contributed to the ongoing crisis, including the introduction of the euro, the growth of new financial instruments such as securitization, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, interest rate policies, and the housing boom and subprime mortgage fiasco. Lucid and informative, The Global Economic Crisis provides an impartial explanation to anyone seeking to understand the current state—and future—of the world’s economy.

Most mainstream economists view capitalism’s periodic breakdowns as nothing more than temporary aberrations from an otherwise unbroken path toward prosperity. For Marxists, this fundamental flaw has long been acknowledged as a central feature of the free-market system. This groundbreaking volume brings together Marxist scholars from around the world to offer an empirically grounded defense of Marx’s law of profitability and its central role in explaining capitalist crises. “World in Crisis has a specific aim: to provide empirical validity to the hypothesis that the cause of recurring economic crises or slumps in output, investment, and employment in modern economies can be found in Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. Marx believed, and we agree, that this is ‘the most important law in political economy.’” —from the preface