Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World- System aims to achieve a clean

conceptual break with theories of “modernization” and thus provide a new theoretical

paradigm to guide our investigations of the emergence and development of capitalism,

industrialism and national states.1 While remaining controversial in some aspects, world

system theory successfully explains many regularities in the recognition of social structures

larger than the state which interact with, and shape social changes within states. Moreover, it

also provides a theoretical account of why many social processes are systematically different

in different countries.2 As a perspective, world- system analysis presented itself as a critique

of existing dominant views in the various social sciences, and primarily of developmentalism

and modernization theory which seemed to dominate social science worldwide during the

1960’s.3

There are main reasons for that the political conclusions following from Wallerstein’s

perspective were very appealing to young American social scientists, particularly sociologists,

in the early and mid-1970s. Firstly, comparative and developmental social science in the

1950s and 1960s had been dominated by a melioristic, gradualistic explanation of the world

called modernization theory. This theory was based on liberal capitalism and Wallerstein’s

historical and political theory seemed to make much more sense of actual world events than

did liberal modernization theory. Secondly, Wallerstein seemed to present Marxism as to be a

theoretical solution in an international context that addressed both foreign and domestic

problems. Thirdly, , Marxism, like all broad philosophies of history, needs to explain away

unexpected developments and Wallerstein dealt with Marxism’s apparent predictive failures.

1
SKOCPOL, Theda, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
p.55
2
CHASE-DUNN, Christopher & HALL, Thomas D., The Historical Evolutions of World Systems,New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005,p. 257
3
WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel, World System Analysis: The Second Phase, Review 13, no.2 (Spring), p.287

1
Lastly, a significant minority of younger sociologists discouraged by the functionalist

positivism that had prevailed in 1950s and 1960s, thirsted for concrete historical knowledge.4

Recent dramatic changes in global political arrangements have caused a spate of

speculations about the future. The juxtaposition of the theoretical and empirical successes of

world system theory with dramatic social changes suggests that questions about

transformations of past world-systems, including the origin of the modern world- system,

might shed some light on the possibilities and probabilities of future transformations. The

main questions are: How did modern world- system begin? How and why did older world-

systems give rise to the modern world- system? Are there regularities or patterns to world

system transformations? that many scholars try to examine and response. All these writers

share an emphasis on the interaction of the societies as a major source of social change. That

is they see the interaction of societies as the major locus of social change within societies. 5

World- system theory in its basic form provides an account of the dynamics of social change

both at the level of the whole system and within its component parts.6

In order to be useful in addressing the problems of social change in the pre-capitalist

setting, world- system theory needs several modifications, most of which amount to

transforming assumptions into empirical, historical questions. 7

The basis of Wallerstein’s synthesis was the idea that whatever small technological

and organizational advantage Western Europe may have possessed at the end of the 15 th

4
SKOCPOL, Theda, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984,
pp. 277- 278

5
CHASE-DUNN, Christopher & HALL, Thomas D., The Historical Evolutions of World Systems,New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 258
6
WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel, World Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Durham: Duke University Press, 2004
7
CHASE-DUNN, Christopher & HALL, Thomas D., The Historical Evolutions of World Systems, p. 258

2
century, it was turned into a much greater superiority by the West’s exploitation of non-

Western peripheries. 8

Wallerstein’s world- system perspective for historical analysis only could fully

understand to be compared with its main competition in the social sciences, the

developmental perspective. The defining feature of the developmental perspective is its view

of change as a societal- level endogenetic process. It is important that the understanding of

developmental perspective because Wallerstein developed his perspective opposite of this

theory. In many respects his theory of the world system is an attempt to save the social

scientific analysis of change from the clutches of both developmentalism and extreme

historical specificity, for he repudiates both.9

One of the most glaring deficiencies of world- system theory is its inability to explain

why economic development affects large areas with roughly similar cultural traditions in very

similar ways, despite their profound differences in power or position in the world system. An

example of Wallerstein’s neglect of culture is found in the treatment of the North American

colonies of England. These colonies began as a periphery, but easily moved up to the semi-

periphery because, according to Wallerstein, the English were too busy with their civil war in

the 1640s to stop them. Such remarks betray an unwillingness to consider the interaction

between culture and economy.10

In Social Revolutions in the Modern World, Theda Skocpol stressed on the theoretical

and historical critiques of the Wallerstein’s “world capitalist system” theory. Firstly,

according to Skocpol, Wallerstein deals with historical evidence primarily in terms of a

preconceived model of the capitalist world economy although his avowed to avoid abstract

model building. In Wallerstein’s view, a world economy should be more able than a world
8
SKOCPOL, Theda, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, p. 276
9
SKOCPOL, Theda, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, pp. 299- 301
10
SKOCPOL, Theda, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, p. 303

3
empire to experience sustained economic development precisely because economic actors

have more freedom to maneuver and to appropriate and reinvest surpluses. 11 Wallerstein

clearly appreciates the importance that how and why capitalism emerge, has developed and

someday pass from the scene, are related to need to understand from a world- historical

perspective.

There are some determinants of socioeconomic and political structures that are built

into Wallerstein’s model of the world capitalist system. According to T. Skocpol, the model is

based on a two- step reduction: first, a reduction of socioeconomic structure to determination

by world market opportunities and technological production possibilities; and second, a

reduction of state structures and policies to determination by dominant class interests.12

Besides all of theoretical critiques of world- system theory, T. Skocpol points on two

methodological critiques. The first has to do with the way Wallerstein handles historical

evidence in relation to his theory- building enterprise. Wallerstein argues that things at a

certain time and place had to be a certain way in order to bring about later states or

developments that accord with that his system model of the world capitalist economy requires

or predicts. T. Skocpol finds this aspect of Wallerstein’s approach very disturbing because it

has the effect of creating an impenetrable abyss between historical findings and social science

theorizing. This has been exactly the methodological shortcoming of modernization theories

and it needs badly to be overcome in any new paradigm for development studies. 13 Secondly,

in Wallerstein’s theory, strong states and international political domination assume crucial

roles because of his hope to overcome the worst faults of modernization theories by breaking

with their overemphasis on national states and their tendency toward a historical model

11
SKOCPOL, Theda, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994,p.
57
12
SKOCPOL, Theda, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, p. 59
13
SKOCPOL, Theda, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, p. 68

4
building. On the one hand, Wallerstein creates an opposition between formalistic theoretical

model of universal reference, and the particularities and accidents of history, on the other

hand, an opposition that uncannily resembles the relationship between theory and history in

the ideal type method of the modernization approach.14

14
SKOCPOL, Theda, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, p. 68

5
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHASE-DUNN, Christopher & HALL, Thomas D., The Historical Evolutions of World
Systems,New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

SKOCPOL, Theda, Social Revolutions in the Modern World, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1994

-. Vision and Method in Historical Sociology, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984

WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel, World Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Durham: Duke

University Press, 2004

-.World System Analysis: The Second Phase, Review 13, no.2 (Spring)