Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link

Abstract

The paper situates the recent attempt by Immanuel Wallerstein to provide a theoretical account of the emergence of the modern world system in the broader context of contemporary social scientific controversies, exposes the major flaws in the work, and suggests elements of an alternative framework that provides a sounder foundation for the construction of macroanalytic theories of social change. The inadequacies of Waller-stein's theory are revealed on the basis of internal evidence: he treats force as an unaccountable “error factor” which often determinatively shaped relationships among European states as well as between them and the larger world; and he does not account satisfactorily for the structure and the boundaries of the system, nor for the position specific countries came to occupy within it, nor for regime variation among them. The concurrent formation of several states must be considered an irreducible particularity of medieval European social organization. Interactive effects among them shaped the course of each during the early modern period and simultaneously contributed to the emergence of a system of states with its own dynamic. Since these political processes contributed as much to the formation of the modern world system as the economic processes emphasized by Wallerstein, theories of the system's origins and subsequent development must be founded on the notion of co-determination.