Akkumulationszyklen und Hegemonie

Abstract

Cycles of accumulation and hegemony. A critical discussion of Giovanni Arrighi’s arguments on the relocation of centre and periphery of the world economy. Based on data on GDP and on stock market capitalization, the paper takes issue with Giovanni Arrighi’s notion of the “terminal crisis” of the US hegemony and the related relocation of the center of the world economy to China. While some indicators support Arrighi’s argument (e.g. the shift of the accumulation dynamic from the material to the financial sphere), others don’t. My analysis in this paper does not yield unambiguous results. Moreover, I question Arrighi’s primary unit of analysis, national economies, maintaining that such a focus downplays the recent fundamental changes in the organization of the world economy. I propose a less state-centric approach to identify centres of the world economy, which is derived from an integration of the concepts of global commodity chains and global cities.