The Institute for Research on World-Systems

This paper discusses research that is designed to examine the historical trajectory of structural globalization as an attribute of the whole world-system. Did the globalized world economy arrive all at once in a rapid and recent transition from national to global economic networks? Or is the process of international integration a long-term trend that has been going up for centuries only to be noticed recently because it has reached such a high peak? Or, alternatively, is globalization a cyclical phenomenon in which the world-system alternates between periods of national autarchy followed by periods of international economic and political integration?