2025/07/01 by Christopher Chase‐Dunn, Emlyn Zhai · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #International Relations and Foreign Policy #World Systems and Global Transformations
paper · doi:10.1177/08969205251337969
openalex publication_date 2025/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article examines the trajectory of the hegemony of the United States in a comparative world-historical context. Most complex and hierarchical world-systems experienced sequences in which a single polity rose to power over other polities and attained a peak level of power for a while and then declined. The modern global system is not an exception. The rise and decline of the United States in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries has been studied extensively by sociologists, political scientists, historians, and policy analysts, but usually not in the context of the evolution of polities, interpolity systems, and modes of accumulation. We also examine changes in quantitative relative shares of economic and military power of states. And we discuss some of the V-Dem 2025 findings about regime change patterns (democracy and autocracy) since 1900 CE. We also venture into the murky realm regarding the probable futures of the structures of global power.