Volume 3, Number 2 (Spring 1997)

George Modelski and William R. Thompson.  LEADING SECTORS AND 
WORLD POWERS: THE COEVOLUTION OF GLOBAL POLITICS AND ECONOMICS. 
Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.  xv + 263pp.  
ISBN 1-57003-054-5, $44.95 (cloth).
 
Reviewed by Terry Boswell, Emory University

For the last several years I have begun several papers on global
hegemony and leadership by contrasting the Long Cycle perspective
of Modelski and Thompson with the World Economy perspective of
Wallerstein, Chase-Dunn, and others.  At first, this was an easy
contrast.  While there was always much overlap, the Long Cycle
school emphasized world order produced by a world leader with over
half the world's naval power.  The world economy school emphasized
economic dominance over finance, trade, and production, or in some
variants, over leading economic sectors.  This difference in
emphasis allowed me to set up contrasting propositions from the
theories that could be tested empirically.  

     Unfortunately, with this book, the difference in perspectives
narrows substantially and I will have to revise my papers
substantially. While their earlier work alluded to economic
processes, with this book the emphasis shifts rather dramatically
from sea power to leading economic sectors.  It is a shift that I
wholeheartedly applaud.  Their discussion of economic and political
coordination, as opposed to focusing on one or the other, raises
the level of debate to a more sophisticated level.  In addition, I
find that determining leadership in terms of dominance over leading
sectors, which includes the concept to long waves, to be more
convincing historically than arguments about simultaneous dominance
in finance, trade and production.  I also find it more convincing
logically as a causal theory, as they now incorporate innovation,
than their own past work, which had a functionalist tinge.  While
they are not alone in advocating leading sector theory, they have
amassed an impressive data set to support their claims.  The book
is a worthy contribution of those grounds alone. 
 
     Given this convergence of emphasis, and I should add that
World Economy theorists have become more political, are there still
important differences between the two schools of thought?  Or in
other words, can I still salvage my papers?  The answer, thank god,
is yes.

     The most important differences are the following: 1.Is global
war necessary for leadership and can a global war occur without
producing a leader? 2. Are there 3 hegemons or 5 leaders after
1500? 3.  Were there world leaders prior to 1500?  and 4. Does the
modern world-system originate around year 1500 or year 1000?   

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     1. Global war is still a necessary part of leadership for long
cycle theory, but only a likely probability for world economy
theory.  Global wars, those wars fought between great powers in
which world leadership is contested, are only included in their
study if the war produced a world leader.  This makes for a
tautological relationship between leadership and war, a problem
world economy theory avoids by making a clearer separation between
economic hegemony and world leadership.  Levy, for instance, lists
5 global wars that Modelski and Thompson ignore.  They even leave
out the Thirty Years War, which was one of the world's most
devastating and most politically important wars prior to 1914. 
Perhaps their next book will explain why this and other global wars
are not included and how their theory would account for them.

     2. World economy theory finds 3 hegemons since 1500, the
Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States.  Long cycle
finds 5 world leaders, the same three plus an 18th century British
leadership and a 16th century Portuguese one.   The difference, of
course, is in how one defines hegemony, leadership and leading
economic sectors.  On page 83, Modelski and Thompson say that
"Global system leaders are not hegemons.  They do not dominate all
economic and political activity."  But this is a straw man version
of hegemony.  Let us take a leading sector version, where hegemony
is dominating (i.e., over 1/2) leading economic sectors.  Then
hegemony and leadership should be about the same, except that
Modelski and Thompson still use sea power to date hegemons, rather
than their own data on leading sectors.  
     
     3.  They also have 2-5 possible leaders before 1500.  I must
admit in being a bit confused in reading their book as to these
early world leaders.  Table 8.5 lists Northern Sung, Southern Sung,
Genoa, and Venice.  Table 9.4 lists the same except it adds the
Mongol world empire and drops Genoa.  World economy theory, at
least until recently, drew a distinction between world empires and
world-systems that would exclude most of their early cases,
although I must admit, not all of them.  

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Journal of World-Systems Research

     
     4.  World economy theory also drew a distinction between the
capitalist world system, where one has accumulation of profits from
commodity exchange of necessities, versus coercive accumulation or
preciosity exchange in other systems. The capitalist world system
emerges in the period of 1450 to 1650, with a decisive turning
point around 1500 with the European discovery and conquest of the
Americas.  Modelski and Thompson note that the key element to this
distinction is a world market that connects political units into a
system, over which a state can lead, but is incapable of subsuming
other units into an empire.  With a world market, one has a
transition belt for innovations, and thus the emergence of economic
long waves.  They claim that a world market began in China around
the year 1000.  Some of this difference is over amounts or degrees
-- to what extent were market relations central prior to 1500, did
they include necessities, was the market fully a world one?.  Other
theorists, such A. G. Frank, drop the question of necessities as a
bogus distinction, and can thus find a world system that stretches
back another 5000 years.  This leads to a necessary, and so far
unresolved, debate over what constitutes a system.  

     We cannot resolve this issue here, but let me throw a wrinkle
in the pre-1500 versions.  Starting around 1550, with the long rise
of Dutch hegemony, sea trade begins to climb at an exponential
rate.  This not only changes the basis on wealth in the European
core from political power to economic efficiency, but the core
states go on to subjugate the rest of the world through colonial
conquest. No previous period of world history is comparable. There
is a profound qualitative transformation around 1500 in the amount
of trade and in its political and social importance, a
transformation made more obvious, ironically, by knowing that a
world market had existed for 500 years prior or that some sort of
system or network existed for 5000 years prior, yet without a
similar qualitative change occurring. Capitalism is a fine name for
the change as far as I am concerned, but call it what you want, the
transformation still must be explained.  

Terry Boswell
Department of Sociology
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

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