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The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to become one of the turning points in the transformation of the world order, as well as many political, social and other relations in the World System. Undoubtedly,...

Among many influences that the pandemic has and will have on society and the World System as a whole, one of the most important is the acceleration of the start of a new technological wave and a new technological paradigm in the near future. This impact is determined by the growing need for the development of a number of areas in medicine, bio- and nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and others, which we denote as “MANBRIC convergence”. It is shown that the experience of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has confirmed that the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution will begin in the 2030s at the intersection of a number of medical, bio, digital and several other technologies, with medical needs as an integrating link. Among the multitude of self-regulating systems in the economy and life (which, in our opinion, will flourish during the Cybernetic Revolution) socio-technical self-regulating systems (SSSs) will play a special role. Thus, COVID-19 becomes a powerful impetus not only in terms of accelerating technological development and approaching the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution, but also in changing sociopolitical (and socio-administrative) relations in the forthcoming decades.

Various parts of the early modern world developed in remarkable synchrony. For most regions, the sixteenth century was marked by a significant increase in population, GDP, number of cities and their inhabitants, trade volume, and so on. This growth was energized by intense contacts between the Old and New Worlds and the respective global diffusion of valuable resources (such as silver) and domesticates. Conversely, the seventeenth century saw a full-scale crisis across almost the whole of the Afro-Eurasian space, which had repercussions in the New World as well. The novelty of early modern dynamics, however, was in that the observed synchrony was related not only to “traditional” exogenous (climatic) factors but also to endogenous (global connectivity) factors acting in the global World System. When the Global Crisis ended, the structure of the global World System began to reconfigure, as the economic, social, and technological development of the Global North increasingly outpaced the Global South. This process laid the foundations for the Great Divergence of the nineteenth century, which has had a significant impact on the structure of the World System up to the present day.

This chapter is divided into two parts. First, we will view the structure and dynamics of the Afro-Eurasian world-system in the centuries preceding the Age of Discovery. We will give particular attention to the issues of this world-system’s connectivity and prerequisites to its subsequent global expansion. Second, we will view the main directions of this world-system’s expansion during the Age of Discovery, which formed the basis of early modern globalization. Then we will proceed to investigate some of the most prominent manifestations and consequences of early modern globalization, namely the intensification of existing transregional flows and interactions, as well as the emergence and sudden spread of new ones. For example, the “Columbian exchange” in flora and fauna led to a gradual globalization of the world’s staple foods, which changed the sociodemographic dynamics in most societies; globalization of pathogens led to severe cases of depopulation in some societies, dramatically changing the balance of power in the regions integrated into the now global World System; the structure of the world trade network transformed as new regions and their resources entered it; and the formation of a “global silver network” led to a sort of global “quantitative easing.” A truly global network space of flows and interactions emerged, which was to increase in density, variability, and importance in the subsequent centuries, prompting humanity to enter the era of modernity.

The nineteenth century was a major watershed in the Big History storyline in general and in the history of globalization in particular. This watershed is related to the modern Technological Revolution that brought profound changes to nearly all spheres of human life. In this chapter, we will touch upon some of the changes that were most relevant to globalization and/or evolved into truly global processes that changed humanity. These include the Industrial Revolution, the changed patterns of global technological dynamics (the emergence of modern technological paradigms) and global economic development (the appearance of global economic cycles and global crises, as well as the impact of some particular breakthrough innovations in transport (railways, steamships) and information transmission (the telegraph). New technologies formed new material networks, which gradually spanned the whole world, leading global connectivity to a totally new level. These newly emerged networks were filled with new types of content, both material (e.g., bulk agricultural goods) and non-material (European-style modernity itself). The acceleration of technological development and increases in global connectivity greatly contributed to the World System core countries’ successful escape from the Malthusian trap. They also played an important role in the start of the global demographic transition, which encompassed the World System core countries in the nineteenth century.

This chapter examines several consecutive periods of the earliest history of globalization. In the ninth to seventh millennia bce, an Afro-Eurasian network emerged. Although it formed slowly and was a loose entity, it nevertheless functioned as a means of spreading innovation. Indeed, it transmitted information and ideas from one society to another, thus enabling the diffusion of technologies and innovations such as domesticated plants, animals, and metallurgy. This chapter traces the origins and diffusion patterns of some of these innovations (such as some crops from the Near Eastern “founder crop package,” some animal domesticates, as well as copper, bronze, and iron metallurgy, war chariots, and some luxury goods). The most important stages in the evolution of ancient globalization were related to the “Urban Revolution” (fourth to mid-third millennia bce), and subsequently to the emergence of agrarian empires (1200 bce–150 ce), which increased the density and variability of interconnections between the societies of the Afro-Eurasian world-system.

The early modern period witnessed the emergence of a number of processes and institutions that were to acquire global scale and have a significant impact on the structure of globalization. In this chapter, we will focus on three processes. The first is related to the invention of the printing press, which triggered the Second Information Revolution in the history of humankind. This dramatically reduced the cost of books, contributing to the democratization of literacy, and also facilitated the mass printing of periodicals, which involved increasing numbers of people into information networks. The second process is the so-called “Military Revolution”—a radical change in military organization, provision, strategy, tactics, and weaponry that resulted in political and administrative changes in many areas of the World System, and led to its major restructuring. The third process is the formation of modern statehood, which prompted the appearance of “global thalassocracies” and a number of modern institutions, whose concepts gradually became integrated worldwide.

In the previous chapter we noted that globalization in the nineteenth century heavily contributed to the global spread of European modernity. In this chapter, we will focus on some of the most prominent political aspects of this modernity, which came to acquire a global character in the twentieth century. In the sphere of politics some of the most notable developments included the advance of constitutionalism (which came in three waves), the emergence of modern political parties, the spread of universal enfranchisement, the global “liberation of slaves,” and the appearance of the prototype of the modern social welfare state. Multidimensional, profound, and very fast (in the Big History perspective) modernization processes developed unevenly and frequently exposed the World System core countries to new types of traps, which could result in revolutions and periods of political turbulence. As globalization forced modernization processes to increasingly penetrate the semi-peripheral and peripheral parts of the World System, such turbulence spread across the world and generated episodes of sociopolitical instability in various modernizing countries throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This chapter offers an analysis of the conditions in the MENA countries on the eve of the Arab Spring in the World System perspective, as well as causes (internal and external, general and specific) and certain consequences of the Arab revolutions in certain countries, the MENA region and in the World System. We will discuss Arab revolutions in a wide historical and theoretical context. It is very useful to compare the causes of revolutions in modern and previous epochs, in Arab and others countries; to find similarities and specificity. For example, in Arab revolutions, a very important role was played by new information technologies. The revolutionary sentiments are especially fueled by the diffusion of radical ideas and ideologies in a society, as well as by a rapid urbanization, growing youth share in the demographic composition and rapidly increasing education level of a part of population in combination with poor education of the other part. Thus, the rapid unregulated changes, and increasing structural disproportions may bring a society to a modernization trap which often causes revolutions and other political upheavals. All these phenomena were present in the Arab countries on the eve of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt and Tunisia.

The events of the Arab Spring can be analyzed in two dimensions: first, with respect to internal and global causes and second, in terms of their influence on the future scenarios of the World System development. Such a view we use in this concluding chapter. We explain the amazing synchronization of social upheavals in a dozen of Arab countries based on the theory (developed by the authors) of the periodical catch-ups experienced by the political component of the World System that tends to lag behind the World System economic component. And such lags cannot constantly increase, the gaps are eventually bridged, but in not quite a smooth way. On the contrary, this catch-up will be rather complex and turbulent. Thus, it eventually becomes evident that the turbulent events in the Arab countries are also a precursor of the forthcoming strong structural transformations of the world. We have called this process the reconfiguration of the World System. This conclusion offers results of our analysis of such reconfiguration of the World System together with a few forecasts that stem from it. We also suggest an explanation why the new catch-up of the World System political component started in the Arab countries.

This chapter provides a preliminary analysis and explanations for the topics and problems that are explored in the book. In particular, the complexities and contradictions in the use of the concepts of Islamism, radical Islamism, and moderate Islamism are shown. One of the ideas that we argue is that, under certain conditions (in particular, a strong political order and participation of Islamists in elections), moderate groups begin to prevail, whereas with the banning of Islamist organizations and the persecution of them radical ones do. Such ambivalence of Islamism is not always taken into account, which sometimes leads to serious political consequences. One of the most acute issues is whether Islam is compatible with democracy? Probably, to a certain extent, it is. On the other hand, since the Islamists enjoy broad popularity among the Muslim populations, the democratic procedures are generally profitable for them. That is why it is impossible and dangerous to try to completely separate democratic and Muslim values, but it is necessary to search for a certain balance between them. In this introductory chapter, we also introduce a series of issues that are analyzed in the chapters of this monograph such as the Arab Spring and opportunities for democracy in Muslim countries; Islamism and Values; the Middle East, revolutions, World System, and Geopolitics; Islamic Radicalism and Terrorism. The Arab Spring is one of the main issues of this introductory chapter and this monograph. These events revealed the forces and problems which turned the renovation expectations of the spring into the gloomy reality of winter. Thus, answering the question in the headline of the present chapter, we can say: revolutions have only exacerbated the Arab countries’ problems. Unfortunately, over the seven years none of the Arab revolutions has solved any serious problem (and probably, will ever be able to). But, of course, in the sense of historical experience, with regard to the possibilities of searching for new forms of organizing society, these revolutions were of great importance for the region. However, the price of such experience is too high. *

This chapter is devoted to a systemic consideration of the preconditions for the emergence of modern Islamism in the Middle East. Since Islamism is spread almost in every country of the Middle East, it seems reasonable to formulate some ideas explaining its widespread influence in this part of the world through a comparative analysis of some developmental trends in this macroregion and in China and India. Such an analysis seems of vital importance since radical Islamism appears a powerful destabilizing force at the global and regional levels. We attend to the need to delineate between radical and moderate Islamisms, since in many Muslim societies the latter appears to be more a stabilizing force and not a destabilizing one. We maintain that the success of Islamism is strongly determined by the traditionally fragile statehood in the Middle East. At the same time, in certain respects, for example, in terms of language, ethnicity, and religion, the Middle East seems to be much more homogenous than, say, India which is one of the most multilingual states of the world. This homogeneity became the most important basis for internationalization of Islamism in the MENA region, which could then easily cross the state boundaries making them transparent.

The article offers forecasts of the geopolitical and geo-economic development of the world in the forthcoming decades. One of the main accusations directed toward globalization is that it deepens the gap between the developed and developing countries dooming them to eternal backwardness. The article demonstrates that the actual situation is very different. It is shown that this is due to the globalization that the developing countries are generally growing much faster than the developed states, the World System core starts weakening and its periphery begins to strengthen. At the same time there is a continuing divergence between the main bulk of developing countries and the group of the poorest developing states. The article also explains why the globalization was bound to lead to the explosive rise of many developing countries and the relative weakening of the developed economies. In the forthcoming decades this trend is likely to continue (although, of course, not without certain interruptions). It is a...

International audience; This chapter offers a thorough analysis of the internal conditions in the MENA countries on the eve of the Arab Spring, as well as causes and consequences of the Arab Revolutions. The chapter also offers an analysis of similar historical World System reconfigurations starting with the 16th century Reformation. The analysis is based on the theory (developed by the authors) of the periodical catch-ups experienced by the political component of the World System that tends to lag behind the World System economic component. Thus, we show that the asynchrony of development of various functional subsystems of the World System is a cause of the synchrony of major political changes. In other words, within the globalization process, political transformations tend to lag far behind economic transformations. And such lags cannot constantly increase, the gaps are eventually bridged, but in not quite a smooth way. The chapter also suggests an explanation why the current catch-up of the World System political component started in the MENA region.

This chapter highlights “dual” or even “triple” structure of cycles—global ups and downs, national ups and downs, and ups and downs in the relative position of countries in the global economy. We study the relationship between the cycles of convergence of the economies of the World System with the overall economic fluctuations. The chapter tries to link the issue of long cycles with the issue of economic convergence and divergence in the World System.

This chapter analyzes long economic cycles (or waves) known as “Kondratieff waves” (or “K-waves”). It is shown that the analysis of them allows us to understand long-term world-system dynamics, to develop forecasts, to explain crises of the past, as well as the current global economic crisis. This chapter offers a sketch of the history of research on K-waves; it analyzes the nature of Kondratieff waves. It offers a historical and theoretical analysis of K-wave dynamics in the World System framework; and in particular, it studies the influence of the long wave dynamics on the changes of the world GDP growth rates during the last two centuries.

This chapter introduces the whole monograph, which is devoted to the analysis of economic cycles of different length and their manifestation in the core and periphery of World System in different periods as well as forecasts on this base of future transformations of technologies, political and social-economics relations. The first chapter analyzes the emergence of modern economic cycles. Though cyclical dynamics was noticed a long time ago the cyclical nature of modern economic development was, for a long time, not traced because it was indiscernibly weak and irregular.

This final chapter in many respects continues the subject which has been analyzed in Chap. 5 . It analyzes some aspects of the population ageing and its important consequences for particular societies and the whole world with respect to the new (sixth) K-wave and its forthcoming technologies. Population ageing is important for both the World System core and many countries of the global periphery and it has turned into a global issue. In the forthcoming decades population ageing is likely to become one of the most important social processes determining the future characteristics of society and the direction of technological development.

In a previous article, “The Coming Epoch of New Coalitions: Possible Scenarios of the Near Future” (Grinin and Korotayev 2011), it was preliminarily demonstrated that the turbulent events of late 2010 and 2011 in the Arab World may well be regarded as a start of the global reconfiguration. The subsequent events have confirmed this supposition. That is why in the present article we develop this important theme. The article offers a thorough analysis of the internal conditions of Arab countries on the eve of revolutionary events, as well as causes and consequences of the Arab Revolutions. The article also offers an analysis of similar historical World System reconfigurations starting with the sixteenth-century Reformation. The analysis is based on the theory (developed by the authors) of the periodical catch-ups experienced by the political component of the World System that tends to lag behind the World System economic component. Thus, we show that the asynchrony of development of various functional subsys...

The most dramatic economic crises substantially changed the main communication lines in the world system. To all appearances, in the next few decades, the current global financial-economic crisis will prompt considerable changes in its structure and operation, as well as in the principles of international relations. Possible transformations caused by the crisis and the probability of different scenarios of the world system’s development are analyzed in the article published below.

There are very significant conceptual links between theories of social macroevolution and theories of the World System development. It is shown that the growth of the World System complexity and integrity can be traced through a system of phase transitions of macroevolution. The first set of phase transition is connected with the agrarian, industrial, and information-scientific revolutions (that are interpreted as changes of “production principles”). The second set consists of phase transitions within one production principle. These phase transitions are analyzed on the basis of the World System urbanization dynamics, but they can be traced with respect to the other (cultural, economic, technological, demographic, political, etc.) dimensions of the World System development.

The final chapter of the present monograph does not only summarize the research but also offers forecasts of the geopolitical and geo-economic development of the world in the forthcoming decades on the basis of the proposed theory (which, incidentally, accounts for the concluding chapter’s title). One of the important lessons that one has learnt is that, on the one hand, in the foreseeable future, we will observe the processes of economic and socio-cultural convergence between developing and developed countries, and, consequently, the reduction of poverty and illiteracy in many developing countries. However, on the other hand, this process will not go smoothly and without any setbacks; what is more, it will require a deep reconfiguration of the World System. This may mean a possible increase in instability and intensity of crises in the world in the forthcoming decades. Instability will be expressed globally due to increased confrontation and the search for a new balance of power and new alliances; but it will also be manifested at regional and national levels, due to the fact that the increased level of technology, culture and expectations may enter into conflict with the existing shortcomings of social and state systems, inequality and injustice. The problem of instability in the foreseeable future is closely linked with the need to search for the principles of the new world order, as the change in the balance of economic forces in connection with the Great Convergence and increasing globalization will inevitably pose such a problem. However, it is important to note that future instability and clash of forces in the global field is likely to become noticeably dissimilar to the original confrontation between the First and Third World, between the former imperial centers and their former colonies. Neither will it be the clash of civilizations in Huntington’s sense (although the ethnic and civilizational component will always be present in global tensions). It is the tension between the old and new players on the “global chessboard”, which in the end (we hope) will not be a field of perpetual confrontation of geopolitical players, but, a field for the maintenance of a new field and somewhat more equitable world order. One of the novel ideas developed in the concluding chapter of this book is that the passing of the USA’s hegemony will not lead to the emergence of a new global hegemon. The authors believe that in a direct connection with the development of globalization processes the hegemony cyclic pattern is likely to come to its end, which will lead to a World System reconfiguration and the emergence of its new structure that will allow the World System to continue its further development without a hegemon. They also suggest that the world middle class (that is growing primarily due to the Great Convergence) may create new possibilities for the political globalization and a fairer world order.

Quite paradoxically, retrospectively one can trace the beginning of the process of the Great Convergence already in the nineteenth century when the European and Western domination seemed to have become overwhelming. The main reason of such a change was the necessity to support the Western industrial output and export of goods. However, this change caused a demand for the increase of the export of capital and technologies to the non-European countries. As a result, these encouraged both the growth of national movements for political and economic independence and the rise of a stratum of entrepreneurs with new business ethics. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the increasing export of British and European capital also marked the start of the formation of the contemporary World System. The chapter traces the development of a number of colonial and dependent countries, the impacts of the two world wars on this process, as well as the collapse of the colonial system. The authors describe in detail the various factors that contributed to the process of convergence.

The role of China in the world economy is constantly growing. In particular we observe that it plays more and more important role in the support of theworld economic growth (as well as high prices of certain very important commodities). In the meantime the perspectives of the Chinese economy (as well as possible fates of the Chinese society) remain unclear, whereas respective forecasts look rather contradictory. That is why the search for new aspects and modes of analysis of possible development of China turns out to be rather important for the forecasting of global futures. This article employs a combination of scientific methods that imply (a) the analysis at the level of Chinese economic model; (b) the analysis at regional level (at this level the Chinese economic model is compared with the regional East Asian model); (c) the analysis at the global level that relies on the modified world-system approach that allows to answer the question whether China will replace the USA as the global leader. It is important that the analysis is conducted simultaneously in economic, social, demographic, and political dimensions. As regards the analysis of specific features of the Chinese model as an especial type of the East Asian model (that is based on the export orientation, capital & technology importation, as well as cheap labor force), we note as organic features of the Chinese model the totalitarian power of the Communist Party and the immenseness of resources. As regards special features of the Chinese model, we note (in addition to “cheap ecology” and cheap labor force) and emphasize that China has a multilevel (in a way unique) system of growth driving forces, where, as opposed to developed states, the dominant role belongs not to native private capital, but to state corporations, local authorities and foreign business. This explains the peculiarities of the Chinese investment (or rather overinvestment), which determines high growth rate up to a very significant degree. A unique feature of the Chinese model is the competition of provinces and territories for investments and high growth indicators. As regards perspectives of the global hegemony of China, we intend to demonstrate that, on the one hand, economic and political positions of China will strengthen in the forthcoming decades, but, on the other hand, China, assuming all possible future success, will be unable to take the USA position in the World System. We believe that in a direct connection with the development of globalization processes the hegemony cycle pattern is likely to come to its end, which will lead to the World System reconfiguration and the emergence of its new structure that will allow the World System to continue its further development without a hegemon. Finally, the article describes some possible scenarios of the development of China. We demonstrate that China could hardly avoid serious difficulties and critical situations (including those connected with demographic problems); however, there could be different scenarios of how China will deal with the forthcoming crisis. We also come to the conclusion that it would be better for China to achieve a slowdown to moderate growth rates (that would allow China to go through the forthcoming complex transition period with less losses) than to try to return at any cost to explosive growth rates attested in the 2000s

Within the framework of this article we attempt to solve the following tasks: 1. to demonstrate that as early as a few thousand years ago (at least since the formation of the system of long-distance and large-scale trade in metals in the fourth millennium BCE) the scale of systemic trade relations grew significantly beyond the local level and became regional (and even transcontinental in a certain sense); 2. to show that already in the late first millennium BCE the scale of processes and links within the Afroeurasian world-system not only exceeded the regional level, as well as reached the continental level, but it also went beyond continental limits. That is why we contend that within this system, the marginal systemic contacts between the agents of various levels (from societies to individuals) may be defined as transcontinental (note that we deal here not only with overland contacts, because after the late first millennium BCE in some cases we can speak about the oceanic contacts—the most salient case is represented here by the Indian Ocean communication network [for more details see Chew in this work]); 3. to demonstrate that even prior to the Great Geographic Discoveries the scale of the global integration in certain respects could be compared with the global integration in more recent periods. In particular, in terms of demography, even 2000 years ago a really integrated part of the humankind encompassed 90% of the total world population.