Economic Globalization and the Structure of the World-City System: The Case of Airline Passenger Data.

This paper reports results from a network analysis of global airline passenger flows and international commodity trade data in order to test propositions related to the effect of globalization on the relationship between the world-system of cities and the interstate world-system. Recent discussions of a world city hierarchy relate that structure to the wider global international division of labor and world-economy. Many scholars suggest that the broader parameters of the world-system structures the urban hierarchy embedded within it, but recently others argue that the urban hierarchy is decoupling from the world-system. Our analyzes show that there has been some modest convergence in the distribution of power in the world city system. Moreover, they suggest that the mechanism for this divergence/convergence is has been the upward mobility of cities located in the semi-periphery and the East Asian region. We close by considering the implication of these findings for a larger understanding of the relationship between globalization, the structure of the world city system and its isomorphism with the world-system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]