Refers to an international system starting in the 16th century in Europe, which originally covered the continent and part of Iberian America, but eventually came to cover the entire world. The dominant mode of production is capitalist, meaning its driving force is the endless accumulation of capital. The structure is that of a global social division of labor between core and periphery states, exhibiting tensions caused by unequal exchange. The political superstructure is that of formally sovereign states constrained by their position in the interstate system. An operational guideline is the balance of power, which ensures that no one state can dominate the system alone as a world-empire. However, there are periods of unchallenged hegemony.
It is a system, meaning we can explain changes due to internal forces, and it is historical, meaning it was born, has developed, and will potentially one day die (Wallerstein, 1983, p. 100). As a system, it has structures, and these structures create causal mechanisms (or tendential outcomes) that lead to the repetition of various patterns. Due to its historical nature, no system ever returns to an equilibrium point it was at once before, but instead moves forward so long as some balance of forces allows it to. Eventually, internal contradictions lead to a situation in which the system is no longer able to reproduce itself, and this dislocates the restorative mechanism that reestablishes its hegemony.
The unit of analysis is the world-system (the whole), not just nation-states (the parts), and they are part of a historically determined social totality (Wallerstein, 1974, 387, 391). What ultimately connects individual social formations into a world economy and consequently a world-system is when the division of labour between them becomes integrated (Ibid, 398). Capitalism as a mode of production has always been a world-system, i.e., it always in essence operates above the boundaries of the formal nation-state, and its politics cannot be reduced to it (Ibid, 401).
References
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Three Instances of Hegemony in the History of the Capitalist World-Economy.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology (Leiden, The Netherlands) 24, nos. 1–2 (1983): 100–108. https://doi.org/10.1163/156854283X00071.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis.” _Comparative Studies in Society and History_ 16, no. 4 (1974): 387–415.
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