State maneuver in the capitalist world-economy: A political geography of contextualized agency

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate a theoretical perspective and outline an analytical framework for state maneuver in the hierarchical world-economy that incorporates the idea of context with structural imperatives. Maneuver is the agency of states within conjunctures of structural imperatives and spatial settings of inter-state alliances and established cultural understandings and historic relations. The hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy is conceptualized as an emergent structure, one that emerges from competition for scarce resources. The resources are economic attributes defined by the process of capital accumulation, political attributes emanating from the imperative of state territorialization, and the agglomeration of these attributes in spatial formations. The structure is emergent from the actions of states that create these spatial formations, but transformation is limited given structural constraints. States maneuver can be modeled as Markov transition probabilities decomposable as logits for covariate analysis.

Keywords

World-systems analysis maneuver political geography emergent structure Markov transition modeling

Global growth remains moderate, with uneven prospects across the main countries and regions… Relative to last year, the outlook for advanced economies is improving, while growth in emerging market and developing economies is projected to be lower, primarily reflecting weaker prospects for some large emerging market economies and oil-exporting countries.¹

The International Monetary Fund

So far the beginning steps of our young innovators are promising. Their initiative is encouraging. We would definitely want them contributing to the development of our country in ways we are most certain will be glorious.²

Eritrean Ministry of Information

Economic policymakers operate in an optimistic mindset that believes that something called “development” is desirable and achievable. Despite much evidence to the contrary, the basic assumptions of developmentalism drive the actions of state elites and managers of the global economy, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The ontology of developmentalism is one of rational states having the ability to make innovative policies in a global level-playing field that, if only they make the right choices, would allow them to achieve rates of economic growth and “develop” (Taylor, 1989). Within this framework economists search for “convergence,” or an expected single mean rate of economic well-being and capability based on an idealized conception of a “modern” or “developed” economy (Barro and Sala-I-Marin, 1991, 1992; Islam, 2003). Equality in growth and wealth, measured by the current standards of the richest countries is assumed to be achievable by all. Hence, the IMF reports the economic outlook of countries as a digression from an expected norm of uniform growth, and the government of Eritrea puts its faith in a “glorious” future.

Our contribution is to identify and propose a means of modeling the politics of state agency as a contextualized form of behavior. The world-systems identification of economic processes operating at the scale of the capitalist world-economy conceptualizes the politics of state decision making as a topological model, or the attempt to “accentuate or ameliorate the general world economic climate in which it operates” (Taylor, 1994: 120). This is the idea of maneuver that we develop as a conceptualization of the prospects of states in the capitalist world-economy. We believe this is a more realistic conceptualization than the tenets of developmentalism (Taylor, 1994).

Maneuver is the expression of the constrained agency of states within an overarching structure. For a specific agent in a particular setting at a particular time, the options available are limited. The presence of economic structures creates a certain path-dependence for actors as the impact of historical patterns of interactions creates the setting for contemporary decisions. Hence, the actions of states should be seen as a restricted rational choice, by which we mean actors evaluate their situation to the best of their knowledge and try to improve their position; though structural constraints may negate their efforts or create unintended outcomes. More appropriately, from our geographic perspective, we argue that constrained agency should be conceptualized as contextualized rational choice. Using a political geography perspective on the world-systems approach, maneuver emphasizes the constraining contexts created within hierarchical structure and geographic setting (Arrighi, 1994: 1–2; Taylor, 1992a, 1994; Wallerstein, 1979: 66–94; Wallerstein, 1983: 13–43). Hierarchy is formed through the competition for, and distribution of scarce resources.³ As a neo-Marxist approach, world-systems analysis defines economic resources as providing the foundation and purpose for political action. Using hierarchy and resources through world-systems analysis provides a means for identifying the rules and goals of agency, the types of contexts that are formed, and the possibility for action within particular contexts; in other words, maneuver.

Our definition of maneuver requires a political geographic understanding of structure and context in framing the actions of states. We eschew structural determinism. Rather, structure emerges from stochastic processes, and in turn partially constrains state agency. The options for agency are partially determined by the structure of the world-economy, but the situation of each state is best conceived of as a geographic context formed by the intersection of a variety of constraints. These constraints are conceptualized as the coming together of a set of scarce resources that are the basis of the hierarchical structure of the capitalist world-economy. Within the constraints of particular contexts states evaluate and attempt to act for their own self-interest, in other words, they maneuver with respect to the actions of other states and how they perceive their situation and a pathway to improving it. Empirical operationalization of the components of action and context allow for modeling of past processes of maneuver, and the prediction of future movement of states, or lack of it, within the capitalist world-economy.

We recognize that states are not the only actors of note. Firms, cities, social groups, etc. are all important, and that the process of capital accumulation takes place through production and exchange through networks of commodity chains that connect regionalized economic activity (Yeung, 2016). However, the state is the essential political actor in the capitalist world-economy (Wallerstein, 1984: 3–4). The state is able to use strategies of territorialization to create pseudo-monopolies and social relations of production and reproduction that produces the necessary geography of economic differentiation that is the manifestation of core-periphery hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 23–24; Wallerstein, 1984: 4). By framing the interaction of economic flows and state territorialization as maneuver, we can understand one form of dynamism within the capitalist world-economy; the ability, or not, of states to capture more core processes within their borders that, in turn, maintains the unequal structure of the system. Core processes are high value-added, high profit economic activities associated with high consumption; peripheral processes are the opposite (Flint and Taylor, 2011: 26). We believe that the relative success of states in this endeavor can only be fully understood and modeled if we identify the role of structural context.

Why contextualized agency?

State maneuver has been analyzed as ascent through the three-tier hierarchy of the world-economy through change in domestic priorities (Shin and Ciccantell, 2009), a political-economic process that must be situated within the historical context of long waves and the structural relations of dependence (Makki, 2015). Situating domestic policies aimed at development within structural contexts requires a relational approach, in which the policies and trajectory of one country are directly related to the fortunes of other countries (Schwartzman, 2015). Hence, rather than beginning with structure, and its implications of determinism, we begin our argument for the idea of maneuver with a discussion of context as the setting for agency.

Context is, arguably, the essential component of human geography. It complements and challenges other social sciences by denying that processes are universal and, consequently, that relationships between cause and effect are stationary. Contextual effects (Gregory et al., 2009: 110–111) play a role in defining the possibilities and limits for action. Geographical setting, as the product of effect, is an arena of limited possibilities and hence creates a limited range of future effects or outcomes.

The underlying idea behind different definitions of context is the mutual construction of space and social relations. Harvey (1982) defined a Marxist approach based on the structures of capitalism and processes that, in spatial fixes with a particular time-span, limit the form of social relations, and hence the transformative viability of politics. The agency that creates spatial fixes is limited, as possibilities of action exist within a broader structural setting (Harvey, 2000: 16). The key qualification is that the potential for change is limited and the pace of change is usually slow. Furthermore, what may at the time be seen as dramatic and conclusive change can, in a longer-term perspective, be seen as a limited disruption to existing political geographic patterns (Martin and Dennis, 2010).

The world is not completely transformable at any given moment or setting, or within a particular context – most actions at a given time reinforce existing social relations and conditions. The many interacting elements of the system means that transformative, and maintaining, agency is relational in that the actions of one actor may provoke systemic change which has an impact on the choices available to other actors. The relation is not deterministic, but it is constrained. Over time the possibilities and constraints of one’s contextual setting may be understood (if imperfectly), a range of choices identified, and decisions made. Hence, agency is a contextual behavior that leads to actions that may be either maintaining of existing conditions, or transformative, whether such outcomes are intended or not.

Structural understandings of context

In general, a Marxist structural approach sees context as the conjuncture of structural mechanisms that is fundamentally, and most simplistically, the interaction between economic base and political superstructure. Conjunctures occur within an overarching systemic structure in which the logic of capital accumulation predominates but is enabled by the interaction between different formations of institutionalized social relations that enable unequal exchange.⁴ In the contemporary context of capitalism, Marxist analysis implies that “world history is understandable in terms of dialectics of the whole, the geographical instance of the whole, and the relations across space between these instances…uneven development of contradictions across space, the forms in which contradictions appear as complexes of crises, and the (spatial) relations between these complexes” (Peet, 1981: 109, quoted in Peet, 1998: 128).

In our approach, we follow previous rejections of “iron laws” of structural Marxism, and emphasize the need to consider the historically contingent development of society (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Especially, Althusser’s (1969) aim was to introduce a form of contingency to Marxism while also maintaining a strong role for structure. The meta-theoretical approach that emerged was the idea of the socio-spatial dialectic (Santos, 1977; Soja, 1980; developed by Plummer and Sheppard, 2006), and the creation of “conjunctures” of structural imperatives and contingent circumstances (Peet, 1998: 121). The dialectical approach is both relational, in the sense that conjunctures have meaning through their connection to each other, and involves a structure-agency interaction. Relations, agency, and structure are all necessary for a full understanding. The relational approach tends to favor the actor, or agency, over the constraints imposed by structures while still wishing to include “macro-theoretical considerations because human agency is not independent from the conditions of the capitalist system” (Jones, 2014: 607 quoting Bathelt, 2006: 230). We agree with claims that there is a need to look at the “wider contexts” within which relations are formed (Jones, 2014: 609); and to “stabilize the world to develop models of how it works” (Sunley, 2008: 16).

Emergent structures allow for the identification of the socio-spatial dialectic in the interaction of multiple levels of a structure (Sunley, 2008: 14). Higher-level properties of a structure emerge from relations between actors within the structure. The result is not only the dynamics of the structure itself, but the “emergent higher-level property or pattern begins to cause effects in the lower level, either in component entities or in their patterns of interactions” (Sawyer, 2001: 559 quoted in Sunley, 2008: 14). The result is a structure with “a relational property that has the generative capacity to modify the powers of its constituents in fundamental ways” (Sunley, 2008: 14). States would be one “constituent” of the structure and, the structure displays a form of scalar-dialectics in which “scalar processes are co-constituted so that the local is not distinct from the global, and vice versa” (Sunley, 2008: 14). Constituents, or institutions within the system are co-constitutive but it should also be emphasized that they are socially constructed. Hence, their roles and actions, the rules by which they operate, may have the unintended consequence of re-creating situations that are detrimental to their goals. The agency of states may be modeled to illuminate such contingent and contextualized state behavior.

World-systems analysis is useful in bringing structure, relationality, agency, and context together for two reasons: It adopts a political-economy approach to increase the complexity of agents and structures, and ups the ante in the ontological scope of context and structure by claiming the capitalist world-economy as the unit of analysis. Though a structural approach, focus upon agency, process and emergence frame our analysis of “social structure as involving internal relations between actors occupying positions that have sets of responsibilities and capabilities attached to them” (Sunley, 2008: 11, citing Lawson, 1997).

In world-systems analysis, the ideas of “social formation” and “spatial dialectics” are conceptualized at a level of analysis that goes beyond the monadic or “kernel” theorization of capitalism” (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 23) to a “global formation” (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 27). Uneven development and spatial variations in capitalist relations are products of multiple modes of production existing within the capitalist world-economy. A mosaic of institutionalized power relations generates relations of unequal exchange that are the basis of a core-periphery hierarchy of inequality, a necessary feature of the system (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 25). Localized socio-economic formations (Santos, 1977: 5) are expressions of the processes of unequal exchange that have a scope beyond bounded “localities” and are only given meaning through their role in system wide processes of accumulation (Frank, 1998: 4). The importance of a relational perspective in the world-systems approach (Frank, 1998: 28–29) echoes the imperatives of relational economic geography, but provides a specific structure of the interaction of the axial division of labor and the longue duree of cycles and secular trends. The outcome is a series of conjunctures (Wilson, 2009: 245 quoting Lee, 1996: 202) that are the outcome of processes, and hence temporal dynamics (Lee, 1996: 202). The structure of capitalism defined by world-systems analysis is dynamic and a set of conjunctures that can be conceptualized as contexts. It is to the specificity of those contexts, and the way they emerge from agency, that we now turn.

World-systems as an approach to structure and context

The world-systems approach to the capitalist world-economy is one way to “conceptualize the capitalist space economy as a complex spatial system” (Martin and Sunley, 2007; Plummer and Sheppard, 2006: 626). The world-economy is an aggregation of, “institutional patterns which regulate competition and conflict… [that are]… historical creations of individual and collective actions” (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 2). It is the existence, contest, cooption, and co-existence of these different institutional arrangements that create conjunctures (or social economic formations to use the more generic language of Santos, 1977) with different spatial expressions. The result is the geographical mosaic of the global formation. Contestation means that the historical social system is neither completely systemic nor fully indeterminate (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 14). Rather it is the conjuncture of these different institutional formations, and the power relations between them, all within the underlying logic of ceaseless capital accumulation, that is the particular interaction of base and superstructure of the capitalist world-economy. The way in which base and superstructure interact provide the many contextual settings in which action, whether transformative or not, is possible and constrained.

The initial element of context is position in the world-economy. Inequity, and the co-construction of core and peripheral regions, is an essential feature of the capitalist world-economy. Hence, the behavior of a state will reflect the manner in which it is embedded in the broad set of relations that constitute the whole social system (Frank, 1998). The primary element of position is the core-periphery hierarchy and the particular moment within the temporal dynamics of economic (Kondratieff) and hegemonic cycles: Or the space-time matrix within which state actions can be situated (Flint and Taylor, 2011: 26).

The spatial ordering of the capitalist world-economy is a relational geography that Frank (1998) identified as the metropole–satellite relationship, the spatial expression of the development of underdevelopment (Frank, 1978a, 1978b):⁵ Producing contexts that are situational-relational rather than just positional. Context, as defined by core-periphery processes, is a matter of spatial form that is given meaning through connection to other spatial forms. It is these relationships that make the capitalist world-economy, and also construct the contexts that actors find themselves. The mutuality of context and agency is evident as forming new relationships, or maintaining existing ones, is the agency available to states that, in turn creates new contexts for action.

Following the axioms of human geography, these processes require a related mutual construction of space – such as the agglomeration of similar industries. The territorial nature of states promotes them as the actors that play an active role in trying to “capture” particular processes within borders. Over time, capturing core processes and negotiating with labor in a contested process, results in differential production sectors and processes, and social reproduction arrangements, within states. The result is “core states” or states within which the majority of processes are core, etc. However, the shorthand expression “core state” should not detract from an understanding of the geographical extent of the capitalist world-economy as a field, or surface, in which core and processes agglomerate in different locations – some of which are contained within state borders while others spill across political entities.⁶

Position in the world-economy is not the sole element of context. The particular regional setting of a state (Buzan and Waever, 2004; Murphy, 2005) is also a factor. Regional setting allows for the consideration of “mesoscale” (Murphy, 2005: 281) processes and relationships that are manifest in rivalries and cooperation based on long-standing and culturally embedded political relations. Such a complex understanding of position goes some way towards alleviating concerns of structural determinism by adding historical cultural ties, long-standing antagonisms, territorial disputes, etc.; though the rules of the capitalist world-economy and the constraints imposed by the core-periphery hierarchy remain.

Contextual setting is not static. Two sets of inter-related temporal dynamics form the historical aspect of context. Kondratieff waves are the economic rhythm of the world-economy (Wallerstein, 1984: 16–17). The political dynamic of the capitalist world-economy is the hegemonic cycle that has been a feature of the nineteenth (British hegemony) and twentieth (US hegemony) centuries (Boswell and Sweat, 1991; Goldstein, 1988). Within the temporal dynamics of hegemony lie the opportunities for states to act in a way that allows them to improve, and in some cases causes them to worsen, their position in the hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy. The context created by the rise and fall of hegemonic powers frame the agency of states, including going to war (Gilpin, 1988), within periodic regimes of rules and norms (Keohane, 1984; Moravcsik, 1993; Zangl, 1994). By extension, periods of hegemonic decline or absence dilute the importance of a regime in setting a context for established or expected state actions (Kindleberger, 1976; Krasner, 1976). Hence, one component of contextualized state maneuver is the calculations made with regard to other states, including the hegemon, within the process of hegemonic rise and decline.

Position in the world-economy is not a life-sentence. Though the three-tier hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy is a necessary and permanent feature of the system there is room for movement for individual states (Dezzani, 2002). The proportion of states that may be classified within each of the categories of core, periphery, and semi-periphery remains fixed to retain the overall balance between levels of consumption and cheap production to enable continued capital accumulation, but individual states can move up or down the hierarchy. The categories of the world system hierarchy may also change within a stochastic context such that analysis may reveal significant cohorts as subsets or aggregations of the more traditional tripartite configuration (see Clark and Beckfield, 2009; Dezzani, 2001; Nemeth and Smith, 1985; Quah, 1997; Smith and White, 1992; Snyder and Kick, 1979). There is room for movement, but not much (Babones, 2009; Dezzani, 2002).

The limited degree of movement in the hierarchy of the capitalist world-economy is the result of a set of processes through which the structure of the system becomes emergent. The structure is not pre-given at any one time, but the product of the many previous actions of multiple agents. The capitalist world-economy is a macro-scale relational interaction of different socio-economic formations, or contexts, with their particular geographic expression (Peet, 1981; Santos, 1977). Socio-economic formations have a temporal legacy meaning that they give a geographical expression to social relations with a particular role in the system wide processes of accumulation (Santos, 1977: 6). The regional agglomerations of economic activity and the strategic couplings involved are the contemporary expression of such socio-economic formations, or contexts (Yeung, 2016). It is within the paths formed by inter-related and dynamic contexts that states maneuver.

State maneuver

Identifying the state as our unit of analysis enables us to examine the way state policies play an important role in the global economic landscape that is created by the aggregation of global commodity chains (Grinberg, 2016; Yeung, 2016). States territorialize the politics of the capitalist world-economy. Their ability to capture certain nodes within a commodity chain and frame politics around such nodes is a basis for understanding how core and periphery processes are territorialized so that commodity chains interact with state actions (Bair, 2014; Quark, 2014; Quark and Slez, 2014).

The important role of the state is a function of its territoriality that has made it the essential organizing agent in the “institutional vortex” (Taylor, 1992b) of the capitalist world-economy. The capturing of core and periphery processes within state borders is a fundamental politics of the capitalist world-economy (Wallerstein, 1984: 4). The process of capital accumulation requires lowering costs through different forms of labor relations and increasing profits by creating pseudo-monopolies (Wallerstein, 1984: 3). Class struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat and inter-bourgeois competition create a politics in which “intrabourgeois political struggles take the form of interstate struggle” (Wallerstein, 1984; 4). States have established partial control of the movement of goods, labor, and capital across borders, set rules to govern social relations of production, taxed production and consumption, redistributed wealth across populations (or not), subsidized some economic activities and not others, monopolized violence (with varying degrees of success), and enabled the individualization of profit and the socialization of economic risk (Wallerstein, 1983: 49–55). The organizational power to conduct such politics, and in the process alter the balance of core and periphery processes within a certain set of borders “is most often institutionalized within state structures or guaranteed by property laws which are backed up by states” (Chase-Dunn, 1989: 24). This is maneuver. States may have to react to similar conditions but “this does not mean they are powerless institutions tossing in the economic sea” (Taylor, 1994: 121). In fact, the actions of states constitute the emergent structure of the capitalist world-economy as the “policies pursued by states are integral to the periodic restructuring of the world-economy” (Taylor, 1994: 121).

We do not assume the state to be a deterministic monolithic entity. States are characterized by the combination of processes and mechanisms that induce them to change their relative position in the capitalist world-economy. Geographical variability and functional efficiency of these processes and mechanisms are critical for state performance in the international arena. States are mobile because of initial (or t-1) endowments of these characteristics, but also owing to the relative effectiveness of decision-making on domestic and foreign policy.

Coupling ostensibly intra-state processes and global processes requires interrogating the concept of hierarchy. So long as sovereignty exists as an organizing principle governing state autonomy in international law, then the structure provided by hierarchy cannot be denied. This structure also carries implications of scale as a characteristic of hierarchy (Lake, 2009: 33–41). Hierarchy as a structural characteristic is rooted in political authority and sovereignty; or the degree and form of control, both direct and indirect, between the governor and the governed (Lake, 2009: 45–49). Thus, differential authority is tied to geographically-limited administrative boundaries that define the structural relation for “levels” of authority and application of legitimate policy over a particular space, that includes local, provincial and national means of government. This specific application of authority over a well-defined geographical range creates a “scale” of legal mechanisms that may govern and coordinate processes that are political, economic and social, though defined by their interactions beyond their immediate location and across the extent of the world-economy. Hence, the numerous regional configurations that constitute the world economy (Yeung, 2016) constitute, and are constituted by, the politics of the state.

In this way, though not to simplify the issue, scale is a function of geography and may also be defined by distance-decay effects and transport or interaction/transaction costs for economic and social processes both global and domestic. These economic processes interact with a scalar construction of government. Local authorities, at the sub-state level or secondary civil division, also have an authority of policy applications that exhibit influence within the defined administrative geography of the unit. These local or regional policies do not extend to the remainder of the state but only apply in the region of legitimacy (Jonas, 2006; MacKinnon, 2011; Marston and Jones, 2005). This is also a reflection of the hierarchical political process and the “scale” of application is a function of the geographical extent of the political unit container. These hierarchical and scale structural relations vary by state and the level and type of organization may also provide benefits or liabilities for global interaction (Lake, 2009: 45).

While we have not yet specifically defined the scales of economic processes, it is assumed that these processes are responding to regional and global demands in scalable markets and these scales may differ from those conferred by political boundaries. This framework is stochastic so behavioral outcomes are the result of likelihoods conditioned on many actors and scales of behavior (Sheppard, 2016: 86–90). States serve as containers and collectors of behaviors and processes but the global economy and economic performance conditioned by this arena is the dominant process. To explain the behaviors of agents both within and across state boundaries to act and react to processes across a variety of scales, the ideas of strategic coupling, productivity chains and value chains must be brought into the world-systems context that identifies the continuing role of the territorialization of economic processes that is a key element of state maneuver.

Economic processes have become increasingly integrated and trans-national. Yet the role of state maneuver is still evident. For example, the rise of China since the late 1970s to become the world’s second largest economy as an increasingly capitalist state, albeit with a particular central-planning component, is testament to this process. This is a near-ideal example of upward mobility of state in the global hierarchy accomplished through both external and internal modification of political, economic and social processes. The Chinese example shows the interaction of processes of global economic integration as processes and mechanisms of state position change (as suggested by Coe et al., 2004; Neilson et al., 2014; Yeung, 2015, 2016).

The construction of networks of production, value and services occurs within, and is constitutive of, the politics of inter-state competition that we define as maneuver. The development and construction of globalized commodity chains is a matter of intra- and inter-state geopolitical arrangements (Glassman, 2011). The ability to make such arrangements is part of the strategy of state maneuver. Globalized commodity and value chains internalize transaction costs and serve to integrate state-level production into global production through mechanisms such as strategic coupling (Yeung, 2016; Yeung and Coe, 2015).

Analyzing state maneuver requires consideration of both economic and political, and contemporary and historic, factors. Changing political processes can be assessed through voting behavior, type of government, party participation and other direct measures of political engagement. Economic processes vary significantly by history (e.g. colonial experience either as colony or colonizer), resource availability, labor quality, literacy, quality of life, education, access to opportunity, transport and other forms of infrastructure. For the industry of a country to participate in global value and commodity chains, there must be a favorable regulatory environment and taxation policies provided by the state and the ability of industries to construct service and value linkages across the state boundary (Yeung, 2016: 4–6). Governments also play a role in facilitating partnerships among businesses, industries and research institutions. Such decisions involve many agents but will ultimately influence the relative position of a state with respect to others in the competitive framework of the world-economy.

Model-based assessment of change in the relative position of a state is measurable using variables keyed to these agents and processes of change. To emphasize the emergent yet lasting nature of the system and the contexts it produces we conceptualize the structure of the capitalist world-economy as a formation of hierarchy that is defined by the competition for, and distribution of scare resources (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971; Nicolis and Prigogine, 1989). Competition for these resources frames agency within a structure that sets, at any given time, a differential capacity to use and share the scarce resources (Arrighi, 1994; Pomeranz, 2000).

We identify the following scarce resources of the capitalist world-economy, moving from economic resources, through political resources, and finishing with their intersection:

production capacity in agriculture and manufacturing (Wallerstein, 1979, 1983)

access to finance capital – the surplus value that permits funding of projects to create and change existing distributions of other scarce resources; hence a prime driver of systemic change (Arrighi, 1994).

transaction cost bargaining power – following Shapley–Shubik, the relative degree of influence within the system that emerges through the agglomeration of high-value added sectors and their ability to set prices relative to lower added sectors. The greater bargaining power of high-value added sectors reduces their risk and lowers transaction costs of core states (Shapley and Shubik, 1954).

the ability to plan and build social, productive, and financial interaction networks that enable production and flows (Arrighi, 1994; Braudel, 1984; Wallerstein, 1983)

system security; the provision of the public good of political stability both within state borders (Tilly, 1990) and across the system (Modelski, 1987)

from (iv) and (v), to accumulate capital states need protection to ensure the functioning of their enterprises by minimizing disruption through violence and, if possible, the establishment of monopolies. This is the ability to extract protection rent (Lane, 1979).

In sum, the political and economic processes identified in the previous six points create geographies of differential development driven by sectoral efficiencies in specific places leading to power-capital advantages and transaction cost minimization (Dezzani and Chase-Dunn, 2010). The operation of the capitalist world-economy involves these six forms of agency in multiple and simultaneous forms that are fully interdependent and integrated. Thereby creating, at the systemic level, a single or common strategic resource limitation. The first three points refer to production in the capitalist world-economy, and the manner in which economic and state elites interact to retain existing economic activities, or innovate new ones. The third point highlights how an agglomeration of economic activity derived from core processes compounds relational advantages towards other states whose economies are based on lower order economic activities. Once such a relationship has been created it enables the maintenance of the relative positions of states in the hierarchy of the world-economy. The relational nature of the system is formed through networks that act as conduits for the flows of commodities, finance, people, and knowledge. The fourth point acknowledges the control of such networks as a key resource. Capital accumulation occurs through the creation of quasi-monopolies, and the legal enforcement of contracts and private property, as well as the control and social reproduction of labor. The fifth point refers to the role states play in producing such social order, both within their borders and through extra-territorial actions. The competitive nature of state actions, and their role in providing comparative advantage for particular firms, is addressed through the concept of protection rent, point six. States undergo militarized and other authoritative actions to decrease the transaction costs of firms tied to their territories (such as combating piracy or enforcing sanctions) while increasing the transaction costs of competitors.

The final point refers to the manner in which the economic and political processes of (i) through (vi) mutually construct geographies at a variety of scales. These social-spatial formations are created within the capitalist world-economy and have a legacy or inertia that partially determines future actions.

Maneuver is the competition for the resources of the capitalist world-economy (i–vi) within the spatial formations, or contexts, created by previous acts of maneuver. Existing spatial formations and the actions of other states frame the range of decisions that a state may make as well as the norms and rules of action. In sum, these myriad actions are the simultaneous maneuver of all states in the world-economy. Aggregative, though not coordinated or determined, maneuver of all states (and other actors) are the atoms of the processes that create the emergent structure of the capitalist world-economy. As such, a variety of factors from path dependent process effects, (i.e. Markov dependence), to internal power politics and resource factor endowments can be manipulated in a variety of ways that influence decisions, policies and actions which result in a state’s maneuver posture. Not only endogenized factors but also global and regional processes influence the maneuver position of a state.

Perceptions of hegemonic stature, and capital accumulation and concentration cycles (i.e. Kondratieff cycles) all provide input into the maneuver decision process (Figure 1). Maneuver, as a combination of learning and action, occurs within the specific contexts of the structure of the capitalist world-economy. By identifying context as the contingent ways within which competition for scarce resources come together within the structural imperatives of the system we are able to conceptualize agency as partially, or contextually determined, and the manner in which the structure is maintained and transformed. Within this multi-faceted, relational, and dynamic context states must make decisions that are formed within, and formative of, contexts. We discuss a way to model such state behavior in the next section.

Figure 1.

Maneuver, learning, and hierarchy.

Modeling the hierarchical world-economy

Denying and avoiding a false distinction between agent, structure, and context the modeling of state behavior must operationalize the fact that changes in one part of the world-economy can induce changes in another because they are connected. One way to accomplish this is to model the integrating characteristic for each part of the world-economy. The basis of this approach to system description is to capture the individual changes as part of the entire system mechanism. This means that changes in one part of the world-economy can induce changes in another because they are connected. One way to accomplish this is to model the integrating characteristic for each part of the world-economy. Any model of change in the world-system must incorporate this criterion, while also considering agency that is bounded, but not determined, by structural constraints. In other words, an element of stochasticity must be operationalized into a descriptive and evaluative quantitative framework.

The details of our suggested modeling approach are explained in the rest of this section. This paragraph summarizes the modeling approach. The utility of an explicit model is to demonstrate how the stochasticity of our maneuver perspective can be operationalized into a descriptive and evaluative quantitative framework.

The descriptive portion is provided by the Markov process approach that uses a derived state space classification to permit an explicit delineation of change for a given time period. The state space consists of a classification (many are possible) that provides a description of the hierarchical world-economy at a specific scale. The process to be modeled is the transition of countries across levels of the hierarchy of the world-economy. The mechanism of country change is captured through modeling the probability that any individual country moves from one level in the hierarchy (i.e. core, semi-periphery, periphery, etc.) to another in a specific period. The mathematical description of this probability process is a type of Markov chain.

A Markov chain is a stochastic, or probability, process {R_n, n = 1,2,…} that takes on a finite or countable number of possible values (Karlin and Taylor, 1975: 48). We use the letter R to define a particular region of the hierarchy of the world-economy (e.g. core, periphery or semi-periphery, etc.) and the index n reflects the partition enumeration of the unique regions. In the world-systems perspective, these regions are also identified as “states of being” reflected in unique sets of characteristics for each region consistent with interaction behaviors and internal decision outcomes of the country constituents. The world-system notion of “state” is entirely consistent with the use of “state” as state-space modeling for Markov processes. The set of possible values can be denoted by nonnegative integers {0, 1, 2, ….} distinguishing the “state” as unique regions consisting of countries reflecting similar characteristics. If R_n = i, then, the process is said to be in state i at time n. Whenever the process in state i, there is a fixed probability P_ij that it will next be in state j. Thus, the probability that a group of countries defining a region in one time period (n to n + 1) transitioning from state i to state j is

P {R_{n + 1} = j | R_{n} = i} = P_{ij}

The scale of the mathematical description might be at the level of the state or some other logically consistent spatial partition that reflects processes that are hypothesized to produce differences in the hierarchy over time. A regional description that reflects spatial integration either larger than or smaller than the state is also logically consistent. One such example might be the use of world cities and their hinterlands as substitutes for country-level economies. The Markov description expressed as a matrix of transition probabilities provides a complete description of change but cannot “explain” the causes of change in the hierarchy from one time period to another. The logistic expansion of the transition matrix provides a framework to employ structural and process-based independent variables so as to statistically account for the variability in the transition probabilities and suggest “explanations” of the statistical relationships. In this way, the world-economy framework can be described, and variables and mechanisms leading to transition or change in the hierarchy can be evaluated. The modeling can account for the variability of persistence or change in the transition probabilities, and thus statistically “explain” the type of change. The value of this approach is the capacity to describe and model change using a variety of variables tied to particular mechanisms and processes of change expected or predicted from a variety of explanatory frameworks, including the world-systems approach.

Call the characteristic f_i which is a measure of the maneuverability or transition change in each region/zone R_i (i.e. classification for i = 1, 2, … n). Then the entire system can be described as a series of differential equations in terms of every other region/group component as:

\partial R_{1} / \partial t = f_{1} (R_{1}, R_{2}, \dots, R_{n})

\partial R_{2} / \partial t = f_{2} (R_{1}, R_{2}, \dots, R_{n})

…

\partial R_{n} / \partial t = f_{n} (R_{1}, R_{2}, \dots, R_{n})

That is, the partial time rate of change of net change is a unique class function of change within class as well as change across all other classes. This is necessary since the world-economy represents a single interacting mechanism such that changes that occur in one subsystem induce commensurate changes in other subsystems.

To begin, assume only three possible states of the world-economy as explicated in the original world-systems framework (Wallerstein, 1984). The hierarchical state classifications for the n countries under analysis are core, semi-periphery and periphery with indices c, s, and p, respectively. Generally speaking, the grouping of states using prevailing commonalities that reflect similar processes while permitting contexts to vary, can provide for many more potential groups of states with statistically-similar characteristics even if processes may vary somewhat. Thus, this analysis is not limited to the traditional tripartite division of groups of states in the hierarchical world-economy. As such, a structural matrix of groups reflecting similar processes creating the hierarchical structure is directly reflective of the dynamic mechanism of change. Theoretically, every state could form a unique “group” reflective of its degenerate situation in the world-economy; this is, in fact the degenerate situation and states do exhibit similar characteristics across a range of criteria that are reflective of statistically significant groupings of territorial entities of the world-economy (Babones, 2009; Dezzani, 2001, 2002; Quah, 1997). In actuality, there exist a continuum of states reflecting a gradient of behaviors and characteristics for which the groupings are a statistically significant discretization of the continuum.

Markov transition matrices provide a complete description of state-level and aggregate mobility but do not explain maneuver mechanisms or processes.

Therefore, a logistic expansion framework, derived from the transition probability partitions, is added to provide an analytical basis for “explaining” maneuver mechanisms through the inclusion of structural and contextual covariates as well as components of state-level change.

For example, assume a valid statistical classification procedure isolates k groups of states constituting the hierarchy of the world-economy such that k ≤ n, where n is the total number of states in the study thus representing the total number of possible states in the world-economy at the time of measurement. Then, the possible transition matrix may be represented as:

(\begin{matrix} F_{11} F_{12} \dots F_{1 v} \\ F_{21} F_{22} \dots F_{2 v} \\ \dots \\ F_{v 1} F_{v 2} \dots F_{v c} \end{matrix})

where the rows exhibit the frequencies Fi*, such that i = 1,…v, of states occupying the group i at time t, and the columns F*j, such that j = 1,…v, of state occupying group j at time t + u, where u is some interval of time specified by the study parameters and v ≤ k. That is, u is the time interval for which mobility or persistence is to be measured. Using this specification, any number of classes, not just the original Wallerstein tripartite hierarchy, can be employed to examine the hierarchical structure of the world-economy. The marginal totals, either row or column, represent the total states occupying the grouping at time t (for rows) or t + u (for columns). The marginal totals are, for example,

\sum_{v = 1, k} F_{1 v}

for row 1 and

\sum_{, v = 1, k} F_{v 1}

for column 1.

For the sake of brevity and simplicity, we will employ the conceit of a tripartite hierarchy (e.g. Wallersteinian groupings – core, semi-periphery and periphery), of the world-economy. If this conceit were not used, the equations describing change would require multiple lines of text and become somewhat incomprehensible:

(\begin{matrix} F c c F c s F c p \\ F s c F s s F s p \\ \dots \\ F p c F p s F p p \end{matrix})

The maximum likelihood estimates for transition probabilities are estimated as the quotient of the observed state frequencies with the total number of countries traversing or persisting in the particular state for the time periods considered:

\begin{matrix} P c c = \frac{F c c}{\sum_{\forall i} F c i} & P c s = \frac{F c s}{\sum_{\forall i} F c i} & P c p = \frac{F c p}{\sum_{\forall i} F c i} \\ P s c = \frac{F s c}{\sum_{\forall i} F s i} & P s s = \frac{F s s}{\sum_{\forall i} F s i} & P s p = \frac{F s p}{\sum_{\forall i} F s i} \\ P p c = \frac{F p c}{\sum_{\forall i} F p i} & P p s = \frac{F p s}{\sum_{\forall i} F p i} & P p p = \frac{F p p}{\sum_{\forall i} F p i} \end{matrix}

for all i = 1, 2, …,n countries.

The maximum likelihood computation produces the final Markov transition probability matrix:

M^{t - u, t - s} = (\begin{matrix} P c c & P c s & P c p \\ P s c & P s s & P s p \\ P p c & P p s & P p p \end{matrix}) where u > s

The vector of class properties for core, semi-periphery and periphery after the time of the estimation interval (t-u, t-s such that u > s) is:

P (c, s, p, t) = (P_{c, t} P_{s, t} P_{p, t}) = P (t) M^{t - u, t - s} such that t - s > t - u

P_cc, P_ss, P_pp are probabilities of persistence within the world-system hierarchy reflecting P_ii, where i ={c, s, p}, while P_ij such that i,j ={c, s, p} but i ≠ j. Persistence probabilities reflect no change in state status across the time periods, hence, the persistence of states within classes. Then, a logistic formulation is derived to capture structural relationships for Markov transition probabilities for persistence (i.e. i,i), and mobility (i.e. i,j):

P_{ii} (β, x (i, i)) = exp (β' x (i, i)) / [1 + exp (β' x (i, i))] (p e r s i s t e n c e)

P_{ij} (χ, x (i, j)) = exp (χ' x (i, j)) / [1 + exp (χ' x (i, j))] (m o b i l i t y)

where β and χ are the corresponding parameter vectors and x is the matrix of corresponding structural independent explanatory variables. This matrix consists of structural variables selected to “explain” either persistence or mobility. As such, the covariate sets will differ for persistence or mobility. The factors discussed in Figure 1 for state characteristics, learning, maneuver and transition and their temporal change representations should provide values for the matrix and then be used to estimate the contribution to the transition probabilities through the estimated coefficient.

The approach used to evaluate these coefficients to explain the transition probabilities in terms of structural explanatory variables is maximum likelihood estimation (i.e. MLE) of the parameters (Edwards, 1972; Mood et al., 1974: 276–288). The central element of MLE is the likelihood function which expresses the joint probability density of the response variables in terms of the parameters to be estimated. This tells us how “likely” a particular set of observations is given that they all occur together. The likelihood function thus provides the expected joint chance that the random variables assume particular values from observation. The MLE is then maximum of the likelihood function expressed by the parameters for specific observations.

The binary response likelihood function for any particular world-system Markov transition configuration is:

L = \prod_{q} {P_{c c}}^{Fcc, q} {(1 - P_{c c})}^{Fcs, q + Fcp, q} {P_{s s}}^{Fss, q} {(1 - P_{s s})}^{Fsc, q + Fsp, q} {P_{p p}}^{Fpp, q} {(1 - P_{p p})}^{Fpc, q + Fps, q}

where F_ij,q are the number/frequency of transitions of each type observed in the qth country. When the expectations of the logistic functions are embedded in the likelihood then the log-likelihood becomes ln(L) = L₀ + L₁ where L₀ is the likelihood for persistence and L₁ is the likelihood for mobility. For brevity, we will only illustrate functions for persistence:

L_{0} = \sum_{q = 1}^{n} {F (c c, q) β^{′} x (q) - (F (c c, q) + [F (c s, q) + F (c p, q)]) \ln [1 + \exp (β^{′} x (q))]}

Maximize L₀ + L₁ by Bayesian hierarchical Newton–Raphson iteration and estimate the parameter vectors β and χ provided the design matrix x is of full rank and the logistic for persistence and mobility can be estimated separately as there are no terms involving both parameter sets simultaneously:

\partial L_{0} / \partial β_{s} = \sum_{q = 1, n} x (q_{s}) [F_{cc, q} - (F_{cs, q} + F_{cp, q}) P_{cc} (β' x(q))]

\partial^{2} L_{0} / \partial β_{s} \partial β_{r} = - \sum_{q = 1}^{n} x (q_{s}) x (q_{r}) (F_{cc, q} + [F_{cs, q} + F_{cp, q}]) P_{cc} (β' x(q)) [1 - P_{cc} (β' x(q))]

Hence, there exists a feasible covariate solution set for the explanation of world-system transition. The result of this functional explication is the derivation of the logistic function. The logistic can be used as a framework of stochastic “explanation” for persistence and/or mobility of countries across the states of the world hierarchy.

The logistic function is derived from the log-likelihood for the core persistence expression and is delineated as:

ln [P_{cc} / (1 - P_{cc})] = Z which implies [P_{cc} / (1 - P_{cc})] = e^{Z}

So that

P_{cc} = F (Z) = F (β' x) = F (β_{0} + \sum_{m = 1, k} β_{m} x_{m}) = 1 + e^{- (β' x)}

Validation of maneuver decisions can be evaluated by assessing the significance of parameters associated with independent variable selected to capture maneuver behavior that would “explain” the variation in the transition probabilities (see Figure 1). This analytical framework should provide a statistically feasible assessment of maneuver behavior that might be expected to account for movement of countries in the hierarchy; hence, provide a stochastic explanation of maneuver as it results in transition probabilities (Dezzani, 2012).

A mixed logistic framework can also be used to generalize the parameter specification and evaluate country-level behaviors with respect to persistence and/or movement in the hierarchy (Mcfadden and Train, 2000; Wang and Puterman, 1998):

P_{cc, i} = F_{i} (Z_{i}) = F_{i} (β ’ x) = F_{i} (β_{0, i} + \sum_{m = 1, k} β_{m, i} x_{m, i}) = 1 + {e^{- (β ’ x)}}_{i}

for countries i = 1, 2, …,n and parameters m = 1, 2, …,k and i is the index for specific cases representing regional subsets for different time periods.

The specified framework permits both specific and general maneuver hypotheses to be evaluated. The Markov methods provide system description for the hierarchical arrangement of the world-economy for a time interval and the logit decomposition of the transition probabilities, as persistence or mobility behaviors, coupled with functional logistic covariate analysis provide the statistical explanation of specific and general maneuver hypotheses. Given this framework, a comprehensive mechanism for description, explanation and evaluation of state-level mobility is now available for use as a general tool for research on state maneuver in the capitalist world-economy.

Potential problems and issues with the analytical approach

As with all quantitative methodologies, there is a necessity for generalization and the need to make hypotheses tractable to the data available. Models, by definition, are simplifications of reality. However, by choosing units of analysis that are meaningful at a scale for which reliable data is available, such methods can provide needed information with a resolution that is useful for both theory validation and policy analysis. These two goals are well within the capacities of the proposed method. It is necessary that covariates in the logistic model must reflect measures of maneuver-based processes, policies and effects otherwise, the “explanatory” logistic model will not capture the salient features of the maneuver behavior. Nevertheless, if the independent variables constituting the covariate effects on transition can be shown to be effective measures of maneuver behavior, then specific maneuver hypotheses can be evaluated.

While regionalization classes are not an emergent feature from this analysis, a variety of forms of rigorous pre-Markov analysis coupled with post transition matrix validation can provide emergent specifications (Dezzani, 2001). The application of criteria of statistical efficiency defined as variance minimization can suggest improvements in classifications which are necessary and prior to the Markov transition matrix and logistic analysis.

Data limitations are the major issue with most global, long-term studies. Most reliable data at the state level begins in the 1950s and extends to the present. However, variable coverage can be intermittent. As such, many studies limit the number of possible cases to be included (see Dezzani, 2001, 2002). Criticisms that the study can only be state-centered are not necessarily valid as other “actors” for which comparable data is available may be included in the structural and explanatory components of the analysis. However, the data types across actors are assumed to be complimentary; as such, data quality and availability maybe the major limitation of the approach. This situation tends to reflect the common case with most quantitative approaches to complex social science studies.

Conclusion

Trends in social science have emphasized agency at the expense of structure, such as the epistemology of rational choice. The idea of maneuver allows for an exploration of the possibilities of state action within the structural constraints of the capitalist world-economy that come together in conjunctures of economic and political processes within regional and temporal contexts. A political geography approach to maneuver identifies (1) a sense of an actor’s situation, with regard to the processes and mechanisms which it must act within and which act upon it (2) an element of agency, the possibilities and constraints facing an actor, (3) an understanding of how an actor learns about its situation, possibilities, and constraints, (4) the types of decisions an actor may make, (5) a temporal dynamic to understand the historic scope of (i) the dynamics of the structure, (ii) the learning process, and (iii) the decision-making process, and (6) an inclusion of the geographic expression of structural constraints – such as regional and neighborhood processes. Furthermore, contextualized state behavior within the capitalist world-economy can be modeled in a way that includes the dynamic interactions between agency, context, and structure. The benefit of this approach is that we no longer talk about position of states in the three-tier hierarchy, with the associated connotations of determinism, but of maneuver that reflects the contextualized and constrained behavior of states.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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