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The Next Three Futures, Part One: Looming Crises of Global Inequality, Ecological Degradation, and a Failed System of Global Governance

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13600826.2011.553525

1469-798X

Christopher Chase‐Dunn, Kirk Lawrence,

International Development and Aid

Abstract This two-part article discusses developments in the first decade of the 21st century and uses the comparative world-systems perspective to consider possible scenarios for the next several decades. In Part One that follows, we consider the likely trends of the 21st century and the major challenges that humanity will face, noting some disturbing similarities, but also some important differences, between what happened during the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and what seems to be happening in the early 21st century. There are three major crises looming: 1) Massive global inequalities; 2) Ecological degradation; and, 3) A failed system of global governance in the wake of US hegemonic decline. The timing and strength of these challenges and their interactions will greatly influence their severity and the possible solutions; however, as in the past, large challenges are also opportunities for innovation and for reorganising human institutions. In Part Two, published in the next issue, we discuss the major structural alternatives for the trajectory of the world-system during the 21st century, positing three basic scenarios: 1) Another round of US economic and political hegemony; 2) Collapse; and, 3) Capable, democratic, multilateral, and legitimate global governance. Notes *The central ideas of this two-part article were presented in earlier forms at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association and at the mini-conference of the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological Association, both in 2009; we are grateful for the comments received during those sessions. We would also like to thank anonymous reviewers and the editorial staff of Global Society for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts. 1. Some scientists think that the 6 1/2 billion humans that are alive now are already too many for a sustainable relationship with the biosphere. See Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2009); William R. Catton, Jr., Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1980); Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, The Population Explosion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2004). 2. David Christian, Maps of Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 487; see also Eric J. Chaisson, Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 3. John Bellamy Foster, The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999); Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth Alan Gould, Environment and Society: The Enduring Conflict (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994). 4. Volker Bornschier, "Income inequality in the world—looking back and ahead", Paper presented at the conference on "Inequality Beyond Globalisation" organised by the World Society Foundation and the RC02 of the International Sociological Association, University of Neuchatel, 28 June 2008. 5. The United States and several other core countries have experienced an increase in within-country inequality since the 1970s, resulting in a shrinking middle class. 6. Volker Bornschier and Christopher Chase-Dunn, Transnational Corporations and Underdevelopment (New York: Praeger, 1985). 7. Andre Gunder Frank, "The Development of Underdevelopment", Monthly Review, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1966), pp. 17–31. 8. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Vintage, 2006). 9. Bruce Podobnik, Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2006). 10. Richard Heinberg, Powerdown (Gabriola Island, BC: Island Press, 2004). 11. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2002). 12. Alfred W. Crosby, "Infectious Diseases as Ecological and Historical Phenomena, with Special Reference to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–1919", in A. Hornborg and C. Crumley (eds), The World System and the Earth System: Global Socioenvironmental Change and Sustainability since the Neolithic (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007), pp. 280–287. 13. Mike Davis, Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu (New York: New Press, 2005). 14. Peter J. Taylor, The Way the Modern World Works: World Hegemony to World Impasse (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996). 15. Christopher Chase-Dunn, Richard Niemeyer, Alexis Alvarez, and Hiroko Inoue, "Scale Transitions and the Evolution of Global Governance since the Bronze Age", in W.R. Thompson (ed.), Systemic Transitions (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), pp. 261–284; John Markoff, Waves of Democracy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1996). 16. United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21, available: (accessed 22 March 2010). 17. Pew Global Attitudes Project, "Opinion of the United States", available: (accessed 22 May 2010>. 18. Russia, in response to the US proposal to build a missile site in Poland, has repeatedly proposed the expansion of NATO into a Eurasian-wide treaty organisation. If this were to happen it would constitute global state formation from a Weberian point of view (the state as the monopoly of legitimate violence). 19. Jackie Smith, Social Movements for Global Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 11. 20. Ibid. 21. Stiglitz, op. cit. 22. Smith, op. cit. 23. George Monbiot, Manifesto for a New World Order (New York: New Press, 2003). 24. Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein, Antisystemic Movements (London: Verso, 1989); see also Terry Boswell and Christopher Chase-Dunn, The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism: Toward Global Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000). 25. Christopher Chase-Dunn and Richard E. Niemeyer, "The World Revolution of 20xx", in M. Albert, G. Bluhm, H. Helmig, A. Leutzsch, J. Walter (eds), Transnational Political Spaces (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2009). 26. William I. Robinson, Latin American and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalisation Perspective (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 27. Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 28. Robinson, op. cit, p. 127. 29. Ruth Reitan, Global Activism (London: Routledge, 2007). 30. World Social Forum Charter, available: (accessed 22 March 2010) see also Christopher Chase-Dunn and Ellen Reese, "The World Social Forum—A Global Party in the Making?", in K. Sehm-Patomäki and M. Ulvila (eds.) Global Political Parties (London: Zed Press, 2007), pp. 53–91; William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah (eds.), Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalisation at the World Social Forum (London: Zed Books, 2003); Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar, with Patrick Bond and Peter Waterman, A Political Programme for the World Social Forum?: Democracy, Substance and Debate in the Bamako Appeal and the Global Justice Movements (New Delhi, India: Indian Institute for Critical Action: Centre in Movement, & Durban: the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, 2007), available: . 31. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, [1944] 2001). 32. Michael Mann, "The Recent Intensification of American Economic and Military Imperialism: Are They Connected?", Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, 11 August 2006. 33. Chalmers A. Johnson, Nemesis : the last days of the American Republic (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), pp. 138–139. 34. Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001). 35. William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Robinson, op. cit.