Hegemony and Imperialism in the Modern World-System: A Framework for Analyzing Core-Periphery Relations in the 21st Century

Resumo

This article aims to: (a) provide a brief analysis of the debate surrounding the concepts of imperialism and hegemony; (b) propose a heuristic model for analyzing core-periphery relations in the 21st century; and (c) examine the most-cited articles in the field of imperialism studies through the lens of the proposed model. We analyze the six mostcited contemporary articles in the Scopus database, identified using the keywords “Imperialism,” “Capitalism,” and “State”. Based on our proposed model, which characterizes imperialism as the intersection of accumulation by dispossession and extortion, our findings reveal that: (a) all six articles emphasize the logic of capital accumulation (manifested in the construction of monopolies and the pursuit of extraordinary profits) as a central element of imperialism; and (b) three of the six articles also highlight aspects related to militarism, such as the use of force and the extortion of peripheral regions by core countries, as key features of the imperialist phenomenon. Therefore, when discussing 21st-century imperialism, the authors converge on the centrality of capital accumulation through dispossession as a defining feature of imperialist processes. However, power projection through extortion emerges as a point of divergence. Thus, our heuristic model, by delineating the conceptual boundaries between hegemonic and imperialist projection, highlights this gap and underscores the importance of discussing the core-periphery dialectic through clearly defined analytical categories.

Keywords: Capitalism; United States; Hegemony; Imperialism; Militarism.