出版社：American Sociological Association Section on Political Economy of the World System
摘要：Gowan challenges the usefulness of world-system theory in accounting for the emer-ge nce of an American world e mpire. His argument is based on one fundamental assumption, that of overwhelming U.S. power in the contemporary period. The assump-tion, howe ver, is f lawed. The U. S. is clearly an unconteste d military superpowe r, a world leader with the ability to projec t its powe r and intere sts around the world. But its e conomic hegemony is in decline, and it is no longer the overwhelming prese nce it once was in the world-economy. Moreover, Gowan is unable to support his thesis that the U.S. is becom-ing an empire over Europe. A lthough the U.S. occupation and administration of Iraq is an example of colonial imperialism, there is no evidence to show that the U.S. has begun to establish a core-wide empire. On the con-trary, U.S. political control ove r Europe has declined to its lowe st level in t he po st-WWII period. The persuasiveness of world-system theory in explaining the changing global political economy remains strong
