Robert Gilpin Quotes

The opposing tendencies of concentration and spread are of little consequence in the liberal model of political economy.

Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled.

The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational.

Structuralism argues that a liberal capitalist world economy tends to preserve or actually increase inequalities between developed and less developed economies.

[In] the definition of international system... There is some "form of control" that regulates behavior and may range from informal rules of the system to formal institutions. ...A view prevalent among many scholars of political science is that the essence of international relations is precisely the absence of control... a condition of anarchy...

Ultimately...the hierarchy of prestige in an international system rests on economic and military power.

Among the many factors that make a return to halcyon days of the first decades of the postwar era virtually impossible is the decline of clearly defined political leadership.

Specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control.

Powerful groups set constraints on and may even determine the actions of state authority. They constitute the society that is protected by the state; their particular concept of justice reigns. The definition and functioning of property rights tend to advance their interest and welfare. ...the basic domestic function of the state is to define and protect property rights of individuals and groups. ...The primary external function of the state is to protect the property rights and personal security of its members vis-à-vis the citizens and actions of other states.

Until the modern era there was no single international system, but rather several international systems, with little or no contact with another.

The competitive nation-state system, with all its capacity for good and evil, is spreading in the Third World and is transforming that world.

The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth.

The economic success of the Reagan Administration was largely dependent upon the pyramiding of massive debt and the siphoning of capital from the rest of the world.

Does the functioning of the world economy tend to concentrate wealth and power, or does it tend to diffuse it?

The historical record suggests that the transition to to a new hegemon has always been attended by what I have elsewhere called hegemonic war.