Robert Gilpin Quotes

Both the control of territory and the political domination of one state over another have profound consequences for international economic relations. However... market power or economic power has itself become a principal means by which states seek to organize and manipulate the international division of labor to their own advantage.

The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth.

It would be premature to suggest that the nation-state is dead or dying.

Trade is the oldest and most important economic nexus among nations. Indeed, trade along with war ha been central to the evolution of international relations.

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

One of the principal functions of war, and particularly... hegemonic war, is to determine the international hierarchy of prestige and thereby determine which states will in effect govern the international system.

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

A precondition for political change lies in the disjuncture between the existing social system and the redistribution of power toward those actors who would benefit most from a change in the system.

The clustering of technological innovation in time and space helps explain both the uneven growth among nations and the rise and decline of hegemonic powers.

Japanese refer to Europe as a "museum" and America as a "farm."

Through exploitation of its influence over global financial affairs, the United States has been able to cover the costs of its hegemonic position, preserve a false domestic prosperity, and mask the consequences of its relative political and economic decline.

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...

A prolonged and massive increase in aggregate wealth per capita has taken place over several centuries.

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.