The Twenty-First Century Revolutions and the World System’s Reconfiguration

At present the World System and world order are undergoing dramatic transformations. Revolutions will be an integral part of these systemic changes; therefore, their numbers and the world-system effect are likely to be significant. In this paper, I analyze in what way the twenty-first century revolutions will relate to the transformations of the World System and world order. My argument is based on the theory of the periodical catch-ups experienced by the political component of the World System, which tends to lag behind the economic component. Such gaps are eventually bridged, but not smoothly. On the contrary, this catch-up is likely to be rather complex, turbulent and conflictive. The twenty-first century revolutions appear to be part of a broad and conflict-ridden process of catch-up of the World-System's political component to its economic component. This catch-up provokes strong structural transformations, described as the reconfiguration of the World System. With the Arab Spring a reconfiguration of the World System started that will remain associated with revolutionary processes in the twenty-first century. I expect that connected with the political catch-up the number of revolutions and their role as a means of the world-system transformation will not decrease, but may even increase noticeably. I analyze the future of revolutions in terms of their typology and other aspects: 1) the evaluation of their number compared with the previous period; 2) their role as a tool defining future progress of societies and the World System; 3) the scale and power of revolutions; 4) the possibility of revolutionary waves, and 5) possible changes of the forms of revolutionary events. I also discuss the possible role the types of revolutions that have spread in previous periods, and the possibility that revolutions may continue to form