The decline of the "West" and the loss of U. S. global

. The conference addressed the theme of "Global Inequalities: Hegemonic Shifts and Regional Differentiations," drawing attention to how the longue durée shapes contemporary struggles for hegemony. More than 40 researchers from all five continents presented and discussed research on the conference theme. To help readers appreciate the context of the discussions that have shaped the following articles, we provide excerpts from the texts that provided the organizing framework for the conference:During its 500-year history, the modern world-system has seen several shifts in hegemony. Since the decline of the United States in the 1970s, however, no single

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The article introduces the concept of long waves or business cycles. It argues that by framing business cycles in a world-system perspective, its initially Western centric character could be overcome and could be used for analyzing the polarizing tendencies of global capitalism as an uneven and combined economic system, constantly producing and reproducing cores and peripheries. Moreover, world-system scholars interconnected business cycles with hegemonic cycles, characterized by a primus inter pares among the dominant core powers. While the hegemon is acquiring an accepted leading position based on economic, military and cultural power, cyclical change is undermining this position, giving way for competing successors. Based on historical explorations of British and US hegemony, the article discusses the prospects of a hegemonic succession after the decline of the United States. It analyzes whether such a hegemonic change will take place in the framework of the capitalist world system, eventually leading to a period of presumably Chinese hegemony, or whether the current global turmoil will rather open a period of chaos, putting an end to the cyclical renewal of global capitalism, as we experienced during the last 500 years.

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Starting from the historical roots of Eastern European peripheralization and orientalization in the framework of the unfolding unequal division of labour in Europe since the 16 th century, the article is discussing concepts and trajectories of "catching-up" between 1867 and 2004. Both associative dependent integration with the world-economic cores and self-reliant national or regional integration can be observed. The evaluation departs from four historical moments, 1867 (Austro-Hungarian Compromise), 1918, 1945and 1989 with an outlook on the new geopolitical dividing lines and alliances after the dissolution of Comecon 1991 and the beginning of EU-enlargement towards Eastern Europe in 2004. Strategies, successes and limits are discussed in front of the interest of Western powers and Russia as well as geopolitical moments and cycles, offering opportunities and restrictions for governments to improve their national economy and international performance. In spite of undeniable upgrading processes in some periods, catching-up has been overshadowed by four fundamental traps: the growth trap, the national trap, the debt trap and the militarization trap, occuring at specific moments of the process, allowing to identify cycles of catching-up. Finally, as catching-up has been reproducing dependency and peripheralization in new forms, the concept of catching-up has to be reconsidered.