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This paper reports results from an analysis of the relationship between the structure of the city-to-city network of global airline passenger flows and the interstate world system. While many scholars suggest that the broader parameters of the world system structure the urban hierarchy embedded within or articulated to it, others argue that the urban hierarchy is decoupling from the world system. The analyses show that there has been some modest convergence in the distribution of power in the world city system. Moreover, they suggest that the mechanism for this convergence is the upward mobility of cities located in the semi-periphery and the east Asian region. The paper closes by considering the implication of these findings for a larger understanding of the relationship between globalisation, the structure of the world city system and its articulation with the world system.

Interdisciplinary literature on global commodity chains (GCCs)/global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs) contends that interfirm power differentials within globally networked forms of economic organization have implications for the developmental trajectories of nation-states. In this article, I advance these literatures in three ways. First, I bridge the two approaches by elaborating an exchange-theoretic conceptualization of interfirm power that is latent in the two literatures. This conceptualization focuses narrowly on the determinants of inter-firm power asymmetries and is useful for explaining why actual production networks vary in terms of the relative power of buyers and producers. Second, I develop an empirical framework to advance basic research on the link between globally networked forms of economic organization and national economic development. In particular, I derive cross-nationally and temporally comparable country-level measurements of the average bargaining power of a country's resident firms using industry-specific international exchange (trade) networks. I demonstrate the validity of these indices through a historical analysis of trade networks in the transport equipment and garment industries and by analysing crossnational variations in wages in the two industries. Finally, I conclude by charting a parallel path for GCC/GVC and GPN research that implicates global models of network organization in macro-comparative analyses of economic development.

In this article, I synthesize and extend the theoretical literature on global commodity chain (GCC) and global value chain (GVC) governance to generate a theory of the ‘globalness’ of value chains and the spatialization of value chain linkages. Drawing from the original GCC dichotomy of buyer/producer‐driven commodity chains, I emphasize the height of entry barriers to manufacturing and supplier capability differentials across the North–South divide as determinants of the amount and geographic extent of global offshoring behaviour. Using a novel empirical approach to the measurement of global offshoring behaviour at the global industry level, the article shows that the original GCC governance scheme successfully predicts the levels, rates and timing of global production fragmentation across three networked industries. Combining the original GCC governance scheme with the more recent GVC governance types, the theory leads to predictions about the specific types of GVC linkages that might occur given the drivenness of a chain and the geographical location of lead firms and their suppliers. I conclude by drawing out the theory's implications for our understanding of the link between value chain formation and economic development in the global South and suggesting areas for future research.