 The rise and fall of great powers: macroeconomic geographies and historiesMichael Dunford Chapter 10 in Rethinking Uneven Development, 2026, pp 274-289 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: This chapter centres on questions concerning the rise and fall of great powers; the emergence of new economic, political and military powers in the Global South and East (GSE); and the conflicts that arise as the former seek to impede the development of the latter and preserve hegemony. Very few countries have managed to overcome obstacles to late development and make relative progress, but those that did are located in highly populous and resource-rich areas of the GSE (China, India, Southeast Asia), with Russia also recovering from the crises of the 1990s. Collectively, some of these countries are establishing new institutions of global governance and new payments systems. As these countries developed, a decline in rates of productive investment, economic growth and productivity of Western countries and the G7 deeply eroded the relative military, political and economic dominance of the Western world. At present, a bitter struggle pits the Collective West against its perceived adversaries in an attempt to preserve its leadership and inhibit the rise of potential rivals and their vision of an alternative multipolar world system. Keywords: Rising Powers; Declining Powers; Hegemony; Rules-Based Order; BRICS; Multipolarity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24148_11 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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