ABSTRACT
The world economy is made up of the totality of economic activity by competing states and corporations. This totality of economic activity has its own patterns of development that are characterised by certain general trends. The period from the Second World War to the 1970s was, for example, a period of high growth and limited recessions. The period since the 1970s has seen growth rates halve and the return of the boombust cycle. Again, the middle decades of the 20th century were dominated by certain state-led forms of development not just in the Eastern bloc but also in the welfare-state/ nationalisation economies of the West and in the developmental models of the Third World. In the period since the 1970s, the neo-liberal era, the role of the state has not been reduced but it has been altered so that it is now much more the facilitator of global corporations. These kind of general characteristics of the world economy as a whole will be examined in chapter four. This chapter is concerned with the relationships between the
competing parts of the economy, predominantly with the economic strengths and weaknesses of the different states that compose the system. This competition is the origin of the general patterns in the world economy, patterns produced by blind interaction rather than conscious intention. But the weight and position of the competing states within this wider pattern is often the element that drives the system beyond economic competition towards military conflict.
