ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the evolution of certain institutions in order to contribute to specified theory, in the hope that an understanding of historical developments in the sense will become possible. It aims to answer the questions of where our historical system came from by focusing on certain institutions that have played a central role in our own and previous systems. Historical action is the activity that alters institutions and transforms interactional logic. From its beginnings as a division of labor among the core countries of northwestern Europe, the Eastern European and Spanish American periphery, and the semi-periphery of the Christian Mediterranean, the modern world system expanded to become our international political economy. A clearly specified theory that explains the reproduction of the structures and processes of the international political economy has not been formulated.
