ABSTRACT
This chapter generates tentative conclusions on the basis of comparisons of small and large world-systems. It considers the difference system size makes in the relative population sizes of the various interaction networks, and summarizes the work of others on the expanding boundaries of the Central political/military network (PMN) and prestige-goods network (PGN). The chapter discusses those general processes that seem to operate in all or most world-systems: pulsations of network growth and contraction, the rise and fall of larger polities, oscillation between political and market-based forms of accumulation, and the emergence of more unequal and more stable core/periphery hierarchies. It reviews comparisons of urban growth and changes in the size of empires in several different PMNs. The chapter also discusses some additional insights that comparative approach produces about the ways in which the modern world-system is similar or different from earlier systems.
