Center-periphery relations in the 21st century

Abstract

In this essay, we postulate the relevance of the center-periphery “vision” to characterize global capitalism in its different periods and, especially, at present. We emphasize the asymmetries between central and peripheral countries, and how they display a pattern of unequal development, where the relations of dependence between the two are understood by the subordination exercised by the central pole over the peripheral one. Global capitalism, thus configured, confers on the economic centers oligopolistic—in some cases also oligopsonistic—market powers, accentuating a rentier relationship between the two poles. As a central corollary of our analysis, we point out that center-periphery relations in the 21st century exacerbate rentierism while diversifying it, under different rent appropriation strategies related to peripheral specificities. Thus, we can distinguish a “classic” rentierism derived from the extraction of natural resources, the financial rentierism characteristic of the neoliberal phase of capitalism, and the emergence of a new digital rentierism associated with the platform economy.