multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis; pioneered by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974
Mann challenges world-systems theorists on the issue of decline: the recession of the 1970s, it turns out, was an opportunity for the US to delay the crisis for several decades, permitting it to profit extensively from its seigneurial position