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While the Communist Manifesto is seen as a lucid prediction of capitalist globalisation, anti-capitalist revolutions have not followed its expectations. Capitalism has proven to be able to react very flexibly to the challenges produced by its own dynamics and to those posed by the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. The author postulates that the neglect of interactions between time and space (and related power structures) constitutes an important source of errors in predictions on the trajectory of capitalism. After summarising ways of predicting social and political change (including future studies and utopias), the role of predictions in global environmental politics is discussed, starting with a comprehensive study from the US Government (Global 2000). Highlighting the lack of transformative visions, the author turns to a critical analysis of capitalism, focusing on the relationship between the Communist Manifesto's vision and changes in revolutionary concepts and their failures. In his prediction on national revolutions, Marx underestimated the change in global spatial structures in the course of capitalist development, which led to a deepening of globalisation and to an arena of global politics. The theory of regulation has analysed a succession of specific phases of capitalist accumulation. In more recent times, however, this has been accompanied by the growing resilience of nation states, related to profi ts from uneven development, as a source of strengthening social compromises in the most advanced and powerful countries. Finally, mass migration undermines the principles of global capital mobility and national control of the mobility of labour (linked to sovereignty). While the political fragmentation of the globe contrasts with human rights norms and the fi ght against climate change, this fragmentation is strengthening many citizens' national identification in the Global North. The article concludes by discussing the difficulties of predicting the future of capitalism and concrete utopias of a post-capitalist society against the background of conflicts between a humanitarian and ecological globalism and the resilience of national egotisms in the Global North. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of dependency theory. The author notes that dependency theory is a diverse set of economic theoretical models and suggests that it should therefore not be labeled as a unified theory. Among other subjects, he discusses debates about underdevelopment in the developing world between such economists as André Gunder Frank and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the relationship between core and periphery within the international economic system, and the formation of social classes under the conditions of dependent economic development and globalization.

The article seeks to provide a definition of space as an analytical category in social science fields such as sociology, political science, and geography. It emphasizes the idea of the social construction of space and the concept of social space. It charts the exploration, appropriation, and organization of territory by human societies from the first civilizations in Western Asia to the emergence of capitalist societies and nation-states, as well as phenomena such as transnationalism, localization, and glocalization, which emerged with the globalization of the world economy. It also discusses the changing characteristics of Herrschaft (authority) in this context.

The article discusses the beginnings and evolution of global social policy initiatives, moving from government dominated projects and private foundation work to public-private partnerships, international human rights declarations and programs coming from the United Nations, and transnational efforts led by non-state actors particularly in medical care. A lack of global centralization and coordination for these social initiatives is noted, together with the "empowerment" processes which strengthen marginalised groups and potentially threaten political conflict.

In political science, policy networks are considered to be of increasing importance in linking public and private forms of governance. Though the term of ,,network society" has been used to stress an apparently dominant role of networks in contemporary processes of social regulation (Castells, Messner), the authors insist that the political role of networks can only be properly assessed in their relationship with hierarchical state structures, market-dominated forms of economic organization and civil society activities. They focus on the potentials of networks to help create an architecture of global governance which can transform the relationship between a globalized economy and fragmented political structures to successfully deal with social problems aggrevated by globalization. The authors discuss these potentials against the background of questions of legitimacy and power. Due to the lack of a central government authority in global governance these questions are particularly complex but very important. Two cases related to global health policy- the Global Fund and the Access Campaign - illustrate these problems, leading to the main conclusion that networked organizations as well as informal policy networks on the one hand dispose of an important potential to strengthen the role of emancipatory forces in global social policies against the dynamics of a globalized economy as well as against dominant elites in national politics. They can, on the other hand, also be exploited to defend existing structures of domination, and lead to a lack of coordination and public control. However, when network structures offer a framework to overcome deadlocks in established international organizations and are used to give a more effective voice to poor people and to push powerful actors to accept compromises, they might improve chances to strengthen global social policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents two of the editors' reflections on the adjective "peripheral" and its relation to such notions as marginality, boundary, a geometrically specific location, and the surface of a sphere versus the term's opposition to centrality and implication of distance from the center and its attraction. Also mulled upon is the use of "peripheral" as it is associated with computers and social integration, but also stressed is the use of the term in discussing economically underdeveloped areas.