Globale Ungleichheit: Weltgesellschaftliche Perspektiven

A common claim made by world system theory and world society theory is that the observable differences in the world system or the world society are to be considered as consequences of the structure of the overall system. This claim is tested by considering the current research on global income inequality. One finding of this research is that the individual share in global income is predominantly determined by where an individual lives. While it is difficult for Luhmann’s theory of world society to account for this observation, from the point of view of world system theory this observation can be interpreted as a result of globally effective profit interests which exploit the political segmentation of the globe. Nevertheless, this interpretation also has to be questioned. On the one hand, there are strong indications that the economic development and the distribution of income are strongly determined by national factors that cannot easily be interpreted as consequences of global forces. On the other hand, world system theory has not succeeded in establishing the mechanisms by which structures of global exploitation operate. It is argued that these findings do not invalidate a world societal perspective on global inequality, but only invalidate the stronger claim that global structures are necessarily determined by global forces. Rather, national structures are still shaping global structures to a high degree.