"Product of the Twenty-seventh Annual Conference of the Political Economy of the World-System held at Georgetown University in April 24-25, 2003"--Acknowledgements.

Hegemony, rivalry, and the trajectory of the world-system / Faruk Tabak -- The Bush regime and the collapse of the postwar geopolitical structures / Immanuel Wallerstein -- Rough road to empire / Giovanni Arrighi -- The U.S. trajectory / Thomas Reifer, Christopher Chase-Dunn, and Andrew Jorgenson -- The trans-Atlantic conflict over primacy / Peter Gowan -- Japan / Ravi Arvind Palat -- Rising intra-core rivalry and the U.S. turn toward East Asia / John Gulick -- Europe as alternative empire / Çağlar Keyder -- Hegemonic rivalry and the periphery / Keith Nurse -- The great powers and the global environment in the twentieth century / John R. McNeill.