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As has been widely recognized in the literature, the post‐war economic boom which drew to a close by the early 1970s has been followed by an intense period of industrial restructuring characterized by marked instability in all three major spheres of economic activity: production, distribution, and finance. This process has taken place both at the global level and at the level of national economies (Cardenas, 1990). It reflects a profound change in the mode of capitalist accumulation. Prior to the current round of restructuring, accumulation was taken to be principally the inward‐oriented task of each nation's own economy. Now, it seems that successful capital accumulation (i.e. development) depends most upon a nation's competitive integration into the world market for goods and services (Garrido, 1995). The present mode of accumulation implies an opening of national economies to international trade in commodities and capital, both among the advanced industrial nations and between the industrialized and the newly‐industrializing countries. This has generated a heightened degree of competition among countries and among firms, given that the easy movement of capital, goods, and services has allowed for real competition to emerge among dispersed places around the globe based upon their comparative financial and productive advantages.

Since the publication of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World‐System in 1974, world‐systems theory has become a prominent explanatory framework for both political and economic international relations. Despite having its critics, world‐system theory continues to stimulate valuable theoretical discussion and empirical research. This special issue is devoted to samples of this work. Included in this issue are articles from well‐established world‐system theorists such as Giovanni Arrighi, Terry Boswell, and Christopher Chase‐Dunn. In addition, the influence world‐system theory is having on a new generation of scholars is exemplified in the work of Shawn McEntee. The international appeal of world‐system's theory is represented by the article by David Spener and Fernando Pozos Ponce.

The Mexican-American population has experienced a dramatic increase in ethnic entrepreneurship over the last several decades. In an attempt to explain this development, 25 Mexican-American entrepreneurs were interviewed in the Chicago area. These interviews focused upon the specific ethnic strategies used by these entrepreneurs to bridge the gap between the opportunity structures for entrepreneurship in the United States economy and the unique group characteristics or capacities for entrepreneurship characterizing the Mexican-American population. Based upon these interviews, we found that the favored ethnic strategy used by Mexican-American entrepreneurs involved attempts at socializing the economic encounter between co-ethnic customers and entrepreneurs. These socializing activities were examined using Goffman's frame analysis, with particular attention devoted to the collective organization of customer and entrepreneur experience in terms of an ethnic frame.

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.

Through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, European science slowly lifted itself out of the fog of Mediaeval scholasticism. A rational, quantified and mechanised world picture emerged. In 1769 an essay questioned why economics benefited so little from the use of mathematics and quantification. Today the opposite may be argued – the increasing loss of relevance of economics is associated with the use of mathematics. Based on Francis Bacon’s criticism of scholasticism, it is argued here that strong parallels exist between the decay of scholasticism and the decay of modern economics. From being a science of practice, late neoclassical economics has degenerated into “working upon itself”, as Bacon says about late scholasticism. Since the 1769 essay, economics has come “full circle”. The problem for economics is not then mathematics per se – mathematics is just one language in which science may decay.