UC Davis

World System Theory suggests structural systemic crisis triggers anti-systemic movements as “struggles of imagination” for a different world “not on the basis of some utopian prescription but on the basis of concrete struggles” (Magnusson and Walker 1988, 62). Currently, no government or major organization claims that we are on track to meet the Paris Agreement targets. As such, the hegemonic world system of neoliberal capitalism is failing to meet 21st century challenges of climate change and rising inequalities such as climate justice and the Sustainable Development Goals. In response, a global anti-systemic movement of organizations, businesses, government bodies, and social movements has emerged, prefiguring an alternative regulatory regime and business ecosystem. Using social network analysis (SNA), supplemented by ethnographic research, a portion of the U.S. "Next System" (after neoliberalism) political economy was modeled based on the relationships between “Next System” economic development organizations (EDOs). This research highlights who and what kinds of “Next System” EDOs tend to work together and how their political and socioeconomic positioning within the US political economy influence the economic development strategy they provide to their clients (such as businesses and non-profits supplying products and services, government bodies, or community groups). Results suggest there are three major subgroups within the network with dense interconnected ties, defined as coalitions, with differing political strategies. First, a group of think tanks and national organizations characterized by workers with graduate degrees, focused on policy changes and pilot projects, and with extensive connections to the broader neoliberal political economy. Second, a diverse group of organizations, cooperatives, and public benefit companies seeking to reinvent how economic entities operate and focused on delivering basic needs and services in a sustainable way. Third, a group of organizations and informal associations who focus on prefigurative economics, solidarity and movement economics, and socially embedded economic practices. A fourth novel community of organizations with loose ties also is emerging with synergistic characteristics of the other three. While tensions and contradictions within the network, and issues of visibility, challenge its ability to keep growing and evolving, network analysis suggests the network is maturing into a self-sustaining paradigm which can guide policy and business practices in sustainable and socially just ways that are neither a continuation of neoliberal theory nor a revolutionary break from it.