Object: a five-hundred-year history of the Modern world-system development. Goal: to identify the features and causes of intensified interstate competition for hegemony, the functioning of the world-system in the context of the global economic and political crisis, and the place of Ukraine in the new world order of the XXI century. Methods: a complex of historical and theoretical methods in the study of the history of capitalism and its impact on the format of state-building at the beginning of the Modern Era, methods of specific comparative political and sociological research in the field of history of international relations. The provisions of the dissertation are based on such methodological approaches as: systems analysis, structural-functional approach, comparative analysis of social transformations, institutional analysis, history, and genetic approach. Theoretical and practical results, the novelty in research are: the correlation of political transformations of the birth of capitalist world-system era, the beginning of absolutist states era and bourgeois revolutions together with the crisis of the world-system in the XXI century and its potential transformation in the near future; a comprehensive analysis of the incorporation of the territory of Ukraine during its belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Pol. Rzeczpospolita), Poland, the Russian Empire, the USSR and modern independent Ukraine in the European world-economy. In addition, the causes and sources of the critical level of enslavement and exploitation of the population, the essence, and necessity of the formation of the Soviet centralized military-bureaucratic model of the state through the prism of world-system analysis are revealed; global political transformations in terms of the transformation of the global elite in the context of deepening crisis of the neoliberal project of international relations, automation of production and the possible dismantling of the capitalist world-system and political hegemony have been analyzed; the prognosis on the future project of interstate relations, a transformation of a way of production, building new supranational institutes of management and systems of public self-government are suggested. Practical significance is: firstly, to expand knowledge about the place of Ukraine as a peripheral state in the context of the global crisis of the capitalist world-system. Secondly, the main political ideas of world-system analysis can be used for further development of the political and legal concept of Ukrainian state-building, taking into account the features of contemporary modernization processes in the world. Field of usage: The main provisions and conclusions of the research could be used by think tanks and government agencies, as well as in teaching courses such as: «Political Science», «Political Philosophy», «Contemporary Global Problems», «Political Systems of the World».
