The intellectual legacy of Immanuel Wallerstein continues to speak with unusual clarity in times of global uncertainty. As the world today confronts the threat of stagflation, growing geopolitical tensions, and disruptions arising from the ongoing war in the Gulf, Wallerstein’s world-systems perspective offers a powerful framework to understand long-term structural change. He urged scholars to look beyond immediate events and to situate crises within the historical patterns of capitalism, where periods of expansion are followed by phases of stagnation and systemic transition. At a time when inflationary pressures, fractured supply chains, and shifting geopolitical coalitions are once again disturbing the global economy, his insights into hegemonic decline and the reorganization of the world economy appear noticeably relevant.

It is in this intellectual spirit that the Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Lecture was organized at the Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU). The lecture brought together scholars, students, and researchers to reflect on contemporary global transformations through a critical and historically grounded perspective. The memorial lecture was delivered by Professor Ravi Arvind Palat, a distinguished political economist and a colleague of Wallerstein at Binghamton University. His lecture, titled The Emperor’s New Clothes: Delusions of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century offered a wide-ranging analysis of the changing configurations of global power and the apparent decline of American hegemony. 

Palat began by questioning the prevailing narrative that recent U.S. policies indicate a revival of its global dominance. Instead, he argued that the aggressive unilateralism of the second Trump administration reflects a serious........

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