Global Politics Third Edition: Heywood & Whitham Textbook

‘Clear, intelligent, accessible and interesting – Heywood and Whitham represent the gold standard in global politics textbooks.’ –Jane Verbitsky, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand ‘Global Politics is a clinical treatment of diverse themes and issues in global studies, international relations, and the vast array of cultural dynamics in a fast-changing world. The authors’ interdisciplinary skills and unrelenting quest for excellence manifest in the demonstrated awareness of time and space. This book is an invaluable companion in the noble quest to transform our students into high-flying graduates and practitioners with proven intellectual acuities. I strongly recommend it to anyone passionate about training tomorrow’s scholars, practitioners, and truly global citizens.’ –Dr Raphael Chijioke Njoku, Professor of History and Global Studies, Idaho State University, USA ‘Among the many university textbooks on international relations, Global Politics by Andrew Heywood stands out for its clarity, readability and balance. This new edition with Ben Whitham has been considerably expanded and updated, taking into account new developments in global politics and the academic study of International Relations. Global Politics remains an ideal guide for students to navigate their way through the complexities and uncertainties of world affairs.’ –André W.M. Gerrits, Professor of International Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands ‘This is an exciting and comprehensive introduction to the study and practice of global politics. Heywood and Whitham have done a superb job updating the text so that the theories, concepts, topics, and recent events of global politics are clearly relevant to students. Pedagogically, they have managed to present the material in a way that facilitates understanding and critical thinking. In a crowded market, Global Politics clearly stands out as a textbook that has distinct advantages over the others.’ –Brian C. Schmidt, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University, Canada ‘The third edition of Global Politics is an impressive achievement. Managing to be both comprehensive and accessible, Heywood and Whitham thoroughly cover the key theoretical and empirical debates of the field, illustrating complex ideas with relevant examples and case studies, and taking account of the true globality of international politics. This is an essential textbook that will bring international relations to life, for students and teachers alike.’ –Leonie Jackson, Assistant Professor, Northumbria University, UK ‘Global Politics provides an extensive and critical approach to the field. It marshals vignettes, comparative theoretical perspectives, and illustrations to apply the student to the implications of each chapter. It takes seriously postcolonial and critical theories that question the received wisdom of western scholars. As a result, it lays strong claim to being a truly global textbook for students of global politics.’ –Paul S. Rowe, Professor of Political and International Studies, Trinity Western University, Canada ‘Heywood and Whitham do an excellent job in this third edition of Global Politics. The text has been revised and updated to be far more thorough and truly global. It now has a much broader range of themes and debates, and focuses on a wide range of theories and current developments. With its well-illustrated text enriched with key concepts, thinkers, figures, introducing diverse approaches, global actors, case studies, and perspectives, it is much more than an introductory textbook of international relations. This new edition will undoubtedly be an important book, inspiring students all over the world to pursue further studies.’ –Tuba Kancı, Associate Professor of Political Science, Kocaeli University, Turkey BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2011 This edition published 2023 Copyright © Andrew Heywood & Ben Whitham, 2023 © Andrew Heywood, 2011, 2014 The authors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image © MirageC/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Heywood, Andrew, author. | Whitham, Ben, author. Title: Global politics / Andrew Heywood, Ben Whitham. Description: Third edition. | London ; New York, N.Y. : Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “A systematic and integrated analysis of the theory and practice of contemporary international relations, covering traditional and critical theory, core issues and recent developments in the field”– Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022026515 (print) | LCCN 2022026516 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350328419 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350328426 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350328433 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350328440 (epub) | ISBN 9781350328457 Subjects: LCSH: International relations. | World politics. Classification: LCC JZ1310 .H49 2023 (print) | LCC JZ1310 (ebook) | DDC 327–dc23/eng/20230103 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026515 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026516 ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: eBook: 978-1-3503-2842-6 978-1-3503-2841-9 978-1-3503-2843-3 978-1-3503-2844-0 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. GLOBAL POLITICS THIRD EDITION ANDREW HEYWOOD & BEN WHITHAM Andrew Heywood dedicates this book to Oliver, Freya, Dominic, and Toby, his grandchildren and aspiring global citizens in their own right. Ben Whitham dedicates this book to all students of global politics, everywhere. In turbulent global times, as the powerful attempt to impose order, your study of this subject is an increasingly necessary and rebellious act. Ben also dedicates the book to the living memory of bell hooks (1952–2021), whose concepts, analysis, and pedagogical vision will continue to inspire as we seek to understand, critique, and above all change global politics. BRIEF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 1 2. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 29 3. TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 65 4. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 97 5. THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 133 6. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 169 7. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 201 8. NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 229 9. THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 257 10. POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER 287 11. WAR AND PEACE 323 12. THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION 351 13. TERRORISM 377 14. HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION 399 15. INTERNATIONAL LAW 431 16. POVERTY, DEVELOPMENT AND INEQUALITY 457 17. GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 491 18. WOMEN, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN GLOBAL POLITICS 521 19. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND THE UNITED NATIONS 545 20. GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 571 21. 601 REGIONALISM AND GLOBAL POLITICS 22. WHOSE GLOBAL POLITICS? 629 v CONTENTS 1 List of Illustrative Material xi About the Authors xv Tour of the Book xvi About the Website xviii Acknowledgements xix Preface to the Third Edition xxi INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 1 3 FROM ‘THE INTERNATIONAL’ TO ‘THE GLOBAL’? 2 From State-Centrism to the Mixed-Actor Model and Interdependence? 3 From the Domestic/International Divide to Transnationalism? 6 From International Anarchy to Global Governance? 7 2 GLOBALIZATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS Defining and Debating Globalization Anti-globalization Politics Globalism, Worlding and Worldism: Imagining Global Politics 9 9 11 LENSES ON GLOBAL POLITICS Traditional Perspectives Critical Perspectives 15 16 18 14 CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN GLOBAL POLITICS 22 USING THIS BOOK 25 THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 29 THE MAKING OF THE GLOBAL WORLD From the First Humans to ‘Civilizations’ The Dawn of the Age of Sail Colonialism and Capitalism Remake the World Industrialization and Imperialism 30 30 31 32 35 4 THE ‘SHORT’ TWENTIETH CENTURY: 1914–90 39 The Dawn of Mass Societies and Social Movements 39 The First World War 40 vi The Second World War End of Empires Rise and Fall of the Cold War 42 46 49 THE WORLD SINCE 1990 A ‘New World Order’? 9/11: The Return of History? The Return of Multipolarity 55 55 56 61 TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 65 WHAT IS THEORY? Types of Theory Components of Theory 66 66 67 THE BIRTH OF IR THEORY AND THE ‘MYTH’ OF 1919 The Traditional Narrative A Foundational Myth? Decolonial Reflections on IR’s ‘Origins Story’ 68 68 71 71 REALISM Classical Realism Statecraft and the National Interest Anarchy and Its Implications Polarity, Stability and the Balance of Power Assessing and Revising Realism 72 74 78 79 81 81 LIBERALISM Interdependence Liberalism Republican Liberalism Closing the Realist/Liberal Divide? Neoliberal Institutionalism Assessing Liberalism 83 84 85 86 88 89 THINKING GLOBALLY Challenge of Interconnectedness Cosmopolitanism 90 90 94 CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 97 THEORY AS CRITIQUE The ‘Critical’ in Critical Theory Critical Theories and the International 98 98 99 Contents ANTI-COLONIAL, POSTCOLONIAL, AND DECOLONIAL THEORIES The Postcolonial Condition Anti-colonial Praxis Theorizing Postcolonial World Order FEMINIST THEORIES The Microsocial Roots of Feminist International Thought Feminisms and the International Theorizing International Relations with Feminist Thought Resurgent Nationalisms and the Longer-Term Effects of Global Financial Crisis 6 107 107 108 109 MARXIST, NEO-MARXIST, AND POSTMARXIST THEORIES Marxism and the International Strands of Marxism 111 112 113 POST-STRUCTURALIST THEORY Post-structuralism and the International 116 117 CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES Constructivism and the International Constructivism, Conflict and Change in the International System 120 124 THE FUTURE OF CRITICAL THEORY IN GLOBAL POLITICS Tensions and Synergies within Critical Theory New Critical Theories for New Crises and New Injustices? 5 99 99 101 104 vii 167 THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 169 STATES AND STATEHOOD IN FLUX States and Sovereignty The State and Globalization State Transformation Behavioural Economics and the ‘Nudge’ State The Postmodern State Return of the State 170 170 175 178 181 181 185 NATIONAL GOVERNMENT TO MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE From Government to Governance Multilevel Governance 189 189 191 FOREIGN POLICY The End of Foreign Policy? How Decisions Are Made 193 195 196 SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 201 SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS: THICK TO THIN? From Industrialization to Post-industrialism Colonization and Decolonization New Technology and ‘Information Society’ Risk, Uncertainty and Insecurity 202 202 204 205 210 GLOBALIZATION, CONSUMERISM, AND THE INDIVIDUAL Understanding the Global through the Social Social and Cultural Implications of Globalization Consumerism Goes Global Rise of Individualism 214 214 215 216 218 GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY Explaining Global Civil Society Transnational Social Movements and NGOs Globalization from Below? 221 221 224 227 NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 229 NATIONALISM AND WORLD POLITICS Making Sense of Nationalism A World of Nation States Nationalism, War, and Conflict 230 230 233 239 126 128 128 7 129 THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 133 CAPITALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM Visions and Models of Capitalism Enterprise Capitalism Social Capitalism State Capitalism Racial Capitalism The ‘Triumph’ of Neoliberalism Implications of Neoliberalism 134 134 135 136 137 141 143 144 ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION Causes of Economic Globalization How Globalized Is Economic Life? 147 147 151 GLOBAL CAPITALISM IN CRISIS Explaining Booms and Slumps Lessons of the Great Crash Modern Crises and ‘Contagions’ The Asian Financial Crisis The 2007 Crash, the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession 155 155 157 159 160 161 8 viii 9 GLOBAL POLITICS NATIONS IN AN AGE OF MIGRATION A World on the Move Transnational Communities and Diasporas 241 241 244 NATIONALISM REVIVED The Resurgence of Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century Resurgence of Cultural Nationalism Resurgence of White Nationalism 248 THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 257 IDENTITY AND ITS POLITICS Identity and Culture Global Identities, Global Inequalities Difference and Global Social Conflict The End of Multiculturalism? 258 258 261 RELIGIOUS REVIVALISM Religion and Politics The Fundamentalist Upsurge 273 273 276 IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND CONTESTED WORLD ORDERS Cultural Hegemony: From an American to a Chinese World Order? ‘The West’ vs ‘the Rest’? ‘Asian Values’ 10 249 250 252 11 266 272 279 280 282 282 POWER AND TWENTY-FIRSTCENTURY WORLD ORDER 287 THEORIES OF POWER AND GLOBAL POLITICS Power As Capability Sources of State Power Relational Power Structural Power Changing Nature of Power From ‘Power Over’ to ‘Power With’ 288 288 288 291 291 293 295 COLD WAR BIPOLARITY AND ITS AFTERMATH Cold War Bipolarity The End of the Cold War The ‘New World Order’ and Its Fate 296 296 297 300 12 UNIPOLARITY: US HEGEMONY AND WORLD ORDER Rise to Hegemony The ‘War on Terror’ and Beyond Benevolent or Malign Hegemony? 301 301 303 306 A MULTIPOLAR GLOBAL ORDER? Rise of Emerging Powers Beyond State-centric Models of World Order Multipolar Order or Disorder? 310 310 316 317 WAR AND PEACE 323 NATURE OF WAR Types of War Why Do Wars Occur? The Human Level The Societal Level The State Level The Structural Level War as a Continuation of Politics 324 324 326 326 327 327 328 328 CHANGING FACE OF WAR From ‘Old’ Wars to ‘New’ Wars? ‘Hybrid’ Warfare and Cyberattacks 332 332 338 JUSTIFYING WAR Realpolitik Just War Theory Pacifism 342 342 343 348 THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION 351 DEFINING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION The Earliest Definition The Contemporary Definition 352 352 353 NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION Nature of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation during the Cold War Proliferation in the Post-Cold War Era 355 355 356 358 NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT Arms Control and Anti-proliferation Strategies A World Free of Nuclear Weapons? 365 365 372 Contents 13 14 15 TERRORISM 377 UNDERSTANDING TERRORISM Defining Terrorism Rise of ‘New’ Terrorism? 378 379 381 SIGNIFICANCE OF TERRORISM Terrorism Goes Global The Globalization of White Supremacist Terror 386 386 COUNTERING TERRORISM Strengthening State Security Military Repression Political Deals 391 391 392 395 HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION INTERNATIONAL LAW IN FLUX From International Law to World Law? Developments in the Laws of War International Tribunals and the International Criminal Court 16 388 399 DEFINING HUMAN RIGHTS The Individual in Global Politics Types of Human Rights Implications of Human Rights for Global Politics 400 400 401 THE HUMAN RIGHTS REGIME The UN NGOs States 408 408 409 412 CHALLENGING HUMAN RIGHTS Philosophical Backlash Postcolonial Critiques 414 414 415 HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION Rise and Decline of Humanitarian Intervention Humanitarian Intervention and the ‘New World Order’ Humanitarian Intervention and the ‘War on Terror’ Conditions for Humanitarian Intervention A ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P)? Does Humanitarian Intervention Work? 416 416 INTERNATIONAL LAW 431 NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW What Is Law? Sources of International Law Why Is International Law Obeyed? 432 432 435 437 ix 405 17 417 419 423 424 425 18 442 442 446 448 POVERTY, DEVELOPMENT AND INEQUALITY 457 UNDERSTANDING POVERTY AND DEVELOPMENT Defining and Measuring Poverty Development: Competing Visions 458 458 460 A MORE UNEQUAL WORLD? Making Sense of Global Inequality Contours of Global Inequality Globalization, Poverty and Inequality Does Global Inequality Matter? 467 467 469 473 475 DEVELOPMENT AND THE POLITICS OF AID Structural Adjustment Programmes and Beyond International Aid and the Development Ethic Debt Relief and Fair Trade 476 476 481 487 GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 491 THE RISE OF GREEN POLITICS The Environment As a Global Issue Green Politics: Reformism or Radicalism? 492 492 496 CLIMATE CHANGE Causes of Climate Change Consequences of Climate Change How Should Climate Change Be Tackled? Why Is International Cooperation So Difficult to Achieve? 502 502 505 508 RESOURCE SECURITY Resources, Power, and Prosperity 516 518 WOMEN, GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN GLOBAL POLITICS 521 FEMINISM, GENDER AND GLOBAL POLITICS Feminist Thought and Movement ‘Gender Lenses’ on Global Politics 522 522 525 513 x GLOBAL POLITICS GENDERING AND QUEERING GLOBAL POLITICS Gendered States and Gendered Nations Gendering Security, War and Armed Conflict Gender, Globalization and Development Queering and Decolonizing Gendered Global Politics 19 20 REFORMING THE BRETTON WOODS SYSTEM? Global Economic Governance and the 2007–9 Crisis A ‘Beijing Consensus’? 527 527 532 537 541 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND THE UNITED NATIONS 545 INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION Rise of International Organization Why Are International Organizations Created? 546 546 547 THE UNITED NATIONS From the League of Nations to the UN The Structure of the UN Promoting Peace and Security From Peacekeeping to Peace-Building Does UN Peacekeeping and Peace-Building Work? Promoting Economic and Social Development Future of the UN: Challenges and Reform 551 551 552 554 559 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 571 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE What Global Governance Is, and Is Not Global Governance: Myth or Reality? 572 572 577 GLOBAL ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE Beginnings of the Bretton Woods System Fate of the Bretton Woods System 578 578 580 EVALUATING GLOBAL ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE The International Monetary Fund The World Bank The World Trade Organization 584 584 587 588 561 562 564 21 22 590 590 596 REGIONALISM AND GLOBAL POLITICS 601 REGIONS AND REGIONALISM Nature of Regionalism Why Regionalism? Regionalism and Globalization Regionalism in Asia Regionalism in Africa Regionalism in the Americas Regionalism in Europe 602 602 605 609 611 614 615 616 WHOSE GLOBAL POLITICS? 629 WHITHER ‘THE GLOBAL’? Tensions in the Global Village The End of the Global, or of Globalism? A Reordering of Global Politics 630 631 633 635 CONTENDING VISIONS OF THE GLOBAL FUTURE A Borderless World? A World of Democracies? A Chinese Century? The Growth of International Community? The Rise of the Global South? The Coming Environmental Catastrophe? Global Politics Beyond the Globe? 636 637 639 640 641 642 643 644 AN UNKNOWABLE FUTURE? Whose Global Future? 646 647 Bibliography 649 Index 670 ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL FIGURES 1.1 The domain of global politics 2.1 The growth of the world population since 1700 2.2 Growth of membership of the United Nations, 1945 to present 3.1 Realism’s core theme and two main approaches 5.1 The Great Recession and the globalization of crisis 6.1 Multilevel governance 8.1 Refugees worldwide, by region 10.1 Hard, soft, and smart power 10.2 GDP of India, 2000–2020 (in trillions of USD) 312 12.1 Accumulation of nuclear warheads by the United States and the Soviet Union, 1945–90 357 12.2 Number of warheads held by nuclear powers, 2020 (estimates of deployed and non-deployed weapons) 362 16.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 459 16.2 World Bank data showing the reduction in the proportion of China’s population living in absolute poverty 470 22.1 World military expenditure 635 2 33 48 74 166 191 244 294 TABLES 6.1 Examples of localization 192 10.1 Extending spheres of influence 297 14.1 Three generations of human rights 404 16.1 Top ten and bottom ten countries in terms of Human Development Indicators (HDI) rankings 471 18.1 Top ten and bottom ten countries in the Gender Inequality Index (GII) league tables 19.1 Liberal and realist perspectives on international organizations 20.1 Competing models of global politics 21.1 Key regional organizations and groupings of the world 540 547 576 607 MAPS 2.1 Colonial holdings, circa 1914 10.1 The BRICS emerging powers 35 311 CONCEPTS Arms Race Balance of Power Chaos Theory Collective Security Confucianism 356 343 94 555 283 Consumerism Cultural Globalization Culture Ecology Economic Globalization xi 216 217 258 493 147 Ethnicity Failed State Federalism Fordism/Post-Fordism Foreign Policy 270 185 193 203 196 xii GLOBAL POLITICS Gender Genocide Geopolitics Global Civil Society Global Governance Globalization Governance Governmentality Hegemony Humanitarian Intervention Human Rights Idealism Imperialism Individualism Interdependence Intergovernmentalism International Aid International Law International Organization 523 424 517 222 572 9 189 179 302 417 400 83 35 220 5 577 484 432 546 International Regime Intersectionality Laissez-Faire Liberal Democracy Liberal Internationalism Multiculturalism Multilateralism Multipolarity National Interest Nation State Neoconservatism Neoliberalism Othering Peace-Building Peacekeeping Political Globalization Post-Materialism Power Queer Theory 89 111 158 267 85 270 579 310 197 236 305 143 268 560 559 178 224 288 525 ‘Race’, Racism, and Racialization 100 Reciprocity 437 Regionalism 603 Religion 274 Religious Fundamentalism 276 Sovereignty 4 Subsidiarity 620 Superpower 49 Supranationalism 575 Terrorism 379 The Nation 230 The State 172 The West 33 Third World 47 Transnational Community 245 Underdevelopment 467 Unipolarity 303 World Government 574 Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–1989) 275 Cabral, Amílcar (1924–73) 325 Carmichael, Stokely/ Kwame Ture (1941–98) 292 Chomsky, Noam (1928–) 307 Fanon, Frantz (1925–61) 282 Mearsheimer, John (1947–) 318 Nye, Joseph S. (1937–) 295 Qutb, Sayyid (1906–66) 285 Said, Edward (1935–2003) 268 von Clausewitz, Carl (1780–1831) 329 Theorists of Race and Class 105 Hayek, Friedrich (1899–1992) 144 hooks, bell (1952–2021) 110 Tickner, J. Ann (1937–) 110 Maynard Keynes, John (1883–1946) 160 Smith, Adam (1723–90) 135 Wallerstein, Immanuel (1930–2019) 154 Queer Theorists of Global Politics 542 Held, David (1951–2019) 577 Keohane, Robert (1941–) 548 Stiglitz, Joseph (1943–) 585 Wilson, Woodrow (1856–1924) 551 Regional Integration, Key Theorists609 Baldwin, James (1924–87) 633 Bull, Hedley (1932–85) 643 Fukuyama, Francis (1952–) 640 Monnet, Jean (1888–1979) 617 Sociology of Globalization, Key Theorists 212 Klein, Naomi (1970–) 216 War, Key Theorists 336 FEATURED FIGURES Carr, E. H. (1892–1982) 45 Confucius (551–479 BCE) 34 Foucault, Michel (1926–84) 19 Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940) 40 Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679) 16 Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) 17 Ling, L. H. M. (1955–2018) 14 Morgenthau, Hans (1904–80) 79 Rosenau, James (1924–2011) 93 Waltz, Kenneth (1924–2013) 80 Contemporary Economics, Key Theorists 163 Cox, Robert (1926–2018) 180 Christine Chinkin (1949–) 442 Development, Key Theorists 485 Ecofeminist Theorists 514 Enloe, Cynthia (1938–) 539 Green Politics, Key Theorists 496 Nationalism, Key Theorists 238 Illustrative Material Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand (1869–1948) 349 Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645) 433 xiii Jackson, Richard (1967–) Tate, Merze (1905–96) 386 356 Walzer, Michael (1935–) 345 International Court of Justice International Monetary Fund Non-Governmental Organizations North Atlantic Treaty Organization The European Union The Muslim Brotherhood 445 586 The United Nations 565 The United States of America 58 The Women’s Movement 524 The World Bank 480 The World Trade Organization 638 The ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (Isis) 390 Transnational Corporations 149 International Law International Organization International Political Economy Nationalism Social Structure and Agency Society Terrorism 440 549 GLOBAL ACTORS Amnesty International Black Lives Matter China Google Group of Twenty India Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 411 103 314 211 177 251 506 8 340 623 284 APPROACHES TO Development Gender Global Economic Governance History Human Nature Human Rights Identity 462 528 582 37 76 406 263 139 234 122 206 384 The 2020 Global Coronavirus Pandemic 20 The Balance of Power 359 The End of the Cold War 298 The Natural Environment 500 The State 183 War and Peace 330 DEBATING Was the Cold War Inevitable? Do Moral Obligations Extend to the Whole of Humanity? Does Economic Globalization Promote Prosperity and Opportunity for All? Is State Sovereignty Now an Outdated Concept? Is Globalization Producing a Global Monoculture? Is Nationalism Inherently Aggressive and Oppressive? Does the United States Remain a Global Hegemon? 51 92 152 187 222 239 309 Are Interstate Wars a Thing of the Past? 333 Do Nuclear Weapons Promote Peace and Stability? 364 Does the Need to Counter Terrorism Justify Restricting Human Rights and Basic Freedoms? 396 Is Humanitarian Intervention Justified? 427 Is the International Criminal Court an Effective Means of Upholding Order and Justice? 454 Does International Aid Work? 488 Can Only Radical Action Tackle the Problem of Climate Change? 515 Would a Matriarchal Society Be More Peaceful? 535 Is the UN Obsolete and Unnecessary? 566 Does Free Trade Ensure Prosperity and Peace? 592 Does the Advance of Regionalism Threaten Global Order and Stability? 612 xiv GLOBAL POLITICS FOCUS ON Defining Global Politics? 3 The Westphalian States System 6 Hitler’s War? 46 Invading Afghanistan: Learning from History? 57 Neorealist Stability Theory: The Logic of Numbers? 73 The Democratic Peace Thesis 87 The Global Colour Line 106 ‘Fake News’: A Post-truth World Order? 119 A Chinese Economic Model? 142 The ‘Washington Consensus’ 145 From the ‘Knowledge Economy’ to a Global ‘Gig’ Economy? 146 Russia Resurgent? 186 Society of the Spectacle? 218 International Migration: Are People Pulled or Pushed? 242 The Two Nationalisms: Good and Bad? 248 Promoting Democracy: For or Against? 279 Pre-emptive Attack 307 Hegemonic Stability Theory 308 Offensive or Defensive Realism? 317 To Balance or to Bandwagon? 319 The Iraq War As a ‘New’ War? 337 The Rise and Fall of CounterInsurgency? 341 Principles of a Just War 344 State Uses of Chemical WMD in the Twenty-First Century 354 North Korea: A ‘Rogue’ Nuclear State? 371 Suicide Terrorism: Religious Martyrdom or Political Strategy? 382 Indigenous Rights 403 The USA: A ‘Rogue State’? 453 The North–South Divide 464 The Zapatistas in Mexico: Alternative Development in Action? 465 The Tragedy of the Commons? 495 Sustainable Development: Reconciling Growth with Ecology? 499 The Anthropocene 503 The Thunberg Effect? 505 The Paradox of Plenty: Resources As a Curse? 519 Human Security: Individuals at Risk? 533 ‘Trans-exclusionary’, or ‘Gender Critical’? 537 Reforming the UN Security Council? 554 The G7/8: An Abandoned Project? 596 The BRICS and the New Development Bank: An Alternative to Bretton Woods? 597 Regionalism in Asia: Replicating European Experience? 613 Europe as a Racist Project? 617 How the European Union Works 618 Crisis after Crisis: Can the EU Survive? 625 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION 9/11 and Global (In) Security23 Fall of the Berlin Wall 54 Paris Peace Conference 1919–2070 The West in an Age of Debt and Austerity 165 The Palestinian Quest for Statehood174 NGOs and the International Criminal Court 226 A Migration ‘Crisis’ in Europe?247 The Arab Spring and Its Legacy278 Sino-US Relations in the Twenty-First Century 320 The War in Afghanistan As a ‘Just War’ 347 Iran and the Bomb 370 The Killing of Osama bin Laden394 Humanitarian Intervention in Libya 422 Charles Taylor’s Conviction for War Crimes 451 From the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals 483 The Paris Agreement 512 Gendered Violence in Anti-Muslim Riots in Gujarat 531 The Backlash Against International Organizations 558 Post-Crash Global Economic Governance594 The EU Expands to the East 624 ABOUT THE AUTHORS ANDREW HEYWOOD Andrew Heywood is a freelance author who caters to the needs of students studying political science and international relations. His bestselling textbooks, including Politics (2019), Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations (2015), Political Ideologies (2012), and Political Theory, have been used by hundreds of thousands of students around the world, and translated into more than twenty languages. A teacher of politics for over twenty-five years, Andrew also worked as Vice Principal of Croydon College and was for many years a Chief Examiner in A-Level government and politics. He currently lives in Cornwall. DR BEN WHITHAM Dr Ben Whitham researches, teaches, and writes about global politics. He has held lectureships in International Relations at De Montfort University (2016–2021) and SOAS, University of London (2021–present). Ben’s research approach is rooted in political sociology and critical social theory, and explores issues relating to global intersecting inequalities and cultural politics – from the theory and practice of neoliberalism, to Islamophobia, austerity, and the dynamics of racial capitalism. His research has been published in leading scholarly journals and edited volumes. Ben was awarded his PhD from the University of Reading in 2015, is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and in 2019 won the Political Studies Association’s Bernard Crick Prize for Outstanding Teaching. He lives in Brighton and is a keen student of traditional Chinese martial arts. xv TOUR OF THE BOOK The pedagogical features found in this book allow important events, concepts, and theoretical issues to be examined in greater depth or detail, whilst also maintaining the flow of the main body of the text. They are, moreover, designed to encourage readers to think critically and independently about the key issues in political analysis. Each chapter starts with a Preview that outlines the major themes and a series of questions that highlight the central themes and issues addressed in the chapter. At the end of each chapter there is a Summary of its major points, a list of Questions for discussion, and suggestions for Further reading. Additional material is provided throughout the text in the form of glossary panels and boxed information. These boxes are comprehensively cross-referenced throughout the text. The most significant features are the following: CHAPTER PREVIEW The preview outlines the major themes and issues of each topic, and sets forth the broad ideas that the chapter will articulate and explore. KEY ISSUES A series of questions that will provoke further thought around this topic. The chapter will provide you with the skills to answer and examine these questions thoughtfully. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION These questions will help you to reflect on the chapter, develop your arguments and explore the key ideas more thoroughly using the knowledge you’ve accumulated. FURTHER READING A useful lists of books providing more information or ideas on the topic, with a small summary of each recommended book and how it relates to the chapter. ONLINE RESOURCES A wealth of online resources accompanies this book, including a password-protected instructor area and a freely accessible student site. The student site offers additional debating prompts, case studies, chapter guides, a searchable glossary, self-test questions, web links, and suggested further reading. It is available at: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e. xvi Tour of the Book xvii KEY CONCEPTS These boxes describe in detail and analyse key concepts relevant to each topic covered, offering examples of how the concept may work or setting it in context. GLOSSARY Definitions for key words highlighted in red within the text. FOCUS ON These boxes provide either further insight into theoretical issues or additional material about the topics under discussion. KEY FIGURES Focus on boxes provide brief biographical material for key figures or major thinkers. Some of these boxes group together a number of influential theorists in a related area. GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION This feature examines major events in global politics and reflects on how they contribute to our understanding of world affairs. DEBATING The Debating boxes examine major controversies in global politics and highlight arguments for and against each particular proposition. GLOBAL ACTORS Consider the nature of key actors on the world stage and reflect on their impact and significance. APPROACHES TO... Outline important theoretical approaches to a central theme under discussion. In each case, we consider realist, liberal, postcolonial, Marxist, feminist, constructivist and poststructuralist views of the theme or issue. ABOUT THE WEBSITE This book is accompanied by a companion website that can be found at http://bloomsbury.pub/heywood-globalpolitics-3e. The website contains an array of resources for students that are freely accessible, as well as lecturer resources that can be accessed on request. For lecturers Exam and Essay Questions Critical questions for you to set in exams and assignments. Figures and Tables For you to add in to your own teaching materials. For students Case Studies Downloadable versions of case studies from the book, and those from earlier editions, helping you to broaden your knowledge of the global political environment. Chapter Previews Concise summaries of each chapter, helping you to consolidate your learning. Glossary Definitions of key terms in the book, allowing you to recap and revise. Key Thinkers A document with all of the book’s key thinkers in one place, arranged A-Z for easy reference. Questions Multiple choice questions for each chapter, plus a separate version with answers, for you to test your knowledge. Web Links Links to useful websites, arranged chapter-by-chapter, allowing you to explore key ideas and topics further. xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Ben Whitham would first like to thank Andrew Heywood for the opportunity to write this new edition of Global Politics with him, and the editors who commissioned and supported the writing of a revised edition – particularly Milly Weaver at Bloomsbury, and Andrew Malvern and Niki Arulanandam who worked on the text during their time at Macmillan. Their comments on drafts and suggestions on pedagogy were invaluable. The input and support of Becky Mutton, Liz Holmes, Deborah Maloney and others at Bloomsbury was also much appreciated. Ben is immensely grateful to the many people with whom he discussed the issues and ideas behind the new material in this edition, including, but not limited to: Lizzie Barker, Adam Beach, Andreas Behnke, Linda Bishai, Dan Bulley, Erika Cudworth, Dave Cudworth, Adam Fishwick, Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Jon Traynor, and many undergraduate and postgraduate students at DMU and SOAS, along with Sam Solomon and Arabella Stanger who generously read and commented on chapter drafts in a series of 2020 lockdown writing retreats. Ben is also indebted to the teaching of Dave Courtney-Jones, who has profoundly influenced his own pedagogical approach and therefore also the thinking that informs this book. Finally, Nadya Ali read, commented on, and discussed many sections of the new material, and provided crucial support and encouragement throughout the preparation of the manuscript for which Ben is eternally grateful. xix xx PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION The third edition of Global Politics provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the study of politics at the global level, and is newly co-authored by Andrew Heywood and Ben Whitham. The book has been significantly revised to account for major changes in both the theory and practice of international relations. It features an entirely new chapter on critical theories of global politics, in recognition of the much increased – and still growing – influence of such approaches within both the academic discipline of international relations and the wider public sphere. Postcolonial, decolonial, anti-racist, and feminist approaches now feature more prominently and in greater depth in the critical theories chapter and throughout the text. A wider range of key global political thinkers, concepts, and analysis is now covered to better represent the state of the art today. Discussion and analysis of global social movements, from Black Lives Matter to #MeToo, are embedded throughout the book to reflect their increased significance in world politics. The book’s discussion of nationalisms now includes both more material on emancipatory, anti-colonial nationalisms and analysis of the twenty-first-century rise of global white nationalism. The chapter on weapons of mass destruction has been broadened to include chemical weapons, which have been more frequently used in recent history. The chapter on the global politics of the environment has been updated to incorporate recent events and new environmental protest movements. And the third edition considers the seismic geopolitical, social, and economic shifts in world order that have characterized the early decades of the twenty-first century, from 9/11 and the global financial crisis to the anti-globalist turn, the rebalancing of relations between China, Russia, and the United States, the global Covid-19 pandemic, and the conflict in Ukraine. These are but a few key features of the new edition, and we hope that you find the book sheds light on how these, and a wide range of other issues, can be explained, analysed, and even practically addressed, with the help of pivotal concepts, theories, and theorists of global politics. Andrew Heywood and Ben Whitham 2023 xxi xxii INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 1 Source: hh5800/Getty Images PREVIEW How should we study politics? Traditionally, there was a tendency to focus on political actors and institutions at the local and national levels. Beyond this, students and scholars in the political subfield of international relations (IR) tend to consider ‘the international’ as the political space in which these local and national political interests are represented in the form of interaction between states, regions of states, and a worldwide ‘states system’. But since the late twentieth century, the concept of globalization has challenged these narrow, state-centric ways of thinking about politics. This book is about global politics, which is to say it is about how politics – struggles over power, how it should be distributed, and how we might best organize ourselves and live together as societies – works at the global level. But what is ‘the global’ when it comes to politics, and why does it matter? How does it differ from ‘the international’ as a way of seeing or imagining our world? What kinds of actors, institutions, and processes contribute the most to the globalization of politics, and which ones try to hold back its tide, and why? This chapter explores the rise of a global imaginary in discussions of politics and international relations, considers its implications for the study and practice of world politics – including issues ranging from state sovereignty to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic – and reflects upon continuity and change in global politics. KEY ISSUES z What is ‘the global’ and how does it relate to ‘the international’? z How have the contours of world politics changed in recent decades? z What have been the implications of globalization for world politics? z How do mainstream approaches to global politics differ from critical approaches? z Which aspects of world politics are changed by globalization, and which remain the same? 1 2 GLOBAL POLITICS FROM ‘THE INTERNATIONAL’ TO ‘THE GLOBAL’? State: A political institution that successfully claims sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders. The aim of this book is to provide an up-to-date, integrated, and forward-looking introduction to global politics. It seeks to be genuinely global while not ignoring the international dimension of world affairs, accepting that ‘the global’ and ‘the international’ complement one another and are not rival or incompatible modes of understanding. In this view, global politics encompasses not just politics at the ‘global’ level – that is, worldwide processes, systems, and institutional frameworks – but politics at, and, crucially, across, all levels – the worldwide, the regional, the national, and the subnational (see Figure 1.1). Such an approach reflects the fact that while, over an increasing range of issues, states interact with one another in conditions of global interconnectedness and interdependence, they nevertheless remain the key actors on the world stage. The worldwide The international The regional The subnational Figure 1.1 The domain of global politics However, if the international paradigm, in which world affairs boil down, essentially, to relations between and among states, no longer constitutes an adequate basis for understanding, what has changed, and how profound have these changes been? How have the contours of world politics changed in recent years? The most significant changes have been the following: z the emergence of new global actors; z the growth of interdependence and interconnectedness; z the erosion of the domestic/international divide; and z the rise of global governance. INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 3 FOCUS ON . . . DEFINING GLOBAL POLITICS? What does it mean to suggest that politics has ‘gone global’? How does ‘global’ politics differ from ‘international’ politics? The term ‘international’ means between nations, and is today commonly understood to mean between nation states or simply ‘states’. The term ‘global’, on the other hand, has two meanings. In the first, global means worldwide, having planetary (not merely regional or national) significance. The globe is, in effect, the world. Global politics, in this sense, refers to politics that is conducted at a global rather than a local, national, or regional level. It therefore focuses primarily on the work of organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which have a near universal membership, and on issues (such as the environment and the economy) where interconnectedness has gone so far that events and developments affect, actually or potentially, all parts of the world and so all people on the planet. In the second meaning (the one used in this book), global means comprehensive; it refers to all elements within a system, not just to the system as a whole. While such an approach acknowledges that a significant (and, perhaps, growing) range of political interactions now takes place at the global level, it rejects the idea that the global level has, in any sense, transcended politics at the national, local, or, for that matter, any other level. In particular, the advent of global politics does not imply that international politics should be consigned to the dustbin of history. This is important because the notion that politics has been caught up in a swirl of interconnectedness that effectively absorbs all of its parts, or ‘units’, into an indivisible, global whole is difficult to sustain. FROM STATE-CENTRISM TO THE MIXED-ACTOR MODEL AND INTERDEPENDENCE? World politics has conventionally been understood in international terms. Although the larger phenomenon of patterns of conflict and cooperation between and among territorially based political units has existed throughout history, the term ‘international relations’ was not coined until the UK philosopher and legal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) used it in his Principles of Morals and Legislation ([1789] 1968). Bentham’s use of the term acknowledged a significant shift: that, by the late eighteenth century, territorially based political units were coming to have a more clearly national character, making relations between them appear genuinely ‘inter-national’. However, although most modern states either are nation states (see p. 236) or aspire to be nation states, it is their possession of statehood rather than nationhood that allows them to act effectively on the world stage. ‘International’ politics should thus, more properly, be described as ‘interstate’ politics. But what is a state? As defined in international law by the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, a state must possess four qualifying properties: z a defined territory; z a permanent population; z an effective government; and z the ‘capacity to enter into relations with other states’. 1 4 GLOBAL POLITICS CON State-centrism: An approach to political analysis that takes the state to be the most important actor in the domestic realm and on the world stage. C E PT In this view, states or countries (the terms can be used interchangeably in this context) are taken to be the key actors on the world stage, and perhaps the only ones that warrant serious consideration. This is why the conventional approach to world politics is seen as state-centric, and why the international system is often portrayed as a states system. The origins of this view of international politics are usually traced back to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which established sovereignty as the distinguishing feature of the state. State sovereignty thus became the primary organizing principle of international politics. SOVEREIGNTY Sovereignty is the principle of supreme and unquestionable authority, reflected in the claim by the state to be the sole author of laws within its territory. External sovereignty (sometimes called ‘state sovereignty’ or ‘national sovereignty’) refers to the capacity of the state to act independently and autonomously on the world stage. This implies that states are legally equal and that the territorial integrity and political independence of a state are inviolable. Internal sovereignty refers to the location of supreme power or authority within the state. The institution of sovereignty is nevertheless developing and changing, both as new concepts of sovereignty emerge (‘economic sovereignty’, ‘food sovereignty’, and so on) and as sovereignty is adapted to new circumstances (‘pooled sovereignty’, ‘responsible sovereignty’, and so forth). States system: A pattern of relationships between and amongst states that establishes a measure of order and predictability (see p. 170). Mixed-actor model: The theory that, while not ignoring the role of states and national governments, international politics is shaped by a much broader range of interests and groups. ‘Billiard ball’ model: A way of seeing global politics, particularly among ‘realist’ thinkers, as a set of interactions between territorially bounded, discrete states; it is a state-centric model (see p. 171). However, the state-centric approach to world politics has become increasingly difficult to sustain. This has happened, in part, because it is no longer possible to treat states as the only significant actors on the world stage. Transnational corporations (TNCs) (see p. 149), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (see p. 8), and a host of other nonstate bodies have come to exert influence. In different ways and to different degrees, groups and organizations ranging from ISIS (see p. 390), the #MeToo movement (see p. 107), and Black Lives Matter (see p. 103) to Google (see p. 211) contribute to shaping world politics. Since the 1970s, indeed, pluralist theorists have advocated a mixed-actor model of world politics. However, although it is widely accepted that states and national governments are merely one category of actor amongst many on the world stage, they may still remain the most important actors. No TNC or NGO, for instance, can rival the state’s coercive power, either its capacity to enforce order within its borders or its ability to deal militarily with other states. (The changing role and significance of the state are examined in depth in Chapter 5.) While the state unquestionably retains a significant degree of power in global politics as compared to other actors, the so-called ‘billiard ball’ model – according to which states are essentially discrete, bounded entities interacting with (or ‘bouncing off ’) one another in international relations – is less sustainable. This model, traditionally advocated by ‘realist’ thinkers has lost ground to the ‘neoliberal institutionalist’ (see p. 88) claim that global politics is in fact characterized by ‘complex interdependence’ (Keohane and Nye 1977), but also to ‘critical’ explanations (see Chapter 4) that suggest the international INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS CON relations are really social relations, and thus were never entirely contained by the state. The mixture of actors and the range of issues over which they interact, the non-state and substate channels of interaction, and the increasing primacy of economic activity have all brought the global imaginary of a state-centric ‘Westphalian’ order (see p. 6) into question. C E PT 5 Global imaginary: An ‘imaginary’ is a way of seeing or imagining things. A global imaginary is a holistic way of imagining social, political, and economic life, at the level of the whole world rather than the local, national, or even international. INTERDEPENDENCE Interdependence refers to a relationship between two parties in which each is affected by decisions that are taken by the other. Interdependence implies mutual influence, even a rough equality between the parties in question, usually arising from a sense of mutual vulnerability. Interdependence, then, is usually associated with a trend towards cooperation and integration in world affairs. Keohane and Nye (1977) advanced the idea of ‘complex interdependence’ as an alternative to the realist model of international politics. This highlighted the extent to which (1) states have ceased to be autonomous international actors; (2) economic and other issues have become more prominent in world affairs; and (3) military force has become a less reliable and less important policy option. Some argue that the state’s special status as a global actor is preserved because it retains what the political sociologist Max Weber famously called the ‘monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber [1919] 1948). The state’s role as the entity that wages war, and maintains domestic law and order, is supposed to render it unique. But even this seems less certain in the early twentyfirst century, with the rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs) – the modern form of what have been known as ‘mercenaries’ – on the one hand, and the increasing privatization of policing and prisons, on the other. In their international relations, states have increasingly relied on PMSCs in armed conflicts, such as the United States in the Iraq War, while PMSCs have also been involved as paramilitary and covert forces in attempted coups d’état. An example of the latter is the unsuccessful attempt by former US Special Forces soldiers employed by a PMSC called Silvercorp USA to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in May 2020 (these mercenaries were ultimately captured and jailed by Venezuelan forces). Within states, meanwhile, armed and state-sanctioned private security firms have offered everything from the guarding of majority-white ‘gated communities’ in Johannesburg, South Africa, to the routine running of prisons and immigration detention centres in the United States and the United Kingdom. While states may retain the greatest quantity, and perhaps quality, of the means of ‘legitimate’ violence, they no longer appear to have a monopoly. The expanded role of substate and private actors in expressions of ‘war power’ and ‘police power’ (Neocleous 2014) lends further weight to the claim that we live in a ‘post-Westphalian’, global order characterized by complexity and interdependence. 1 6 GLOBAL POLITICS FOCUS ON . . . THE WESTPHALIAN STATES SYSTEM The Peace of Westphalia (1648) is commonly said to mark the beginning of modern international politics. The Peace was a series of treaties that brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which consisted of a series of declared and undeclared wars throughout central Europe involving the Holy Roman Empire and various opponents, including the Danes, the Dutch, and, above all, France and Sweden. Although the transition occurred over a much longer period of time, these treaties helped to transform a medieval Europe of overlapping authorities, loyalties, and identities into a modern states system. The so-called ‘Westphalian system’ was based on two key principles: z States enjoy sovereign jurisdiction, in the sense that they have independent control over what happens within their territory (all other institutions and groups, spiritual and temporal, are therefore subordinate to the state). z Relations between and among states are structured by the acceptance of the sovereign independence of all states (thus implying that states are legally equal). FROM THE DOMESTIC/INTERNATIONAL DIVIDE TO TRANSNATIONALISM? Globalization: The emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. Transnationalism: Political, social, economic, or other forms of action and interaction that transcend or cut across national borders. One of the key implications of approaching study from the perspective of ‘the international’ is that politics has a distinct spatial or territorial character. In short, borders and boundaries matter. This applies especially in the case of the distinction between domestic politics, which is concerned with the state’s role in maintaining order and carrying out regulation within its borders, and international politics, which is concerned with relations between and among states. In that sense, sovereignty is a ‘hard shell’ that divides the ‘inside’ of politics from the ‘outside’. This domestic/international, or ‘inside/outside’, divide also separates what have conventionally been seen as two quite different spheres of political interaction. Whereas politics ‘inside’ has an orderly and regulated character, stemming from the ability of the state within the domestic sphere to impose rule from above, order of this kind is absent from politics ‘outside’, in that there is no authority in the international sphere higher than the sovereign state. According to John Agnew (1994), such thinking had created a ‘territorial trap’ within the discipline of international relations, reflected in three assumptions. First, the state is a clearly bounded territorial space. Second, domestic and foreign affairs are entirely different realms. Third, states are ‘containers’ of society, implying that the boundaries of the state coincide with the boundaries of society. Such an emphasis on borders and clear territorial divisions have nevertheless come under pressure as a result of recent trends and developments, not least those associated with globalization. In particular, there has been a substantial growth in cross-border flows and transactions – movements of people, goods, money, information, and ideas. This has created the phenomenon of transnationalism. As state borders have become increasingly ‘porous’, the conventional domestic/international or ‘inside/outside’ divide has become more difficult to uphold. This can be illustrated by both the substantially greater vulnerability of domestic economies to events that take place elsewhere in the world (as demonstrated by the wide-ranging impact of the 2007–8 global financial crisis, and of the 2020 global coronavirus pandemic) and by the wider use of digital technologies that enable people to communicate with one another through means (such as mobile phones and the INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 7 1 internet) that national governments find difficult to control. It is also notable that issues that are prominent in world affairs, such as environmental politics and human rights, tend to have an intrinsically transnational character. However, claims that the modern world is effectively ‘borderless’ are manifestly absurd, and, in some ways, territorial divisions are becoming more important, not less important. This is evident, for instance, in the greater emphasis on national or ‘homeland’ security in many parts of the world since the terrorist attacks of September 11, and in attempts to constrain international migration by strengthening border and other immigration controls. FROM INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE? A key assumption of the traditional approach to international politics, and especially ‘realist’ thinking (see p. 72), has been that the states system operates in a context of anarchy. This reflects the notion that there is no higher authority than the state, meaning that external politics operates as an international ‘state of nature’, a pre-political society. The implications of international anarchy are profound. Most importantly, in the absence of any other force attending to their interests, states are forced to rely on themselves in a system of ‘self-help’ (see p. 80). If international politics operates as a ‘self-help system’, the powerseeking inclinations of one state are only tempered by competing tendencies in other states, suggesting that conflict and war are inevitable features of the international system. In this view, conflict is only constrained by a balance of power, either developed as a diplomatic strategy by peace-minded leaders or occurring through a happy coincidence. This image of anarchy has been modified by the idea that the international system operates more like an ‘international society’ (see p. 641). Hedley Bull ([1977] 2012) thus advanced the notion of Anarchy: Literally, without rule; the absence an ‘anarchical society’, in place of the conventional theory of international anarchy. However, the idea of international anarchy, and even the more modest notion of an ‘anarchical society’, has become more difficult to sustain because of the emergence, especially since 1945, of a framework of global governance (see Chapter 20) and sometimes regional governance. This is reflected in the growing importance of organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (see p. 584), the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see p. 588), the European Union (see p. 623), and so on. The growing number and significance of international organizations has occurred for powerful and pressing reasons. Notably, they reflect the fact that states are increasingly confronted by collective action problems; issues that are particularly taxing because they confound even the most powerful of states when acting alone. This first became apparent in relation to the development of technologized warfare and particularly the invention of nuclear weapons, but has since been reinforced by challenges such as financial crises, pandemics, climate change, terrorism, crime, migration, and development. Such trends, nevertheless, have yet to render the idea of international anarchy altogether redundant. While international organizations have undoubtedly become significant actors on the world stage, competing, at times, with states and other non-state actors, their impact should not be exaggerated. Apart from anything else, they are, to a greater or lesser extent, the creatures of their members: they can do no more than their member states, and especially powerful states, allow them to do. of a central government or higher authority, sometimes, but not necessarily, associated with instability and chaos. Balance of power: A condition in which no one state predominates over others, tending to create general equilibrium and curbing the hegemonic ambitions of all states. Collective action problems: A problem that stems from the interdependence of states, meaning that any solution must involve international cooperation rather than action by a single state. 8 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . NON- GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS A non-governmental organization (NGO) is a private, non-commercial group or body that seeks to achieve its ends through non-violent means. The World Bank (see p. 480) defines NGOs as ‘private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development’. Very early examples of such bodies were the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (formed by William Wilberforce in 1787) and the International Committee of the Red Cross, founded in 1863. The first official recognition of NGOs was by the United Nations (UN) in 1948, when forty-one NGOs were granted consultative status following the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (indeed, some NGO activists believe that only groups formally acknowledged by the UN should be regarded as ‘true’ NGOs). A distinction is often drawn between operational NGOs and advocacy NGOs: z Operational NGOs are those whose primary purpose is the design and implementation of development-related projects; they may be either relief-orientated or development-orientated, and they may be community-based, national, or international. z Advocacy NGOs exist to promote or defend a particular cause; they are sometimes termed ‘promotional pressure groups’ or ‘public interest groups’. Significance: Since the 1990s, the steady growth in the number of NGOs has become a veritable explosion. By 2021, 5,593 groups had been granted consultative status by the UN, with estimates suggesting a total of around 50 large (multi-country, multi-mandate) international NGOs and as many as 300,000 smaller internationally focused NGOs globally. If national and local NGOs are taken into account, the number grows enormously: as of 2021, the United States has an estimated 1.5 million NGOs; in 2017, Russia reportedly had 224,500 NGOs; and Kenya, to take one developing country alone, registered 11,262 new NGOs between 2001 and 2019. The major international NGOs have developed into huge organizations. For example, Care International, dedicated to the worldwide reduction of poverty, controls a budget worth more than $970 million, Greenpeace has a membership of 2.8 million and a staff of over 2,400, and Amnesty International is better resourced than the human rights arm of the UN. There can be little doubt that major international NGOs and the NGO sector as a whole now constitute significant actors on the global stage. Although lacking the economic leverage that TNCs can exert, advocacy NGOs have proved highly adept at mobilizing ‘soft’ power and popular pressure. In this respect, they have a number of advantages. These include that leading NGOs have cultivated high public profiles, often linked to public protests and demonstrations that attract eager media attention; that their typically altruistic and humanitarian objectives enable them to mobilize public support and exert moral pressure in a way that conventional politicians and political parties struggle to rival; and that, over a wide range of issues, the views of NGOs are taken to be both authoritative and disinterested, based on the use of specialists and academics. Operational NGOs, for their part, have come to deliver about 15 per cent of international aid, often demonstrating a greater speed of response and level of operational effectiveness than governmental bodies, national or international, can muster. Relief- and development-orientated NGOs may also be able to operate in politically sensitive areas where national governments, or even the UN, would be unwelcome. Nevertheless, the rise of the NGO has provoked considerable political controversy. Supporters of NGOs argue that they benefit and enrich global politics. They counterbalance corporate power, challenging the influence of TNCs; democratize global politics by articulating the interests of people and groups who have been disempowered by the globalization process; and act as a moral force, widening people’s sense of civic responsibility and even promoting global citizenship. In 9 these respects, they are a vital component of emergent global civil society (see p. 221). Critics, however, argue that NGOs are really self-appointed ‘pressure’ or ‘interest’ groups that have limited democratic credentials. NGOs have also faced criticism for cynical fund-raising and campaigning tactics, and for blunting the radical edge of social movements. Amid a series of recent scandals, some major Western international NGOs have been found to be involved in sexual exploitation and violence in developing countries and institutionally racist, bullying and abusive employment practices in their home countries, spawning the social media hashtag campaign #CharitySoWhite in 2019. (The impact and significance of NGOs are examined further in Chapter 6.) GLOBALIZATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS No development has challenged the conventional state-centric image of world politics more radically than the emergence of globalization. By the 1990s, globalization had become a key ‘buzzword’ from the social sciences to politics and pop culture, although its use has been in decline since the mid-2000s. The twenty-first century was supposed to be the ‘global century’, but what is ‘globalization’? Is it actually happening, and, if so, what are its implications? DEFINING AND DEBATING GLOBALIZATION Globalization is what W. B. Gallie (1955/6) would have called an ‘essentially contested concept’. That is to say that it has many definitions, some of which overlap and some of which conflict with one another. It has been variously defined as: z ‘[T]he intensification of worldwide social relations that link distant localities in a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’ (Giddens 1990). z ‘The integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, direct foreign investment, short-term capital flows, international flows of workers and humanity generally, and flows of technology’ (Bhagwati 2004). z ‘The processes through which sovereign nation states are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks’ (Beck 2000). CON z ‘A process (or set of processes) which embody the transformation of the spatial organization of social relations and transactions’ (Held et al. 1999). C E PT GLOBALIZATION Globalization is the emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. The central feature of globalization is therefore that geographical distance is of declining relevance and that territorial borders, such as those between nation states, are becoming less significant. By no means, however, does globalization imply that ‘the local’ and ‘the national’ are subordinated to ‘the global’. Rather, it highlights the deepening as well as the broadening of the political process, in the sense that local, national, and global events (or perhaps local, regional, national, international, and global events) constantly interact. 10 GLOBAL POLITICS Globality: A totally interconnected whole, such as the global economy; the social domain created by globalization. z ‘A reconfiguration of social geography marked by the growth of transplanetary and supraterritorial connections between people’ (Scholte 2005). z ‘A process of time-space compression – literally a shrinking world – in which the sources of even very local developments, from unemployment to ethnic conflict, may be traced to distant conditions or decisions’ (McGrew 2017). z ‘[T]he fad of the 1990s, and […] made in America’ (Waltz 1999). Globalization is a complex, elusive, and controversial term. Recent analysis of the literature on globalization has suggested its sometimes confused and contradictory definitions result from the tautology underpinning it: those who theorize globalization often do so by reference to claims about the existence of ‘the global’ (Kamola 2013, 2019). ‘Globalization’ has been used to refer to a process, a policy, a marketing strategy, a predicament, or even an ideology. Some have tried to bring greater clarity to the debate about the nature of globalization by distinguishing between globalization as a process or set of processes (highlighting the dynamics of transformation or change, in common with other words that end in the suffix ‘-ization’, such as modernization) and globality as a condition (indicating the set of circumstances that globalization has brought about, just as modernization has created a condition of modernity) (Steger 2003). The problem with defining globalization may be that it is not so much an ‘it’ as a ‘them’: it is not a single process but a complex of processes, sometimes overlapping and interlocking as well as, at times, contradictory and oppositional. Nevertheless, the various developments and manifestations that are associated with globalization, or indeed globality, can be traced back to the underlying phenomenon of interconnectedness between previously unconnected people and institutions. Held et al. (1999) thus defined globalization as ‘the widening, intensifying, speeding up, and growing impact of world-wide interconnectedness’. Although globalization theorists have championed particular interpretations of globalization, these are by no means all mutually exclusive. Instead, they capture different aspects of a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Globalization has been interpreted in three main ways: z Economic globalization (see p. 147) is the process through which national economies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been absorbed into a single global economy (examined in greater depth in Chapter 5). z Cultural globalization (see p. 217) is the process whereby information, commodities, and images that have been produced in one part of the world enter into a global flow that tends to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences between nations, regions, and individuals (discussed more fully in Chapter 7). z Political globalization (see p. 178) is the process through which policy-making responsibilities have been passed from national governments to international organizations (considered in greater detail in Chapter 6). But is globalization actually happening? Although globalization has been a buzzword in the social sciences, and among politicians and journalists, for decades, its very existence remains open to question. The most influential early attempt to outline the various positions on this globalization debate was set out by Held et al. (1999). They distinguished between three positions: INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS z the hyperglobalists; z the sceptics; and z the transformationalists. Hyperglobalism is arguably something of an intellectual ‘straw man’, since its rather extreme position – that globalization makes the state obsolete – is found more often in arguments against globalization theory than it is as a coherent theoretical position of its own. In fact, the one text that is almost always mentioned in the same breath as hyperglobalism is Keniche Ohmae’s (1990) The Borderless World. Ohmae’s book is aimed at corporate managers, but nevertheless became treated as a serious work of globalization theory, if only because its central arguments are easily refutable. Ohmae argued that the globalization of trade, led by the ‘Triad’ of the United States, Europe, and Japan, meant that ‘national borders have effectively disappeared’ between these countries. Even in the 1990s this claim was hyperbolic, but in the twenty-first century, with the reassertion of state power through the ‘war on terror’ (see p. 303), the rise of anti-immigration politics, and increasingly tough and complex immigration regimes, it is impossible to sustain. Globalization sceptics for their part, including many Marxist (see p. 111) and realist (see p. 72) thinkers, argue that globalization either does not exist at all or is not what hyperglobalists and other globalists think it is. Hirst and Thompson (1999) argue that claims about ‘economic globalization’, in particular, do not stand up to scrutiny, since ‘free’ transnational capital flows tend to be amongst major powers in general and the USA-Europe-Japan ‘Triad’ in particular. Realist sceptics, on the other hand, emphasize the fact that what liberal globalists and hyperglobalists call ‘globalization’ may actually be simply expressions of America’s global ‘hegemonic’ power. On this view, it is USdominated capital and US interests that benefit from the outsourcing of manufacture from West to East, and the influence of the international organizations that carry out ‘global governance’. For realists, an iron fist of military might lies within the velvet glove of ‘globalization’ talk; as Kenneth Waltz (see p. 80) noted of the fevered globalization theories and predictions that followed the end of the Cold War: ‘America continues to garrison much of the world and to look for ways of keeping troops in foreign countries’ (Waltz 2002). ‘Transformationalists’, meanwhile, are supposed to represent a ‘third way’ between those who embrace and those who reject claims about globalization. A transformationalist position on globalization admits that there have been profound changes – transformations – as a result of technological innovation and increased interconnectedness, but takes care to specify these changes closely rather than bundling them up as ‘globalization’. ANTI-GLOBALIZATION POLITICS Globalization has been subject not only to intellectual critiques by those who would suggest it does not exist, or is not what we think it is, but also to opposition in practice by a range of global political movements and actors opposed to its perceived ill-effects. There have been two broad trends in this politics of anti-globalization. The first is 11 Hyperglobalism: The view that new, globalized economic and cultural patterns became inevitable as a result of fast-paced information and communication technological (ICT) innovations in the twentieth century, and that globalization makes states obsolete, producing a ‘borderless world’. 1 12 GLOBAL POLITICS associated loosely with the transnational political left: activists, politicians, and NGOs arguing that globalization is really an intensification of the exploitation and violence done to working-class and marginalized people, and to the environment, around the world. The second is associated with a broadly right-wing tradition that can, ironically, be characterized as a ‘transnational nationalist’ movement. This right-wing movement opposes the immigration and racial mixing enabled by globalization, and laments how particular social groups it identifies with ‘the nation’ have ‘lost out’ or been ‘left behind’ by economic globalization. Left-Wing Anti-globalization The first wave of left-wing anti-globalization politics coalesced around mass demonstrations against the institutions of ‘global governance’ (see Chapter 20) at the turn of the millennium. Precipitated by the Zapatista uprising in Mexico in the mid-1990s (see p. 465), this transnational social movement was partly enabled by the rise of the internet, which provided new channels for activist organization and the planning and promotion of direct action and protest. Major demonstrations included those against the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999, and at the ‘Group of Eight’ (G8) major economies meeting in Genoa in 2001. Each of these demonstrations attracted many tens of thousands of protestors from around the world, campaigning across a huge range of issues, from ecological protection to the need to replace capitalism with a more humane economic system. This movement was associated with the World Social Forum (WSF), an alternative to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which was seen as a key global governance institution bringing the global economic and political elite together in Davos, Switzerland each year to discuss the future of the global economy. The WSF has instead met each year from 2001 in the ‘Global South’ (see p. 464), initially in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and brings together activists concerned with achieving ‘global social justice’ for workers, marginalized and minoritized groups, indigenous peoples, and the natural environment. As the movement developed in the 2000s and 2010s it became more closely associated with ‘alter-globalizations’ – recognizing that globalization may be both inevitable and a force for good, but emphasizing that the US-led, corporate, culturally homogenizing, and violently militaristic model of globalization, associated with undemocratic and unaccountable elites and their global governance institutions, is the ‘wrong’ kind of globalization. This broadly left-wing anti-globalization movement instead advocates a more open global immigration regime, or even an end to national borders altogether, more global cooperation to slow or reverse climate change and environmental degradation, and global cross-racial and working-class solidarities. After the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis, a series of related global movements and demonstrations emerged to contest the targeting of the crisis’s costs at vulnerable populations in the form of ‘austerity’ policies, often mirroring or overlapping the left-wing anti/alterglobalization movement. These included the anti-austerity ‘Indignados’ movement in Spain, the ‘Occupy’ movements, beginning with Occupy Wall Street, in 2011 and spreading to cities around the world, and the rise of leftist anti-austerity parties such as Syriza, which was elected to government in Greece in 2015. Between 2015 and INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 2020, left-wing veterans of the anti/alter-globalization and anti-austerity movements, including the US Senator Bernie Sanders and the British MP Jeremy Corbyn, became ‘mainstream’ political leaders in their respective national legislatures, although both ultimately failed in their ambitions to be elected to government. Right-Wing Anti-globalization The right-wing anti-globalization movement emerged as a relatively coherent, though less united and coordinated, global network much more recently. While the idea of transnational nationalist solidarity might appear contradictory or oxymoronic, given the investment of nationalist groups in ‘their’ respective national identities, and their hostility to foreigners, the situation is not so simple. In fact, historically speaking, nationalists have been at least as oriented towards transnational organizing and solidarity as liberal and left-wing global actors – think of the alliances and collaborations between Germany, Italy, and Spain when those three countries were under fascist rule, for example, and of the ‘Axis’ powers’ alliance in the Second World War (see p. 42). In the 2010s, parallel to the anti/alter-globalization left’s anti-austerity movement, there emerged an increasingly widespread and successful transnational right-wing movement, which argued against globalization and especially against ‘globalism’ (see p. 14). These consisted of local, national, and regional-level movements in Europe and North America, including organizations and political parties such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain, Alternatif fur Deutshland (AfD) in Germany, Generazione Identitaria (Generation Idenity) in Italy, and the movement around the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in the United States. Outside of the ‘West’ (see p. 33), similar movements emerged around the political leadership of Narendra Modi in India and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. While, like those involved in left-wing antiglobalization movements, these global political actors differ over the details of precise political goals and methods, they are united by the claims that ‘their’ people have lost out in various ways through globalization and liberal, globalist policy, and by their advocacy of racially or ‘ethnically’ defined concepts of national identity. Their politics at both the national and the global level tends to centre on the demonization of the political left, and of racialized, gendered, and sexual minorities, and especially on opposition to ‘mass’ immigration. If the first wave of left-wing anti-globalization politics was enabled by the dawn of the internet – a technology so shrewdly exploited by the Zapatistas and other parts of the anti-capitalist left – then the more right-wing turn against globalization could not have happened without social media. The transformative effects of social media, as internet content began to be created by individual users rather than predominantly by big businesses, were so dramatic that the term ‘Web 2.0’ was coined to describe the new social media model. Political organizing and political argument in general became core features of social media, with platforms such as Twitter becoming especially politicized. While both left and right organize and propagandize through social media, the transnational anti-globalization right was really born through these platforms, which allowed disparate and distant right-wing activists to communicate and organize around the shared views discussed above, across their otherwise very different national and local contexts. 13 1 14 GLOBAL POLITICS FIG U Globalism: The belief – most closely associated with liberal thought (see p. 83) – that globalization is an inevitable and benevolent force in the world, modernizing, developing, and ultimately integrating the world’s many societies. RE GLOBALISM, WORLDING AND WORLDISM: IMAGINING GLOBAL POLITICS A popular slogan associated with the first wave of anti-globalization movements was ‘think global, act local’. This emphasized the need for people to be conscious of globalization (and what its critics view as the exploitation and inequality it perpetuates and extends), but to direct their anti-globalization activism at their local contexts. Apart from the comparatively straightforward case for studying the global as a ‘domain’ of politics, on the grounds that the national, regional, and international domains no longer capture everything that constitutes ‘the political’, there is a wider question around what it means to ‘think global’. It is now widely argued that one of the key drivers of globalization and the emergence of ‘the global’ as a political space is imagination. This does not mean that global politics are not ‘real’, but rather that the increased focus on the global is the result of an imaginative shift in societies across the world, from the level of our own local and national contexts – the things that matter to us at a relatively ‘micro’ level – to more ‘macro’-level imaginaries. Studying global politics is, in this sense, first of all about ‘thinking international relations differently’ (Tickner and Blaney 2012), moving away from the traditional focus on interstate relations. Isaac Kamola (2019) argues that the process of ‘making the world global’, which consists first of all in the social construction (see p. 120) of a ‘global imaginary’, is closely linked to the rise of neoliberalism (see p. 143) in the 1980s and 1990s. The rise of ‘the global’, on this view, results from the increasing influence of multinational corporations, university business schools, international financial institutions, and politicians advocating market-driven politics, all of whom pushed a ‘globalist’ way of seeing the political that was attached to their particular vision of the global economy. L. H. M. LING (1955–2018) L. H. M. (Lily) Ling became a highly influential scholar of postcolonial international relations theory (see p. 99) in the early twenty-first century. Ling’s work challenged many of the dominant, ‘traditional’ understandings of global politics in the West, including what she called ‘Westphalia world’ – the view that the world consists of a lot of territorially bounded states of various sizes and capabilities interacting with one another under conditions of anarchy. Importantly, whereas this vision of global politics was rooted in exclusively Western sources, from Thucydides and Thomas Hobbes to Immanuel Kant, Ling’s ‘worldist’ alternative drew also upon Chinese sources, including Daoist philosophical texts and dialectical reasoning. Ling was also a feminist scholar, contributing to ‘non-Western’ feminist thinking on international An extract from the Hereford ‘Mappa Mundi’ relations. In a 2015 interview Ling said: ‘I am a product of both (1280 CE), one of the first renderings of a East and West. Growing up in this hybrid space has allowed me European ‘global imaginary’. The map included to see the possibilities and drawbacks of both traditions; […] to places roughly equivalent to Europe, Asia, and syncretize the best of both worlds, thereby leaving behind the North Africa, but not the Americas, which worst of each.’ Her key works include Postcolonial International Europeans were yet to have any contact with at Relations: Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West this point (2002), Transforming World Politics: From Empire to Multiple Source: Universal History Archive/Getty Images Worlds (2009, with Anna M. Agathangelou), The Dao of World Politics (2014), and Imagining World Politics (2014). INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS To think globally when we think about politics is to imagine the world as a world, rather than simply as a set of states interacting in a system (see the ‘billiard ball’ model, p. 4). But this imaginative shift is not necessarily a ‘natural’, neutral, or inevitable process, simply reflecting the emergence of the global as a ‘new’ space or domain of politics, and our need to understand and explain it. Thinking globally is rather about adopting a particular world view or ‘ontology’ (see p. 67) of social relations – including politics – and one that, as much as any other perspective on the social, is rooted in our own more local contexts. One of the big questions that this chapter will return to is the extent to which it is possible to truly ‘think globally’, given the profoundly different cultural and social contexts that exist in the world, into which we are all born and by which we are all conditioned and constrained to think in particular, rather than universal, ways. For example, it has been pointed out that in major Western studies of globalization, and ‘globalist’ theories, Africa either does not feature at all or, where it is discussed, is ‘almost always as a problem’ (Kamola 2012: 183). The Western globalist imaginary therefore tends to deny African people agency and significance in the making of the global world. We must recognize that the ‘global imaginary’ might be very different for, say, Chinese and American people, or Europeans and Africans, while there will also likely be significant divergence over the meaning of the global within those national and regional groupings. In recent years ‘postcolonial’ (see p. 99) thinkers have proposed alternate paradigms to the ‘globalist’ vision, which is itself closely associated with a Western – and especially North American – imaginary of the world. The concept of ‘worlding’ has been used to describe the ways in which different societies imagine global politics, while L. H. M. Ling (1955–2018) uses the term ‘worldism’, or ‘the theory of Multiple Worlds’, to describe the existence of a plurality of visions of the world, among which Western globalism is but one (Ling 2014a). Particular people and societies often seek to impose a universal global imaginary on the world, based on their local, national, and/or regional experiences, including their more ‘internal’ and spiritual life and imagination. Ling offers an alternative to Western models, rooted in the Chinese philosophical traditions of Daoism, along with the Chinese intellectual traditions bequeathed by the philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE) and the strategist Sun Tzu (544–496 BCE). She shows that through these different lenses the nature and behaviour of people, societies, the earth, and thus also ‘the global’, can be seen very differently than they are through the Western paradigm. Among other things, this alternate vision of the global does not necessitate viewing the ‘rise of China’ in world order as the intrinsic ‘threat’ it has been represented as by Western, liberal, globalist rhetoric. LENSES ON GLOBAL POLITICS Making sense of global politics also requires that we understand the theories, values, and assumptions through which world affairs have been interpreted. How do different analysts and theorists see the world? What are the key ‘lenses’ on global politics? The theoretical dimension of the study of global politics has become an increasingly rich and diverse arena in recent decades. The substantive ideas of the growing range of theoretical traditions are examined in Chapters 3 and 4. This introduction, nevertheless, attempts to map out broad areas of debate among the traditions, in particular by distinguishing between ‘traditional’ perspectives and ‘critical’ perspectives. 15 Worlding: The process by which different societies construct their imaginaries of the world, including how they envisage its structure and constituent parts, such as which are the key global actors and processes. Worldism: A theory of ‘multiple worlds’ – the differing global visions that have emerged from the different local, national, and regional processes of worlding. 1 16 GLOBAL POLITICS FIG U Positivism: The theory that social and indeed all forms of enquiry should conform to the methods of the natural sciences (see p. 68). RE TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVES The two ‘traditional’ perspectives on global politics are realism and liberalism. What do they have in common, and in what sense are they ‘traditional’? Realism and liberalism can be viewed as mainstream perspectives in the sense that they, in their various incarnations, have dominated conventional academic approaches within the discipline or field of ‘international relations’ (IR) theory. They are also ‘traditional’ in the sense attributed to ‘traditional theory’ by Max Horkheimer (see p. 98), offering explanations and predictions about global politics that tend to reproduce or ‘explain away’ the status quo of existing world order. Realist and liberal theories have two broad things in common. In the first place, they are both – in their contemporary forms – grounded in positivism. This suggests that it is possible to develop objective knowledge, through the capacity to distinguish ‘facts’ from ‘values’. In short, it is possible to compare theories with the ‘real world’, the world ‘out there’. Robert Cox (1981) thus describes such theories as ‘problemsolving theories’, in that they take the world ‘as it is’ and endeavour to think through problems and offer prudent advice to policymakers trying to negotiate the challenges of the ‘real world’. (These issues are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4.) Second, realist and liberal theorists share similar concerns and address similar issues, meaning that they, in effect, talk to, rather than past, one another. In particular, the core concern of both realism and liberalism is the balance between conflict and cooperation in state relations. Although realists generally place greater emphasis on conflict, while liberals highlight the scope for cooperation, neither is unmindful of the issues raised by the other, as is evidenced in the tendency, over time, for differences between realism and liberalism to have become blurred (see ‘Closing the Realist/Liberal Divide?’ p. 86). Nevertheless, important differences can be identified between the realist and liberal perspectives. THOMAS HOBBES (1588–1679) English political philosopher. Hobbes was the son of a minor clergyman who subsequently abandoned his family. Writing at a time of uncertainty and civil strife, precipitated by the English Revolution, Hobbes theorized human nature, and explored its social and political implications, chiefly in his great work, Leviathan (1651). Here Hobbes extrapolated from his philosophical belief – influenced by his French contemporary and interlocutor, the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) – that human beings are fundamentally wired to avoid pain and to seek out pleasure. Hobbes argued that this motivates people to accumulate power, which enables the avoidance of painful experiences and the proliferation of pleasant ones. Human nature is thus the seeking of ‘power after power’, and life in what Hobbes called the ‘state of nature’ would be violently selfish, ‘nasty, brutish and short’. For this reason, the sovereign power of the state and government are required to protect us Source: Hulton Archive/ from ourselves and one another. Handout/Getty Images Power politics: An approach to politics based on the assumption that the pursuit of power is the principal human goal; the term is sometimes used descriptively. How do realists see global politics? Deriving from ideas that can be traced back to thinkers such as Thucydides, Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War), Machiavelli (see p. 74), and Thomas Hobbes, the realist vision is pessimistic: international politics is marked by constant power struggles and conflict, and a wide range of obstacles standing in the way of peaceful cooperation. Realism is grounded in an emphasis on power politics, based on the following assumptions: INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS z Human nature is characterized by selfishness and greed. z Politics is a domain of human activity structured by power and coercion. z States are the key global actors. z States pursue self-interest and survival, prioritizing security above all else. z States operate in a context of anarchy, and thus rely on self-help. 17 Internationalism: The theory or practice of politics based on cooperation or harmony among nations, as opposed to the transcendence of national politics. z Global order is structured by the distribution of power (capabilities) among states. z The balance of power is the principal means of ensuring stability and avoiding war. z Ethical considerations are (and should be) irrelevant to the conduct of foreign policy. By contrast, how do liberals see global politics? Liberalism offers a more optimistic vision of global politics, based, ultimately, on a belief in human rationality and moral goodness (even though liberals also accept that people are essentially self-interested and competitive). Liberals tend to believe that the principle of balance or harmony operates in all forms of social interaction. As far as world politics is concerned, this is reflected in a general commitment to internationalism, as reflected in Immanuel Kant’s belief in the possibility of ‘universal and perpetual peace’. The liberal model of global politics is based on the following key assumptions: z Human beings are rational and moral creatures. z History is a progressive process, characterized by a growing prospect of international cooperation and peace. z Mixed-actor models of global politics are more realistic than state-centric ones. z Trade and economic interdependence make war less likely. z International law helps to promote order and fosters rule-governed behaviour among states. FIG U z Democracy is inherently peaceful, particularly in reducing the likelihood of war between democratic states. RE IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804) German philosopher. Kant spent his entire life in Königsberg (which was then in East Prussia), becoming professor of logic and metaphysics at the University of Königsberg in 1770. His ‘critical’ philosophy holds that knowledge is not merely an aggregate of sense impressions; it depends on the ‘a priori’ conceptual apparatus of human understanding, which precedes our experiences. Kant’s political thought was shaped by the central importance of morality and is closely associated with ‘Enlightenment’ thinking and ‘universalist’ claims about our rights and obligations. That said, despite his arguments for the ‘cosmopolitanism’ (global citizenship) of political communities, Kant is now viewed also as a variety of ‘scientific racist’ for writings in which he sought to intellectually establish the cultural superiority of white Europeans over Asians and Africans. Kant’s most influential works include Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals (1785), and To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Source: Culture Club/Getty Images Sketch (1795). 1 18 GLOBAL POLITICS CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES Since the late 1980s, the range of critical approaches to world affairs has expanded considerably. Until that point, Marxism had constituted the principal alternative to mainstream realist and liberal theories. What made the Marxist approach distinctive was that it placed its emphasis not on patterns of conflict and cooperation between states but on structures of economic power and the role played in world affairs by international capital. It thus brought international political economy, sometimes seen as a subfield within IR (see p. 139), into focus. However, hastened by the end of the Cold War, a wide range of ‘new voices’ started to influence the study of world politics, notable examples including social constructivism, critical theory, post-structuralism, postcolonialism, feminism, and green politics. What do these new critical voices have in common, and in what sense are they ‘critical’? In view of their diverse philosophical underpinnings and contrasting political viewpoints, it is tempting to argue that the only thing that unites these ‘new voices’ is a shared antipathy towards traditional thinking. However, two broad similarities can be identified. The first is that, albeit in different ways and to different degrees, they have tried to go beyond the positivism of traditional theory, emphasizing instead the role of consciousness in shaping social conduct and, therefore, world affairs. These so-called post-positivist theories are therefore ‘critical’ in that they not only take issue with the conclusions of traditional theory but also subject these theories themselves to critical scrutiny, exposing biases that operate within them and examining their implications. The second similarity is linked to the first: critical perspectives are ‘critical’ in that, in their different ways, they oppose the dominant forces and interests in modern world affairs, and so contest the global status quo by (usually) aligning themselves with marginalized or oppressed groups. Each of them, thus, seeks to uncover inequalities and asymmetries that traditional theories tend to ignore. However, the inequalities and asymmetries to which critical theorists have drawn attention are many and various: z Postcolonial thinkers have highlighted the historical centrality of colonialism to producing our present world order, and the ways in which its intellectual legacies – including racism, as a system of both structural inequality and belief or ideology – continue to shape global politics today. z Feminists have drawn attention to systematic and pervasive structures of gender inequality that characterize global and, indeed, all other forms of politics. In particular, they have highlighted the extent to which mainstream, and especially realist, theories are based on ‘masculinist’ assumptions about rivalry, competition, and inevitable conflict. z Marxists (who encompass a range of traditions and tendencies that in fact straddle the positivist/post-positivist divide) highlight inequalities in the global capitalist system, through which developed countries or areas, sometimes operating through TNCs or linked to ‘hegemonic’ powers such as the United States, dominate and exploit working-class populations overseas just as they do at home. z Post-structuralists emphasize that all ideas and concepts are expressed in language that itself is enmeshed in complex relations of power. Influenced particularly by the INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 19 writings of Michel Foucault, post-structuralists have drawn attention to the link between power and knowledge using the concept of ‘discourse’. z Constructivists have thrown traditional theory’s claim to objectivity into question, in arguing that people, in effect, ‘construct’ the world in which they live, suggesting that the world operates through a kind of ‘inter-subjective’ awareness. Constructivism is not so much a substantive theory as an analytical tool. FIG U z A range of new critical theoretical approaches have emerged in the early twentyfirst century, drawing on insights from ‘green’ or ecological theory, and sociological theories focused on the ‘materiality’ of social practices, the relationship between ‘actors’ and ‘networks’ in global politics, and the role of ‘necropolitics’ – the politics of death – in the epoch known as the ‘Anthropocene’. RE MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926–84) French philosopher and radical intellectual. Foucault was initially a member of the French Communist Party (PCF) and remained a lifelong political activist, though his academic work turned away from Marxism and towards what came to be called ‘post-structuralism’. His books and popular public lectures, which ranged over the histories of madness, of medicine, of punishment, of sexuality, and of knowledge itself, proceeded on the basis that ‘universal’ truths about such subjects do not exist, and that instead we should understand these fields as ‘discourses’: structured ways of representing the world and interacting in it. This suggests that power relations can largely be disclosed by examining the structure of knowledge, since ‘“Truth” is […] produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses’ (Foucault [1972] 1984: 73). Foucault’s most important works include The Order of Things (1966) and The Archaeology of Knowledge Source: Bettmann/Getty Images (1969). 1 20 APPROACHES TO. . . REALIST VIEW Realists are state-centric thinkers. They are sceptical about globalization in general, and about the notion that it reduces the power and significance of states as global political actors in particular. Following the outbreak of the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, one of the most prominent American realists, Stephen Walt, suggested that the virus showed that ‘the high water mark of contemporary globalization is now behind us’ (Walt 2020). Drawing on the classical realist source, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, which describes the effects of a lethal plague on the international relations of Athens with its neighbouring city states, Walt argues that the more recent pandemic ‘reminds us that states are still the main actors in global politics’ (Thucydides 1963). Realists also suggest that the pandemic crisis will likely contribute, in the longer term, to what they see as the decline of the trends others have labelled ‘globalization’, and that a consequence of the pandemic will be, in Walt’s (2020) words: ‘borders between states will become a bit higher’. LIBERAL VIEW Liberals, who generally embrace globalization as a real and necessary process that they believe will lead to greater security and stability in the world, were frustrated by state responses to the global coronavirus pandemic but hopeful for a solution through global governance. For liberals, institutions such as the World Health Organization are central to the ‘liberal world order’ and were designed precisely to provide the necessary governance to guide societies through crises like this. Alleged state secrecy around the scale of risk the pandemic posed, first in China and then elsewhere, was, on the liberal view, the enemy of effective solutions. More open, democratic, global cooperation is the only means to solve collective action problems (see p. 7) like a pandemic, from the liberal perspective. As the virus spread in 2020, the influential American ‘neoliberal institutionalist’ (see p. 88) Joseph Nye (2020) argued that: On transnational threats like COVID-19 and climate change, it is not enough to think of American power over other nations. The key to success is also learning the importance of power with others. Every country puts its national interest first; the important question is how broadly or narrowly this interest is defined. COVID-19 shows we are failing to adjust our strategy to this new world. POSTCOLONIAL VIEW From a postcolonial perspective, the global pandemic threw into even sharper relief the structural inequalities that globalization has failed to resolve, or has even exacerbated. Like the global financial crisis that struck thirteen years earlier, the societies that were positioned to be highly vulnerable were those with weaker economies and infrastructure. These societies, largely located in the ‘Global South’ (see p. 464) are, for the most part, countries that were once subjected to European colonialism (see p. 31), a major cause of their relative economic and infrastructural problems. As it transpired, powerful ‘Global North’ countries with major economies also suffered greatly, with Italy, the United States, and the UK seeing among the very highest proportions of deaths from the virus in the world. But postcolonial analysis would point to the internal dynamics within these states, where – especially in the United States and UK – official statistics showed that those racialized as minorities were far more likely to die from the virus than the white majority. Postcolonial thinkers such as Gurminder Bhambra 21 THE 2020 GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC noted that disproportionate deaths among people racialized as minorities in the West correlated to their overrepresentation in frontline health and care work – among national working classes – itself a colonial legacy. MARXIST VIEW For Marxists, the pandemic is another crisis of capitalism, and one that starkly highlights the structural violence done in the name of capitalist ‘globalization’. The American Marxist historian Mike Davis published a book fifteen years prior to the global pandemic, warning that global pharmaceutical corporations neglect vaccine research as ‘unprofitable’, while the rise of factory farming and ‘megaslums’ provide fertile conditions for a new global plague. Capitalism is an economic system driven by the profit motive alone and, in the Marxist view, has something of a track record in degrading, endangering, and extinguishing human life in the pursuit of profit. In 2020, Davis suggested that: ‘This new age of plagues, like previous pandemic epochs, is directly the result of economic globalization’ (Davis 2020), since it was the global interconnectedness necessitated by capitalist markets, industry, and trade that spread the virus. CONSTRUCTIVIST AND POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEWS From both constructivist and post-structuralist perspectives, the global pandemic is of interest in the way that it is interpreted and acted upon by states and non-state actors in global politics. The dominant ‘symbolic order’ of global politics has tended to prioritize military forms of security as the ultimate concern of such actors, depicting issues like terrorism as the most significant threats. For example, Dan Stevens and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2020) noted that while the UK’s National Security Strategy had listed pandemics as a key threat since at least 2010, this perception was not shared by the public, and in any case no equivalent funding or infrastructure was forthcoming to deal with pandemics to that surrounding the ‘war on terror’ (see p. 303). ‘Discourses’ on the pandemic (see p. 116), meanwhile, have been ‘securitised’, with politicians and media outlets depicting the virus as an ‘invisible enemy’, and the global response as a ‘war’ or ‘battle’, underlining the post-structuralist emphasis on language as the medium of politics. FEMINIST VIEW For feminists, the pandemic highlighted, first of all, the fact that a ‘human security’ lens, rather than narrowly state-centric approaches to security, is necessitated by globalization. Feminist theorists of global politics have long pointed out that patriarchal violence, including domestic abuse, is quantifiably a much greater security threat to women than, say, terrorism. The pandemic intensified such violence, with a global surge in reports of domestic abuse as women and girls were ‘locked down’ at home with abusive partners and families. Feminists concerned with gender and sexuality also expressed concern at the impact of the pandemic on transgender people. Some places, such as Panama City, operated gendered lockdown policies, where men and women were allowed outside at separate times, and transgender people were subject to harassment 22 and abuse. In other countries, for instance Kenya and the United States, transgender people suffered as hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgeries were deprioritized in favour of pandemic-related health care. From a feminist perspective, this sort of reprioritization is a result of patriarchy (see p. 107) and prevailing ‘heteronormative’ values, in which women’s, girls’, and LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual) people’s needs are systematically accorded less significance than ‘cishet’ (cisgendered – i.e. of the gender assigned at birth – and heterosexual) men. Black feminist thinkers, meanwhile, including Kimberlé Crenshaw (see p. 111), highlighted the intersectional nature of racialized and gendered experiences of the global pandemic. World order: The perceived hierarchy of states in the world, which varies according to when, where, and whom the ‘orderer’ is, and tends to relate to perceived economic, political, cultural, and military power. Security: In a global political system where states remain among the most important actors, security – the condition states are supposed to be able to provide for citizens – looms large in politics and policy, while insecurity arguably remains a pervasive feature. Justice: Any analysis of global politics reveals differences and inequalities within and between societies, and this leads on to questions of fairness and justice. Alter-globalisation movements (see p. 12), for instance, fight for ‘global social justice’. Power: Can be conceived of in several ways, including the ability to make others do what we want done, the ability to set political agendas and define what is seen to be possible, or as productive ‘empowerment’ – becoming able to speak and act for oneself. CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN GLOBAL POLITICS While global politics is an ever-shifting field, it is also characterized by certain key continuities. Dramatic, globally significant events of recent decades, from the fall of the Berlin Wall (see p. 54) and 9/11 (see p. 23) to the 2020 global coronavirus pandemic, can change the course of national foreign policies, and the domestic political and economic fortunes of states. These events may reshape international organizations and the institutions of global governance, and even the fabric of societies themselves. But certain key themes remain relevant to any analysis of global politics. World order persists as a fundamental goal or principle informing much global political activity. Indeed, Cedric J. Robinson (1980) identifies the ‘myth of order’ as the defining feature of the Western notion of the political, and ideas about ‘world order’ continue to shape much of the theory and practice of global politics today. The related concept of security, and its obverse – insecurity – looms large over debates on international relations in a global political age, just as it did before the concept of globalization emerged. Similarly longstanding concerns about social justice, and concomitant concerns with rights, equality, and inequalities, remain equally pertinent in a global era. And above all power – arguably the essence of politics itself – in all of its locations and distributions, is at stake in all discussions of global politics, including those on order, security, and justice. 23 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . 9/11 and Global (In) Security Events: On the morning of 11 September 2001, a coordinated series of terrorist attacks were launched against the United States using four hijacked passenger jet airliners (the events subsequently became known as ‘9/11’). Two airliners crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, leading to the collapse first of the North Tower and then the South Tower. The third airliner crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the US Department of Defence in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC. The fourth airliner, believed to be heading towards either the White House or the US Capitol, both in Washington DC, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, apparently following passenger action to stop the attack. There were no survivors from any of the flights. A total of 2,995 people were killed in these attacks, mainly in New York City. In a videotape released in October 2001, responsibility for the attacks was claimed by Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qaeda organization, who praised his followers as the ‘vanguards of Islam’. Significance: 9/11 has sometimes been described as ‘the day the world changed’. This certainly applied in terms of its consequences, notably the unfolding ‘war on terror’ and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and their ramifications. It also marked a dramatic shift in global security, signalling the end of a period during which globalization and the cessation of superpower rivalry appeared to have been associated with a diminishing propensity for international conflict. Globalization appeared to have ushered in new security threats and new forms of conflict. For example, 9/11 demonstrated how fragile national borders had become in a technological age. If the world’s greatest power could be dealt such a devastating blow to its largest city and its national capital, what chance did other states have? Further, the ‘external’ threat in this case came not from another state but from a terrorist organization, and one, moreover, that operated more as a global network than a nationally based organization. The motivations behind the attacks were also not conventional ones. Instead of seeking to conquer territory or acquire control over resources, the 9/11 attacks were carried out in the name of a religiously inspired ideology, and revenge for US foreign policy outside the West, and aimed at exerting a symbolic, even psychic, blow against the cultural, political, and ideological domination of the West. Shortly before their collapse, smoke billows from the World Trade Center’s ‘Twin Towers’ in New York City, which were struck by two hijacked airliners on 11 September 2001 Source: Robert Giroux/Getty Images However, rather than marking the beginning of a new era in global security, 9/11 may have indicated more a return to ‘business as normal’. In particular, the advent of a globalized world appeared to underline the vital importance of ‘national’ security, rather than ‘international’ or ‘global’ security. The emergence of new security challenges, and especially transnational terrorism, re-emphasized the core role of the state in protecting its citizens from external attack. Instead of becoming progressively less important, 9/11 gave the state a renewed significance. The United States, for example, responded to 9/11 by undertaking a substantial build-up of state power, both at home (through strengthened ‘homeland security’) and abroad (through increased military spending and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq). A unilateralist tendency also became more pronounced in its foreign policy, as the United States became, for a period at least, less concerned about working with or through international organizations of various kinds. Other states affected by terrorism have also exhibited similar tendencies, marking a renewed emphasis on national security sometimes at the expense of considerations such as civil liberties and political freedom. In other words, 9/11 may demonstrate that state-based power politics is alive and kicking. 24 GLOBAL POLITICS While there have been many dramatic events and changes in the first decades of the twenty-first century, from 9/11 to the global coronavirus pandemic, struggles for power, security, world order, and justice remain the key forces behind global politics. How can we theorize, explain, and understand global politics? How does the global economy work, and for whom does it work best? What roles can states and non-state actors play in a globalized world? Is war a permanent feature of international relations? How important are international organizations to world order? And how are social structures and identities of gender and ‘race’ at stake in global politics? These questions, which continue to animate global politics, are all about power, security, world order, and justice. And they are just some of the key questions explored throughout the remainder of this book. INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS USING THIS BOOK Global politics is, by its nature, an overlapping and interlocking field. The material encountered in this book stubbornly resists compartmentalization, which is why, throughout, there is regular cross-referencing to related discussions that occur in other chapters and particularly to relevant boxed material found elsewhere. Nevertheless, the book develops by considering what can be thought of as a series of broad issues or themes. The first group of chapters is designed to provide background understanding for the study of global politics: z This chapter has examined the nature of global politics and considered the developments that make a global politics approach to world affairs appropriate, as well as providing an introduction to contrasting mainstream and critical perspectives on global politics. z Chapter 2 examines the historical context of modern global politics, particularly by looking at key developments in world history during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. z Chapter 3 outlines key ‘traditional’ theoretical approaches to global politics. These influential accounts remain central to many commonplace concepts we use when we talk about the international and the global today, from anarchy and security to conflict and cooperation. z Chapter 4 introduces a set of ‘critical’ theories of global politics. These popular and increasingly ‘mainstream’ approaches challenge the traditional theories and practices of global politics and invite us to consider our own positions as theorists and analysts embedded in the social and political practices we study. The next group of chapters discusses the various transformations that have occurred, and are occurring, as a result of the globalization of world politics: z Chapter 5 discusses the nature, extent, and implications of economic globalization and considers, amongst other things, the crisis tendencies within modern global capitalism. z Chapter 6 examines the role and significance of the state in a global age, as well as the nature of foreign policy and how foreign policy decisions are made. z Chapter 7 considers the social implications of globalization and whether or not it is possible to talk of an emergent global civil society. z Chapter 8 examines the ways in which nations and nationalisms have been shaped and reshaped in a global world, including the ways in which nationalism has been both weakened and strengthened. z Chapter 9 examines the significance of identity culture to politics in a global age. The following group of chapters considers the broad themes of global order and conflict: 25 1 26 GLOBAL POLITICS z Chapter 10 looks at the nature of global power and the changing shape of twentyfirst-century world order, as well as at the implications of such changes for peace and stability. z Chapter 11 examines how and why wars occur, the changing nature of warfare, and how, and how successfully, war has been justified. z Chapter 12 considers the nature and implications of weapons of mass destruction and their impact on global politics past and present. z Chapter 13 discusses the nature of terrorism, the various debates that have sprung up about its significance, and the strategies that have been used to counter it. The next group of chapters focuses on various issues to do with the theme of global justice: z Chapter 14 considers the nature and significance of international human rights, how, and how effectively, they have been protected, and debates about humanitarian intervention and its implications. z Chapter 15 addresses the issue of international law, in particular examining the changing nature and significance of international law in the modern period. z Chapter 16 considers the issues of global poverty and inequality and also looks at development and the politics of international aid. z Chapter 17 focuses on global environmental issues and examines the challenge of climate change in depth. z Chapter 18 discusses feminist approaches to global politics and how gender perspectives have changed thinking about war, security, and other matters. The following group of chapters considers attempts to address global or transnational issues through the construction of intergovernmental or supranational institutions: z Chapter 19 examines the nature and growth of international organizations and looks in particular at the role and effectiveness of the United Nations. z Chapter 20 discusses the idea of global governance and examines its development in the economic sphere through the evolution of the Bretton Woods system. z Chapter 21 focuses on the causes and significance of regionalism, focusing especially on the nature and significance of the European Union. z The final chapter, Chapter 22, provides a conclusion to the book by considering some of the possible futures of global politics, through a range of different lenses. INTRODUCING GLOBAL POLITICS 27 1 SUMMARY y Global politics is based on a comprehensive approach to world affairs that takes account of political developments not just at a global level but also at and, crucially, across, all levels – global, regional, national, subnational, and so on. In that sense, ‘the global’ and ‘the international’ complement one another and should not be seen as rival or incompatible modes of understanding. y ‘International’ politics has been transformed into ‘global’ politics through a variety of developments. New actors have emerged from the world stage alongside states and national governments. Levels of interconnectedness and interdependence in world politics have increased, albeit unevenly. And international anarchy has been modified by the emergence of a framework of regional and global governance. y Globalization is the emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness that means that our lives are increasingly shaped by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. Distinctions are commonly drawn between economic globalization, cultural globalization, and political globalization. However, there are significant debates about whether globalization is actually happening and how far it has transformed world politics. y The two traditional perspectives on global politics are realism and liberalism; these are both grounded in positivism and focus on the balance between conflict and cooperation in state relations, even though they offer quite different accounts of this balance. Critical perspectives, by contrast, tend to adopt a post-positivist approach to theory and contest the global status quo by aligning themselves with the interests of marginalized or oppressed groups. y Global politics is an ever-shifting field, with, if anything, the pace of change accelerating over time. Debates have emerged about the changing nature of power and the shifting configuration of global power, about whether national security has been displaced by international, global, or even human security, and about the extent to which justice now has to be considered in cosmopolitan or global terms. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y How does ‘global’ politics differ from ‘international’ politics? y In what ways is the international dimension of politics still important? y To what extent have non-state actors come to rival states and national governments on the world stage? y Does interdependence always lead to cooperation and peace, or can it generate conflict? y Which definition of globalization is most persuasive, and why? y Has the impact and significance of globalization been exaggerated? y What are the key differences between traditional and critical approaches to global politics? y Over what do realist and liberal theorists disagree? y To what extent has global power become more diffuse and intangible in recent years? y Why has there been growing interest in the notion of ‘human’ security? y Does the idea of ‘global’ justice make sense? FURTHER READING Brown, C. and K. Ainley, Understanding International Relations (2009). A highly readable and thought-provoking introduction to the theory and practice of international relations. Held, D. and A. McGrew, Globalization/Anti-globalization: Beyond the Great Divide (2007). A comprehensive and authoritative survey of contemporary political and intellectual debates over globalization. Kamola, I., Making the World Global: U.S. Universities and the Production of the Global Imaginary (2019). A critical analysis of how the idea of ‘the global’ rose to such prominence in the social sciences. Ling, L. H. M., The Dao of World Politics: Towards a PostWestphalian, Worldist International Relations (2014a). A path-breaking reimagining of global politics from a non-Western perspective. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e 28 THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 2 Source: iStock.com/Starcevic PREVIEW Politics can be defined as a struggle over the best way to live together as societies. The direction and recording of how this struggle plays out are the essence of what we call ‘history’. This means that politics and history are inextricably linked. In a simple sense, politics is the history of the present while history is the politics of the past. Studying aspects of global history helps us to comprehend and engage with present circumstances and provides context to appreciate how we got here. History is always, to some extent, understood through the lens of the present, as modern concerns, understandings, and attitudes help us to ‘invent’ the past. And it is also worth remembering Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), then Premier of the People’s Republic of China, who replied, when asked in the 1960s about the lessons of the 1789 French Revolution, that ‘it is too early to say’. Nevertheless, the modern world makes little sense without some understanding of the momentous events and transformations that have shaped world history, particularly since the advent of the twentieth century. How did international and global politics first emerge? What role did colonialism play in making our present world order? What do the events that led up to the outbreak of the First World War and Second World War tell us about the causes of war, and what does the absence of ‘world’ war since 1945 tell us about the causes? What does world history tell us about the possible future of global politics? KEY ISSUES z What developments shaped world history before the twentieth century? z What were the causes and consequences of the First World War? z What factors resulted in the outbreak of the Second World War? z What were the causes and consequences of the ‘end of empire’? z Why did the Cold War emerge after 1945, and how did it end? z How has post-Cold War history – history after the ‘End of History’ – reshaped world order? 29 30 GLOBAL POLITICS THE MAKING OF THE GLOBAL WORLD FROM THE FIRST HUMANS TO ‘CIVILIZATIONS’ In 2017, remains found in Morocco were discovered to be human (Homo sapiens), marking a key moment in our understanding of world history. This evidence suggests that human beings may have existed across the African continent more than 300,000 years ago, whereas the commonly held belief dated the first humans as evolving in a ‘Garden of Eden’ situation, about 200,000 years ago. While it is very difficult to learn much about them, the archaeological evidence suggests that these early human societies would have been much smaller and simpler in organizational terms. So how did we transition from such simple, small, and isolated societies – hard to distinguish through archaeology from Neanderthals – to the hyper-connected and highly populous global world of the twenty-first century? The beginning of recorded world history is often dated from the establishment of a succession of ancient civilizations in place of the hunter-gatherer communities of earlier times. The two key features of these early civilizations were agriculture, which allowed for permanent settlement and the emergence of urban life, and the development of writing (the earliest known forms being Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics), which occurred from around 3000 BCE (Before the Common Era, notionally determined by the birth of Jesus). Mesopotamia, located between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates in the area of modern-day Iraq, is often portrayed as the ‘cradle of civilization’, giving birth to three major civilizations – the Sumerian, the Babylonian, and the Assyrian. But other civilizations emerged in nearly all regions of the globe (see ‘Key Events’). EVE NT S THE GROWTH OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 3500 to 1500 BCE The Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian civilizations. The civilization of ancient Egypt. 2600 to 1900 BCEThe earliest civilization in South Asia emerged in the Indus River Valley, in what is now Pakistan. 1600 BCEThe Shang Dynasty marks the beginnings of Chinese civilization. After the Warring States period, 403–221 BCE, China was eventually unified under the Ch’in (from which the name comes). 800 to 600 BCEGreek settlements extended throughout the eastern Mediterranean, with colonies being formed in Asia Minor as well as in the southern parts of the Balkans. 509 BCEAncient Rome was born after the Roman monarchy was overthrown, creating an oligarchic republic. The civilization of ancient Egypt, along the course of the Nile, endured for around three and a half thousand years. Ancient India, which stretched across the plains from the Indus to the Ganges, extending from modern-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh, began around 500 BCE with the birth of the ‘golden age’ of classical Hindu culture, as reflected in Sanskrit literature. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS The period generally known as ‘classical antiquity’, dating from around 1000 BCE, witnessed the emergence of various civilizations in the area of the Mediterranean Sea. Starting with the growth of Etruscan culture and the spread of Phoenician maritime trading culture, the most significant developments were the emergence of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Ancient Greece is often viewed as the foundational culture of Western civilization, while ancient Rome developed into a vast empire that extended from the eastern Mediterranean across North Africa and included most of Europe. However, during the fifth century, the classical world gradually descended into crisis, caused by invasions of mounted nomadic peoples into the great crescent of these established ancient civilizations, ushering in the ‘Dark Ages’. All the established civilizations of Eurasia were affected. Only China coped successfully with the invaders, but even here their appearance sparked a period of political fragmentation. In Europe, narrowly territorially defined as comprising the Roman Empire at the time, nonEuropean invaders and settlers were negatively racialized (see p. 100) as ‘barbarians’. These included peoples whose descendants would today be racialized as ‘white’ and ‘European’, such as Germanic and Slavic peoples, during the fifth and sixth centuries, with a further wave of invasions coming in the ninth and tenth centuries from the Vikings, Magyars, and Saracens. Perhaps the most impactful of these nomadic peoples were, nevertheless, the Mongols, who created, between 1206 and 1405, an empire of unequal scope and range. The Mongol Empire stretched from the eastern frontiers of Germany and from the Arctic Ocean to Turkey and the Persian Gulf. Its impact on world history was profound. The political organization of Asia and large parts of Europe was altered; whole peoples were uprooted and dispersed, permanently changing the ethnic character of many regions (not least through the wide dispersal of the Turkic peoples across western Asia); and European access to Asia and the Far East became possible again. THE DAWN OF THE AGE OF SAIL The historical development of these great civilizations gave the peoples of Africa, Europe, and Asia significant opportunities for extensive contact, trade, and shared cultural heritage, such that some world historians refer to a single region of ‘AfroEurasia’ (Adelman et al. 2021). But new connections abounded from the late fifteenth century and throughout the sixteenth century, as a direct result of the technological innovation of large, seaworthy vessels that could transport goods and people over greater distances than ever before, inaugurating an ‘Age of Sail’ that would last until the nineteenth century. For societies in Asia and Europe, which had been decimated by the fourteenth century’s ‘Black Death’ or ‘Plague’ pandemic, which is estimated to have cost more than 100 million lives, the dawn of this maritime age revived and accelerated global trade and interaction. The most well-known of the so-called ‘voyages of discovery’ in this period is that of the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) who, in 1492, sought to sail from Spain to the ‘East Indies’ (the general term then used in Europe for Southeast Asia), instead landing at the Caribbean islands of Guanahani, Cuba, and Haiti, and thus making the first contact between Europeans and the peoples and lands of the Americas. 31 2 32 GLOBAL POLITICS This first tentative exploration of what Europeans came to call the ‘New World’ set the pattern for what was to follow. On making landfall, Columbus unfurled the flag of the Spanish monarch (on whose commission he sailed) and ‘took possession’ of the islands and their people for Spain. Columbus described the indigenous Taíno people he encountered as unarmed and ‘simple’, freely offering gifts and trading with his crew, and noting that ‘I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance.’ He added that he believed the Taíno ‘would be good servants and […] very readily become Christian’ (Columbus [1492] 1996). Finally, Columbus abducted seven Taíno people and boasted in a letter to his royal employers in Spain that he ‘could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased’. Columbus’ first encounters with, and descriptions of, the indigenous people of these islands were typical of the emerging practice of European colonialism, displaying an extractivist attitude to the natural resources and valuable goods of the Taíno people’s land; a proprietorial claim to their territories, and to the people themselves (including the forced transportation of some of them back to Europe); and a condescending attitude to their social and cultural traditions, which appeared naïve from Columbus’ Eurocentric (see p. 101) perspective. In the decades that followed, Spain colonized vast areas of central and south America, killing off indigenous populations, whether through direct violence or disease, extracting precious resources (silver in particular), and effectively enslaving many of the surviving Native Americans and forcing them to labour on sugar, coffee, and tobacco plantations, or down mines. Meanwhile Portugal, whose most famous explorer, Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521), had successfully sailed to the East Indies by the early sixteenth century, similarly colonized and exploited the lands and peoples of the eastern part of South America that would become Brazil. Only later in the sixteenth century did other European powers begin their own serious efforts at colonization of the New World, with England, France, and the Netherlands following the Iberian and Portuguese examples. The voyages of discovery and the early phase of European colonialism are sometimes described as the very earliest form of globalization, since they marked the first point at which societies in most of the world’s great land masses became connected. Driven by trade and colonialism, a truly ‘global’ world was beginning to emerge. COLONIALISM AND CAPITALISM REMAKE THE WORLD Enlightenment, the: A European political and intellectual project of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that challenged traditional beliefs in religion, politics, and learning in general, in the name of reason and progress. The era of European colonialism was central to the making of the ‘West’ as a relatively coherent global entity or actor. Alongside and closely connected to colonialism and the empire-building it enabled, several other developments were critical to the rise of the West in world order. In political terms, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the establishment of sovereign states with strong central governments. This is often dated to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War, a series of bloody conflicts across Europe between Catholic and Protestant nations. The advent of sovereign statehood fostered in Europe a level of social and political stability that favoured technological innovation and economic development. The period of scientific and philosophical change referred to as the ‘Enlightenment’ in the eighteenth and THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 33 CON nineteenth centuries, which entailed a limited turn away from religious dogmatism and monarchical rule under the doctrine of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’, was tightly connected to political developments within Europe and to an emerging Western ‘identity’ or sense of self. The political and moral philosopher, and early international relations theorist, Immanuel Kant (see p. 17) was one of the intellectuals most closely associated with the Enlightenment tradition. This new European or Western identity was characterized by a focus on rationalism, and by a strong sense of cultural superiority to the peoples in recently colonized, and non-colonized, societies outside of Europe – the emergence of what Edward Said would later call ‘Orientalism’ (see p. 104). C E PT 2 THE WEST The term ‘the West’ has two overlapping meanings. In a general sense, it refers to the cultural and philosophical inheritance of Europe, which has often been exported through migration or colonialism. The roots of this inheritance lie in Judeo-Christian religion and the learning of ‘classical’ Greece and Rome, shaped in the modern period by the ideas and values of liberalism. In a narrower sense, fashioned during the Cold War, ‘the West’ meant the US-dominated capitalist bloc, as opposed to the USSR-dominated East. The relevance of the latter meaning was weakened by the end of the Cold War, while the value of the former meaning has been brought into question by political and other divisions amongst so-called Western powers. But perhaps most significant was the transition of Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from medieval, feudal modes of production, ownership, and exchange towards a capitalist economic model. This, most importantly, stimulated the growth of industrialization, which started in mid-eighteenth-century Britain (the ‘workshop of the world’) and spread during the nineteenth century to North America and throughout western and central Europe. Industrialized states acquired massively enlarged productive capacities, which contributed, amongst other things, to their military strength. The advance of agricultural and industrial technology also contributed to improving diets and rising living standards, which, over time, had a massive impact on the size of the world’s population (see Figure 2.1). Global population growth, 1700–2020 1700 1900 1.6 billion 1804 1 billion 1700 610 million 1750 1800 1850 1900 2020 7.8 billion 2000 6.1 billion 1980 4.5 billion 1960 3.0 billion 1950 2000 Figure 2.1 The growth of the world population since 1700 2050 Feudalism: A system of agrarian-based production that is characterized by fixed social hierarchies and a rigid pattern of obligations. Tenant farmers and other workers laboured on, or with, aristocratic landowners’ property in exchange for subsistence provisions such as food and shelter for their families, rather than a wage. 34 GLOBAL POLITICS Opium Wars: Two wars waged between Britain and its East India Company, France, and China between 1839 and 1860. The European powers waged war to force Chinese acceptance of their exports, including opium grown by Britain in India. China was comprehensively defeated, signalling the end of its last imperial dynasty, the Qing. FIG U Qing Dynasty: The Qing was the last of China’s imperial dynasties, which reigned from 1644 to 1912, with its monarchs claiming the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ – similar to the medieval European ‘Divine Right of Kings’ – until its overthrow and the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. RE Colonialism was central to the development of capitalism, as was slavery, which persisted as part of the capitalist world economy for more than 300 years – contrary to the popular notion of it being a feature of a ‘pre-capitalist’ economic system (Robinson 1983: 4). The trade in forced human labour from Africa and the ‘New World’ complemented the emergence of a wage-labour economy and industrial working class within Europe, and some 8 million to 10.5 million Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas in a regime of systematic enslavement led by the British, Spanish, Portuguese, and other major colonial powers of Europe. Narratives of this historical period emanating from Western historians have often tended towards an ‘internalist story’ about a spontaneous and endogenous ‘rise of the West’ (Anievas and Nişancıoğlu 2015: 5). In other words, these accounts have depicted the profound political-economic reordering inside and outside of Europe – the emergence of capitalism and burgeoning industrial technologies; of philosophical, political, and cultural ‘modernity’; and of the modern states system in global politics – as though they were the product of some intrinsic European or Western ingenuity. Anievas and Nişancıoğlu call this the ‘founding myth’ of Eurocentrism (see p. 101). In fact, social realities and transformations external and ‘exogenous’ to Europe, from colonial encounters and international trade to the influence of non-Western philosophers and theologians on Western political thought, played a central role in this remaking of the world. Contrary to the ‘internalist story’ of Western-led world development, great centres of political thought, power, and economic development existed outside of Europe, and independent of its control, during this period. Until the nineteenth century’s Opium Wars, China’s Qing Dynasty was a thriving cultural and political power, which by the eighteenth century controlled vast swaths of Inner Asia and a booming international trade in commodities, including tea, silk, and silver. The Qing oversaw the development of a market economy in China, largely separate from that which emerged in Europe, and a political and cultural scene dominated by Confucianism rather than European Enlightenment rationalism (see p. 32). CONFUCIUS (551–479 BCE) An important politician and thinker in his own lifetime, Confucius remains one of the most influential political and moral philosophers in world history. Alongside the religious philosophies of Taoism and Buddhism, the broad philosophical tradition known as Confucianism (see p. 283) has strongly shaped political and cultural values in China, East Asia, and among some communities in the West too. Whereas his contemporaries in ancient Greece, whose philosophies would come to underpin Western traditions of political thought, tended to focus on the powers, rights, and needs of individuals in relation to their fellow citizens and governing authorities, Confucius emphasized social duties and obligations, Source: XiXinXing/Getty Images especially ‘filial piety’ – the obligation to honour one’s parents and ancestors through good conduct. Confucian values are about acting ‘correctly’ and with integrity in all one’s dealings, including political leadership. Confucius was traditionally attributed as author of the Chinese ‘Five Classics’ (major works of ancient Chinese poetry, philosophy, and history), though their authorship is now disputed, but is best known for The Analects, collated and published posthumously during the Han Dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE). THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 35 INDUSTRIALIZATION AND IMPERIALISM Empire: A structure of domination in which Europe’s influence on the rest of the world was substantially extended through the growth diverse cultures, ethnic of imperialism, which intensified during the late nineteenth century with the so-called groups, or nationalities are ‘scramble for colonies’, focused especially on Africa. By the first decade of the twentieth subject to a single source of authority. century, much of the world had been brought under European control, with the British, French, Belgian, and Dutch empires alone controlling almost one-third of the world’s population (see Map 2.1). The belle époque was accompanied by the establishment of levels of economic globalization that are comparable with those of the contemporary period. International trade, expressed as a proportion of the world’s aggregate GDP, was as great in the late nineteenth century as it was in the late twentieth century. Indeed, the United Kingdom, the world’s foremost imperial power during this era, was more dependent on trade than any contemporary state, including the United States. Austria-Hungary Denmark Great Britain Netherlands Portugal Belgium France Italy Norway Russia China Germany Japan Ottoman Empire Spain Belle époque: From the French, literally meaning ‘beautiful era’; a period of peace and prosperity in Europe between the late nineteenth century and the outbreak of the First World War was seen as a ‘golden age’. It was also the peak of European imperialism, the violent appropriations of which in Africa and Asia enabled the prosperity ‘back home’ in Europe. United States CON Map 2.1 Colonial holdings, circa 1914 C E PT IMPERIALISM Imperialism is, broadly, the policy of extending the power or rule of a state or society beyond its boundaries, typically through the establishment of political, military, and/or economic control over other states or societies (an empire). In its earliest usage, imperialism was an ideology that supported military expansion and imperial acquisition, usually by drawing on nationalist and racialist doctrines. In its traditional form, imperialism involves the establishment of formal political domination or colonialism and reflects the expansion of state power through a process of conquest and (possibly) settlement. Modern and more subtle forms of imperialism may nevertheless involve economic domination without the establishment of political control, or what is called ‘neo-colonialism’. 2 36 GLOBAL POLITICS Industrial Revolution: The period between the late eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries, which saw the mechanization of much manufacturing, and great technological innovation, especially in Europe, as European powers reached their imperial apex. This period was also characterized by substantial cross-border migration flows that peaked in the period between 1870 and 1910. Immigration into the United States rose steadily from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, coming mainly from Germany and Ireland but also from the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the Scandinavian countries, and Eastern Europe. Canada, Australia, and South Africa also attracted large numbers of migrants from the poorest parts of Europe and some parts of Asia. These relatively rapid flows of goods, capital, and people were, in turn, facilitated by technological advances in transport and communications, notably the development of steam-powered shipping, the spread of the railroads, and the invention and commercial application of the telegraph. These key technologies resulted from the heavy industrialization of the nineteenth century’s Industrial Revolution and were central to creating the global as a space for politics. However, this period of what Scholte (2005) called ‘incipient globalization’ came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the First World War, which brought the ‘golden age of free trade’ to an end and led to a return to economic nationalism and a backlash against immigration. In a warning for the contemporary global era, some have even interpreted the outbreak of the First World War as a consequence of belle époque globalization, in that it brought the European states into conflict with one another as they struggled for resources and prestige in a shrinking world. D. Napier & Son Ltd, ‘Aero Engine in the Making’, England during the Industrial Revolution, circa 1918 Source: Museums Victoria, Unsplash. 37 APPROACHES TO . . . REALIST VIEW Realists believe that history tends to have an enduring character. From their perspective, similarities between historical eras are always more substantial than the differences. In particular, power politics, conflict, and the likelihood of war (though, by no means, endless war) are inescapable facts of history. History, if you like, does not ‘move forward’; rather, it repeats itself, endlessly. This happens for at least three reasons. First, human nature does not change: humans are egotistical and power-seeking creatures, given to lusts and impulses that cannot be restrained by reason or moral considerations. Changes in terms of cultural, technological, and economic progress do not change these ‘facts of life’. Second, history is shaped by self-interested political units of one kind or another. These political units may take different forms in different historical periods – tribes, empires, city states, nation states, and so on – but their basic behaviour in terms of rivalry (potentially or actually) with other political units never changes. Third, anarchy is an enduring fact of history, an assumption sometimes referred to as ‘anarcho-centrism’. Despite long periods of domination by various civilizations, empires, great powers, or superpowers, none has managed to establish global supremacy. The absence of world government (see p. 574), ensures that every historical period is characterized by fear, suspicion, and rivalry, as all political units are forced, ultimately, to rely on violent self-help. LIBERAL VIEW The liberal view of history is ‘teleological’, meaning that it is characterized by a belief in progress towards ends: history marches forwards as human society achieves higher and higher levels of advancement. The assumption that history moves from the ‘dark’ to the ‘light’ is based, above all, on a faith in reason. Reason emancipates humankind from the grip of the past and the weight of custom and tradition. Each generation is able to advance beyond the last as the stock of human knowledge and understanding progressively increases. In international affairs, progress involves a transition from power-seeking behaviour, in which aggression and violence are routinely used as tools of state policy, to a condition characterized by cooperation and peaceful coexistence, brought about by economic interdependence, the emergence of an international rule of law, and the advance of democracy. Such thinking has a utopian dimension, in that it emphasizes the possibility of ‘perpetual peace’ (Kant) and suggests, following Fukuyama (see p. 640), that the worldwide victory of liberal democracy would amount to the ‘end of history’. MARXIST VIEW The most influential critical approaches to history have developed out of Marxism. The Marxist theory of history – often portrayed as ‘historical materialism’ – emphasizes that the primary driving forces in history are material or economic factors. In Marx’s view, history moves forwards from one ‘mode of production’ to the next, working its way through primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism and eventually leading to the establishment of a fully communist society, history’s determinant end point. Each of these historical stages would collapse under the weight of their internal contradictions, manifest in the form of class conflict. However, communism would mark the end of history because, being based on common ownership of wealth, it is classless. Although orthodox Marxists sometimes interpreted this as a form of economic determinism, Frankfurt School critical theorists and those influenced by them, such as Robert Cox (see p. 180), have 38 HISTORY rejected determinism in allowing that, in addition to the material forces of production, states and relations among states can also influence the course of history. Nevertheless, such essentially class-based theories of history have been rejected by post-structuralists, social constructivists, and feminists. POST-STRUCTURALIST AND CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEWS Post-structuralists have often followed Foucault (see p. 19) in employing a style of historical thought called ‘genealogy’, exposing hidden meanings and representations in history that serve the interests of domination and exclude marginalized groups and peoples. Through this historical deconstruction and reconstruction of social practices, post-structuralists hope to shed light on what Foucault called the ‘order of things’ in present-day societies. Social constructivists, meanwhile, criticize the Marxist materialist account, instead emphasizing the power of ideas, norms, and values to shape world history. Constructivist accounts of major global-historical changes, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, highlight their ‘ideational’, or belief-based, roots in changing identities and social structures. History, for constructivists, is the unfolding process of interaction between social structures and social agents as the latter come to view themselves and others in different ways at different junctures. POSTCOLONIAL VIEW History, and especially historiography (the study of what versions of history are recorded, how, and by whom) is central to the postcolonial view of global politics. In particular, postcolonial thinkers emphasize the ways in which the intellectual and material history of colonization continues to directly structure our present. From the hierarchies of a Western-dominated ‘world order’ to the widespread structural and direct racism in majority-white societies (see p. 100), postcolonial theory contends that coloniality remains firmly embedded in the global politics of the twenty-first century. From this perspective, the rise of social movements such as Black Lives Matter (see p. 103) exists in part to highlight the centrality of historical experience in shaping the inequalities of today, contesting both contemporary problems and historical erasures. It is widely agreed among postcolonial thinkers that the teaching and learning of history in schools and universities has systematically distorted or erased non-Western perceptions of colonial history and therefore also of the power dynamics at work in global politics today. FEMINIST VIEW Feminists, for their part, have sometimes highlighted continuity, by portraying patriarchy (see p. 107) as a historical constant found in many historical and contemporary societies. But as a form of critical theory addressing structural inequality and social injustice, feminist theory also emphasizes the potential for change and emancipation through history. In this respect, feminists highlight the successes of women’s movements in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in changing the basic rights and freedoms of many women around the world, on issues ranging from suffrage and unequal pay to freedoms associated with sexuality, gender identity, abortion, and domestic abuse. Postcolonial feminists, however, like other postcolonial thinkers, also note the complicity of ‘white feminism’ itself in the historic – and therefore also the present-day – perpetuation of racist stereotypes and structures, particularly with reference to women of the Global South. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS THE ‘SHORT’ TWENTIETH CENTURY: 1914–90 THE DAWN OF MASS SOCIETIES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS The nineteenth century’s industrialization and age of imperialism ‘massified’ societies in many respects, through the advent of mass production in the capitalist economy and the huge migrations of population from rural to urban living in many countries to meet the demand of the new economy for factory workers and other urban labour. At the outset of the twentieth century, these emergent mass societies became increasingly politically volatile. The development of mass communications and mass media, along with an increase in literacy, connected people within and between societies, fostering awareness of current affairs at a more global level and enabling the proliferation of social movements for change. The first two decades of the twentieth century alone saw mass political uprisings around the world, including the Chinese ‘Boxer’ Rebellion (1899–1901) against foreign imperialist powers, the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), which transformed the country into a constitutional republic, and the Russian Revolution (1917–23), which established the Soviet Union as the world’s first communist society. In the emergent Western ‘liberal democracies’, highly organized and militant mass movements for women’s suffrage saw some constituencies of (mostly white and middle-class or wealthy) women win limited voting rights for the first time, including in Australia (1902), Finland (1906), the UK (1918), and the Netherlands and Sweden (1919). That said, many Western countries took much longer to enact women’s suffrage, including France (1945) and Switzerland (1971). Anti-colonial mass social movements (see p. 101), meanwhile, gathered pace and intensity in the continents that Europeans had spent the previous centuries conquering, occupying, and exploiting for labour and resources. During and after the First World War (see below) and the Russian Revolution, and directly connected to these events that preoccupied the colonizing European ‘Great Powers’, anti-colonial forces began to organize at a greater scale. The Jamaican internationalist and anti-colonial activist and intellectual Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. The UNIA held its first international convention in New York in 1920, where tens of thousands of attendees from across the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere gathered and ultimately issued a ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World’. In the same period, W. E. B. Du Bois (see p. 106) published his influential The Souls of Black Folk ([1903] 1961) and co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, which remains one of the most influential American civil rights organizations today. Meanwhile, in 1915, Mohandas Gandhi (see p. 349) returned from South Africa to India as an anticolonial agitator and joined the Indian National Congress Party, which would go on to spearhead the Indian independence movement that finally threw off British colonial rule in 1947. 39 Mass societies: From the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, societies in which new technologies and industrial transformations led to unprecedented levels of communication, commerce, and connection, and the ‘masses’ gained access to politics. Social movements: Coalitions of individuals and groups seeking to implement social change. This may be through influencing – or even seizing control of – government or the state and its levers of economic and political power. 2 FIG U 40 RE GLOBAL POLITICS MARCUS GARVEY (1887–1940) The Jamaican political activist and thinker Marcus Garvey was a key figure in the development of Black nationalism (see p. 269) and pan-Africanism (see p. 237). In founding the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Garvey played a pivotal role in establishing international relations among Black liberation movements across the West. However, Garvey was a controversial figure, whose Black nationalist politics extended to racial separatism and to opposition to ‘miscegenation’, or ‘racial mixing’. He actually embraced the politics of the violent white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), agreeing that America should be left to the whites, while Black Americans should make a new, separate home for themselves in Africa. Garvey’s collaboration with the KKK saw him jailed in the 1920s, and he remained unrepentant over it upon his release. Garvey’s racial separatism put him at odds with integrationist contemporaries such as W. E. B. Du Bois (see p. 106). Though he wrote no books, Garvey’s UNIA papers, speeches, courses, and poetry were posthumously collected and published in many volumes, including Message to the People: The Course of African Source: New York Daily News/ Getty Images Philosophy (1986, edited by Tony Martin). These trends of social massification, and political transformation and globalization, were made possible by technological developments in domains including communications and transport. The production of the Ford Model T in 1908 – the first affordable, massproduced motor car – even led later sociologists to use the term ‘Fordism’ to describe the industrial and technological dynamics of the period. But the sudden speeding-up of technological innovation that had been made possible by the industrialization of the nineteenth century – including the advent of factories and a transnational industrial working class – had a ‘dark side’ beyond the brutal working conditions that underpinned it. Some businesses, states, and imperial Great Powers in particular, sought new methods of war-making rooted in these new technologies. The dawn of aeroplanes, after the Wright brothers’ first successful flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft in the United States in 1903, and of the ‘Maxim’ machine gun developed by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in the UK in 1844 were especially pivotal developments. These and other new military technologies would dramatically alter the waging of war throughout the twentieth century, rendering the mass killing of both combatants and civilians an altogether easier feat. THE FIRST WORLD WAR Total war: A war involving all aspects of society, resulting from largescale conscription, the gearing of the economy to military ends, and the mass destruction of ‘enemy’ targets, including civilians. The outbreak of war in 1914 is often seen as the beginning of the ‘short’ twentieth century (Hobsbawm 1994), the period during which world politics was dominated by the ideological struggle between capitalism and communism, and which ended in 1989–91. The First World War has been described as the most significant war in world history. It was the first example of total war, meaning that domestic populations and the patterns of civilian life (the ‘home front’) were more profoundly affected than by earlier wars. The war was also genuinely a ‘world’ war, not only because of the recruitment of armies from across the empires of Europe but also because of the participation of several states, including Turkey and Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers and Serbia, THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS Belgium, Luxembourg, Japan, Italy, Romania, Portugal, Greece, and, most significantly, the United States on the side of the Allied Powers. The First World War was the first ‘modern’ war, in the sense of being industrialized – it witnessed the earliest use of, for example, tanks, chemical weapons (poison gas and flame-throwers), and aircraft, including long-range strategic bombing. Some 65 million men were mobilized by the various belligerents, over 8 million of whom died, while about 10 million civilians were killed in the war itself or perished in the pandemic of Spanish influenza that broke out in the winter of 1918/19. The First World War was precipitated by the assassination, in June 1914, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, nephew of the Austrian Emperor, by the Black Hand, a group of Serbian nationalists. This precipitated declarations of war by Austria-Hungary and Russia, which, thanks to a system of alliances that had been constructed over the previous decade, led to a wider war between the Triple Alliance (Britain, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) and in due course several other states were drawn into the conflict. The eventual victory of the Allies was probably accounted for by their greater success, perhaps linked to their democratic systems, in mobilizing manpower and equipment; by their earlier and more effective use of mechanized warfare; and, ultimately, by the entry of the United States into the war. However, there was, and remains, considerable debate about the origins of the war. The main causes that have been linked to the outbreak of the First World War are the following: z the ‘German problem’; z the ‘Eastern question’; z imperialism; and z nationalism. The ‘German problem’ draws attention to a phenomenon that has many and diverse interpretations. Realist theorists, who believe that the basic inclination of states towards the acquisition of power and the pursuit of national interest can only be constrained by a balance of power (see p. 81), argue that Europe’s instability stemmed from a structural imbalance which had resulted from the emergence, through the unification of Germany in 1871, of a dominant power in central Europe. This imbalance encouraged Germany’s bid for power, reflected, for instance, in its desire for colonies (Germany’s ‘place in the sun’) and in its growing strategic and military rivalry with Britain, especially in terms of naval power. Alternative interpretations of the ‘German problem’, however, tend to locate the source of German expansionism in the mindset of its political and military elites. The German historian Fritz Fischer (1968) famously emphasized the role of Weltpolitik, or ‘world policy’, in shaping Germany’s aggressive and expansionist foreign policy during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888–1918. This view, in effect, blames Germany (or at least its political leaders) for the outbreak of the First World War, something that the Allies expressed through the ‘war guilt’ clause of the Treaty of Versailles (1919). The fact that the First World War broke out in the Balkans and initially involved declarations of war by Russia and Austria-Hungary highlights the significance of the so-called ‘Eastern question’. The ‘Eastern question’ refers to the structural instabilities of the Balkans region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 41 2 42 GLOBAL POLITICS These instabilities resulted from a power vacuum left by the territorial and political decline of the Ottoman Empire, which at its height had once controlled the Middle East, much of south-eastern Europe, and parts of North Africa. This meant that the Balkans, a region characterized by complex ethnic and religious diversity and a growing streak of nationalist aspirations by the late nineteenth century, sparked the expansionist ambitions of two of Europe’s traditional great powers, Russia and Austria-Hungary. But for this, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 may have remained a localized incident. As it was, it led to war between Russia and Austria-Hungary, which turned into a continent-wide war and eventually a world war. Wider explanations of the outbreak of the First World War have drawn attention to developments such as the advent of imperialism and the impact of nationalism. As discussed earlier, the late nineteenth century had witnessed a remarkable period of colonial expansion and particularly a ‘scramble for Africa’. Marxist historians have followed V. I. Lenin in viewing imperialism as the core explanation for world war. Lenin ([1916] 1970) portrayed imperialism as the ‘highest’ stage of capitalism, arguing that the quest for raw materials and cheap labour abroad would lead to intensifying colonial rivalry amongst capitalist powers, eventually precipitating war. The African American anti-racist scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois (see p. 106), a contemporary of Lenin, meanwhile highlighted the centrality of Africa to the outbreak of war. Whereas, Du Bois noted in a 1915 article, ‘there are those who would write world-history and leave out this most marvelous of continents’, in fact ‘in a very real sense Africa is a prime cause of this terrible overturning of civilization which we have lived to see’ (Du Bois 1915). The ‘robbery’ of the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ was a primary driver of the war, according to Du Bois. Competition among European states, as their existing empires approached the beginning of their terminal decline, turned to Africa’s natural resources and labour power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Critics of Lenin’s Marxist interpretation of the First World War have argued that, in interpreting imperialism as essentially an economic phenomenon, he failed to take account of a more powerful force in the form of nationalism. From the late nineteenth century onwards, nationalism had become enmeshed with militarism and chauvinism, creating growing support for expansionist and aggressive foreign policies amongst both political elites and the general public. In this view, the spread of chauvinist or expansionist nationalism both fuelled ‘new’ imperialism and created intensifying international conflict, eventually leading to war in 1914. THE SECOND WORLD WAR Chauvinism: An uncritical and unreasoned dedication to a cause or group, typically based on a belief in its superiority, as in ‘national chauvinism’. The First World War was meant to be the ‘war to end all wars’, and yet within a generation a second world war broke out. The Second World War was the world’s biggest military confrontation. Over 90 million combatants were mobilized, with estimates of the war dead, including civilians, ranging from 40 million to 60 million. The war was more ‘total’ than the First World War, in that the proportion of civilian deaths was much greater (due to indiscriminate air attacks and the murderous policies of the Nazi regime, THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS particularly towards Jewish people), and the level of disruption to domestic society was more intense, with economies being restructured to support the war effort. The reach of warfare during the Second World War was also truly global. The war started as a European war with the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, leading, within days, to the UK and France declaring war on Germany. Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands were engulfed in war through Germany’s Blitzkrieg (‘lightning war’) attacks in 1940. In 1941, an Eastern Front opened up through the German invasion of Yugoslavia, Greece, and, most crucially, the Soviet Union. The war in Asia was precipitated by the Japanese attack on the US military base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, which also drew the United States into the war against Germany and Italy and resulted in fighting in Burma and across much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The war also spread to North Africa from 1942 onwards. The war in Europe ended in May 1945 with the capitulation of Germany, and the war in Asia ended in August 1945, following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. EVE NT S WORLD HISTORY, 1900–1945 1900–1901 Boxer Rebellion in China 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War 1910–20 Mexican Revolution 1914 The First World War begins 1915 Armenian genocide 1917 Russian Revolution creates world’s first communist state 1919 Treaty of Versailles 1922 Mussolini seizes power in Italy 1929 Wall Street Crash (October); Great Depression begins 1929 Stalin begins forced collectivization in Soviet Union 1930 Japan invades Manchuria 1932 F. D. Roosevelt elected US President; the New Deal starts 1933 Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany 1934 Mao Zedong begins the Long March 1935 Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia) 1936 Germany reoccupies the Rhineland 1938 Anschluss with Austria 1938 Munich Agreement 1939 The Second World War begins 43 2 44 GLOBAL POLITICS 1940 The ‘Axis’ alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan signs the Tripartite Pact 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 1942–3 Battle of Stalingrad 1942–5 Holocaust extermination campaign 1945 End of the Second World War in Europe (May) 1945 Japan surrenders, ending the Second World War (September), after the United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing more than 100,000 civilians The factors that were decisive in determining the outcome of the Second World War were the involvement of the USSR and the United States. War against the Soviet Union forced Germany to fight on two fronts, with the Eastern Front attracting the bulk of German manpower and resources. Following the Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942–3, Germany was forced into a draining but remorseless retreat. The involvement of the United States fundamentally affected the economic balance of power by ensuring that the resources of the world’s foremost industrial power would be devoted to ensuring the defeat of Germany and Japan. However, the origins of the Second World War have been a subject of even greater historical controversy than the origins of the First World War. The main factors that have been associated with the outbreak of the Second World War have been: z the First World War peace settlements; z the global economic crisis; z Nazi expansionism; and z Japanese expansionism in Asia. Reparations: Compensation, usually involving financial payments or the physical requisition of goods, to cover the costs of war and other international human catastrophes, including slavery. Many historians have seen the Second World War as, in effect, a replay of the First World War, with the Treaty of Versailles (1919) marking the beginning of the road to war. In this sense, the years 1919 to 1939 amounted to a ‘twenty-year truce’. Critics of Versailles tend to argue that it was shaped by two incompatible objectives. The first was the attempt to create a liberal world order by breaking up the European empires and replacing them with a collection of independent nation states policed by the League of Nations, the world’s first attempt at global governance (see Chapter 20). The second, expressed in particular by France and the states neighbouring Germany, was the desire to make Germany pay for the war and to benefit territorially and economically from its defeat. This led to the ‘war guilt’ clause, the loss of German territory on both western and eastern borders, and to the imposition of reparations. Although it set out to redress the European balance of power, Versailles therefore made things worse. Realists have often followed E. H. Carr in arguing that a major cause of the ‘twenty-year crisis’ that led to war in 1939 was wider faith in ‘utopianism’, or liberal internationalism. This encouraged the ‘haves’ (the First World War victors) to assume that international affairs would in future be guided by a harmony of interests, inclining them to disregard bids for power by the ‘have-nots’ (in particular Germany and Italy). FIG U THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS RE 45 E. H. CARR (1892–1982) British historian, journalist, and international relations theorist. Carr joined the Foreign Office and attended the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the First World War. Appointed Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1936, he later became assistant editor of The Times of London before returning to academic life in 1953. Carr is best known for The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (1939), a critique of the entire peace settlement of 1919 and the wider influence of ‘utopianism’ on diplomatic affairs, especially a reliance on international bodies such as the League of Nations. He is often viewed as one of the key realist theorists, drawing attention to the need to manage (rather than ignore) conflict between ‘have’ and ‘have-not’ states. Nevertheless, he condemned cynical realpolitik for lacking moral judgement. Carr’s other writing includes Nationalism and After (1945) and the quasi-Marxist fourteen-volume A History of Soviet Russia (1950–78). The second major factor that contributed to intensifying international tension in Europe was the global economic crisis, 1929–33. Sparked by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, this highlighted both the higher level of interconnectedness of the global economy (through its rapid spread across the industrialized world) and the structural instability of its financial systems in particular. The main political impact of the economic crisis was a rise in unemployment and growing poverty, which, in politically unstable states such as Germany, made radical or extreme political solutions more potent. Economically, the crisis resulted in the abandonment of free trade in favour of protectionism and even in autarky, the turn to economic nationalism that helped to fuel the rise of political nationalism and international distrust. However, the main controversies surrounding the origins of the Second World War concern the role and significance of Nazi Germany. Historians have disagreed about both the importance of ideology in explaining the outbreak of war (can German aggression and expansionism be explained largely in terms of the rise of fascism and, specifically, Nazism?) and the extent to which the war was the outcome of the aims and deliberate intentions of Adolf Hitler. German foreign policy certainly became more aggressive after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933. The Rhineland was occupied in 1936, Austria was annexed in 1938, the Sudetenland portion of Czechoslovakia was occupied and the rest of Czechoslovakia invaded in 1938–9, and then Poland was invaded in September 1939. Moreover, the fact that fascist and particularly Nazi ideology blended social Darwinism with an extreme form of chauvinist nationalism appeared to invest Hitler’s Germany with a sense of a messianic or fanatical mission: the prospect of national regeneration and the rebirth of national pride through war and conquest. Others, on the other hand, have argued that Nazi foreign policy was dictated less by ideology and more by either geopolitical factors or a political culture that was shaped by the nineteenthcentury unification process. From this perspective, there was significant continuity between the foreign policy goals of the Nazi regime and the preceding Weimar Republic (1919–33) and early Wilhelmine Germany, the turn to aggressive expansion in the 1930s being explicable more in terms of opportunity than ideology. Autarky: Economic self-sufficiency, often associated with expansionism and conquest to ensure the control of economic resources and reduce economic dependency on other states. Social Darwinism: The eugenicist belief that social existence is characterized by competition or struggle, ‘the survival of the fittest’, implying that international conflict and probably war are inevitable. 2 46 GLOBAL POLITICS FOCUS ON . . . HITLER’S WAR? The debate about Hitler’s personal responsibility for the Second World War has been particularly intense. Those who subscribe to the ‘Hitler’s war’ thesis emphasize the clear correlation between the three aims he set out for Germany in Mein Kampf (1924) and unfolding Nazi expansionism in the 1930s. Hitler’s ‘war aims’ were, first, to achieve a Greater Germany (achieved through the incorporation of Austria and the Sudetan Germans into the Third Reich); second, the expansion into eastern Europe in search of lebensraum or ‘living space’ (achieved through the invasion of Russia); and third, a bid for world power through the defeat of the major sea empires, Britain and the United States. This view is also supported by the fact that Nazi Germany operated, in effect, as Hitler’s state, with power concentrated in the hands of a single, unchallengeable leader. On the other hand, opponents of this view have emphasized the limitations of the ‘great man’ theory of history (in which history is seen to be ‘made’ by leaders acting independently of larger political, social, and economic forces). Marxist historians, for example, have drawn attention to the extent to which Nazi expansionism coincided with the interests of German big business. Others have drawn attention to miscalculation on the part of both Hitler and those who sought to contain Nazi aggression. The chief culprits here are usually identified as a lingering belief in liberal internationalism across much of Europe, which blinded statesmen generally to the realities of power politics, and the UK’s policy of appeasement, which encouraged Hitler to believe that he could invade Poland without precipitating war with the United Kingdom and eventually the United States. However, unlike the First World War, the Second World War did not originate as a European war that spilled over to other parts of the world; important developments took place in Asia, notably linked to the growing power and imperial ambition of Japan. In many ways, the position of Japan in the interwar period resembled that of Germany before the First World War: the growing economic and military strength of a single state upset the continental balance of power and helped to fuel expansionist tendencies. Japan’s bid for colonial possessions intensified in the 1920s and 1930s, in particular with the occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and the construction of the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1936, Japan joined with Germany and Italy to form the Anti-Comintern Pact, which developed into a full military and political alliance, the ‘Pact of Steel’, in 1939 and eventually the Tripartite Pact in 1940. However, expansionism into Asia brought growing tension between Japan and the United Kingdom and United States. Calculating that by 1941 its naval forces in the Pacific had achieved parity with those of the United States and the United Kingdom, and taking advantage of the changing focus of the war once Germany had invaded Russia in June 1941, Japan decided deliberately to provoke confrontation with the United States through the pre-emptive strike on Pearl Harbor. By drawing the United States into the Second World War, this act also effectively determined its outcome. END OF EMPIRES Appeasement: A foreign policy strategy of making concessions to an aggressor in the hope of modifying its political objectives and, specifically, avoiding war. The year 1945 was a turning point in world history in a number of respects. Principally, it instigated a process of decolonization that witnessed the gradual but dramatic disintegration of the European empires. Not only did ‘end of empire’ symbolize the larger decline of Europe but it also set in train, across much of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in particular, political, economic, and ideological developments that would have profound implications for global politics. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 47 Imperial over-reach: A hubristic attempt by an imperialist power to exert control over more territories or peoples than it has the material resources z First, the traditional imperial powers (especially the UK, France, Belgium, and the (including financial and Netherlands) were suffering from ‘imperial over-reach’ (Kennedy 1989). military capabilities) to successfully maintain. The process of gradually dismantling European control of overseas territories and peoples had begun after the First World War. Germany was forced to give up its colonies as part of the Treaty of Versailles and the British dominions had attained virtual independence in 1931. However, the process accelerated greatly after the Second World War through a combination of three factors: z Second, a decisive shift against European colonialism had occurred diplomatically. US pressure to dismantle imperialism became more assertive after the Second World War and more difficult to resist. CON z Third, resistance to colonialism across Asia, Africa, and Latin America became fiercer and more politically engaged. This occurred, in part, through the spreading influence of a set of radical political ideas; indigenous theories of resistance such as pan-Africanism (see p. 237), often combined with forms of nationalism; religious doctrines from the Christian and Muslim traditions known as ‘liberation theologies’, which stressed the fundamental equality of human beings and the evils of racism and poverty; and the Western anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist doctrine of Marxism– Leninism. In combination, these created a potent form of anti-colonial nationalism across much of what came to be known as the ‘Third World’ in pursuit of ‘national liberation’, implying not only political independence but also a social revolution, offering the prospect of both political and economic emancipation. C E PT THIRD WORLD The term ‘Third World’ drew attention to the parts of the world that, during the Cold War, did not fall into the capitalist so-called ‘First World’ or the communist so-called ‘Second World’. The formerly colonized and newly independent countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America were ‘third’ in the sense that they were made economically and militarily dependent on the ‘first’ and ‘second’ worlds, and often suffered from widespread poverty and famine as a result. The term also implied that they were ‘non-aligned’, the Third World often being the battleground on which the geopolitical struggle between the First and Second Worlds was conducted. Some anti-racist movements and Black liberationists in ‘First World’ countries, such as Stokely Carmichael (see p. 292), situated their movements as connected or conjoined with the Third World, highlighting parallel forms of subjugation of non-white peoples at the national and global levels. The term ‘Third World’ has largely been abandoned since the 1970s due to its pejorative ideological implications, the receding significance of a shared colonial past, and economic development in Asia in particular. The end of the British Empire, which had extended across the globe and encompassed over 600 million people at its height, was particularly significant. India won its independence in 1947, followed by Burma and Sri Lanka in 1948, and Malaya in 1957, with the UK’s African colonies achieving independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1980, when Zimbabwe gained its independence, the collapse of the British Empire had ushered forty-nine new states into existence. Although the UK had faced some armed anti-colonial resistance, in Malaya and Kenya in particular, the logic of decolonization was ineluctable. In contrast, France’s refusal to relinquish its imperial status resulted in 2 48 GLOBAL POLITICS prolonged brutal, and ultimately unsuccessful, counter-insurgency wars to prevent the independence of Vietnam (1945–54) and Algeria (1954–62). Portugal similarly saw its colonial power violently overthrown by small and often poorly equipped but nevertheless highly motivated and organized anti-colonial struggles in its African colonies of GuineaBissau, Mozambique, and Angola, in a set of revolutionary wars (see p. 325) known collectively as the ‘Portuguese Colonial War’ (1961–75). It may be possible to argue that the implications of decolonization were more profound than those of the Cold War, and it certainly had an impact over a longer period of time. In the first place, the early decades after the Second World War witnessed the most dramatic and intense process of state construction in world history. European decolonization in the Third World more than tripled the membership of the UN, from about 50 states in 1945 to over 150 states by 1978 (see Figure 2.2). This meant that the European state-system that had originated in the seventeenth century became a truly global system after 1945. However, the end of empire also significantly extended the reach of superpower influence, highlighting the fact that decolonization and the Cold War were not separate and distinct processes but overlapping and intertwined ones. The developing world increasingly became the battleground on which the East–West conflict was played out. In this way, the establishment of a global state system, and the apparent victory of the principle of sovereign independence, coincided with a crucial moment in the advance of globalization: the absorption of almost all parts of the world, to a greater or lesser extent, into rival power blocs. This process not only created a web of strategic and military interdependence but also resulted in higher levels of economic and cultural penetration of the newly independent states. UN Member States 250 200 150 100 50 0 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 2022 Figure 2.2 Growth of membership of the United Nations, 1945 to present Finally, the achievement of formal independence had mixed consequences for developing world states in terms of economic and social development. The so-called ‘tiger’ economies of East and Southeast Asia and many of the oil-producing states of the Gulf region, achieved high levels of growth, banishing poverty and bringing wider THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 49 prosperity. Despite the political upheavals of the Mao period in China, 1949–75, steady levels of economic growth laid the foundation for the subsequent transition to a market economy and rising growth rates from the 1980s onwards. However, many other areas were less fortunate. Across what started from the 1970s to be called the ‘Global South’ (see p. 464), and most acutely in sub-Saharan Africa, widespread and sometimes acute poverty persisted. RISE AND FALL OF THE COLD WAR CON If the ‘short’ twentieth century was characterized by the ideological battle between capitalism and communism, 1945 marked a dramatic shift in the intensity and scope of this battle as world order was transformed post-war. Although badly shaken by the First World War and having experienced economic decline relative in particular to the United States, European powers had been the major forces shaping world politics in the pre-1939 world. The post-1945 world, however, was characterized by the emergence of the United States and the USSR as ‘superpowers’, predominant actors on the world stage, apparently dwarfing the ‘great powers’ of old. The superpower era was characterized by the Cold War, a period marked by tensions between an increasingly US-dominated West and a Soviet-dominated East. The multipolarity (see p. 310) of the pre-Second World War period thus gave way to Cold War bipolarity (see p. 296). C E PT SUPERPOWER First used as ‘super-power’ by William Fox (1944), the term indicates a power that is greater than a traditional ‘great power’. For Fox, superpowers possessed great power ‘plus great mobility of power’. As the term tends to be used specifically to refer to the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War period, it is of more historical than conceptual significance. To describe the United States and the Soviet Union as superpowers implied that they possessed (1) a global reach, (2) a predominant economic and strategic role within their respective ideological bloc or sphere of influence, and (3) preponderant military capacity, especially in terms of nuclear weaponry. The first phase of the Cold War was fought in Europe. The division of Europe that had resulted from the defeat of Germany (the Soviet Red Army having advanced from the east and the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies having pushed forward from the west) quickly became permanent. As Winston Churchill put it in his famous speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946, an ‘iron curtain’ had descended between East and West, from Lübeck in northern Germany to Trieste in the Adriatic. Some trace back the start of the Cold War to the Potsdam Conference of 1945, where the leaders of the USA, UK, and Soviet Union disagreed over the division of Germany and Berlin into four zones, while others associate it with the establishment of the so-called ‘Truman Doctrine’ in 1947, whereby the United States committed itself to supporting ‘free people’, later instigating the Marshall Plan, which provided economic support for the rebuilding of war-torn Europe in the hope that it would be able to resist the appeal of communism. The process of division was completed in 1949 with the creation of 2 50 GLOBAL POLITICS the ‘two Germanys’ and the establishment of rival military alliances, consisting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and, in 1955, the Warsaw Pact. Thereafter, the Cold War became global. The Korean War (1950–3) marked the spread of the Cold War to Asia following the Chinese Revolution of 1949. However, how did the Cold War start in the first place? There is a little controversy over the broad circumstances that led to the Cold War: z In line with the assumptions of realist theorists (see p. 72), the very existence of superpower states provided an irresistible opportunity for aggrandizement and expansion, which made rivalry between the world’s two superpowers virtually inevitable. z In the case of the United States and the Soviet Union, this rivalry was exacerbated by their common geopolitical interests in Europe and by a mutual deep ideological distrust. z The irreconcilable ideological opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the two poles of power in the Cold War, was rooted in the antagonism between communism, a collectivist ideology of popular rule and a highly statecontrolled ‘command’ economy, and liberal capitalism, an individualist ideology of representative government attached to a ‘free market’ economy. z Underlining these tensions between the two superpowers was the approximate equivalence of their military capabilities, stemming particularly from their possession of nuclear weapons, the most devastating of all weapons of mass destruction (see Chapter 12). Nevertheless, significant debates emerged about responsibility for the outbreak of the Cold War, and these were closely linked to the rivalries and ideological perceptions that helped to fuel the Cold War itself. The traditional, or ‘orthodox’, explanation for the Cold War lays the blame firmly at the door of the Soviet Union. It sees the Soviet stranglehold over Eastern Europe as an expression of long-standing Russian imperial ambitions, given renewed impetus by the Marxist–Leninist doctrine of worldwide class struggle leading to the establishment of international communism. Buffer zone: An area, state, or collection of states located between potential (and more powerful) adversaries, reducing the likelihood of land-based attack in particular. A ‘revisionist’ interpretation of the Cold War was nevertheless developed that attracted growing support during the Vietnam War (1964–75) from academics such as Gabriel Kolko (1985). This view portrayed Soviet expansionism into Eastern Europe as defensive rather than aggressive, motivated essentially by the desire for a buffer zone between itself and a hostile West and a wish to see a permanently weakened Germany. Various ‘post-revisionist’ explanations have also been developed. Some of these acknowledge the hegemonic ambitions of both superpowers, arguing that the Cold War was the inevitable consequence of a power vacuum that was a product of the defeat of Germany and Japan as well as the exhaustion of the UK (Yergin 1980). Alternative explanations place a heavier emphasis on misunderstanding and missed opportunities. For example, there had been early signs of hope in President Roosevelt’s belief in peaceful cooperation under the auspices of the newly created United Nations, and also in Stalin’s distinctly discouraging attitude towards Tito in Yugoslavia and Mao in China. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 51 DEBATING . . . WAS THE COLD WAR INEVITABLE? 2 There is always a tendency to read inevitability into historical events: they happened because they had to happen; history has a predestined course. In the case of the Cold War, this debate has raged with a particular passion because it is linked to rival theories about the factors that drive world politics. Is history shaped by irresistible political or ideological forces, or is it, all too often, a product of misperceptions and miscalculations? YES NO Dynamics of bipolarity. Realist theorists have argued that the Cold War is best understood in terms of power politics and the nature of the international system. In this view, states are primarily concerned with their own survival and therefore prioritize military and security concerns. However, their ability to pursue or maintain power is determined by the wider distribution of power within the international system. What made the Cold War inevitable was that after the Second World War the defeat of Germany, Japan, and Italy and the long-term decline of victorious states such as the UK and France created a bipolar world order in which the United States and the Soviet Union had predominant influence. The shape of global politics in the post-Second World War era was therefore clear. Bipolarity meant that rivalry and hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union were inevitable, as each sought to consolidate and, if possible, expand its sphere of influence. This led to growing enmity between a US-dominated West and a Sovietdominated East. A world of multiple great powers had given way to a world dominated by two superpowers, and peace and cooperation between these superpowers were impossible. Western misperceptions about the Soviet Union. The Cold War was not dictated by either bipolarity or ideology but came about through a process of mistake, miscalculation, and misinterpretation. Both key actors blundered in missing opportunities for peace and cooperation; instead, escalating misperception created a mentality of ‘bombs, dollars and doctrines’ that made mutual suspicion and ingrained hostility seem unavoidable. Western misperceptions about the Soviet Union were based on the assumption that Soviet foreign policy was determined by ideology rather than territorial security. The Soviet Union’s primary concerns were permanently to weaken Germany and to create a buffer zone of ‘friendly’ states in Eastern Europe. However, by 1946–7, US policy analysts were starting to see the creation of the Soviet bloc as either an expression of deepseated Russian imperial ambitions or a manifestation of the Marxist–Leninist doctrine of worldwide class struggle. Key figures in the Truman administration came to believe that they were confronting a Soviet Union bent on pursuing world revolution, and increasingly acted accordingly. The ideological ‘long war’. An alternative version of the Cold War inevitability portrays ideology as the irresistible driving force. In this view, the Cold War was essentially an expression of the global ideological struggle between capitalism and communism that emerged in the nineteenth century but assumed a more concrete form after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Antagonism between capitalism and communism derives from the fact that they represent incompatible modes of economic organization; in effect, competing visions of the future. The Cold War was therefore a battle between the capitalist West and the communist East, the United States and the Soviet Union being merely the instruments through which it was fought. The Cold War, thus, became inevitable once fascism had been vanquished in 1945, leaving global politics to be structured by East–West conflict. Soviet misperceptions about the West. The Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin, was influenced by a deep distrust of the West, born out of interwar fears about ‘capitalist encirclement’. Paralleling Western misperceptions, Soviet leaders believed that US foreign policy was guided more by ideological considerations, particularly anti-communism, than by strategic concerns. Thus, the United States’ rapidly reducing military presence in Europe (US forces dropped from 3.5 million in May 1945 to 400,000 the following March, and eventually to 81,000) had little or no impact on Soviet policymakers, who failed to understand that the United States genuinely wanted cooperation after the Second World War, albeit on its own terms. The mutual interest that the Soviet Union and the United States had in establishing a possible long-term relationship (based on a shared desire to reduce their defence burden and plough resources instead into domestic reconstruction) thus proved to be insufficiently strong to contain the drift towards fear and antagonism. 52 GLOBAL POLITICS Brinkmanship: A strategy of escalating confrontation even to the point of risking war (going to the brink) aimed at persuading an opponent to back down. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): A condition in which a nuclear attack by either state would only ensure its own destruction, as both possess an invulnerable secondstrike capacity. Détente: (French) Literally, loosening; the relaxation of tension between previously antagonistic states, often used to denote a phase in the Cold War. The Cold War was not a period of consistent and unremitting tension: it went through ‘warmer’ and ‘cooler’ phases, and at times threatened to become a ‘hot’ war. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was probably the moment at which direct confrontation between the superpowers came closest to happening. The fact that this exercise in brinkmanship ended peacefully perhaps demonstrated the effectiveness of the condition of Mutually Assured Destruction in preventing tension between the superpowers developing into military confrontation. However, the bipolar model of the Cold War became increasingly inaccurate from the 1970s onwards. This was due, first, to the growing fragmentation of the communist world (notably, the deepening enmity between Moscow and Beijing) and, second, to the resurgence of Japan and Germany as ‘economic superpowers’. The 1963–71 period reflected an emerging multipolarity and led more clearly to the era of détente between East and West, 1972–80. However, when the Cold War did come to an end, it was dramatic, swift, and quite unexpected. Over seventy years of communism collapsed in just two years, 1989–91, and where communist regimes survived, as in China, a process of radical change was taking place. During the momentous year of 1989, communist rule in Eastern Europe was rolled back to the borders of the Soviet Union; in 1990, the CSCE Paris Conference formally announced the end of the Cold War; and in 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed. Nevertheless, debate about the end of the Cold War is mired in as much ideological controversy as the debate about its origins (see p. 50). The range of factors that have been associated with the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War include the following: z the structural weaknesses of Soviet-style communism; z the impact of Gorbachev’s reform process; z US foreign policy; and z economic and cultural globalization. Some have argued that the collapse of communism was an accident waiting to happen, the inevitable outcome of structural flaws that doomed Soviet-style regimes to certain collapse more effectively than the contradictions identified by Marx as the fatal flaw of the capitalist system. These weaknesses were of two kinds, economic and political. The economic weaknesses were linked to the inherent failings of central planning. Centrally planned economies proved to be less effective than capitalist economies in delivering general prosperity and producing modern consumer goods. Eruptions of political discontent in 1980–91 were thus, in significant measure, a manifestation of economic backwardness and expressed a desire for Western-style living standards and consumer goods. The political weaknesses derived from the fact that communist regimes were structurally unresponsive to popular pressure. In particular, in the absence of competitive elections, independent interest groups, and a free media, single-party communist states possessed no mechanisms for articulating political discontent and initiating dialogue between rulers and the people. There is little doubt that, in addition to economic frustration, the popular protests of the 1989–91 period articulated demand for the kind of civil liberties and political rights that were seen as being commonplace in the liberal democratic West. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 53 Although structural weaknesses may explain communism’s susceptibility to collapse they do not explain either its timing or its swiftness. How did economic and political frustration accumulated over decades spill over and cause the downfall of regimes in a matter of months or even weeks? The answer lies in the impact of the reforms that Mikhail Gorbachev introduced in the Soviet Union from 1985 onwards. There were three key aspects of the reform process: 2 z The first, based on the slogan perestroika, involved the introduction of elements of market competition and private ownership to tackle the long-term deficiencies of Soviet central planning, drawing on earlier experiments in ‘market socialism’, particularly in Yugoslavia. However, economic restructuring under Gorbachev had disastrous consequences: it replaced an inefficient but still functioning planned economy with one that barely functioned at all. Perestroika: (Russian) Literally, ‘restructuring’; used in the Soviet Union to refer to the introduction of market z The second aspect of the reform process involved the dismantling of restrictions reforms to a command or on the expression of opinion and political debate, under the slogan of glasnost. planned economy. However, glasnost merely gave a political voice to Gorbachev’s opponents – hardline communists who opposed any reforms that might threaten the privileges and power of the party-state elite, as well as radical elements that wished to dismantle the apparatus of central planning and communist rule altogether. Gorbachev thus became increasingly isolated and retreated from ‘reform communism’ into more radical changes, including the formal abandonment of the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. z The third, and crucial, aspect of Gorbachev’s reforms was a new approach to relations with the United States and Western Europe, the basis of which was the abandonment of the Brezhnev doctrine. Its replacement, the so-called ‘Sinatra doctrine’, allowing the states of Eastern Europe to ‘do it their way’, meant that Gorbachev and the Soviet Union refused to intervene as, one after another, communist regimes collapsed in 1989–90, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Glasnost: (Russian) Literally, ‘openness’; used in the Soviet Union to refer to freedom of expression within the context of a one-party communist state. Brezhnev doctrine: The doctrine, announced by Leonid Brezhnev in 1968, that Warsaw Pact states only enjoyed ‘limited sovereignty’, justifying possible Soviet intervention. 54 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . Fall of the Berlin Wall Events: On 9 November 1989, a weary East German government spokesman announced that travel restrictions would be lifted. Flustered and subjected to further questioning, he then stated that this would take effect ‘immediately’. The effect of the announcement was electric. Inspired by the heady excitement that had been generated by the collapse of communist regimes in Poland and Hungary and by weekly mass demonstrations in Leipzig and, on a smaller scale, in other major East German cities, West and East Berliners rushed to the Wall. A euphoric party atmosphere rapidly developed, with people dancing on top of the Wall and helping each other over in both directions. By the morning of 10 November, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the chief symbol of the Cold War era, had begun. Over the following days and weeks, the borders between the two Germanies and the two parts of Berlin were increasingly opened up. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall had been inspired by events elsewhere in Eastern Europe, it, in turn, proved to be a source of inspiration. Communist rule collapsed in Czechoslovakia in December, and in Romania rioting first forced the Communist leader Ceaușescu and his wife Elena to flee by helicopter, before they were captured and summarily executed on Christmas Day. Significance: The fall of the Berlin Wall was the iconic moment in the momentous year of 1989, which witnessed the Eastern Europe Revolutions that effectively rolled back the boundaries of communism to the borders of the Soviet Union and ignited a process of reform that affected the entire communist world. The year 1989 is widely, and with justification, viewed as one of the most significant dates in world history, ranking alongside 1648 (the birth of the European state system), 1789 (the French Revolution), 1914 (the outbreak of the First World War), and 1945 (the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War). The momentum generated in 1989 led directly to a series of world-historical events. First, Germany was reunified in 1990, starting a process through which Europe would be reunified through the subsequent eastward expansion of the EU and, to some extent, NATO. Also in 1990, Source: GERARD MALIE/Getty Images representatives of the Warsaw Pact and NATO, the military faces of East–West confrontation, met in Paris formally to declare an end to hostilities, officially closing the book on the Cold War. Finally, in December 1991, the world’s first communist state, the Soviet Union, was officially disbanded. For Francis Fukuyama (1989) the year 1989 marked the ‘end of history’, in that the collapse of Marxism– Leninism as a world-historical force meant that liberal democracy had emerged as the sole viable economic and political system worldwide (for a fuller discussion of the ‘end of history’ thesis, see p. 127). For Philip Bobbitt (2002), the events precipitated by 1989 marked the end of the ‘long war’ between liberalism, fascism, and communism to define the constitutional form of the nation state. Nevertheless, some have questioned the historical significance of 1989, as represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall. This has been done in two ways. First, it is possible to argue that there is significant continuity between the pre- and post-1989 periods, in that both are characterized by the hegemonic position enjoyed by the United States. Indeed, 1989 may simply mark a further step in the United States’ long rise to hegemony. Second, 1989–91 may have marked only a temporary weakening of Russian power, which, as Russia emerged from the crisis years of the 1990s and started to reassert its influence under Putin, led to the resumption of Cold War-like rivalry with the United States. THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS Alternative explanations of the end of the Cold War draw attention away from internal developments within the Soviet Union and the communist bloc in general and focus instead on the changing context within which communism operated. The chief external factors contributing to the collapse of communism were the policies of the Reagan administration in the United States and the advance of economic and cultural globalization. The Reagan administration’s contribution to this process was to instigate a renewed US military build-up in the 1980s, particularly in the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (the ‘star wars’ initiative) of 1983. Whether intended or not, this drew the Soviet Union into an arms race (see p. 356) that its already fragile economy could not sustain, helping provoke economic collapse and increase the pressure for reform. The contribution of economic globalization was that it helped to widen differential living standards between the East and the West. While the progressive internationalization of trade and investment helped to fuel technological and economic development in the USdominated West from the 1970s onwards, its exclusion from global markets ensured that the Soviet-dominated East would suffer from economic stagnation. Cultural globalization contributed to the process through the spread of radio and television technology, helping ideas, information, and images from an apparently freer and more prosperous West to penetrate the more developed communist societies, particularly those in Eastern Europe. This, in turn, further fuelled discontent and bred support for Western-style economic and political reforms. THE WORLD SINCE 1990 A ‘NEW WORLD ORDER’? The birth of the post-Cold War world was accompanied by a wave of optimism and idealism. The superpower era had been marked by East–West rivalry that extended across the globe and led to a nuclear build-up that threatened to destroy the planet. As communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, and Soviet power was in retreat both domestically and internationally, President Bush (Snr) of the United States proclaimed the emergence of a ‘new world order’. Although the idea of a ‘new’ world order often lacked clear definition, it undoubtedly expressed quintessentially liberal hopes and expectations. Whereas the Cold War had been based on ideological conflict and a balance of terror, the end of superpower rivalry opened up the possibility of ‘liberal peace’, founded on a common recognition of international norms and standards of morality. Central to this emerging world order was the recognition of the need to settle disputes peacefully, to resist aggression and expansionism, to control and reduce military arsenals, and to ensure the just treatment of domestic populations through respect for human rights (see Chapter 14). As ‘end of history’ theorists such as Francis Fukuyama (1989, 1991) argued, all parts of the world would now irresistibly gravitate towards a single model of economic and political development, based on liberal democracy. The post-Cold War world order appeared to pass its first series of major tests with ease, helping to fuel liberal optimism. Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait in August 1990 led to the 55 2 56 GLOBAL POLITICS Capitalist encirclement: The theory, developed during the Russian Civil War (1918–21) that capitalist states were actively engaged in attempts to subvert the Soviet Union to bring down communism. construction of a broad Western and Islamic alliance that, through the Gulf War of 1991, brought about the expulsion of Iraqi forces. The disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991, which precipitated war between Serbia and Croatia, saw the first use of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) (renamed the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE] in 1994) as a mechanism for tackling international crises, leading to hopes that it would eventually replace both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Although the CSCE had been effectively sidelined by superpower hostility since its creation at the Helsinki Conference of 1975, it was the CSCE heads of government meeting in Paris in November 1990 that produced the treaty that brought a formal end to the Cold War. However, the early promise of international harmony and cooperation quickly proved to be illusory as new forms of unrest and instability rose to the surface. Stresses within the new world order were generated by the releasing of tensions and conflicts that the Cold War had helped to keep under control. The existence of an external threat (be it ‘international communism’ or ‘capitalist encirclement’) promotes internal cohesion and gives societies a sense of purpose and identity. To some extent, for instance, the West defined itself through antagonism towards the East, and vice versa. There is evidence that, in many states, the collapse of the external threat helped to unleash centrifugal pressures, usually in the form of racial, ethnic, and regional tensions. This occurred in many parts of the world, but in particular in Eastern Europe, as demonstrated by the break-up of Yugoslavia and prolonged bloodshed amongst Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. The Bosnian War (1992–5) witnessed the longest and most violent European war in the second half of the twentieth century. Far from establishing a world order based on respect for justice and human rights, the international community stood by and, until the Kosovo crisis of 1999, allowed Serbia to wage a war of expansion and to perpetrate genocidal policies reminiscent of those used in the Second World War. Nevertheless, these early trends, hopeful and less hopeful, in post-Cold War world history were abruptly disrupted by the advent of global terrorism in 2001. 9/11: THE RETURN OF HISTORY? For many, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 (see p. 23) were a defining moment in world history, the point at which the true nature of the post-Cold War era was revealed and the beginning of a period of unprecedented global strife and instability. On the other hand, it is possible to exaggerate the impact of 9/11. As Robert Kagan (2004) put it, ‘America did not change on September 11. It only became more itself ’. The United States had, in the 1990s, ostensibly adopted the role of a ‘global police officer’, leading UN- and NATO-backed military interventions under the rubric of ‘humanitarianism’, of stabilizing ‘failed’ and ‘rogue’ states, and of frustrating dictators who threatened their own citizens and/or neighbouring states. These interventions stretched from Iraq in the Middle East (1990–1) to Somalia in the THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 57 Horn of Africa (1992–3) and Kosovo in post-communist Eastern Europe (1999). After 9/11, foreign policy discourse shifted distinctly, with an increasingly intense focus on ‘global terrorism’ and on majority-Muslim countries in particular. The ensuing ‘war on terror’ (see p. 303) inaugurated by George W. Bush Jr included US-led invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), resulting in long and complex conflicts that did not reach clear and decisive end points. FOCUS ON . . . INVADING AFGHANISTAN: LEARNING FROM HISTORY? When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980 and a US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2001, were they failing to learn lessons from earlier attempts to conquer Afghanistan? Does history issue warnings, in this sense? In the nineteenth century, Afghanistan had been the focus of great-power rivalry, standing, as it did, between the Russian Empire to the north and British India to the east. This resulted in two wars. The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–42) was, arguably, the UK’s greatest imperial disaster of the nineteenth century. British forces invaded Afghanistan with the intention of extending UK influence by re-establishing Shah Shuja on the throne. Shuja’s assassination in Kabul in 1842, however, left the British troops in an unsustainable position. After a two-month siege, they began what came to be called the ‘Retreat from Kabul’. Out of the 18,500-strong party that left Kabul, only one man made it through to the British garrison in Jalalabad, in modern-day Pakistan. Nevertheless, some forty years later, the Second Anglo– Afghan War (1878–80) took place. This time, the British achieved their main objective, which was to curtail Russian influence by dictating Afghan foreign policy, although the Afghans retained internal sovereignty and established full independence from British influence in 1919. Some have argued that the (unlearnt) lesson of these nineteenth-century wars was that extreme caution should be exercised by any state contemplating invading Afghanistan, rightly dubbed the ‘graveyard of empires’. Afghanistan certainly presents any would-be conqueror with a daunting range of challenges, including an inhospitable geography (largely consisting of mountains and deserts); severe winters; a lack of infrastructure; a complex tribal mix and a variety of ethnicities; little history of centralized authority; and traditional hostility to foreign occupation. Such a combination of factors makes Afghanistan particularly unsuitable for the use of conventional military strategies, counterbalancing any technological advantage that an invading force may possess. Arguably the 2001 invasion ended with as few political gains as the previous ones, following the NATO withdrawal in 2021 and re-establishment of the Taliban government. It is tempting to invoke Marx’s statement (made in relation to Napoleon I and Napoleon III) that history repeats itself, ‘first as tragedy, then as farce’. However, it is always dangerous to read determinism into history. No two sets of historical circumstances are ever identical. In the case of the 2001 US-led invasion, for example, its goals were far more ambitious than earlier colonial invasions, in that, in addition to attacking al-Qaeda and removing the Taliban from power, it ostensibly sought to recast Afghanistan internally on the basis of representative democracy. 2 58 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Type Population GDP per capita HDI ranking Capital State 1,403.5m 315.5m $49,601 $8,827 3/187 86/187 Washington, Beijing DC The United States of America was established as a federal republic in 1787, through the adoption of the US Constitution. It was formed by thirteen former British colonies that had founded a confederation after the 1776 War of Independence. The nineteenth century was characterized by the establishment of the territorial integrity of the United States as it exists today, not least through the Civil War between the abolitionist, Unionist North and the pro-slavery, Confederate South. By 1912, all forty-eight states of the continuous land mass of the United States had been created (Hawaii and Alaska were added in 1959). The United States is a liberal democracy (see p. 267) comprising: z the Congress, composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate (two senators represent each state, regardless of size); z the presidency, which heads the executive branch of government; and z the Supreme Court, which can nullify laws and actions that run counter to the US Constitution. As the US system of government is characterized by a network of constitutional checks and balances, deriving from federalism and a separation of powers between the legislature, executive, and judiciary, it is susceptible to ‘government gridlock’. For example, treaties need to be both signed by the president and ratified by the Senate, and although the president is the commander-in-chief, only Congress can declare war. Significance: The United States’ rise to global hegemony started with its economic emergence during the nineteenth century. By 1900, the United States had overtaken the United Kingdom as the world’s leading industrial country, producing around 30 per cent of the world’s manufactured goods. However, burgeoning economic power was only gradually expressed in international self-assertiveness, as the United States abandoned its traditional policy of isolationism. This process was completed in 1945, when the United States emerged as a superpower, commanding unchallengeable military and economic might and exerting influence over the whole of the capitalist West. The United States’ rise to global hegemony came about both because the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world’s sole superpower, a hyperpower, and because of close links between the United States and ‘accelerated’ globalization (so much so that globalization is sometimes viewed as a process of ‘Americanization’). US power in the post-Cold War era was bolstered by massively increased defence spending, giving the United States an unassailable lead in high-tech military equipment in particular and, as its response to September 11 demonstrated, making the United States the only country that can sustain military engagements in more than one part of the world at the same time. However, US power has a paradoxical character. For example, although the United States’ military dominance cannot be doubted, its political efficacy is open to question. September 11 thus demonstrated the vulnerability of the United States to new security threats, in this case transnational terrorism. The launch of the ‘war on terror’ as a response to September 11 also highlighted the limits of US power and was, in some senses, counterproductive. Although the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were quickly successful in removing the targeted regimes, both wars developed into protracted and highly complex counterinsurgency wars that proved to be difficult to ‘win’ in the conventional sense. Moreover, the general tendency of the Bush administration towards unilateralism and, in particular, its approach to the ‘war on terror’ 59 damaged the United States’ ‘soft’ power and bred resentment, particularly within the Muslim world. The need to work within a multilateral framework in a more interdependent world has been recognized in shifts that occurred in US foreign affairs under President Obama since 2008, some of which were rescinded under the Republican Trump administration (2017–20), though the Democrat successor Joe Biden set about reinstating them. Internally, the United States has been increasingly politically polarized between Republican-voting rightwingers and Democrat-voting liberals. Perhaps the most significant challenge to US global power, however, is the rise of so-called ‘emerging states’, and particularly China. Warnings about the decline of US hegemony date back to the 1970s and 1980s, when events such as defeat in the Vietnam War and economic decline relative to Japan and Germany were interpreted as evidence of ‘imperial over-reach’ (see p. 302). The rise of China is nevertheless much more significant, in that it perhaps suggests the emergence of a new global hegemon, with China set to overtake the United States in economic terms during the 2020s. The ‘war on terror’ – which quickly garnered participation from other Western powers, especially the UK – was initially focused on al-Qaeda, the network of ‘Islamist’ militants who claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. In the 2000s and 2010s, though, its scope extended to include a much wider range of militant Islamist organizations across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as the Muslim citizenry of Western countries. While this marked a foreign policy shift, and a transformation of post-Cold War world order, in some important respects US foreign-policy during this period also maintained some historical continuities. In particular, the United States (and to some extent the wider West) was seen by many as having vested interests in the majority-Muslim countries of the Middle East as a result of American economic dependence on the oil these countries control. Critics of the ‘war on terror’ have often suggested that the Iraq War, in particular, was less about humanitarian concern for the Iraqi people, or even preventing the fostering of terrorist tactics among Islamist militants (who were in any case unwelcome in Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship), and more about preserving and extending US strategic interests in this oil-rich region – a form of realpolitik (see p. 342). Relatedly, Western involvement in the region through the processes of colonization to decolonization is often viewed as having fostered corruption and dictatorship, and sowed the seeds of instability. In particular, the establishment, in 1947, of the state of Israel was perceived by many in the surrounding newly independent Arab states as an extension of Western colonialism, the creation of a Western outpost designed to weaken the Arab world, defeat in a succession of Arab–Israeli wars merely deepening the sense of frustration and humiliation across the Arab world. The political and symbolic impact of the ‘Palestine problem’ – the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs after the 1948 war and establishment of ‘occupied territories’ after the Six-Day War in 1968 – is difficult to overestimate, particularly across the Arab world but also in many other Muslim states. In addition to breeding a festering sense of resentment against Western influences that are seen to be embodied in the state of Israel, it also made it easier for corrupt and complacent military dictatorships to come to power and remain in power, knowing that they could always use the issue of Israel and Palestine to mobilize popular support. GLOBAL POLITICS 60 EVE NT S THE POST-COLD WAR PERIOD 1991 Gulf War (January–February) 1992 Civil war breaks out in former Yugoslavia 1993 European Union created 1994 Rwandan genocide (April–July) 1994 Apartheid ends in South Africa (September) 1996 Taliban seize power in Afghanistan 1997–8 Asian financial crisis 1998 India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons 1999 Kosovo War 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States (see p. 23) 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan (October) 2002 International Criminal Court established 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq (March) 2006 North Korea tests nuclear weapon 2008 Russia invades Georgia 2007–9 Global financial crisis 2010 Birth of the Arab Spring (December) (see p. 278) 2010–13 Eurozone crisis 2011 Libyan civil war 2011 Syrian civil war begins 2013 Egyptian coup d’état (July) 2015 Iran signs nuclear deal with UN Security Council and EU member states 2016 The UK votes to become the first country to leave the European Union 2017 Donald Trump becomes US President (see p. 166) 2020 Hong Kong imposes ‘security’ law, tightening China’s political control 2020–1 The world is hit by a lethal global coronavirus pandemic (see p. 21) While the advent of the Obama administration in the United States after 2008 was initially seen as a possible ‘beginning of the end’ for the ‘War on Terror’, which had often been cast as a ‘war without end’, it was not to be. Obama massively extended the US drone strike programme (see p. 306), assassinating targets in majority-Muslim countries identified by the Bush administration. His administration also maintained other controversial practices – widely deemed to breach international human rights law – including the THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS ‘extraordinary rendition’ (kidnapping) of suspects from other countries, and their subsequent detention and possible torture in secret ‘black site’ prisons in third-party states with lax human rights enforcement. When Donald Trump’s administration took office in 2017, while it stood significantly to the political right of even Bush Jr’s presidency, it actually offered a somewhat less interventionist approach than its predecessors. And when, in January 2020, the administration took perhaps its most controversial foreign policy decision, assassinating the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by drone strike as he visited Iraq, it did so using the mechanisms and norms that had already been established by Bush and Obama. The Biden administration controversially withdrew US troops from Afghanistan in 2021, handing control back to the Taliban after twenty years of war. Though Afghanistan was the signature ‘war on terror’ conflict, launched in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks, the Biden administration continued to engage the machinery of the ‘war on terror’, including the use of drone strikes to carry out extrajudicial ‘targeted killings’ (see p. 306). THE RETURN OF MULTIPOLARITY The collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War seemingly heralded a new, unipolar era in global politics, as the United States stood as the world’s sole superpower. But from the 9/11 attacks onward, this ‘global hegemony’ (see p. 309) was increasingly subject to existential challenges. The economic resurgence of China in the first decade of the twenty-first century, alongside the wider ‘BRICS’ group of developing economies (see p. 597) indicated that the vast economic power the United States had established in the aftermath of the Second World War, and through the advent of corporate globalization in the late twentieth century, might turn out to be transient. Contemporary history suggests that the significance of the United States to world affairs is, in many respects, in decline. China, especially, is an increasingly important global actor. China’s economic growth has been globally unparalleled in the early twenty-first century. Following the initial ‘opening-up’ of communist China’s national economy to the global capitalist market under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) in the late twentieth century, the country became increasingly central to global production chains. By 2009, China had overtaken the United States to become the world’s biggest exporter of goods, dominating the global manufacture and trade in goods ranging from affordable consumer electronics to clothing, toys, and sports equipment. Major Western states, whose economies outperformed China’s as recently as a few decades ago, now depend heavily upon imports from China – even the United States, the largest Western superpower, which has recently operated a protectionist ‘America First’ approach to its economy (see p. 320), and often adopted an adversarial approach to China in global politics, lists China as its largest import partner. Quite apart from its economic power, and its disproportionate production of the world’s consumer goods, Chinese ‘soft power’ (see p. 293) and cultural influence, as well as its military and technological might and regional influence, all mark it out as a rising, potentially global hegemon. Increasing tensions between China and India at their shared border – resulting in the first deadly clashes between the two countries in forty-five years, in Ladakh in June 2020 – are illustrative of the possible re-emergence of ‘multipolarity’ in world order. Major, nuclear-armed 61 2 62 GLOBAL POLITICS states, including China, India, and Russia, jostle for economic resources, global political influence, and territorial control, in competitions that have little to do with the United States and its global leadership. In this context, the relatively ‘isolationist’ posture of the Trump administration is perhaps unsurprising. Dramatic changes have also been wrought in South and Central America in the post-Cold War years that have challenged US hegemony even in a region where it has historically made significant interventions. From the early nineteenth century, President James Monroe’s (1758–1831) ‘Monroe Doctrine’ stipulated an isolationist US foreign policy stance and prohibited further European conquest in Latin America. However, Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt’s (1858–1919) so-called ‘Roosevelt Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine in the early twentieth century outlined a right of US intervention in Latin America on behalf of European powers. As the Cold War got underway, this more interventionist approach by the United States to the countries it considered its ‘back yard’, accelerated greatly with President Harry Truman’s (1884–1972) ‘Truman Doctrine’ of ‘containment’ directed at communist countries, which included a commitment to ‘hemispheric defence’ from encroaching communism. The Cold War period was marked by frequent direct and indirect strategic US interventions in Latin America, from Chile and Guatemala in the mainland to the islands of Cuba and Nicaragua, wherever the United States saw (even quite moderate) socialists winning power. Within a few years of the end of the Cold War left-wing political movements began to see considerable success in Latin America, where deep inequalities persisted in many societies. The so-called ‘pink tide’ of the 2000s was exemplified by the rise of Venezuelan democratic socialist leader Hugo Chavez, whose reforms of the country’s constitution and enfranchisement of the oil-rich country’s barrios and slum-dwelling populations made him a popular figure on the left at home and overseas. Chavez, alongside other Latin American socialist leaders from Bolivia and Ecuador, led what they called a ‘Bolivarian revolution’ (after Simon Bolivar, who had first won independence from Spain for these countries, and others in Latin America, in the early nineteenth century). This movement included sweeping social reforms aimed at addressing inequalities and improving quality of life and vocal opposition to what they saw as twenty-first-century ‘American imperialism’ in the region. The pink tide was seemingly turning by the late 2010s, however, when, following Chavez’s premature death from cancer in 2013, Venezuela began to decline into a deep crisis under his successor Nicolas Maduro, and right-wing governments came to power in other key Latin American countries. The defeat of leftwing politics was nowhere more resounding than in Brazil, the continent’s largest and most populous country by a great margin, and one of the rising BRICS powers. Here, the popular leftist presidencies of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known simply as ‘Lula’), from 2003 to 2010, and Dilma Rousseff, from 2011 to 2016, were not only mired by claims of corruption that saw Lula jailed and Rousseff impeached but followed by the success of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. While the trajectory of the BRICS has been cast into doubt (see p. 597) and China’s economic growth slowed significantly in the 2010s, there is no question that the United States is less central to global politics in the 2020s than it was in the 2000s. That said, even if recent events mark the beginning of the end for US global hegemony and the informal THE HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS 63 ‘American empire’ in world politics, this decline is likely to be a slow and limited one. While other great hegemonic powers, from ancient Rome to the Han Dynasty and the British Empire, have demonstrated the seeming inevitability of imperial collapse, there are some historical factors that differentiate the United States. Perhaps first among these is its possession of nuclear weapons (see Chapter 12). While there should be no suggestion that the United States might resort to nuclear war lightly, or that doing so could somehow prevent its declining influence on global politics, there is no recent precedent for a country that has attained this scale of military power being suddenly pushed down the hierarchy of world order. And there can be no doubt that the United States will fight to protect what it perceives to be its interests in global politics, which may bring it into more or less direct conflict with the emergent great powers that have contributed to its reduced standing. SUMMARY y The ‘modern’ world was shaped by a series of developments, from the first human societies to the rise of ancient civilizations, and from industrialization and empire to the dawn of ‘mass societies’. y The First World War was meant to be the ‘war to end all wars’, but within a generation the Second World War had broken out. The key factors that led to the Second World War include the First World War peace settlements, the global economic crisis of the 1930s, the programme of Nazi expansion, sometimes linked to the personal influence of Hitler, and the growth of Japanese expansionism in Asia. y The year 1945 is commonly seen as a watershed in world history. It initiated two crucial processes. The first was the process of decolonization and the collapse of European empires. The second was the advent of the Cold War, giving rise to bipolar tensions between an increasingly US-dominated West and Soviet-dominated East. y Cold War bipolarity came to an end through the Eastern European revolutions of 1989–91, which witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was a result of factors including the structural weakness of Soviet-style communism, the impact of Gorbachev’s reform process, and the wider implications of economic and cultural globalization. y Power balances within the global economy have shifted in important ways. While the postwar world order saw a trend in American-led economic globalization, other global powers – especially China – have been key to world economic transformations in the twenty-first century. y Western ‘liberal’ predictions about the post-Cold War period flourished briefly before being confounded by events, ranging from the 9/11 attacks, to the rise of anti-liberal politics within the West itself, and the re-emergence of multipolarity. y Global politics today are increasingly shaped by multipolarity – the struggle between multiple major military and economic powers – as well as important transnational social movements, even as they remain marked by histories of colonialism and imperial domination. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y Why and how was Europe a dominant influence in the pre-1900 world? y How important are the histories of colonialism and capitalism to shaping global politics today? y Was the Second World War really a rerun of the First World War? y Would the Second World War have happened without Hitler? y Was rivalry and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union inevitable after 1945? y Did anyone ‘win’ the Cold War? 2 64 GLOBAL POLITICS y Why did hopes for a ‘new’ world order of international cooperation and peaceful coexistence prove to be so short-lived? y Was 9/11 a turning point in world history? y Is China in the process of eclipsing the United States as the most powerful force in global politics? y Does history ‘teach lessons’, and is there any evidence that we learn from them? FURTHER READING Adelman, J., E. Pollard, and R. Tignor, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the World from the Beginnings of Humankind to the Present, 6th Edition, Volumes 1 and 2 (2021). One of the most expansive, and least Eurocentric, accounts of world history. Anievas, A. and K. Nişancıoğlu, How the West Came to Rule (2015). A detailed re-appraisal of the geopolitical origins of capitalism, rooted in Marxist and anti-Eurocentric theory. Hobsbawm, E., Globalization, Democracy and Terrorism (2008). A short and lucid account of major trends in modern world history, taking particular account of developments in the Middle East. Young, J. W. and G. Kent, International Relations since 1945: A Global History, 3rd Edition (2020). A comprehensive account of international developments during the Cold War and after. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 3 Source: George Dadvani/EyeEm/Getty Images PREVIEW No one sees the world just ‘as it is’. All of us look at the world through a veil of theories, presuppositions, and assumptions. In this sense, observation and interpretation are inextricably bound together: when we look at the world we are also engaged in imposing meaning on it. This is why theory is important: it offers clarifying explanations, analyses, and rules to help us get to grips with complex realities. Social and political theories have existed for thousands of years, and we have texts – from Plato and Confucius to Wollstonecraft and Marx – attesting to this fact. But in the twentieth century, global politics found its own theoretical ‘discipline’ and field of academic study in Anglophone universities: international relations (IR). The dominant mainstream perspectives within this field have traditionally been realism and liberalism, each offering a different account of the balance between conflict and cooperation in world affairs. Debates between realists and liberals were at the heart of IR theory throughout the twentieth century until ‘critical’ theories (Chapter 4) began to gain more ground around the turn of the millennium. But where did the discipline of IR theory and these two great traditional theories spring from? Why do realists believe that global politics is characterized by unending conflict, while liberals believe in the possibility of cooperation and enduring peace? And why have realist and liberal ideas become more similar over time? How is it possible to ‘think globally’? In what ways and to what extent does global interconnectedness require that we rethink existing theories? KEY ISSUES z What is theory, what forms does it take, and what components comprise it? z Why have realists argued that world affairs should be understood in terms of power and self-interest? z Why do liberals believe that world affairs are biased in favour of interdependence and peace? z What are the empirical and moral implications of global interconnectedness, and can traditional theories adequately accommodate globalization? 65 66 GLOBAL POLITICS WHAT IS THEORY? This book explores two broad categories of theories in global politics: traditional theories (this chapter) and critical theories (Chapter 4). But what is theory? Anything from a plan to a piece of abstract knowledge can be described as a ‘theory’. In academic study, theory can, most broadly, be viewed as a kind of abstract or generalized thinking that seeks to explain, interpret, or evaluate something. However, theory is a plural rather than singular phenomenon: it comes in a variety of shapes and forms. TYPES OF THEORY In the first place, theory may serve quite different purposes. Three types of theory can thus be identified, as follows: Classical realism: A form of realism that explains power politics largely in terms of human selfishness or egoism. Neorealism: A perspective on international politics that modifies the power politics model by highlighting the structural constraints of the international system; sometimes called ‘new’ or ‘structural’ realism. Republican liberalism: A form of liberalism that highlights the benefits of republican (rather than monarchical) government and, in particular, emphasizes the link between democracy and peace. Neoliberal institutionalism: An approach to study that emphasizes the role of institutions (both formal and informal) in the realization of liberal principles and goals. z Explanatory theory. Sometimes called ‘descriptive’ or ‘empirical’ theory, this helps to explain why, and under what circumstances, events happen or developments unfold. Explanatory theories embody generalized causal propositions, which can be tested against ‘hard’ evidence; that is, data that exists separately from our perception of it. Traditional perspectives on global politics tend to use theory in this sense. z Interpretive theory. Sometimes referred to as ‘constitutive’ theory, this imposes meaning on events or issues, attempting to understand, rather than explain, the world. Interpretive theory emphasizes that human reflection is a social process and treats the ‘real world’ as a series of competing truths or interpretations. This is a stance most commonly associated with critical perspectives on global politics. z Normative theory. Sometimes termed ‘prescriptive’ or ‘political’ theory, this prescribes values and standards of conduct; it deals with what ought to be, rather than with what is. However, all empirical theories of global politics are underpinned, at some level, by normative considerations. Normative theory also overlaps with interpretive theory, as the latter rejects the distinction between facts and values. Second, theories differ in terms of their scope and scale. The broadest theories of global politics are theoretical traditions (sometimes termed ‘perspectives’, ‘discourses’, ‘schools of thought’, ‘world views’, or ‘paradigms’). Theoretical traditions are intellectual frameworks comprising interrelated values, theories, and assumptions; they constitute broad approaches to the analysis of world affairs. Examples include realism, liberalism, Marxism, feminism, and so on. Each of these traditions can nevertheless be divided into a series of sub-traditions, or ‘currents of thought’. For instance, realism encompasses classical realism, neorealism, and, perhaps, post-neorealism, while liberalism comprises interdependence liberalism, republican liberalism, and neoliberal institutionalism. Tensions between rival sub-traditions mean that there can sometimes be as much debate within a theoretical tradition as there is between traditions. Finally, there are concrete or specific theories, such as neorealist stability theory (see p. 73), world-systems theory TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 67 (see p. 115), and just war theory (see p. 343). While such theories are usually linked to a particular theoretical tradition, or a specific sub-tradition, others may resist becoming the ‘property’ of any single tradition. COMPONENTS OF THEORY It is often said that theories of international relations are predicated on specific ontological, epistemological, and methodological world views. These can take the form of more explicit commitments, or more implicit assumptions, about: z What the social world of international relations is ‘made of ’ – its ‘furniture’ or building blocks – a theory of ‘being’ (ontology). For instance, are states and their interactions the primary object of study of global politics, or is it more about social relations between individuals and groups across state borders? z How knowledge of this social world can be produced, and how we can adjudicate between valid and invalid, correct or incorrect knowledge – a theory of ‘knowing’ (epistemology). For instance, can the social world of global politics be studied in a similar way to the natural world of biology, physics, or chemistry – with social scientists of international relations drawing conclusions from repeated ‘empirical’ observations? z What methods are most appropriate to study global politics, given one’s prior ontological and epistemological commitments or assumptions (methodology). For instance, can meaningful ‘data’ on global politics be generated through the collection of macro-level statistical (quantitative) information about state behaviour, war, economic metrics, and so on, or through more micro-level (qualitative) interviews and focus groups with the people whose everyday activities and experiences ‘constitute’ the international? Or some mixture of the two? And what methods of analysis of this data are possible – can we ascertain objective ‘laws’ of how global politics works, or are we only able to make subjective interpretations of the data we collect about the world? While theorists rarely address ontology and epistemology explicitly – and methodology constitutes a whole separate academic literature – we will see these philosophical or ‘metatheoretical’ principles arise from time to time throughout this chapter and Chapter 4 (on critical theories of global politics). This is because they provide a useful overarching way of thinking about the many competing theories that exist, and how they can be differentiated, compared, and contrasted. Ontological and epistemological theoretical commitments extend beyond global politics and actually shape the ‘everyday’ theories that constitute our ‘common sense’ too. For example, people of religious faiths assume ‘divine’ ontologies and epistemologies, according to which there exist supernatural, and not necessarily empirically observable, entities and places, such as gods, angels, demons, heaven, and/or hell. Knowledge of the world, from this perspective, can be bestowed by God, established through ‘revelation’, while social reality itself may be simply the unfolding of a predetermined ‘divine plan’ and our knowledge of it is limited to what a god or gods deems we need to know at any given time. 3 68 GLOBAL POLITICS Positivism: An objectivist tradition in the philosophy of social science that strives to study the social world in a way analogous to the natural sciences, including establishing causal laws and predictions. Empiricism: Closely associated with positivism, empiricism is a commitment to the epistemological principle that valid knowledge can only be produced through the observation and recording or measurement of events. Interpretivism: A subjectivist tradition in the philosophy of social science that rejects the idea that human beings can be objective observers of the societies in which we are all embedded. It posits an epistemological relativism where social entities, actors, events, and processes are only significant inasmuch as we imbue them with particular meanings and interpret them in particular ways that are dependent on our social contexts. The types and components of theories are, however, especially important to the study of global politics because they have political implications, which is to say, they pertain to the relationships between theory and power. The ‘traditional’ IR theories of realism and liberalism, explored in this chapter, have quite different purposes or aims as varieties of theory, and different ontological and epistemological bases, from the ‘critical’ theories explored in the next chapter. The sum of these differences is the very distinction between Max Horkheimer’s (see p. 98) definition of traditional theory as that which seeks to ‘explain away’ the world as it currently is and critical theory as that which seeks to radically critique and change it. Their contemporary forms – neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism – share common positivist and empiricist ontological and epistemological assumptions about the social world. This means that neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists tend to see their theories as objective rather than subjective – free from ‘bias’, and rooted in the empirical observation and collection of facts about the world. They are keen to discern ‘laws’ governing human behaviour in global politics and to make predictions based on their observations where possible. This is a further crucial difference from the non-positivist or post-positivist and largely ‘interpretivist’ critical theories explored in Chapter 4. THE BIRTH OF IR THEORY AND THE ‘MYTH’ OF 1919 As noted above, the academic discipline of IR has been a central source of theories of global politics. But given that thinkers in ancient Greece and ancient China were already theorizing international relations well over two thousand years ago, why was this new theoretical field needed, and how did it emerge? THE TRADITIONAL NARRATIVE An old and persistent narrative recounts the birth of the discipline of IR. The story goes that following the global human catastrophe that was the First World War (see p. 40) – where killing became ‘industrialized’ with the help of machine guns, aircraft, and other new technologies, and around 20 million people died – policymakers and intellectuals recognized the need to prevent the outbreak of any comparable conflict in the future. The nature of this particular war – anticipated by competition and ‘sabre-rattling’ between key imperial powers of the then ‘multipolar’ world order but ultimately triggered by the surprise assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a lone Bosnian Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip – underscored the arbitrary, brutal, and arguably pointless nature of war in general and the immorality of its mass extermination of ordinary working-class people in the name of grand imperial ambitions. Perhaps most emblematic of this newfound focus on the search for ‘world peace’ was US President Woodrow Wilson (see p. 552), who led the creation of the League of Nations, an international membership organization of the sort that the proto-liberal theorist Immanuel Kant had envisioned in his republican liberal theory on ‘perpetual peace’ (see p. 17). Wilson’s name became synonymous with the interwar effort by liberal politicians and thinkers to TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS build a more peaceful and united world order, such that this position is referred to in the traditional narrative of IR theory as ‘Wilsonian liberal idealism’ (see p. 552). In 1919, the first known professorship in the discipline – in the Anglophone world, at least – was created at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University) under the title of the Woodrow Wilson Chair in International Politics. While other philosophers, theorists, sociologists, and diplomats had theorized international relations to varying degrees, this was the beginning of widespread formal recognition that what this textbook calls ‘Global Politics’ must be studied as a distinct discipline or subject area. According to the traditional narrative, the failure of the League of Nations, and the slide towards a Second World War in the 1930s, led to the emergence of a second key strand of IR theory that was diametrically opposed to the Wilsonian liberal idealist approach: realism (see p. 72). Like liberals, realists would draw on much older traditions in political theory, and especially historiography, to make claims about the international. Unlike liberals, their theoretical claims emphasized that war must be a permanent, immutable feature of global politics because it is a fundamentally different domain than national or local politics within states, where political communities are constrained by a sovereign power and by a common moral ethos or law. And so, as the story goes, the first ‘great debate’ in IR theory took place in the interwar and post-Second World War period and was essentially a dualistic dispute between liberals and realists. A church wrecked by German shells during World War 1, 1914. Realists saw war as a permanent, immutable feature of global politics, opposing the liberal idealist approach to war Source: British Library, Unsplash, Photographed by H. D. Girdwood 69 3 70 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . Paris Peace Conference 1919–20 Events: In the aftermath of the First World War, representatives of the Allies (the leading figures were President Wilson [see p. 552] of the United States, Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, and Lloyd George, the UK Prime Minister) met in Paris in January 1919 to arrange a peace treaty with Germany. The result of this was the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919, with a further series of treaties later being signed with the other defeated powers. Two main motivations lay behind these treaties. The first, articulated by Wilson and set out in his Fourteen Points (a peace programme announced in a speech to Congress in January 1918) was the desire to institute a new international order, achieved through a ‘just peace’ that would banish power politics for ever. This resulted in the redrawing of the map of Central and Eastern Europe in line with the principle of national self-determination, leading to the creation of new states such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Wilson’s major contribution to the Versailles conference, though, was the creation of the League of Nations. However, the other major motivation, expressed in particular by Clemenceau, was to punish Germany and strengthen French security. This led to the large-scale disarmament of Germany, the loss of German territory and the distribution of its colonies as ‘mandates’ to various Allied powers, and the imposition of the ‘war guilt’ clause. Significance: Just twenty years after the Paris Peace Conference, the world was plunged once again into total warfare, the Second World War bringing even greater carnage and suffering than the First World War. What had gone wrong? Why had the ‘just peace’ failed? These questions have deeply divided generations of international relations theorists. Taking their lead from E. H. Carr, realist theorists have often linked the outbreak of war in 1939 to the ‘idealist’ or ‘utopian’ ideas of the Paris peacemakers. By believing that the First World War had been caused by an ‘old order’ of rampant militarism and multinational empires, they placed their faith in democracy, self-determination, and international organizations. In particular, they had failed to recognize that power politics is not the cause of war but the major way in which war can be prevented. Delegates to the Paris Peace Conference meet at Versailles, 1919 Source: Photo 12/Getty Images When Germany, blamed (with dubious fairness) for the outbreak of the First World War, re-emerged as a major and ambitious military power, breaking, in the process, many of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations stood by powerless to stop it. Liberal statesmen and theorists had ignored the most basic fact of international relations: as all states are ultimately driven by self-interest, only power can be a constraint on power; a reliance on law, morality, and international institutions will be of no avail. The wider acceptance of such an analysis in the aftermath of the Second World War helped to assure the growing ascendancy of realist theories over liberal theories within the discipline of international relations. On the other hand, liberal internationalists have pointed to the inconsistent application of liberal principles at the Paris Peace Conference. The Treaty of Versailles was never properly a ‘liberal peace’. This was both because it left many nationalistic conflicts unresolved, and sometimes worsened (especially through the loss of German land to France and Czechoslovakia), and because, in important respects, the desire to punish and permanently weaken Germany took precedence over the quest for a just peace. Arguably, the seeds of the Second World War were thus sowed not by a reliance on 71 ‘utopian’ principles but by the fact that Versailles was in many ways a ‘victors’ peace’. The ‘mistreatment’ of the defeated stored up massive grievances that could only, over time, help to fuel hostile and aggressive foreign policies. What is more, the much vaunted League of Nations never lived up to its name, not least because of the refusal of the world’s most powerful state, the United States, to enter. In that sense, the Paris Peace Conference produced the worst of all worlds: it strengthened the currents of power politics in Europe while persuading the victorious powers that power politics had been abolished. A FOUNDATIONAL MYTH? From the 1990s onward, there emerged a small but significant ‘cottage industry’ of research exposing the ‘mythical’ nature of this origins story. Historians and sociologists of the discipline itself suggest that, contrary to the traditional narrative, it was realists rather than liberal idealists that carved out a specific space and remit for IR in American, and British, universities. Notwithstanding the creation of the Woodrow Wilson Chair in 1919, much of this early work in forging the discipline happened after the Second World War, and in the context of the Cold War – a new bipolar world order, to which realist reasoning and explanations seemed particularly appropriate. Realists such as E. H. Carr (see p. 45), it is argued, used ‘Wilsonian idealism’ as a ‘straw man’ argument, while no ‘first great debate’ – in the sense of realist thinkers reading and engaging directly with liberal thinkers – actually took place. It was, as Peter Wilson notes, later invented as a ‘pedagogic device for bringing order to a bewildering array of theories’ as the discipline was constructed in university classrooms and in textbooks like this one (Wilson 1998). Some of these more critical views of the emergence of IR cite 1919 as one of the two key foundational myths of the discipline (de Carvalho, Leira, and Hobson 2011) alongside 1648 – the year that the Peace of Westphalia treaty was signed, often noted by traditional IR theorists of liberal and realist persuasions as the birth of the ‘modern states system’. Beyond its pedagogical utility and symmetry, it is argued that a further key function of these myths about the modern states system and its study is the obscuring of the practices of imperialism and colonialism by the Western powers in which the discipline of IR emerged. DECOLONIAL REFLECTIONS ON IR’S ‘ORIGINS STORY’ While focusing on how a set of theories and a discipline such as IR emerged in Western academia could seem like ‘navel-gazing’, questioning the traditional narrative about the birth of IR reveals some very concrete problems. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the ways in which academic disciplines as they are presently constituted in Western universities tend to erase, on the one hand, the ideas and contributions of non-Western, or non-European, or more simply non-white, theorists, and, on the other hand, the ways in which these disciplines themselves contributed to and justified colonial 72 GLOBAL POLITICS thinking (including racism) and arguably continue to justify neocolonial ideas today. This focus on the ‘coloniality’ (see p. 102) of Western academic disciplines has led to considerable introspection, as universities and academics seek to ‘decolonize’ their curricula. In IR, in addition to a renewed focus on colonialism and the postcolonial, this has meant a reappraisal of the discipline’s ‘origins story’ in the myth of 1919. Taking a historical and sociological approach to the discipline itself, Robert Vitalis has shown that its intellectual roots in fact lie, to an extent, in the project of imperial ‘race subjection’ and white anxieties about an impending ‘race war’, as empires began to crumble in the early twentieth century (Vitalis 2015). An excavation of IR’s history as a discipline reveals a range of supporting facts. The first scholarly, periodical, journal associated with the field – still a leading publication today under the name Foreign Affairs – was originally called the Journal of Race Development. Whereas the traditional ‘origins story’ of IR has it that E. H. Carr was the first ‘realist’ IR theorist, with his great 1939 book The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, Vitalis shows that Lothrop Stoddard was in fact the first self-proclaimed IR ‘realist’, using the term as early as 1932 (2015: 83). Stoddard, a leading racist and eugenicist intellectual, and Ku Klux Klan member, was the author of the 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, which warned of the ‘imminent danger that the white stocks may be swamped by Asiatic blood’ and that this ‘danger’ of global, racialized (see p. 100) population change constituted ‘the supreme crisis of the ages’. This is a very different story of the origins of IR theory. Rather than a more-or-less benevolent effort to ‘solve the tragedy of war for the benefit of all peoples’ (de Carvalho, Leira, and Hobson 2011), or at least better control the likelihood, frequency, and intensity with which it occurs, this new discipline emerged out of Western anxieties about the impending collapse of what Stoddard called ‘white world-supremacy’, and a desire to manage what was widely known in majority-white Anglophone countries as ‘the race problem’. In particular, the ‘traditional’ theories – realism and liberalism – are found to be implicated through their desire to ‘explain away’, or only moderately reform, key dynamics of global politics, in the projects of Western imperialism and European colonialism (see p. 31) themselves. REALISM The key traditional Western perspectives on global politics have been realism and liberalism. In the Cold War and post-Cold War periods especially, these two theories have provided the most influential accounts of global politics not only in academic circles but among policymakers too – particularly in the United States. From the 1950s to the 1970s, new versions of realism and liberalism appeared, and, over time, the differences between these two dominant traditions have been blurred. Realist IR theory (sometimes called ‘political realism’, to distinguish it from artistic and philosophical forms of realism) claims to offer an account of world affairs that is ‘realistic’, in the sense that it is hard-headed and (as realists see it) devoid of wishful thinking and deluded moralizing. For realists, global politics is, first and last, about TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 73 power and self-interest. This is why it is often portrayed as a ‘power politics’ model of Power politics: international politics. As Hans Morgenthau (see p. 79) put it, ‘Politics is a struggle for Sometimes called by power over men, and whatever its ultimate aim may be, power is its immediate goal and its German name, ‘Realpolitik’, denotes a the modes of acquiring, maintaining and demonstrating it determine the technique of view that power and its political action’ (Morgenthau 1946, p.167). The theory of power politics is based on two pursuit are the only rules governing world politics. core assumptions (Donnelly 2000): z People are essentially selfish and competitive, meaning that egoism is the defining Egoism: Concern for one’s own interest or characteristic of human nature. well-being, or selfishness; z The states system operates in a context of international anarchy, in that there is no the belief that one’s own interests are morally authority higher than the sovereign state. superior to those of others. FOCUS ON . . . NEOREALIST STABILITY THEORY: THE LOGIC OF NUMBERS? From a neorealist perspective, bipolar systems tend towards stability and strengthen the likelihood of peace. This happens for the following reasons: z The existence of only two great powers encourages each to maintain the bipolar system as, in the process, they are maintaining themselves. z Fewer great powers means the possibilities of great-power war are reduced. z The existence of only two great powers reduces the chances of miscalculation and makes it easier to operate an effective system of deterrence. z Power relationships are more stable as each bloc is forced to rely on inner (economic and military) resources, external (alliances with other states or blocs) means of expanding power not being available. On the other hand, multipolar systems tend to be inherently unstable, for the following reasons: z A larger number of great powers increases the number of possible great-power conflicts. z Multipolarity creates a bias in favour of fluidity and, perhaps, instability, as it leads to shifting alliances as great powers have external means of extending their influence. z As power is more decentralized, existing great powers may be more restless and ambitious while weak states may be able to form alliances to challenge and displace existing great powers. Such thinking was most prevalent during the Cold War, when it was used to explain the dynamics of the superpower era. Since then, it has become less fashionable to explain stability and conflict simply in terms of the structural dynamics of the international system. 3 74 GLOBAL POLITICS Egoism Anarchy + Classical Neorealism or realism Structural realism = Power Politics Figure 3.1 Realism’s core theme and two main approaches The core theme of realist theory can therefore be summed up in the equation: egoism plus anarchy equals power politics. Some have suggested that this formulation betrays a basic theoretical fault line within realism, dividing it into two distinct schools of thought, classical realism and neorealism or structural realism, as shown in Figure 3.1. However, these alternative approaches reflect more a difference of emphasis within realism rather than a division into rival ‘schools’, as the central assumptions of realism are common to most realist theorists, even though they may disagree about which factors are ultimately the most important. The key themes within realism are as follows: z classical realism; z statecraft and the national interest; z international anarchy and its implications; and z polarity, stability, and the balance of power. CLASSICAL REALISM There are two meanings to the use of ‘classical’ in relation to realist international relations theory. First, classical realists such as E. H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau are widely considered to be the trailblazing or ‘original’ realists in the discipline of IR as it emerged in the twentieth century, and their ideas can be distinguished from the later ‘neorealist’ theories of Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer. Second, classical realist thinking is rooted in a particular vision of ‘human nature’ that arguably has its roots in ‘classical’ or ancient, and medieval, political thought. In basing their theories of politics on a pessimistic, but allegedly ‘realistic’, model of human nature (see p. 76), classical realists have worked within a long and established tradition of thought, which can be traced back to Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War, and to Sun Tzu’s classic work on strategy, The Art of War, written at roughly the same time in China. Other significant figures included Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes (see p. 16). Machiavelli’s theory of politics was based on a darkly negative model of a changeless human nature. In his view, humans are ‘‘ungrateful and unreliable; they lie, they fake, they’re greedy for cash and they melt away in the face of danger’ (Machiavelli 2014 p. 66). On this basis, Machiavelli argued that political life is always characterized by inevitable strife, encouraging political leaders to rule through the use of cunning, cruelty, and manipulation. Hobbes’ thinking was also driven by the view that human nature is essentially egoistic. He argued that humans are driven by non-rational appetites: aversions, fears, hopes, and desires. TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS On learning that the principal way to sate one’s desires and escape one’s aversions is to gain power, their key goal becomes the accumulation of ‘power after power’. As – in the absence of the sovereign authority of a state – no single person or group is strong enough to establish dominance, and therefore a system of orderly rule, over society (a condition that Hobbes referred to as a ‘state of nature’), an ongoing civil war developed between all members of society. Life in this ‘state of nature’ would thus be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ (Hobbes [1651] 1909, p. 97). According to Hobbes, the only way of escaping from the barbarity of such a society would be through the establishment of a sovereign and unchallengeable power; that is, by the creation of a state. How did such thinking shape the understanding of international politics? In the first place, as realists accept that no form of world government (see p. 574) can ever be established, it meant that politics is conducted within what is, in effect, an international ‘state of nature’. The international arena is therefore dangerous and uncertain, with order and stability always being the exception rather than the rule. Second, whereas Machiavelli and Hobbes were primarily concerned to explain the conduct of individuals or social groups, realist international theorists have been concerned, above all, with the behaviour of states. Realists view states as coherent and cohesive ‘units’, and regard them as the most important actors on the world stage. Realists’ theories of international politics are thus firmly state-centric. Third, and crucially, the fact that states are composed of, and led by, people who are inherently selfish, greedy, and power-seeking means that state behaviour cannot but exhibit the same characteristics. Human egoism therefore determines state egoism; or, as Morgenthau (1962, p. 7) put it, ‘the social world [is] but a projection of human nature onto the collective plane’. Just as human egoism leads to unending conflict amongst individuals and groups, state egoism means that international politics is marked by inevitable competition and rivalry. As essentially self-interested actors, the ultimate concern of each state is for survival, which thereby becomes the first priority of its leaders. As all states pursue security through the use of military or strategic means, and where possible seek to gain advantage at the expense of other states, international politics is characterized by an irresistible tendency towards conflict. 75 State of nature: A society devoid of political authority and of formal (legal) checks on the individual. 3 76 APPROACHES TO. . . REALIST VIEW Human nature is the starting point for classical realism, such that it has sometimes been portrayed as ‘biological realism’. Influenced by thinkers such as Hobbes and Machiavelli, realists have embraced a theory of human nature that has three main features. First, the essential core of human nature is fixed and given, fashioned by ‘nature’ (biological or genetic factors) rather than by ‘nurture’ (the influence of education or social factors generally). Second, instinct ultimately prevails over intellect. Human beings are driven by non-rational appetites: aversions, fears, hopes, and desires, the strongest of which is the desire to exercise power over others. Third, as human beings are essentially self-seeking and egoistical, conflict between and amongst them is an unavoidable fact of life. Human egoism determines state egoism and creates an international system that is inevitably characterized by rivalry and the pursuit of the national interest. Neorealists, however – particularly Kenneth Waltz – strongly reject human nature as the basis for a realist theory of international relations, insisting that there can be no evidence for this view since state behaviour in the international system is determined, in the final analysis, not by people but by the structure of the system itself (anarchy). LIBERAL VIEW Liberals have a broadly optimistic view of human nature. Humans are self-seeking and largely self-reliant creatures; but they are also governed by reason and are capable of personal self-development. This implies, on the one hand, that there is an underlying and unavoidable tendency towards rivalry and competition among individuals, groups, and, in the international arena, states. However, on the other hand, this tendency towards rivalry is contained by an underlying faith in a harmony of interests (conflicts can and should be resolved) and by a preference for resolving conflict through discussion, debate, and negotiation. Traditionally, liberals therefore rhetorically deplore the use of force in international relations, although their critics (including realists) note that they may be all to ready to wage war in the name of ‘humanitarian’ goals. In this view, the use of force may be justified, either on the grounds of self-defence or as a means of countering oppression, but always and only after reason and argument have failed. By contrast with the realist image of humans as ruthless power-maximizers, liberals emphasize that there is a moral dimension to human nature, most commonly reflected in the doctrine of human rights. MARXIST VIEW Socialist theories, which prioritize the social (the rights and welfare of the collective, or community) over the individual, predate the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (see p. 111), and coexisted with Marxist thought without acquiescing to it. These included non-Western socialist currents, as Cedric J. Robinson has shown (see p. 105). These non-Marxist socialisms were often rooted in the view that socialism is the ‘true’ expression of human nature – collaborative, compassionate, communalist – which the individualist doctrines of liberalism, conservatism, and capitalism pervert or suppress. But Marx and Engels, and subsequently Marxism as a critical theory of global politics, advocated a more radical rejection of human nature thinking. The self-proclaimed ‘scientific’ historical materialist philosophy of Marxism tells us that 77 HUMAN NATURE people’s thoughts and behaviours are largely or entirely determined by their concrete or ‘material’ social conditions. In a capitalist society, what appears as ‘human nature’ – that is, default social practices and behaviours that are considered ‘normal’ – will reflect the economic base of that society, the capitalist mode of production. Ideology, or the ‘ruling ideas’, in the Marxist view, are not (as is commonly ascribed to Marxism) about straightforwardly ‘false’ beliefs but rather historically specific and contextual ones. For instance, it may be ‘true’ (a ‘truism’, even) to speak a human nature cliché such as ‘it’s a dog-eat-dog world’ in the present context because our world is ordered by global capitalism. The optimistic hope of Marx and Marxists is that communism as a new economic base could provide a new context for completely different forms of human behaviour. CONSTRUCTIVIST AND POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEW Constructivists and post-structuralists, perhaps even more so than Marxists, are sceptical of any notion of static and ahistorical ‘human nature’. For constructivists, our decisions are guided by our sense of identity, which is in turn shaped by our interactions with others. While ‘norms’ of social practice may persist over long periods, they can still be subject to change as relationships and identities shift. For post-structuralists, meanwhile, ideas about human nature are strongly linked to specific historical political projects, like that which Michel Foucault (see p. 19) characterizes as liberal or neoliberal ‘biopolitics’: the project of making a ‘biological’ concept of the human the subject of political power in Western societies, replacing the more traditional models of sovereignty that preceded it. Human nature, from this perspective, is one category of political ‘discourse’ and a ‘grand narrative’, emerging particularly from the ‘Enlightenment’ period, through which people establish and exercise power. FEMINIST VIEW Feminists, especially after the work of ‘second-wave’ thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir (see p. 523), and ‘third-wave’ post-structuralist gender theorists like Judith Butler (see p. 529) have largely rejected the concept of human nature. This is because traditional ideas about innate, ‘natural’ gendered differences between men and women, which invariably cast women as inferior and limited with respect to men in a variety of ways, are at the core of patriarchy (see p. 107). ‘Nature’ has been ideologically defined and weaponized in patriarchal societies to represent women as physically and mentally inferior to men. The view that women are ‘naturally’ predisposed to ‘caring’ and domestic labour, rather than business, politics, or public life, has been the rationale for their confinement to the private sphere of the home and the family, and for their exclusion from a wide range of social practices and professions. Feminists seeking to advance or protect the rights of transgender and intersex people, meanwhile, abhor and reject the view that a male/female binary is the ‘natural’ order. Gendered ideas about human nature are among the most strongly embedded in society. That said, some feminist theorists of global politics do not reject the idea of ‘natural’ or inherent gender difference altogether. While J. Ann Tickner (see p. 109) calls Morgenthau’s realist approach ‘a partial, masculine view of human nature’, she emphasizes that human nature includes both masculine and feminine traits, and that global politics could use more of the latter. 78 POSTCOLONIAL VIEW For many postcolonial thinkers, the Western concept of ‘human nature’, developed through medieval European philosophy and continued in the realist and liberal traditions of IR theory, is highly problematic. It is not only that the particular conceptions of human nature at stake – whether more pessimistic, as in the realist tradition, or optimistic as in the liberal tradition – are Eurocentric (see p. 101) but also that they determine the horizons of ‘humanity’ itself. These ideas of human nature were central to the justifications of colonialism, which emerged alongside them, since they designated those who did not fit the Eurocentric model as ‘sub-human’. Some tribes of Native Americans, for example, were commonly characterized as a sub-normal or inferior ‘race’ (see p. 100) by white European colonizers, precisely on the basis that their behaviour was too peaceable and closely connected to the natural environment to fit with European ideas about human nature. From the postcolonial perspective, defining human nature is an enterprise also designed to define its ‘other’ – those who are to be understood as not fully human – and to provide a pseudoscientific and moral basis for their oppression. Nevertheless, it is important to note that non-Western visions of human nature also exist, some of which are captured by the ‘Asian values’ debate (see p. 282). Non-Western ideas of human nature are often less individualistic in character. STATECRAFT AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST Although realism (and neorealism in particular) is often associated with the attempt to understand international politics from an objective or ‘scientific’ standpoint, it also acknowledges the important role played by statecraft. For example, in his analysis of the ‘twenty-years crisis’ that came between the First and Second World Wars, E. H. Carr (see p. 45) criticized the leading figures at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–20 (see p. 70) for allowing ‘wishing’ to prevail over ‘thinking’. By neglecting the importance of power in international politics, they had set the world on an inevitable course to further conflict. Morgenthau (1948) similarly placed an emphasis on the ‘art of statecraft’, arguing that the practical conduct of politics should nevertheless be informed by the ‘six principles of political realism’, spelled out as follows: 1. Politics is governed by objective laws that have their root in human nature. 2. The key to understanding international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power. 3. The forms and nature of state power will vary in time, place, and context but the concept of interest remains consistent. Statecraft: The art of conducting public affairs, or the skills associated with it – statesmanship. 4. Universal moral principles do not guide state behaviour, although this does not rule out an awareness of the moral significance of political action. 5. Moral aspirations are specific to a particular nation; there is no universally agreed set of moral principles. TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 79 6. The political sphere is autonomous, meaning that the key question in international National interest: Foreign policy goals, politics is ‘How does this policy affect the power of the nation?’ FIG U The key guide to statecraft in the realist tradition is a concern about the national interest. This concern highlights the realist stance on political morality. Realism is commonly portrayed as essentially amoral, both because of its image of humans as lustful and power-seeking creatures and because of its insistence that ethical considerations should be strictly excluded from foreign policy decision-making. However, a normative emphasis also operates within realist analysis, in that the requirement that state policy should be guided by a hard-headed pursuit of the national interest suggests, ultimately, that the state should be guided by the well-being of its citizens. What realists reject, therefore, is not nationally based conceptions of political morality but universal moral principles that supposedly apply to all states in all circumstances. Indeed, from a realist perspective, one of the problems with the latter is that they commonly get in the way of the pursuit of the former. Calculations about the national interest, moreover, offer the surest basis for deciding when, where, and why wars should be fought. Although realism is commonly associated with the idea of endless war, realists have often opposed war and aggressive foreign policy. In their view, wars should only ever be fought if vital national interests are at stake, the decision to wage war being based on something like a cost–benefit analysis of its outcomes in terms of strategic interests. Such thinking, for example, led Morgenthau and most US realists (except for Henry Kissinger, who was the National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, 1969–77) to oppose the Vietnam War. Realists were amongst the most trenchant critics of the ‘war on terror’ (see p. 303), with thirty-four leading US realist scholars having publicly opposed the US military build-up against Iraq in 2002 (see ‘Focus On... the Democratic Peace Thesis’, p. 87). RE objectives, or policy preferences that supposedly benefit a society as a whole (the foreign policy equivalent of the ‘public interest’) (see p. 197). HANS MORGENTHAU (1904–80) Hans Morgenthau was a German-born US international relations theorist. A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Morgenthau arrived in the United States in 1937 and started an academic career that led to him being dubbed the ‘Pope’ of international relations. Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations (1948) was highly influential in the development of international relations theory. He set out to develop a science of ‘power politics’, based on the belief, clearly echoing Machiavelli and Hobbes, that what he called ‘political man’ is an innately selfish creature with an insatiable urge to dominate others. Rejecting ‘moralistic’ approaches to international politics, Morgenthau advocated an emphasis on ‘realistic’ diplomacy, based on an analysis of balance of power and the need to promote the national interest. His other major writings include Scientific Man Versus Power Politics Source: Denver Post/ (1946), In Defence of the National Interest (1951), and The Purpose of American Politics (1960). Getty Images ANARCHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS From the late 1950s onwards, new thinking within the realist tradition started to emerge that was critical of ‘early’ or ‘classical’ realism. The key texts in this process were Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State, and War (1959) and Theory of International Politics (1979). For Waltz (see p. 80), theories about international politics could be developed on ‘three levels of analysis – the human individual, the state and the international system’ 3 80 GLOBAL POLITICS FIG U Systems theory: An approach to study that focuses on works of ‘systems’, explaining their operation and development in terms of reciprocal interactions amongst component parts. RE (Waltz 1959). In this light, the defect of classical realism was that it could not explain behaviour at a level above the state, which is a limitation of any endogenous, or ‘insideout’, theory (one which explains behaviour in terms of ‘the inside’, the intentions or inclinations of key actors) (see ‘Social Structure and Agency’, p. 122). Using systems theory, neorealism – also known as ‘structural realism’ – explains the behaviour of states in terms of the structure of the international system. As such, neorealism is an exogenous, or ‘outside-in’, theory (one in which the behaviour of actors is explained in terms of ‘the outside’, the context or structure in which they operate) of global politics. In shifting attention from the state to the international system, it places an emphasis on the implications of anarchy. The characteristics of international life stem from the fact that states (and other international actors) operate within a domain that has no formal central authority. But how does this shape behaviour? And why, according to neorealists, does international anarchy tend towards conflict rather than cooperation? KENNETH WALTZ (1924–2013) US international relations theorist. Waltz’s initial contribution to international relations, outlined in Man, the State, and War (1959), adopted a conventional realist approach and remains the basic starting point for the analysis of war. His Theory of International Politics (1979) was the most influential book on international relations theory of its generation, establishing Waltz as the successor to Morgenthau in the discipline. Ignoring human nature and the ethics of statecraft, Waltz used systems theory to explain how international anarchy effectively determines the actions of states, with change in the international system occurring through changes in the distribution of capabilities between and amongst states. Waltz’s analysis was closely associated with the Cold War and the belief that bipolarity is more stable and provides a better guarantee of peace and security than does multipolarity. Self-help: A state’s reliance on its own capacities and resources, rather than external support, to ensure security and survival. Neorealists argue that international anarchy necessarily tends towards tension, conflict, and the unavoidable possibility of war for three main reasons. In the first place, as states are separate, autonomous, and formally equal political units, they must ultimately rely on their own resources to realize their interests. International anarchy therefore results in a system of ‘self-help’ because states cannot count on anyone else to ‘take care of Security dilemma: The them’. Second, relationships between and amongst states are always characterized by dilemma that arises from uncertainty and suspicion. This is best explained through the security dilemma (Booth the fact that a build-up and Wheeler 2008). Although self-help forces states to ensure security and survival of military capacity for defensive reasons by one by building up sufficient military capacity to deter other states from attacking them, state is always liable to be such actions are always liable to be interpreted as hostile or aggressive. Uncertainty interpreted as aggressive about motives therefore forces states to treat all other states as enemies, meaning that by other states. permanent insecurity is the inescapable consequence of living in conditions of anarchy. Relative gains: The Third, conflict is also encouraged by the fact that states are primarily concerned about position of states in maintaining or improving their position relative to other states; that is, about making relation to one another, reflected in the distribution relative gains. Apart from anything else, this discourages cooperation and reduces the of benefits and capabilities effectiveness of international organizations (see p. 547) because, although all states may between and amongst benefit from a particular action or policy, each state is actually more worried about them. whether other states benefit more that it does. TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS POLARITY, STABILITY AND THE BALANCE OF POWER However, the fact that states are inclined to treat other states as enemies does not inevitably lead to bloodshed and open violence. Rather, neorealists, in common with classical realists, believe that conflict can be contained by the balance of power (see p. 343), a key concept for all realist theorists. However, while classical realists treat the balance of power as a product of prudent statecraft, neorealists see it as a consequence of the structural dynamics of the international system, and specifically of the distribution of power (or capacities) between and among states. In short, the principal factor affecting the likelihood of a balance of power, and therefore the prospect of war or peace, is the number of great powers operating within the international system. Although neorealists believe that there is a general bias in the international system in favour of balance rather than imbalance (see ‘To Balance or to Bandwagon?’ see p. 318), world order is determined by the changing fate of great powers. This is reflected in an emphasis on polarity. Neorealists have generally associated bipolar systems with stability and a reduced likelihood of war, while multipolar systems have been associated with instability and a greater likelihood of war. This inclined neorealists to view Cold War bipolarity (see p. 296) in broadly positive terms, as a ‘long peace’, but to warn about the implications of rising multipolarity in the post-Cold War era (discussed in more detail in Chapter 10). Realists, nevertheless, disagree about the relationship between structural instability and the likelihood of war. For so-called offensive realists, for instance John Mearsheimer, as the primary motivation of states is the acquisition of power, if the balance of power breaks down (as it tends to in conditions of multipolarity), there is a very real likelihood that war will break out (Mearsheimer 2001). Defensive realists, on the other hand, argue that states tend to prioritize security over power, in which case states will generally be reluctant to go to war, regardless of the dynamics of the international system (Mastanduno 1991) (see ‘Offensive or Defensive Realism?’ p. 317). ASSESSING AND REVISING REALISM Realism was so dominant within international relations during much of the post-Second World War period that, when Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979) was published, some claimed that, in neorealism, the discipline had found its ‘master theory’. Amongst the reasons for realism’s dominance was that the Cold War, characterized as it was by superpower rivalry and a nuclear arms race, made the politics of power and security appear to be undeniably relevant and insightful. Waltz (1986) was thus able to assert that realism identifies ‘a small number of big and important things’. However, in a process that began during the 1970s and 1980s, but was significantly accelerated by the end of the Cold War, more and more aspects of world politics came to be shaped by developments that either ran counter to realist expectations or highlighted the limitations of realist analysis. These included the end of the Cold War itself (which realists failed to predict 81 Polarity: The existence within a system of one or more significant actors, or ‘poles’, which affect the behaviour of other actors and shape the contour of the system itself, determining its structural dynamics. Offensive realism: A form of structural realism that portrays states as ‘power maximizers’, as there is no limit to their desire to control the international environment. Defensive realism: A form of structural realism that views states as ‘security maximizers’, placing the desire to avoid attack above a bid for world power. 3 82 GLOBAL POLITICS and struggled to explain [see p. 297]), the growing impact of non-state actors on world affairs, the advance of globalization, and the increased significance of issues related to human rights. Realism’s centrality within international relations therefore came under growing pressure. Not only was greater attention given to rival theoretical approaches, in the form of revived liberalism and ‘new’ critical voices such as constructivism (see p. 120), but a growing number of realists (sometimes called ‘weak’ or ‘hedged’ realists) sought to blend the core principles of realist analysis with a range of wider political possibilities. Nevertheless, while the impulse to establish the overall explanatory priority of realism over rival traditions may have receded, the continued relevance of realist theory is rarely doubted, and few deny that realism should form part of the analytical toolkit of every serious student of international relations (Donnelly 2000). This applies, in part, because the acceptance that anarchy (albeit, perhaps, modified by other developments) remains a basic feature of world politics extends well beyond realism. Neorealist thinking about the structural dynamics of a self-help international system is, therefore, seldom dismissed out of hand. Moreover, in a range of areas realism continues to be in the forefront of contemporary debate. This can be seen in the case of debate, especially in the United States, about US foreign policy, as was apparent over the ‘war on terror’ and especially the invasion of Iraq, and over how the United States should respond to the rise of China (see p. 311). Since the 1990s, one of the clearest trends in realist theory has been the tendency to fuse systems analysis with a unit-level approach, giving rise to what has been called ‘neoclassical realism’ (Rose 1998). Neoclassical realists, such as Randall Schweller, William Wohlforth, and Fareed Zakaria, practise a form of foreign policy analysis that connects classical realist thinking on decision-making and leadership, and human behaviour, to more structural factors including anarchy and world order. Greater openness to the insights of classical realism has, in particular, allowed renewed stress to be placed on the importance of statecraft. This underlines that the most enduring lesson taught by realist theory is perhaps that actions, however well-intentioned, may always have unintended consequences, implying that, where possible, international affairs should be approached with caution and prudence. Innovative revisions of realist thought in more recent years, including Errol Henderson’s (2015) exploration of ‘African realism’, seek to bring classical and neorealist theory – which traditionally paid little attention to colonialism and its legacies – into a dialogue with the realities of a postcolonial world. Henderson notes what he calls both the ‘empirical neglect and racism in IR regarding Africa’, with Western IR theorists either ignoring African involvement in global politics or treating it as a set of ‘failed states’ that evidence the dangers of ‘anarchy’. He suggests, however, that a ‘modified realist lens’ can allow us to understand how and why conflict has been such a persistent feature of Cold War and post-Cold War African international relations. Henderson’s point is that while the powerful Western states and the liberal international institutions they have created tend to preach a ‘liberal paradigm’ to African societies, in practice these states tend TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS to adopt realist approaches to their relations with one another, as a result of ‘both the push of African agency and the pull of global forces on African foreign policy behavior’ (Henderson 2015: 12). LIBERALISM CON By the end of the Cold War and the turn of the twenty-first century, it would have been a fair assessment to say that liberalism had become the dominant ideological force shaping Western political thought. Only more recently have explicitly anti-liberal politics and international relations begun to turn this tide – most notably through the 2016 election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States and the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, as well as a wider rightward shift in European politics. Indeed, some portray liberalism as the ideology of the industrialized West and identify it with ‘Western civilization’ itself. Liberal ideas and theories had a considerable impact on the discipline of international relations as it took shape following the First World War, although they drew on a much older tradition of so-called ‘idealist’ theorizing that dates back, via Kant’s (see p. 17) belief in the possibility of ‘universal and perpetual peace’, to the Middle Ages and the ideas of early ‘just war’ thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas (see p. 343). Marginalized during the early post-1945 period due to the failure of the liberal-inspired Versailles settlement and the ascendancy of realist thought, liberal ideas nevertheless attracted growing attention from the 1970s onwards, often in the form of so-called neoliberal institutionalism. This largely stripped liberalism of its idealist trappings. The end of the Cold War (sometimes seen as the ‘liberal moment’ in world affairs), the growing impact of globalization, and a new wave of democratization in the 1990s each gave liberal theory additional impetus. C E PT 83 Neoliberal institutionalism: A school of thought within liberalism that emphasizes the scope for cooperative behaviour within the international system while not denying its anarchic character. Democratization: The transition from authoritarianism to liberal democracy, reflected in the granting of basic freedoms and political rights, the establishment of competitive elections, and the introduction of market reforms. IDEALISM Idealism (sometimes called ‘utopianism’) (see p. 44) is an approach to international politics that stresses the importance of moral values and ideals, rather than power and the pursuit of the national interest. As a guide to foreign policy-making, idealism is essentially a variant of liberal internationalism: it reflects a strong optimism about the prospects for international peace, usually associated with a desire to reform the international system by strengthening international law (see Chapter 15) and embracing cosmopolitan ethics. However, idealism is not coextensive with liberalism: idealism is broader and more nebulous than liberalism, and modern liberal theorizing is often disconnected from the idealist impulse. The central theme of liberalism in all its forms is the notion of harmony or balance amongst competing interests. Individual, groups, and, for that matter, states may pursue self-interest but a natural equilibrium will tend to assert itself. At a deeper level, competing interests complement one another; conflict is never irreconcilable. Just as, from a liberal perspective, natural or unregulated equilibrium tends to emerge in 3 84 GLOBAL POLITICS Commercial liberalism: A form of liberalism that emphasizes the economic and international benefits of free trade, leading to mutual benefit and general prosperity as well as peace amongst states. Free trade: A system of trade between states not restricted by tariffs or other forms of protectionism. economic life (see ‘Approaches to International Political Economy’, p. 140), a balance of interests tends to develop amongst the states of the world, disposing liberals to believe in the possibility of peace and cooperation. However, it is important to note that the liberal paradigm is not clearly distinct from realism, as both of them share certain traditional assumptions about how international politics works. Most significantly, liberals and realists both accept that world affairs are shaped, in important ways, by competition amongst states, implying that the international system is, and perhaps must always remain, decentralized. The difference, nevertheless, is that liberals assume that competition within this system is conducted within a larger framework of harmony. This inclines liberals to believe in internationalism (see p. 85) and to hold that realists substantially underestimate the scope for cooperation and integration within the decentralized state system. The key themes within liberal theory are as follows: z interdependence liberalism; z republican liberalism; and z neoliberal institutionalism. INTERDEPENDENCE LIBERALISM Liberal theories about interdependence (see p. 5) are grounded in ideas about trade and economic relations. Such thinking can be traced back to the birth of commercial liberalism in the nineteenth century, based on the classical economics of David Ricardo (1770–1823) and the ideas of the so-called ‘Manchester liberals’, Richard Cobden (1804–65) and John Bright (1811–89). The key theme within commercial liberalism was a belief in the virtues of free trade. Free trade has economic benefits, as it allows each country to specialize in the production of the goods and services that it is best suited to produce, the ones in which they have a ‘comparative advantage’. However, free trade is no less important in drawing states into a web of economic interdependence that means that the material costs of international conflict are so great that warfare becomes virtually unthinkable. Cobden and Bright argued that free trade would draw people of different races, creeds, and languages together in what Cobden described, in an 1846 speech in Manchester, as ‘the bonds of eternal peace’. Not only would free trade maintain peace for negative reasons (the fear of being deprived of vital goods) but it would also have positive benefits in ensuring that different peoples are united by shared values and a common commercial culture, and so would have a better understanding of one another. In short, aggression and expansionism are best deterred by the ‘spirit of commerce’. The stress on interdependence that underpins commercial liberalism has been further developed by neoliberals into what Keohane and Nye (1977) called ‘complex interdependence’, viewed, initially at least, as an alternative theoretical model to realism. Complex interdependence reflects the extent to which peoples and governments in the modern world are affected by what happens elsewhere, and particularly by the actions of their counterparts in other countries. This not only applies in the economic realm, through the advance of globalization, but is also evident in relation to a range of other TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS CON issues, including climate change, development and poverty reduction, and human rights. Such a view suggests that realism’s narrow preoccupation with the military and diplomatic dimensions of international politics, the so-called ‘high politics’ of security and survival, is misplaced. Instead, the international agenda is becoming broader with greater attention being given to the ‘low politics’ of welfare, environmental protection and political justice. Relations between and amongst states have also changed, not least through a tendency for modern states to prioritize trade over war and through a trend towards closer cooperation or even integration, as, for instance, in the case of the European Union. Nevertheless, there has been disagreement amongst interdependence liberals about the significance of such trends. So-called ‘strong’ liberals believe that qualitative changes have taken place in the international system which substantially modify the impact of anarchy, self-help, and the security dilemma, creating an irresistible tendency towards peace, cooperation, and integration (Burton 1972; Rosenau 1990). ‘Weak’ liberals, on the other hand, have come to accept neorealist assumptions, particularly about the implications of international anarchy, as the starting point for analysis, thereby highlighting the extent to which modern realist and liberal theory sometimes overlap (Axelrod 1984; Stein 1990). C E PT 85 High politics: Issue areas that are of primary importance, usually taken to refer to defence and foreign policy generally, and particularly to matters of state selfpreservation. Low politics: Issue areas that are seen not to involve a state’s vital national interests, whether in the foreign or the domestic sphere. LIBERAL INTERNATIONALISM Internationalism is the theory or practice of politics based on cooperation between states, nations, or societies. It is rooted in universalist assumptions about human nature that put it at odds with political nationalism, the latter emphasizing the degree to which political identity is shaped by nationality. However, liberal internationalism is compatible with nationalism, in the sense that it calls for cooperation or solidarity among pre-existing nations, rather than for the removal or abandonment of national identities altogether. Internationalism thus differs from cosmopolitanism (see p. 94). Liberal internationalism is reflected in support for free trade and economic interdependence as well as a commitment to construct, or strengthen, international organizations. REPUBLICAN LIBERALISM Like classical realism, the liberal perspective on international politics adopts an ‘insideout’ approach to theorizing. Larger conclusions about international and global affairs are thus derived from assumptions about their basic elements. Although liberalism’s stress on peace and international harmony contrasts sharply with the realist belief in power politics, the two perspectives are united in viewing states as essentially self-seeking actors. Each state therefore poses at least a potential threat to other states. However, unlike realists, liberals believe that the external behaviour of a state is crucially influenced by its political and constitutional make-up. This is reflected in a tradition of republican liberalism that can be traced back to Woodrow Wilson (see p. 552), if not to Kant. While autocratic or authoritarian states are seen to be inherently militaristic and aggressive, democratic states are viewed as naturally peaceful, especially in their dealings with other democratic states (Doyle 1986, 1995). The aggressive character of authoritarian regimes stems from the fact that they are immunized from popular pressure and typically have strong and politically powerful armies. As they are accustomed to the use of force to maintain themselves in power, force becomes the natural mechanism through which 3 86 GLOBAL POLITICS Democratic peace thesis: The notion that there is an intrinsic link between peace and democracy, in particular that democratic states do not go to war with one another. they deal with the wider world and resolve disputes with other states. Liberals, moreover, hold that authoritarian states are inherently unstable because they lack the institutional mechanisms for responding to popular pressure and balancing rival interests, and are so impelled towards foreign policy adventurism as a means of regime consolidation. If the support of the people cannot be ensured through participation and popular consent, ‘patriotic’ war may provide the only solution. In this light, liberals have seen democracy as a guarantee of peace. The democratic peace thesis resurfaced with particular force in the aftermath of the collapse of communism, notably in the writings of Francis Fukuyama (see p. 640). In Fukuyama’s view, the wider acceptance of liberal democratic principles and structures, and the extension of market capitalism, amounted to the ‘end of history’ and also promised to create a more stable and peaceful global order. Liberals have claimed empirical as well as theoretical support for such beliefs, especially in the fact that there has never been a war between two democratic nation states (even though wars have continued to take place between democracies and other states). They have also associated the general advance of democratization with the creation of ‘zones of peace’, composed of collections of mature democracies in places such as Europe, North America, and Australasia, as opposed to the ‘zones of turmoil’ that are found elsewhere in the world (Singer and Wildavsky 1993). Nevertheless, republican liberalism has also been drawn into deep controversy, not least through the growth of socalled liberal interventionism and the idea that democracy can and should be promoted through militarily imposed ‘regime change’. This issue is examined in more detail in Chapter 10, in association with the ‘war on terror’. CLOSING THE REALIST/LIBERAL DIVIDE? Although realism and liberalism are commonly portrayed as antithetical theories of international politics – one emphasizing egoism, power, and conflict; the other, morality, peace, and cooperation – the difference between them has tended to fade over time. One of the characteristic features of neoliberals is an acceptance of certain neorealist assumptions, making them, for instance, happier than ‘traditional’ liberals to explain state behaviour in terms of self-interest and to accept that the international system is essentially anarchical. Similarly, most modern realists are ‘weak’ or ‘hedged’ realists, in that they accept that international politics cannot be explained exclusively in terms of power, self-interest, and conflict. The ‘neo–neo debate’ has therefore become an increasingly technical, rather than foundational, debate. The idea that international politics is best explained in the light of both realist and liberal insights, recognizing the counter-balancing forces of conflict and cooperation, has been championed, since the 1960s, by theorists who subscribe to the notion of ‘international society’ (see p. 641), sometimes seen as the ‘English School’ of international relations. This view modifies the realist emphasis on power politics and international anarchy by suggesting the existence of a ‘society of states’ rather than simply a ‘system of states’, implying that international relations are rule-governed and that these rules help to maintain international order. The chief institutions that generate cultural cohesion and social integration are international law, diplomacy, and the activities of international TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 87 organizations. Hedley Bull ([1977] 2012) thus advanced the notion of an ‘anarchical society’, in place of the conventional realist idea of international anarchy. International society theory can be seen as a form of liberal realism. FOCUS ON . . . THE DEMOCRATIC PEACE THESIS The ‘democratic peace thesis’ or DPT (also known as the ‘liberal peace thesis’) is supported by most liberals and suggests that republican liberalism, democracy, and peace are linked, particularly in the sense that wars do not occur between constitutionally liberal democratic states. This thesis is widely regarded, and described by its liberal proponents, as the closest thing to a ‘law’ of the kind found in the natural sciences (the laws of physics, for example) that the discipline of international relations theory has produced. This is because liberals can produce compelling evidence to make their case. But the thesis is rooted in Kant’s eighteenth-century philosophical republicanism – it was his view that since wars tended to be fought in the interests of competitive monarchs rather than ordinary people, more government by (or at least for) the people should mean less war. Democratic peace theorists claim that the data bears this argument out. In its modern form, Michael W. Doyle has been the foremost proponent of what he calls the ‘dyadic’ liberal peace thesis. This version of the theory suggests Kant was overly optimistic in his ‘monadic’ vision, where the whole world would be pacified by the creation of more republics. Liberal democracies, Doyle argues, ‘do not seem to go to war with one another yet seem to be as war-prone as any other regime’ (Doyle 1997: 294). Significance: The DPT has been one of the most influential ideas in not only the theory but also the practice of international relations. It has garnered support from – and been a guiding principle of – both politically liberal and politically conservative governments in Western liberal democracies. In 1994, the Democrat US President Bill Clinton explained his interventionist post-Cold War American foreign policy stance with the principle that ‘democracies don’t attack each other’, while a decade later, in 2004, the Republican President George W. Bush described the new ‘war on terror’ phase of military interventionism in identical terms: ‘democracies don’t go to war with each other’. The doctrines of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’ (see Chapter 14) have been closely informed by the belief that creating new liberal democracies, through military intervention, will ultimately make the world a more peaceful place, and that intervening militarily in other states (waging war) to promote, create, or stabilize and protect liberal democracy is therefore a moral good. The evidence to support the DPT includes the ‘Correlates of War’ project database, which attempts to keep a record of every armed conflict. DPT theorists suggest that this data shows there has never been a war between any two liberal democratic states. Despite its widespread adherence, including among the most prominent leaders in the post-Cold War West, the DPT has also been extremely controversial – not least with other theorists of global politics. Realists have fiercely resisted what they see as the dangerous hubris of the moralizing belief adopted by Western governments that they are on the ‘right side of history’. Their position is that war is inevitable at times, but nonetheless tragic and undesirable, while prudence and strategic reasoning are vital. They abhor many ‘wars of choice’, where liberal democracies attack other, nonthreatening sovereign states, in the name of ‘spreading democracy’. In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, most influential living The bombing of Baghdad, 2003 realist thinkers – including John Mearsheimer, Thomas Schelling, Randall Source: Nam Hun SUNG/Getty Images 3 88 GLOBAL POLITICS Schweller, Stephen Walt, and Kenneth Waltz – co-signed an advertisement in the New York Times warning that the imminent war (which President Bush justified through the language of democracy promotion) would be unnecessary, had ‘no plausible exit strategy’, would ‘jeopardize the campaign against al Qaeda’, and was not based on any imminent threat to America or its allies. The ad was headlined ‘WAR WITH IRAQ IS NOT IN AMERICA’S NATIONAL INTEREST’ (Art et al. 2002). Critical theorists, (see Chapter 4), meanwhile, have highlighted the selective and fuzzy interpretations or definitions of liberalism, democracy, and war at stake in the DPT. Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey (2001 pp. 13–14), for instance, point to the terminological conflation of ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy’ in the DPT, noting that ‘democracy and liberalism are distinct and by no means necessarily compatible […] Democracy is about popular rule. Liberalism, in contrast, is about the construction of a particular kind of social order, organized around the individual and his or her rights.’ They and other critical scholars note that the way these ‘variables’ are defined in the DPT is slippery and means that when theorists say there have been ‘no wars between liberal-democracies’, they exclude, for example, proxy wars and coups – such as the US-backed overthrow of various democratically elected left-wing governments in Latin America. Others have suggested that the bifurcation of the world into ‘democracies’ and ‘non-democracies’ creates a generally more bellicose world order pervaded by what are perceived to be ‘existential’ threats (Geis, Brock, and Müller 2006). Post-structuralists have been particularly critical of the contemporary ‘liberal way of war’ (Dillon and Reid 2009), suggesting that the post-9/11 security policies of Western states have brought about an era of ‘liberal terror’ (Evans 2013). Postcolonial theorists, meanwhile, have viewed the DPT as a fig leaf for violent neocolonial policies pursued by major Western powers in the ‘Global South’. The post-Cold War era has arguably been an ‘age of liberal wars’ rather than a period of ‘democratic peace’ (Freedman 2005). Western liberal democracies may, if anything, have been more bellicose than other types of state – starting ‘pre-emptive’ wars on the basis of flimsy plans to ‘democratize’ other societies. The DPT was, therefore, already at something of a low point when the new wave of anti-liberal politics hit the West with the 2016 election of President Trump in the United States. Trump’s ‘America First’, anti-globalist rhetoric offers a less interventionist vision for US foreign policy – and despite an often aggressive stance on China, and the 2019 drone assassination of a senior Iranian general, he was the first post-Cold War US president not to deploy troops into a new military intervention within his first presidential term. NEOLIBERAL INSTITUTIONALISM Rule of law: The principle that law should ‘rule’, in the sense that it establishes a framework within which all conduct and behaviour takes place. The chief ‘external’ mechanism that liberals believe is needed to constrain the ambitions of sovereign states is international organizations. This reflects the ideas of what is called neoliberal institutionalism. The basis for such a view lies in the ‘domestic analogy’, the idea that insight into international politics can be gained by reflecting on the structures of domestic politics. Taking particular account of social contract theory, as developed by thinkers such as Hobbes and John Locke (1632–1704), this highlights the fact that only the construction of a sovereign power can safeguard citizens from the violence and danger of the ‘state of nature’. If order can only be imposed ‘from above’ in domestic politics, the same must be true of international politics. This provided the basis for the establishment of the rule of law, which, as Woodrow Wilson put it, would turn the ‘jungle’ of international politics into a ‘zoo’. The League of Nations was the first, if flawed, attempt to translate such thinking into practice. The United Nations (see p. 552) has attracted far wider support and established itself as a seemingly permanent feature of global politics. Liberals have looked to such bodies to establish a rule-governed international system that would be based on collective security (see p. 556) and respect for international law. TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS CON Modern neoliberals in IR theory have built on this positive approach to international organizations, practising what is usually called neoliberal institutionalism. Distancing themselves from the cosmopolitan dreams of some early liberals, they have instead explained growing cooperation and integration in functional terms, linked to selfinterest. Institutions thus come into existence as mediators, to facilitate cooperation among states on matters of common interest. Whereas neorealists argue that such cooperation is always difficult and prone to break down because of the emphasis by states on ‘relative’ gains, neoliberals assert that states are more concerned with absolute gains. Instead of constantly engaging in one-upmanship, states are always willing to cooperate if they calculate that they will be better off in real terms as a result. Although neoliberals use such arguments to explain the origins and development of formal institutions, ranging from the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see p. 588) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (see p. 584) to regional economic blocs such as the European Union (see p. 623), they also draw attention to more informal institutions. In this, they embrace what has been called ‘new’ institutionalism, which defines institutions not so much as established and formal bodies but, more broadly, as sets of norms, rules, and ‘standard operating procedures’ that are internalized by those who work within them. This explains the stress within neoliberal theory on the role of international regimes. C E PT 89 Absolute gains: Benefits that accrue to states from a policy or action regardless of its impact on other states. INTERNATIONAL REGIME A regime is a set of principles, procedures, norms, or rules that govern the interactions of states and non-state actors in particular issue areas within international politics. As such, they are social institutions with either a formal or informal character. Examples of regimes include treaties, conventions, international agreements, and international organizations. These now operate in a wide variety of issue areas, including economics, human rights, the environment, transport, security, policing, communications, and so on. The greater significance of regimes reflects the growth of interdependence and the recognition that cooperation and coordination can bring absolute gains to all parties. ASSESSING LIBERALISM Interest in liberal theory revived from the 1970s onwards through the emergence of a series of trends in global politics that appeared to correspond closely with liberal thinking. The advance of globalization generated renewed interest in interdependence liberalism, particularly as liberal political economy was widely used to cast globalization in a positive light, associating it with economic dynamism and the prospect of worldwide prosperity. The wave of democratization that commenced in the late 1980s with the fall of communism stimulated a resurgence of republican liberalism, reviving debates that had originated in the aftermath of the First World War about the link between democracy and peace. And the growing prominence of international organizations helped to establish neoliberal institutionalism as a major rival to neorealism, seemingly bearing out the possibility of ‘cooperation under anarchy’. However, if there had been a ‘liberal moment’ in world affairs, it may not have extended far beyond the 1990s, as other trends emerged that seemed to defy liberal analysis. This, for instance, applied in the case of the growth of 3 90 GLOBAL POLITICS political Islam and the wider tendency towards religious revivalism. These developments clearly ran counter to the liberal belief that modernization and secularization march hand in hand, as religious belief is either weakened by the advance of rationalism or increasingly confined to the private sphere. Further challenges to liberal theory have arisen due to its multifarious and complex character. Although the breadth of liberalism is commonly viewed as a strength, particularly by comparison with realism’s narrow focus on issues of power, security, and survival, it may bring the overall coherence of liberal theory into question. This occurs, in part, because liberalism’s three main sub-traditions do not necessarily support one another, and may even be contradictory (Griffiths 2011). Thus, support for free trade and the integration of national economies into a single, global economy (in line with interdependence liberalism) may, by allowing global markets and transnational corporations (see p. 149) to dictate to national governments, undermine the quality of domestic democracy (a core concern of republican liberalism). Other sources of tension within liberalism can also be identified. For example, the advance of globalization highlights divisions within liberal political economy between those who placed their faith in the untrammelled workings of global markets and those who argue that global capitalism needs to be protected from itself through a framework of regulation. In the same way, the growth of international organizations exposes tensions within liberalism between its internationalist and its cosmopolitan tendencies. While liberal internationalists seek to use international organizations as a mechanism through which sovereign nation states can cooperate, liberal cosmopolitans advocate supranational governance and may insist that the norm of state sovereignty is subordinated to the norm of human rights. THINKING GLOBALLY The acceleration of globalization from the 1980s onwards not only contributed to a reconfiguration of world politics; it also brought with it a series of new theoretical challenges. Not the least of these was the problem of conceptualizing the emerging condition of global interconnectedness, in which politics is increasingly enmeshed in a web of interdependences that operate both within and across worldwide, regional, national, and subnational levels. How is it possible, in other words, to ‘think globally’? And what are the implications of global thinking? Two challenges have emerged in particular. The first concerns the difficulties that global interconnectedness poses to empirical understanding: how can we make sense of a world in which everything affects everything else? The second concerns the normative implications of global interconnectedness: have wider social connections between people expanded the moral universe in which we live? CHALLENGE OF INTERCONNECTEDNESS To what extent can traditional theories accommodate global thinking? In many ways, this is indicated by the degree to which they are able to address the issue of globalization. The picture here is mixed. As far as realism is concerned, its core focus on unit-level TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS analysis, taking the state to be the primary actor on the world stage, puts it starkly at odds with most of the claims made about globalization, especially the idea of an interlocking global economy. Thus, insofar as realists have addressed the issue of globalization, it is to deny that it is anything new or different: globalization is ‘more of the same’, a game played by states for states. The much vaunted ‘interdependent world’ is thus largely a myth, from a realist perspective. Kenneth Waltz (1999, p. 694) argued that ‘globalization is the fad of the 1990s, and globalization is made in America’, insisting that what the United States – and as a consequence the wider West – called ‘globalization’ was really self-interested US foreign policy. The reality of globalization, Waltz claimed, was the United States instrumentalizing international financial institutions such as the IMF (see p. 584) to force a ‘golden straitjacket’ of neoliberal economic reforms on ‘third world’ countries – reforms that largely benefited US capital and trade – while simultaneously aiming to ‘garrison much of the world and to look for ways of keeping troops in foreign countries rather than withdrawing them’, with American military might acting as the iron fist concealed in the velvet glove of globalization. Liberals, on the other hand, have been eager to incorporate the phenomenon of globalization into their thinking. For liberals, the advent of globalization fitted in well to long-established ideas about economic interdependence and the virtues of free trade. Much ‘hyperglobalist’ theorizing, indeed, is based on liberal assumptions, especially about the tendency of the market to achieve long-term equilibrium, bringing with it both general prosperity and widening freedom. Adam Smith’s (see p. 135) image of the ‘invisible hand’ of market competition can therefore be seen to provide the basis for a market-based, and unashamedly positive, model of global interconnectedness. Andrew Moravscik, who has been among the most influential of contemporary liberal IR theorists, actually defines liberalism as ‘a theory of international politics that believes the fundamental force in world politics is globalization’ (OpenLearn 2014), which he describes as the increasing interdependence of groups of people in different societies. Moravscik’s ‘liberal intergovernmentalism’ is a theory specifically designed to explain the existence of the European Union and the history of post-war European integration – particularly tricky phenomena for realists to explain, given the voluntary ceding of sovereign powers from member states to the supranational organs of the Union, which suggests that ‘survival’ as states might not be states’ top priority after all. But Moravscik and others have extended this theory to the level of global politics. For these liberals, globalization is the engine through which we will see ever closer interdependence and cooperation in international relations as a consequence of the accumulation of shared ‘preferences’ of the citizens of different countries being realized at the level of foreign policy. That Moravscik is himself a former US trade diplomat, and partner of Anne-Marie Slaughter – another influential liberal IR scholar, international lawyer, and Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department under the Obama administration – speaks to how tightly woven liberal thinking on global politics and globalization has been in the fabric of US foreign policy-making, and consequently the Western-dominated world order of the early post-Cold War period. President Trump’s explicit rejection of liberalism and what he calls ‘globalism’, along with his specific foreign policy stances, and appointments to key diplomatic roles, suggest a decisive shift away from the pro-globalization liberalism that has been central to shaping world order for much of the last century. 91 3 92 GLOBAL POLITICS DEBATING . . . DO MORAL OBLIGATIONS EXTEND TO THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY? At the heart of the idea of global justice is the notion of universal rights and obligations stretching across the globe, establishing ‘justice beyond borders’. But what is the basis for such thinking, and how persuasive is it? YES NO Humans as moral creatures. The core feature of cosmopolitan ethics is the idea that the individual, rather than any particular political community, is the principal source of moral value. Most commonly, this is asserted through the doctrine of human rights, the notion that people are entitled to at least the minimal conditions for leading a worthwhile existence. These rights are fundamental and universal, in that they belong to people by virtue of their humanity and cannot be denied on grounds of nationality, religion, cultural identity, or whatever. The doctrine of human rights therefore implies that there is but a single ethical community, and that is humankind. People everywhere are part of the same moral universe. Morality begins at home. Communitarian theorists argue that morality only makes sense when it is locally based, grounded in the communities to which we belong and which have shaped our lives and values. The simple fact is that people everywhere give moral priority to those they know best, most obviously their family and close friends and, beyond that, members of their local community and then those with whom they share a national or cultural identity. Not only is morality fashioned by the distinctive history, culture, and traditions of a particular society but it is difficult to see how our obligations can extend beyond those who share a similar ethical framework. The globalization of moral sensibilities. The narrowing of moral sensibilities just to people within our own society is unsustainable in a world of increasing interconnectedness. Transborder information and communication flows, particularly the impact of television, mean that the ‘strangeness’ and unfamiliarity of people and societies on the other side of the globe has reduced substantially. News reports and especially pictures of, for instance, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami provoked massive outpourings of humanitarian concern in other parts of the world, helping to fund major programmes of emergency relief. Globalization therefore has an important, and irresistible, moral dimension. The agency problem. The idea of universal rights only makes sense if it is possible to identify who is obliged to do what in relation to the rights-bearers. If moral obligations fall on individual human beings, there is little that they, as individuals, could do in the event of, say, a natural disaster or a civil war. If our obligations are discharged through states and national governments, there is the problem that states have different capabilities. Citizens’ and states’ obligations may therefore become little more than a reflection of the wealth and power of their society. If universal obligations only make sense in a context of world government (see p. 574), in which global justice is upheld by supranational bodies, this creates the prospect of global despotism. Global citizenship. Moral obligations to people in other parts of the world stem, in important respects, from the fact that we affect their lives. We live in a world of global cause and effect. Purchasing decisions in one part of the world thus affect job opportunities, working conditions and poverty levels in other parts of the world. Whether we like it or not, we are morally culpable, in that our actions have moral implications for others. Such thinking draws on the utilitarian belief that we should act so as to achieve the greatest possible pleasure over pain in the world at large, each person’s happiness or suffering counting equally. A basic moral principle for ‘citizens of the world’ would therefore be: do no harm. The virtues of self-help. Doctrines of universal rights and obligations are invariably used to argue that rich and successful parts of the world should, in some way, help poor and less fortunate parts of the world. However, such interference is often counterproductive: it promotes dependency and undermines self-reliance. Perhaps the main obligation we owe other peoples and other societies is to leave them alone. This may result in short-term moral costs but longerterm ethical benefits, in the form of societies better able to protect their citizens from suffering and hardship. State sovereignty may therefore make good moral sense as well as good political sense. TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS However, some argue that the challenges of global interconnectedness defy all established theories and, in effect, require the development of an entirely new way of thinking. This is because the rise of complex forms of interconnectedness make it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to think any longer in conventional terms of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. In an interdependent world, the relationships between two or more factors, processes, or variables are characterized by reciprocal causation, or mutual conditioning. Thus, if A, B, and C are interdependent, then any change in B will result in a change in A and C; any change in A will result in a change in B and C; and any change in C will result in a change in A and B (Hay 2010). However, complexity does not stop there. The fact that any change in A changes not just B and C but also A itself, means that it becomes difficult to think in terms of ‘A-ness’, ‘B-ness’, or, indeed, in terms of ‘thing-ness’ in any sense. One of the first theorists to apply ‘complexity science’ to the study of politics and international affairs was James Rosenau. Taking account of the dynamics and consequences of globalization, but also moving beyond a globalization paradigm, Rosenau highlighted the emergence of an ever-shrinking world of uncertainty, change, and complexity, which can best be understood as an endless series of ‘distant proximities’. 93 Distant proximity: A phenomenon, rooted in complexity, in which what seems to be remote also seems to be close at hand. FIG U Complex interconnectedness arguably challenges the very basis of reasoning in the Western tradition, which dates back to Aristotle’s assertion that ‘everything must either be or not be’. While this dualistic or ‘either/or’ approach to thinking implies that the world can be understood in terms of linear, causal relationships, complex interconnectedness perhaps calls for an alternative holistic, non-dualistic, and therefore non-linear approach to understanding. Eastern thinking in general and Buddhism in particular (by virtue of its stress on oneness, grounded in the belief that all concepts and objects are ‘empty’ of own-being) (Clarke 1997) are often seen as archetypal examples of non-dualistic thinking; other attempts to think beyond ‘either/or’ distinctions include ‘fuzzy thinking’ (Kosko 1994), deep ecology (Capra 1996), and systems thinking (Capra 2003). But where does non-linearity or non-dualist thinking lead us? One of its key implications is that, as patterns of causal relationships become increasingly difficult to identify, events take on a random and seemingly arbitrary character. This is highlighted by chaos theory (see p. 94), which describes systems whose behaviour is difficult to predict because they consist of so many variables or unknown factors. Chaos tendencies may, for instance, be evident in the inherent instability of global financial markets (Soros 2000) and in a general tendency towards risk and uncertainty in society at large (Beck 1992). RE JAMES ROSENAU (1924–2011) A US political scientist and international affairs scholar. A pioneer in the analysis of foreign policy decision-making, Rosenau came to focus on the dynamics and consequences of globalization and on the wider phenomenon of increased complexity and uncertainty. In Turbulence in World Politics (1990), he investigated the new forces shaping world politics beyond the nation state, including the rising importance of NGOs and the empowerment of individuals as actors in world politics. Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier (1997) and Distant Proximities (2003) took this analysis further, by emphasizing how the increasing number of actors involved in events and the deepening degree of interdependence amongst them create an environment that is dense with causal layers. His concept of Source: Courtesy of ‘fragmentation’ attempted to capture dynamics that operate beyond globalization, notably localization Institute of Global Leadership and decentralization. 3 94 GLOBAL POLITICS COSMOPOLITANISM CON Global interconnectedness does not merely challenge us in terms of how we understand the world but also, perhaps, in terms of our moral relationships. The advance of globalization has undoubtedly had an ethical dimension, in that it has renewed interest in forms of cosmopolitanism, often expressed through growing interest in ideas such as global justice or world ethics (Dower 1998; Caney 2005). Another idea originally popularized by Immanuel Kant (see p. 17), and closely linked to the liberal tradition of political and international theory, cosmopolitanism literally means citizenship of the world, or universe (‘cosmos’). As the world has ‘shrunk’, in the sense of people having a greater awareness of other people living in other countries, often at a great distance from themselves, it has become more difficult to confine their moral obligations simply to a single political society. The more they know, the more they care. For cosmopolitan theorists, this implies that the world has come to constitute a single moral community. People thus have obligations (potentially) towards all other people in the world, regardless of nationality, religion, ethnicity, and so forth. Such thinking is usually based on the doctrine of human rights. Pogge (2008) broke this rights-based cosmopolitanism into three elements. It believes in individualism, in that human beings, or persons, are the ultimate unit of moral concern. Second, it accepts universality, in the sense that individuals are of equal moral worth. Third, it acknowledges generality, in that it implies that persons are objects of concern for everybody, not just their compatriots. Other forms of moral cosmopolitanism have also been advanced, however. O’Neill (1996) thus used the Kantian notion that we should act on principles that we would be willing to apply to all people in all circumstances to argue that people have a commitment not to injure others and that this commitment has a universal scope. Singer (2002), on the other hand, argued that the ethics of globalization demand that we should act so as to reduce the overall levels of global suffering, thinking in terms of ‘one world’ rather than a collection of discrete countries or peoples. C E PT CHAOS THEORY Chaos theory emerged in the 1970s as a branch of mathematics that sought an alternative to linear differential equations. Linearity implies a strong element of predictability (for example, how a billiard ball will respond to being hit by another billiard ball). In contrast, chaos theory examines the behaviour of non-linear systems (such as weather systems), in which there are such a wide range of variable factors that the effect of a change in any of them may have a disproportionate, and seemingly random, effect on others. The classic example of this is the so-called ‘butterfly effect’: the idea that the mere flap of a butterfly’s wing could cause a hurricane to occur on the other side of the globe (see p. 631). TRADITIONAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS Moral cosmopolitanism also has its critics, however. On the one hand, radical critics of cosmopolitanism reject ideas such as global justice or world ethics on the grounds that it is impossible to establish universal values that are binding for all people and all societies. This cultural relativism is often used to argue that human rights in particular are essentially a Western ideal and therefore have no place in non-Western cultures. From a broader perspective, cosmopolitanism is often contrasted with communitarianism. From the communitarian perspective, moral values only make sense when they are grounded in a particular society and a particular historical period. This implies that human beings are morally constituted to favour the needs and interests of those with whom they share a cultural and national identity. Communitarianism has been closely associated with the ‘New Right’ politics of conservatism in the United States and the United Kingdom since the 1980s. In 2016, when the British Conservative Party politician Theresa May became Prime Minister in the wake of the UK’s referendum on EU membership, to underscore her commitment to seeing through the ‘Brexit’ a majority of voters had chosen, she issued a succinct statement of the communitarian response to cosmopolitanism: ‘If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.’ In other words, ‘the world’ or ‘the global’ is simply not a political community. This refutation of the cosmopolitan ideal has been at the heart of the anti-liberal, anti-globalist turn in Western politics in recent years, which has been articulated in opposition to corporate globalization and the international outsourcing of jobs but also to immigration in general and liberal cosmopolitan citizenship sensibilities in particular. On the other hand, moderate critics accept that universal values such as human rights may make moral sense, but they nevertheless object to the priority that they are accorded within moral cosmopolitanism (Nagel 2005). In this view, although the desire, for example, to reduce overall levels of global suffering may be laudable, this is accepted as an unreliable, indeed unrealistic, guide for day-to-day moral reasoning, which will inevitably be shaped by more personal and local concerns. Cosmopolitan ethics, therefore, may exist but only on the basis of a ‘thin’ sense of moral connectedness, rather than the ‘thick’ sense of moral connectedness that emerges within nations and local communities (Walzer 1994). As traditional theories, both realism and liberalism offer us a number of useful tools for explaining and understanding global politics. They propose clear explanatory models of the rules they believe govern international relations, and they each offer potential guides to action for the makers of foreign policy. In this sense, though they come from quite different political and theoretical traditions, both realists and liberals want to enable us to better understand, live with, reform, and steer the global politics we find ourselves in – the ‘status quo’. This is precisely what differentiates them from the critical theories explored in the next chapter, each of which seeks to overturn some of the traditional ways of seeing international relations and to offer a more radical critique and programme for change than liberals or realists could endorse. 95 Cultural relativism: The view that matters of right or wrong are culturally determined, and that moral orders are particular to the time and place in which they emerge, rather than immutable and universal. Communitarianism: The belief that the self or person is constituted through the community, in the sense that individuals are shaped by the communities to which they belong. 3 96 GLOBAL POLITICS SUMMARY y The realist model of power politics is based on the combined ideas of human selfishness or egoism and the structural implications of international anarchy. While this implies a strong tendency towards conflict, bloodshed and open violence can be constrained by the balance of power. The key dynamics in the international system flow from the distribution of power (or capacities) between and among states. y The central theme of the liberal view of international politics is a belief in harmony or balance. The tendency towards peace, cooperation, and integration is by factors such as economic interdependence, brought about by free trade, the spread of democracy, and the construction of international organizations. However, over time, liberalism (or neoliberalism) has become increasingly indistinct from realism. y Increased levels of global interconnectedness, linked to accelerated globalization, have brought a series of new theoretical challenges. These include the difficulties that complexity poses to conventional linear thinking, the possibility that the world now constitutes a single moral community. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y Does all politics boil down to power and the pursuit of self-interest? y To what extent is realism a single, coherent theory? y How do realists explain periods of peace and stability? y Why do liberals believe that world affairs are characterized by balance or harmony? y Is the ‘democratic peace’ thesis persuasive? y Are states concerned more with relative gains or with absolute gains? y Do traditional theories merely legitimize the global status quo? y Can any established theory cope with the challenges of complex interconnectedness? y Does it make sense to think of the world as a single moral community? FURTHER READING Bell, D. (ed.), Ethics and World Politics (2010). An excellent volume that discusses general perspectives of world politics and important ethical dilemmas. Burchill, S. et al., Theories of International Relations (2013). A systematic and comprehensive introduction to the main theoretical approaches in the study of international relations. Capra, F., The Hidden Connections (2003). A thoughtprovoking analysis of human societies, corporations, nation states, and global capitalism from the perspective of systems theory. Jackson, R. and G. Sørensen, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches (2012). An accessible, lucid, and comprehensive introduction to the complexities of modern international thought. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 4 Source: Elsie Dippenaar/Eye Em/Getty Images PREVIEW Since the 1980s, a key shift in the theorization of global politics has meant that the traditional theories discussed in Chapter 3 have been losing intellectual ground to ‘critical’ theories. These approaches stress that theorists and analysts of international relations are embedded in their specific cultural, political, historical, and fundamentally social contexts, and that their theories are also products of these contexts. Traditional theorists of international relations, certainly by the late twentieth century, tended to make strong claims about the ‘objectivity’ of their theories. Neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists, especially, frame their theories as objective or ‘scientific’ attempts to explain global politics, drawing upon empirical data in a similar way to the work of natural scientists. However, critical theorists, whose numbers have continued to swell in the early twenty-first century, reject such a characterization. On the contrary, they argue, traditional theories of international relations reflect the particular interests of particular social groups – defined by ‘socially constructed’ characteristics such as class, race, nation, gender, and sexuality – and serve ‘ideological’ functions, enabling the continuation of ‘business as usual’, the status quo in global politics and world order. This chapter introduces critical theories of global politics, including postcolonialism, feminism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and constructivism, and addresses a set of key questions. What does it mean to be ‘critical’? What are the popular critical theories and concepts, and who are the key theorists? And what is the future for critical theories of global politics and their transformational goals? KEY ISSUES z What makes a theory or theorist ‘critical’? z Why are critical theories needed, and how do they relate to traditional theories? z Which are the key critical approaches to theorizing global politics? z Can critical theories provide answers to global political problems? z What are the tensions within critical theory, and what might its future hold? 97 98 GLOBAL POLITICS THEORY AS CRITIQUE THE ‘CRITICAL’ IN CRITICAL THEORY What does it mean to call a theory ‘critical’? Thinking and theorizing ‘critically’, or engaging in theoretical ‘critique’, is an ancient and global approach to creating knowledge about, and making changes to, the world we find ourselves in. In ancient Greece, political philosophers such as Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE), Plato (c. 428–348 BCE), and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) used the critical method of ‘dialectics’ to propose theories about the world, and then subject them to critique – trying to disprove them – as a test of plausibility. Contemporaneously, thousands of miles away in Warring States period China (475–221 BCE), great thinkers’ reflections recorded in the Chan-kuo Ts’e took the form of ‘persuasions’ and stories that similarly proceeded by critique: establishing why a given principle, premise, or strategy was false or weak, to demonstrate the strengths of an alternative. Apart from these general uses of intellectual negativity as a tool for producing knowledge about the world, Immanuel Kant (see p. 17) is credited with founding what became known as the ‘critical tradition’ in Western philosophy. Kant’s ‘transcendental’ method of philosophizing involved reflecting on the ‘conditions of possibility’ for the world to be as it is; in other words, speculating about what kinds of less observable, but ontologically (see p. 67) prior rules must be in place for the particular types of societies and behaviours we see around us to exist as they do. This critical tradition in Western philosophy was particularly useful for thinking about politics, and influenced, among others, G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) and Karl Marx (see p. 111). In Marx’s work, and that of twentieth-century theorists working in the Marxist tradition, lies the root of the most popular meaning of ‘critical’, as it is used in the study of the social world today. In one of his most widely quoted aphorisms (indeed which became so iconic that it would later be engraved on his tomb), contained in the philosophical text now known as The German Ideology, Marx wrote that: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point, however, is to change it’ (Marx and Engels 1974). The Frankfurt School critical theorist Max Horkheimer argued that this is the central distinction between traditional and critical theories. Traditional theories seek to ‘explain away’ the world as they find it, acting as justifications for existing social orders, while critical theories seek to challenge – both intellectually and materially – the profound injustices of prevailing social hierarchies. This broad yet specific conceptualization of critical theories, as those seeking to highlight the world’s tensions and contradictions, while also insisting that better solutions exist, brings together a diverse array of theoretical approaches to global politics. Postcolonial theories (see p. 99) and feminist theories (see p. 107) have very different focal points than Marxist theories (see p. 111), for instance. Yet each shares in common the premise that the world as we find it is characterized by a set of social injustices – racism and white supremacy, sexism and patriarchy, capitalism and class exploitation – and that the purpose of theory should be to highlight and, in so doing, to change this state of affairs. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 99 CRITICAL THEORIES AND THE INTERNATIONAL While critical theories gained popularity throughout the twentieth century, in fields of study ranging from anthropology to literature, they arrived rather later in the discipline of international relations (IR). The ‘traditional’ theories, especially realism and liberalism (see Chapter 3), had already defined the field in their own terms. Their core interests – in Man, the State and War, as Kenneth Waltz titled his influential book (1959) – became the reference points of the academic discipline, and its theoretical anchors. More sociologically inclined critical theories thus struggled to find traction. Marxism, a pervasive approach across the social sciences in Western universities by the midtwentieth century, was the first critical approach to seriously challenge the realist and liberal orthodoxy of IR theory. By the 1960s and 1970s, Marxism was a serious, if marginalized, contender among IR theories. The third ‘Great Debate’ or ‘inter-paradigm debate’ in IR theory was between realist, liberal, and Marxist scholars in these decades. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s, however, that feminism and postcolonial theory began to make inroads in the discipline. Emerging from concrete social movements – the often violent struggles for women’s liberation and against white supremacy and colonial domination – these theoretical traditions had been directly connected to key international relations issues such as war and state power from their very inception in the early twentieth century. But their concerns were (and still are) derided by the realist mainstream in IR theory as ‘low’ or ‘domestic’ politics, of little relevance to the field. In the 1980s, trailblazing feminist and postcolonial scholars began to turn their attention directly on the discipline itself, its narrow understanding of ‘the international’, which ‘reifies’ states as actors and fails to take social relations seriously, and on the patriarchal or masculinist (see p. 108), neocolonial, and racist underpinnings of the mainstream theories, and in so doing sparked an explosion of critical theoretical work in the field. Today, while the traditional theories retain a good deal of prestige among scholars at elite universities, and foreign policymakers (especially in the United States), feminist, postcolonial, Marxist and postMarxist, post-structuralist, and social constructivist scholarship is commonplace in most universities where IR is studied and taught. ANTI-COLONIAL, POSTCOLONIAL, AND DECOLONIAL THEORIES THE POSTCOLONIAL CONDITION European colonialism was possibly the single most important global political and economic process for producing the world order we live with today (see Chapter 2). This was the practice, from at least the fifteenth century onward, of Europeans (later racialized as white) using military and economic means to control and exploit societies and resources in the continents of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Oceania. Perhaps most obviously, the collective of countries that are today variously described as the ‘West’, the ‘First World’, the ‘developed world’, the ‘advanced industrial economies’, and 4 CON 100 C E PT GLOBAL POLITICS the ‘Global North’ (though this sometimes implies a wider group) consists of majoritywhite European societies (see p. 252), and those settler-colonies where a white European population successfully replaced an indigenous non-European one (the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). ‘RACE’, RACISM, AND RACIALIZATION ‘Race’ is a pseudoscientific concept developed and popularized by European societies as they began to colonize other societies around the world. As Europeans violently conquered the people of other continents, they constructed the language of race as a means of justifying their activity. They placed the various societies they encountered into an order and hierarchy of ‘races’, with imagined ‘biological’ characteristics determining their behaviour, abilities, and value as human beings. Casting people in colonized lands as ‘inferior races’ in need of either paternalistic control and instruction or moralizing punishment allowed Europeans a sense of moral superiority – which they associated with racial whiteness – in their relations with non-European societies. While scholars of critical race studies today often place ‘race’ in inverted commas to highlight its social constructedness, ‘race’ is nonetheless a living concept today, which continues to be produced, not least through social structures and belief systems that are racist. Rather than existing as an immutable, biological, or scientific category, ‘race’ and racism are products of an ongoing social process of racialization, which both attributes particular ‘races’ to particular groups of people and accords those races levels of value, merit, or ‘deservingness’. As the age-old saying, often misattributed in the West to Winston Churchill, goes: history is written by the victors. The conquering European powers, and the white societies they established in the lands they colonized, have tended to represent their own colonial exploits as mostly or entirely benevolent. This way of seeing their history is a contemporary form of structural or cultural racism, since it implies that inferior peoples in other parts of the world needed and benefited from paternalistic white European domination. The British Empire, for instance, which by its peak in the early twentieth century had subjugated a quarter of the world’s population to British rule and was responsible for making English a global ‘common tongue’, has traditionally been viewed by British and some other Western historians as a relatively benign enterprise. Of particular note has been the popular notion that the crumbling of colonialism, from the abolition of slavery in the Americas to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, or the eventual independence of Asian, African, and other colonized peoples, was the result of British and other European colonizers’ generosity. The popular narrative that suggests white Europeans benevolently ‘gave’ colonies their freedom as the very function or ultimate goal of colonialism itself – to ‘civilize’ the ‘savage’ peoples of the world such that they were worthy or capable of self-rule – also erases the fact and influence of violent and concerted resistance by colonized peoples (Gopal 2019). This reflects what Paul Gilroy (2004) called a ‘post-colonial melancholia’, and what others have called ‘imperial amnesia’ and ‘empire nostalgia’; a desire to rewrite our collective social history to paint white Westerners as the ‘good guys’. This way of seeing the world also allows majority-white Western societies to frame colonialism as a distant historical fact, and thus to ‘unsee’ what postcolonial critics would call ‘neocolonial’ international relations today. These societies employ a global regime of institutions to maintain relations of dominance over their former colonial possessions, while simultaneously ignoring or seeking to discredit the structural and direct racism experienced by those racialized as other than white inside majority-white countries. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS In fact, the twentieth century involved a series of bloody anti-colonial independence struggles and resulted in the establishment of dozens of new postcolonial states. The leading lights of these independence struggles, from Ho Chi Minh and Kwame Nkrumah (see p. 609) to Amilcar Cabral (see p. 325) and Frantz Fanon (see p. 282), were influential theorists as well as insurgent warriors and politicians. Postcolonial theory, as it became known, was forged in the fire of anti-colonial struggle. ANTI-COLONIAL PRAXIS Marxism, though a Eurocentric theory itself, was hugely influential among the social movements that threw off colonial rule in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America in the mid-twentieth century. And the Marxist concept of praxis – the notion that social theories have a living relationship to social practice – is evident in these struggles, led by warrior scholars, against the material and intellectual power of colonialism. Frantz Fanon (1925–61) has become the figure most closely associated with Marxian anticolonial thought in international relations. The book that has accorded him this status, completed on his deathbed in the United States, is a slim yet incendiary volume on the global politics and ethics of colonialism and armed resistance to it, originally titled Les Damnés de la Terre and translated into English as The Wretched of the Earth (1961). Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925. This small Caribbean island was colonized by France in 1635 and its indigenous Arawak and Carib populations murdered or exiled. It remains an ‘overseas department’ of France today, making it also one of the ‘special territories’ of the European Union. Like other European powers colonizing the region, the French brought enslaved African people to the island, of whom Fanon was a descendent. After French surrender in the Second World War, Martinique was ruled by collaborationist Vichy naval forces, and Fanon fled in 1943, at eighteen years old, to join Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces and fight against the Axis powers. He was briefly based in Algeria, a French colony in North Africa, during the war, and returned to Martinique after Nazi Germany was defeated. Fanon went on to study in Lyon, France, where he qualified as a psychiatrist in 1951 before returning to Algeria to practise. The Wretched of the Earth, together with his earlier book Black Skin, White Masks (1952), drew on a mixture of psychological theory, Fanon’s experience of clinical psychiatric practice with colonial subjects, and Marxist and anti-colonial ideas, including pan-Africanism (see p. 237). While Fanon and ‘Fanonism’ were rejected for their unorthodox approach by many white Western Marxists, with the notable exception of Immanuel Wallerstein (see p. 154), his merging of the Marxist language of ‘proletariat’, ‘bourgeoisie’, and revolution with an analysis of the relationship between the ‘settler’ and the ‘native’ has been highly influential with both postcolonial theorists and Black Power activists. Fanon’s theory was sparked during his residency in France, when he wrote Black Skin, White Masks as an analysis of the psychological damage done to Black people by colonialism, and later forged in the heat of Algeria’s anti-colonial revolution (1954–62), in which he fought with the National Liberation Front (FLN) to throw off French colonial rule, and which shaped The Wretched of the Earth. Fanon emphasized the legitimacy and necessity of violent anti-colonial struggle and theorized the ways in which a patronizing and dehumanizing relationship between ‘settlers’ and ‘natives’ was 101 Eurocentrism: The practice of developing theories that fit white, European social realities, ‘or their ‘settler-colonial’ descendants’ (e.g. the United States), and attributing global validity to them. Praxis: The idea, popularized especially by Marxism (which in turn influenced much anti-colonial politics and theory), that social theory and social practice are inextricably linked; we live our theories. 4 102 GLOBAL POLITICS established through colonialism, with the former represented as enlightened educators of the latter – animalistic and inferior, childlike populations in need of white stewardship. While ‘postcolonial’ has become the most familiar label for the theories that aim to critically explain structural inequalities in global politics that centre on colonial legacies, including racism, Fanon and other trailblazing theorists were really ‘anti-colonial’, since they were actively struggling against colonialism in its own time. It was later scholarship, from the likes of Edward Said (see p. 268), that made for a definitively ‘postcolonial’ approach. Postcolonial theories tend to be concerned not so much with strategies of active and violent resistance to colonizing or occupying powers but rather with developing critical analyses of how such colonization functioned until formal European colonialism finally collapsed in the twentieth century, and how its legacies continue to shape the postcolonial present. Postcolonial theorists would attribute the persistent inequalities between the Global North and Global South, and between differently racialized groups within societies around the world, as a direct consequence of colonialism. ‘Neocolonialism’ refers to a less formal but no less real or violent manifestation of the same phenomenon. For example, the use of mechanisms of international debt – including the World Bank and IMF (see Chapter 20) – by the Global North to leverage the countries of the Global South into ‘liberalizing’ their economies (effectively privatizing national industry and opening sectors up to foreign investment from the Global North) is commonly seen as a form of neocolonial relationship. Decoloniality: Coloniality and the process of decolonization did not stop at the withdrawal of European colonial powers from overseas territories, but is rather an ongoing struggle to remove colonial influence from ideas, language, culture, and social institutions. In addition to anti-colonial and postcolonial thought, a third important strand has been ‘decolonial’ theory. While European states did, for the most part, give up their territorial claims on colonized places and peoples by the mid-twentieth century, the process of decolonialism runs deeper than this. As the Kenyan critic and writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o highlighted in Decolonising the Mind (1986), language, culture, and the very identities and minds of those societies that fell under European rule were colonized. Decolonial theories, such as those of Anibal Quijano (1930–2018) and Walter Mignolo (1941–), have emanated especially from Latin America and stress the ‘coloniality’ of contemporary forms of political power in general, and how ‘epistemologies’ – theories of what counts as valid knowledge about the world – are colonized to exclude knowledge produced by the Global South. Decolonizing thus extends to spheres including higher education, with prominent campaigns in the early twenty-first century to ‘decolonize the curriculum’ and ‘decolonize the university’, and with some institutions adopting decolonization as a formal policy or project. 103 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . BLACK LIVES MATTER Type Social movement In 2013, George Zimmerman – a 28-year-old man in a Florida ‘gated community’ neighbourhood watch scheme who had shot dead seventeen-year-old, unarmed Black schoolboy Trayvon Martin – was acquitted on charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter. In response, three Black women – Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi – established the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and began organizing a grassroots activist network around it. Their contention, and that of the huge numbers of people who would join the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, was that both police and citizens in the United States in particular, and majoritywhite societies in general, too readily endanger or end the lives of Black people because of racism, fear, and hatred. While there is a degree of formal organization associated with BLM, it generally takes the form of a typical ‘new social movement’, with formal organizations constituting a minority of participants, while masses of people spontaneously attending protests form the majority. After 2013, high-profile and controversial police killings of Black people in the United States tended to trigger large-scale BLM demonstrations. When Michael Brown Jr, an eighteen-year-old unarmed Black teenager, was shot dead by a white police officer in August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, a series of demonstrations began, including many violent clashes between police and demonstrators and the burning of vehicles and buildings. Mass protests took place right across the country but also in other Western, majority-white countries, including the UK. Further police killings of Black people – especially young men, including Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Alton Sterling – triggered similar demonstrations in the years that followed. Key slogans of the movement became ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ and ‘I can’t breathe’ – references to the reported words and actions of some of the Black victims of these police killings. Increasingly, police body-worn and dashboard camera footage of controversial shootings demonstrated the readiness with which white officers shot or violently restrained Black citizens and suspects in seemingly unnecessary circumstances. Source: Ira L. Black – Corbis/Getty Images In 2020, police footage was released of a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed Black man, George Floyd. Floyd is heard to say ‘I can’t breathe’ at least sixteen times, as well as ‘please’, ‘I’m about to die’, and ‘don’t kill me’. After nearly eight minutes of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, as other officers prevented bystanders from intervening, Floyd was dead. The scale and intensity of the demonstrations that followed were unprecedented. At this point, BLM went ‘global’, with vast demonstrations taking place not only in the United States but also in France, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Japan, Brazil, and many more countries. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people joined BLM marches globally. Despite coming in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic lockdown (which had recently cost Floyd his job), the rallies were vast and vigorous and arguably significantly more effective than previous waves of BLM activism. The police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck was fired and charged with second-degree murder – highly unusual in cases of police killings in the United States. But a wave of further cultural transformations was triggered by BLM in 2020, including the removal of statues of colonialists and slave traders across the United States and Europe. Smaller, issue-focused social movements whose aims overlap with BLM suddenly achieved successes they had struggled for years to 104 attain. The ‘Rhodes must fall’ campaign successfully had a statue to the white supremacist and imperialist Cecil Rhodes removed from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2015. Oxford University resisted doing the same with their own Rhodes statue until a sudden change triggered by the 2020 BLM demonstrations. In response to the vast, expensive, and often violent policing of the protests themselves, longer-term campaigns to ‘defund’, or even abolish, the police achieved sudden traction in mainstream American politics and elsewhere in the world. New York City stripped its own police force budget of $1 billion, as outrage at excessive spending on violent policing (especially during a time of national and global economic crisis related to the pandemic) spread. A vast range of major global brands and institutions, meanwhile, began issuing statements committing to ending structural and cultural forms of anti-Black racism. THEORIZING POSTCOLONIAL WORLD ORDER Much of what is now accepted and taught as ‘postcolonial IR theory’ today was in fact developed entirely separately from the academic discipline of international relations – in fields such as history and literature and the most influential postcolonial scholars from the perspective of the Anglophone West – Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha – all came from non-IR disciplinary backgrounds. However, their works have more recently been appropriated and routinely drawn upon by IR scholars because their powerful ideas can tell us much about international relations and global politics. Orientalism: Originally the term used by Western scholars working on the ‘Orient’ themselves, since Edward Said’s book ‘Orientalism’ has come to denote the racist practice of majority-white Western societies representing non-Western societies – especially Muslim and far Eastern ones – as ‘backward’, ‘irrational’, ‘barbaric’, and generally less ‘developed’. Racial capitalism: The theory that capitalism as a system has always been bound up with colonialism, racialization, and racism (see p. 100) rather than simply class exploitation. Global politics includes cultural politics, and the work of postcolonial theorists highlights precisely the dynamics of this cultural politics, which can be used to explore the dynamics of international relations. For example, Edward Said’s influential conceptualization of Orientalism ([1978] 2003) suggests that in the Western ‘canon’ of literature on the ‘Orient’ there are powerful racist tropes or discourses (see p. 116). These include the tendency to depict Westerners/the West as rational, scientific, advanced, and enlightened, and Easterners/the East as irrational, unscientific, backward, and superstitious. This includes representations of Islam in the West. On this view, contemporary Islamophobia, or anti-Muslim racism (see p. 253), has long roots in Western orientalism. But insights from postcolonial theory can also be used to explain contemporary world order, including geopolitical and political-economic factors. Postcolonial thought began to make inroads in IR theory in the 1980s, especially in the subfields of ‘Third World’ studies and development, but the early twenty-first century has been marked by a much more substantial ‘mainstreaming’ of this approach. Thinkers such as Robbie Shilliam and Gurminder Bhambra have applied and developed postcolonial theory to understand how the politics of Brexit are connected to colonial legacies, shaped by understandings of ‘whiteness’ and citizenship, and by the intersections of raced and classed inequalities in postcolonial Britain. The concept of ‘racial capitalism’, meanwhile, coined by Oliver Cromwell Cox and popularized through the writings of international theorist Cedric J. Robinson (see p. 105), has been used by Gargi Bhattacharyya and others to explore the ‘austerity’ projects rolled out in many countries as a response to the global financial crisis (see p. 165). Evidence suggests that the effects of these cuts to public spending in Europe have been most keenly felt by women and racialized minorities, and by minority women in particular. Racial capitalism theory suggests that this is a central feature, rather than CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 105 FIG U an unintended consequence, of the way the cuts are designed. The national and global distribution of wealth is determined, on this view, by the politics of what Shilliam (2018) calls ‘race and the undeserving poor’; when states are looking to cut spending they target and demonize people racialized as minorities within their borders, as well as migrants to their territories, painting them as ‘undeserving’ of the social security afforded to majority-ethnicity citizens. RES 4 THEORISTS OF RACE AND CLASS CEDRIC J. ROBINSON (1940–2016) An activist academic, Robinson’s approach was at once that of a historian and that of a theorist of global politics. Robinson’s reformulation of Marxist histories of the emergence of capitalism placed race and racism centre-stage, and as such he is widely credited as the foundational theorist of ‘racial capitalism’ (see p. 104). His works include Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983), Black Movements in America (1997), and the posthumous essay collection Cedric J. Robinson: On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance (2019). Source: Doc Searls, flickr.com ROBBIE SHILLIAM A key figure in the twenty-first-century resurgence of postcolonial theory in Anglophone IR theory, Shilliam’s work is eclectic, taking in topics from the racial politics of Brexit to connections between African anti-colonial struggles and South Pacific islanders’ political activism. His key works include The Black Pacific: Anticolonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections (2015) and Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit (2018), as well as the edited collections International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity (2010) and Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (2014). Source: With permission of Robbie Shilliam GARGI BHATTACHARYYA (1964–) Bhattacharyya’s work explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in a global context. She has continued to develop and apply the theory of racial capitalism popularized by Cedric J. Robinson and has analysed a range of global political issues, from smuggling and immigration to sexuality and Islamophobia. Her books include Sexuality and Society (2002), Traffick: The Illicit Movement of People and Things (2005), Dangerous Brown Men (2008), Crisis, Austerity and Everyday Life (2015), and Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2018). Source: With permission of Gargi Bhattacharyya 106 GLOBAL POLITICS Perhaps the most significant obstacle to a postcolonial approach in IR theory is that the former insists on the validity of – and urgent need to engage with – non-Western thought, whereas the latter is an academic discipline that has emerged from the specific context of Western (and largely Anglophone) universities. In other words, even where IR theorists and analysts of global politics do engage with postcolonial thought, they usually do so ‘on their own terms’. The postcolonial thinkers who are probably the most read by Western students of international relations today, Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, wrote in the languages of European colonizers: French and English, respectively. Their ideas were shaped by great ‘dead white men’ of the Western political theory ‘canon’, Karl Marx and Michel Foucault, albeit in combination with anti-colonial and pre-colonial intellectual traditions from Africa and the Middle East. Prominent postcolonial IR theorists such as L. H. M. Ling (see p. 14) and Robbie Shilliam have sought to redress this imbalance, drawing directly upon non-Western thought, and also to show how it has been co-opted, adapted, and erased from Western theories. But their prominence, to an English-speaking audience, is of course partly dependent on their writing and publishing in English. Indeed, the textbook you are now reading, produced by two English-speaking authors for an English-speaking audience, can be said to be limited in this way. While a few great theoretical works by authors in the Global South make it to student reading lists in Anglophone universities – perhaps even becoming part of the ‘canon’ – these are almost always penned in languages originating with European colonizers (Latin American authors writing in Spanish or Portuguese, for example), which are then translated into English, with which they share an alphabet and a good deal of cultural context. It is much rarer for a book written in Chinese, Sanskrit, or Arabic to be translated and used widely in Anglophone international relations. FOCUS ON . . . THE GLOBAL COLOUR LINE The concept of a global colour line cannot be separated from the stories of its two earliest exponents. Frederick Douglass (1817–95) was born into slavery in the United States but became a noted author and pivotal political campaigner in the movement for the abolition of slavery (he secretly taught himself, and other enslaved people, to read and write, and escaped the Maryland plantation on which he had been held for the relative safe haven of New York City, where slavery was outlawed and many abolitionist campaigners were based). W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois (1868–1963) was an influential African American social and political theorist and commentator. Du Bois was born after the Civil War and abolition of slavery in the United States but in the midst of segregation. A pan-Africanist (see p. 237), Du Bois’ ideas shaped the civil rights and Black Power movements of mid-twentieth-century America, and he spent the last years of his life in the newly independent Ghana, as a guest of its president and fellow panAfricanist thinker Kwame Nkrumah (p. 609). In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois elaborated on a term first coined by Douglass in an 1881 journal article, ‘The Color Line’. The opening sentence of Du Bois’ essay ‘Of the Dawn of Freedom’ put it thus: ‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea’ (Du Bois 1903). While Du Bois used this notion to explore the legacies of slavery inside segregated America, his nod to the global dimensions of the colour line has inspired contemporary work in postcolonial IR theory. Though ‘race’ has been proven a social construction, rather than a ‘biological’ attribute (see p. 100), it is the privilege of those racialized as white to adopt a ‘colour-blind’ perspective, imagining that the racialized connotations of colour ‘don’t matter’. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 107 Postcolonial, decolonial, and anti-racist IR theory has begun using the concept of the global colour line to recentre race and racism in the theorization and analysis of international relations, exploring the ‘racialised structures of global power’ (Anievas, Manchanda, and Shilliam 2015), while also reflecting on the roots of IR as an academic discipline in the racial politics of the early twentieth century (Vitalis 2015 – see p. 72). The global colour line can today be defined as the postcolonial and neocolonial racialized divides – economic, financial, technological, and military – which both separate societies, states, and groups of states in global politics from one another and produce internal racialized tensions and structural inequalities within societies. In this sense, it is a theoretical concept closely related to the conceptual oppositions between the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ (see p. 464) or the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ (see p. 115) as well as the concepts of race and racialization (see p. 100). FEMINIST THEORIES THE MICROSOCIAL ROOTS OF FEMINIST INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT Like postcolonial theory, it was not until the 1980s that feminism – which had long been an influential strand of social and political theory – began to be accepted into the field of IR theory. Also like postcolonial theory, feminism has been, since its inception in the late nineteenth century, a social movement as much as a theoretical approach. It was largely liberal and socialist ‘first-wave’ feminists who fought – literally, in many cases – for women’s suffrage in the first decades of the twentieth century, while the ‘radical’ second wave of feminist thought grew out of 1960s and 1970s protest movements and struggles for ‘women’s liberation’, and against their relegation to the ‘private’ sphere of family and domestic labour. ‘Third-wave’ feminists derived concepts such as ‘intersectionality’ and ‘performativity’, meanwhile, from lived experiences of struggle, including insights gleaned Patriarchy: Literally the ‘rule of the father’, about the exclusive ‘whiteness’ prevalent among first- and second-wave feminisms. The theoretical, explanatory contributions of the first wave of feminism lay in revealing and challenging the systematic exclusion of women – the majority of the global population of human beings – from ‘public life’ (politics and business, for example). The second wave of feminist theory added to this problem of exclusion and under-representation a structural analysis of the violence and exploitation resulting from patriarchy, from widespread sexual and domestic abuse of women and girls to gender stereotyping and the unequal gendered distribution of domestic labour and childcare. Third-wave theorists – from the Black feminists stressing the intersectionality of raced, classed, and gendered inequality, such as bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw, to the post-structuralist feminists deconstructing ‘gender’ and sexuality, for instance Judith Butler – demanded more nuanced analyses of gender, power, and violence, highlighting the ways in which some women (especially Black and working-class women), along with gay men and non-binary transgender people, suffer more intensely than others in (especially white) patriarchal societies. What some have called a ‘fourth wave’ of feminist activism emerged in the 2010s, enabled by digital social media and exemplified by the ‘#MeToo’ campaign and its revelations about sexual abuse in politics and the entertainment and media industries. This movement draws upon the theories of previous waves and has seen a significant ‘mainstreaming’ of concepts such as intersectionality (see p. 111) and the case for transgender people to have rights to self-identify and live free from persecution. patriarchy is the social dominance of men and masculinist values. Patriarchal societies (which might be liberal democracies, fascist dictatorships, ‘or any other type of regime’) are those that are structured to benefit men over women. #MeToo: A transnational movement of women (and some men) highlighting their experiences of sexual and gender-based harassment and violence. The hashtag was coined by Tarana Burke in a 2006 post on MySpace (see p. 210) but first ‘went viral’ in 2017. 4 108 GLOBAL POLITICS But such theories were of little interest to the traditional mainstream or ‘malestream’ (O’Brien 1981) in IR theory. Again, the title of Kenneth Waltz’s book Man, the State and War (1959) is a useful measure of the (this time gendered) dimensions of what realists and other influential – predominantly white, male – IR theorists considered pertinent to their field of study. In the same movement by which ‘women’s issues’ were consigned to the domestic sphere of the home within Western societies in the twentieth century, so they were consigned to the ‘domestic’ sphere in the sense of that which is not ‘international’. FEMINISMS AND THE INTERNATIONAL Despite their exclusion from traditional IR theory, many feminists were always directly and explicitly concerned with the international, in their writing as in their activism. The ‘first wave’ of feminist theorists partly emerged as an expression of the rage many women in Europe felt at the seemingly senseless mass slaughter of the First World War, instigated by and for masculinist notions of nation and empire. In addition to seeking the vote, many among the women’s suffrage movement were animated by pacifist beliefs (see p. 348). Mass demonstrations by women against armed conflict became a feature of feminist movement, as pacifism or at least anti-militarism has become a key feature of much feminist theory. While there exists a broad range of feminist thought within IR theory, just as there does within feminist social theory more generally – liberal, Marxist, postcolonial, and intersectional approaches have all been popular – there are a few common insights. The overwhelming dominance of men in the constitution of states, the states system, and war has been one such shared concern. In 2019, the United Nations noted that among the 206 states it recognizes as existing in the world, just eleven women were serving as Heads of State and twelve as Heads of Government, rendering the vast majority of the ‘world leaders’ – prime ministers and presidents of states – men. Fewer than a quarter of the world’s parliamentarians, and just one out of five government ministers, were women in 2019, with ‘the five most commonly held portfolios’ for women government ministers being ‘Social Affairs; followed by Family/Children/Youth/Elderly/Disabled; Environment/Natural Resources/Energy; Employment/Labour/Vocational Training; and Trade/Industry’ (UN Women 2019). A 2017 study of gender in diplomacy, meanwhile, found that: ‘The share of female ambassadors is low, glaringly so. Eighty-five percent of the world’s ambassadors are male, making this high prestige post yet another international post that is still dominated by men’ (Towns and Niklasson 2017, p. 537). With some exceptions – such as the all-women YPJ Kurdish forces that were central to the defeat of ISIS in Kurdish northern Iraq and Syria in the late 2010s – men also continue to make up the vast majority of the world’s military personnel, including not only soldiers, sailors, and airforce crews but also officers and senior strategic decision-makers. Like most species that reproduce sexually, the global sex ratio for humans – the proportion of males to females in the world – is close to 1:1. So the fact of women’s exclusion from all of these crucial spaces associated with ‘the international’ is the result of specific social and cultural norms, rules, and historical processes. From a feminist perspective, patriarchy has resulted in the male dominance of national, state-level institutions, and consequently also of international, interstate institutions. Meanwhile, behaviours such as aggression and violence that are culturally associated with social constructions of ‘masculinity’ or CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS maleness in many societies have been naturalized in international relations by malecentric or ‘masculinist’ institutions. States, as locations and expressions of male power, and war, as the apex of masculinist violence, are ‘fetishised’ by traditional IR theories such as realism and liberalism, which were themselves devised by and for men; theories designed to ‘explain away’ and justify a hyper-violent, competitive, masculinist world order based on the primacy of states and their (mostly male) leaders. Through a series of careful intellectual distinctions and binaries, such as ‘public’ versus ‘private’, and ‘international’ versus ‘domestic’, and its fixation on states and institutions, masculinist IR theory also erases the material ways in which women are involved in international relations. As with Marxists and many other critical theorists, most feminists prefer to view international relations as a species of social relations, which are essentially transnational in that they are not bound by state borders, rather than as a narrow field in which states and international institutions or organizations interact, as the traditional theories would have it. Perhaps the most influential feminist IR theorist in this relatively ‘mainstream’ strand, widely recognized as a trailblazer who forced the realists and liberals to take heed, is J. Ann Tickner (see p. 110). Tickner’s powerful feminist critique of traditional IR theories included a reformulation of Morgenthau’s ‘six principles of political realism’ (see p. 78). Where Morgenthau sees global politics as a domain ‘governed by objective laws’, for Tickner (1988, p. 437): ‘objectivity, as it is culturally defined, is associated with masculinity […] supposedly “objective” laws of human nature are based on a partial, masculine view’. She subjects the realist ideas both of power ‘as domination and control’ and of an amoral international domain to feminist critique, showing how this intellectual project ‘excludes the concerns and contributions of women’. In particular, Tickner demonstrates how pervasive ‘masculinist’ approaches to the male-dominated fields of both foreign policymaking – or the practice of ‘IR’ – and theorizing IR may be the real reason that armed conflict has been such a long-standing and key feature of global politics. The relationships between women, war, peace, and security have been a central theme of feminist IR theory. Issues explored in the feminist research programme include the prevalence of gender-based and sexual violence in war, including the use of rape as a weapon of war; the role of ‘military masculinities’ and of masculinist foreign policymaking in causing war; and the ways in which women who are actually involved in war are rendered invisible by scholarship and reporting on the subject. Cynthia Enloe and, more recently, Laura Sjoberg have explored how women’s roles in armed conflict – from sex workers servicing soldiers at military bases to diplomats and frontline fighters – are erased or distorted in mainstream media and theories about war. THEORIZING INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS WITH FEMINIST THOUGHT While feminist thought entered IR theory in the form of a critique of the ‘traditional’ realist and liberal scholarship, it was nevertheless bound by some of the raced, classed, and gendered norms of the field. Those who are commonly recognized as ‘great’ feminist IR theorists today are mostly white women who spent their careers at ‘elite’ universities in the United States, and whose work did not always account for the experiences of, for example, Black and working-class women or women of the Global South. 109 Masculinism: A world view centred on traits and behaviours commonly associated with masculinity and maleness. Masculinity is a social construction that is often represented as being more ‘rational’ and ‘objective’ than femininity but also more aggressive and violent. 4 FIG U 110 RES GLOBAL POLITICS BELL HOOKS (1952–2021) bell hooks is the pen name of Gloria Watkins. Raised in a working-class African American family in the segregated Deep South of the United States, hooks went on to become a scholar of literature and a cultural critic. Her work explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in a wide variety of contexts, from music, art, and cinema to higher education and politics. hooks has been an extraordinarily prolific intellectual and is widely recognized as one of the most influential feminist thinkers of the last century. Her books include Ain’t I a Woman? (1981, her hugely influential debut, written when hooks was an undergraduate student), Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Teaching to Transgress (1994), and Source: The Washington Post/Getty Images Feminism Is for Everybody (2000). J. ANN TICKNER (1937–) Originally from the United Kingdom, J. Ann Tickner settled in the United States and is perhaps the most well-known feminist theorist in the discipline of IR. Widely credited with forcing IR scholars to pay attention to feminist concerns, Tickner’s work highlights the gendered nature of mainstream IR theories, and of the practices of global politics. Her key works include Gender in International Relations (1992), Gendering World Politics (2001), and A Feminist Voyage through International Relations (2014). Source: With permission of J. Ann Tickner Intersectional feminist, Black feminist, and postcolonial feminist approaches shed light on what bell hooks calls ‘imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’. In other words, these forms of feminist theory allow us to understand the international and global dimensions of overlapping, co-dependent, or ‘mutually constitutive’ systems of structural inequality, violence, and exploitation: racism, capitalism, and patriarchy. On this view, imperialism and the project of European colonialism (see p. 31) – and other components of contemporary global politics – can be understood as the projection of a form of white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal masculinity from a few majoritywhite societies onto the world. The personal is political, as the 1960s radical feminist slogan goes, and so the personal is also part of global politics. An intersectional feminist analysis of Donald Trump’s presidency of the United States, for instance, highlights the connections between his personally sexist or misogynist conduct and comments (for example, his boast of sexually assaulting women: ‘You can do anything … grab ’em by the pussy’) and domestic political connections to the racist and anti-feminist ‘altright’ (see p. 252) and his immigration and foreign policy positions, from comments about Mexicans being ‘murderers and rapists’, to the ‘trade war’ with China, and his so-called ‘travel ban’ or ‘Muslim ban’. Trump’s macro-level role as a global political actor is connected to his micro-level role as an individual wealthy, white male in American society. For some contemporary feminists, his personal bigotry is reflected in his foreign policy, and his politics represent an angry backlash or ‘whitelash’ against perceived ‘progressive’ values, against minority rights, and against feminism itself. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 111 CON Importantly, Black and intersectional feminist theorizations of global politics also criticize ‘white feminist’ and ‘liberal feminist’ approaches for their blindness to the intersection of gendered inequalities with race-based and class-based ones. They are frequently implicated in what Sara Farris calls ‘femonationalism’ – highlighting the ‘patriarchal’ nature of ‘other’ non-Western societies and patronizingly viewing women in those societies as lacking agency, while failing to adequately understand how their own raced and classed identity and context position them in relation to these ‘subaltern’ women. C E PT 4 INTERSECTIONALITY Intersectionality as a concept existed in Black feminist theory, emanating especially from the United States, before it was named as such. Third-wave feminist thought centred on feminist reflexivity – critique directed internally, at feminism itself, highlighting how some women’s experiences of gendered inequality had been prioritized above others. bell hooks (see p. 110) and others highlighted the ‘raced’ and ‘classed’ dimensions of gender, and how these affected the ‘lived experience’ of particular women in particular contexts. In raced, gendered, and classed hierarchies, hooks noted, white masculinity is valued over Black masculinity (which is represented as violent and criminal), while white femininity is similarly valued over Black femininity (which is depicted as animalistic and dangerous). Working-class Black women were most often positioned at the bottom of every such hierarchy. In 1989, the African American legal theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw used the term ‘intersectionality’ to describe the way in which multiple overlapping structures of inequality and oppression come together to affect particular women, and the term has become increasingly popular since then. In a 2015 Washington Post article, Crenshaw reflected on the increasing popularity of the term with ‘fourth-wave’ feminists today (see p. 107) and noted that ‘intersectionality was a lived reality before it became a term’ (Crenshaw 2015), since it arose from the lived experiences of Black women in what hooks would call the ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ of majority-white Western societies. At the global level, intersectionality is experienced in terms of nationality and positionality in world order and is used to analyse the qualitative differences between, for example, the experience of patriarchy of white women in Europe and North America and that of women of colour in the Global South, as well as that of racialized minority women around the world. The concept has been embraced and developed by contemporary feminist thinkers, including Patricia Hill Collins, and shapes the cuttingedge theoretical work of UK-based feminist thinker Sara Ahmed, who – like many intersectional feminists today – includes sexuality and gender identity in the matrix of intersectional analysis, exploring how those gendered other than ‘male’ or ‘female’, transgender, and non-binary people, experience further exclusions and oppressions. MARXIST, NEO-MARXIST, AND POSTMARXIST THEORIES Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels’ (1820–95) theory begins from the ‘historical materialist’ premise that what distinguishes human beings from other species is our ability to consciously reproduce the means of our own reproduction. In other words, through social practices such as agriculture we can design and implement plans to produce what we need to live (rather than simply ‘survive’) and even to produce a surplus. The production, distribution, and consumption of the goods and services that allow us to go on, as societies, tends to happen in structured ways, and for Marx and Engels these Historical materialism: The philosophy underpinning Marxist social, political, and economic analysis. Marx and Engels developed historical materialism in opposition to the ‘idealism’ of German philosophy at the time. It emphasizes that the material social conditions we live in – especially our mode of production – shape our intellectual, political, and cultural life, whereas idealists (e.g. Hegel) tended to see it the other way around. 112 GLOBAL POLITICS Mode of production: The way a society materially organizes the production, distribution, and consumption of the social goods necessary to reproduce itself – food and clothing, for example. The examples Marx and Engels refer to most often are the feudal and the capitalist modes of production, which differ greatly in terms of which social classes have ownership or control of which parts of the economy. Revolution: The inevitable result of the class antagonism at the heart of the capitalist mode of production, proletarian revolution will, in the Marxist view, overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie and replace it with a radical form of workers’ democracy: communism. social structures amount to ‘modes of production’, which largely determine the rest of social life – international relations included. The particular mode of production, and way in which surplus is created and distributed, in a given historical period also determines, from the Marxist perspective, a system of social class. In their most famous text, The Communist Manifesto (1976), Marx and Engels focus on how the capitalist mode of production, which replaced the feudal mode of production, entails the exploitation of wage labourers – the ‘proletariat’ or working class – by a capitalist class they call the ‘bourgeoisie’, who own the ‘means of production’ (the land, the factories, and so on). Workers have no capital, only their labour, which they sell to the highest bidder by competing for jobs. By paying workers subsistence wages and creaming off ‘surplus-value’ (that is profit) from their labour, the bourgeois capitalist bosses not only enrich themselves but can pump some of this profit back into fresh capital, to be invested in further enterprises that will generate more profit, and so on, ad infinitum. This is what Wallerstein (see p. 154) called the ‘self-regarding process’ of capitalism. But the capitalist mode of production has a tension or contradiction at its heart: the vast mass of people are subjugated as wage labourers, living unhappy lives and carrying out what Marx called ‘alienated’ labour, in which they have little or no personal investment. Only the bourgeois minority really benefits materially from capitalism, and as such this class devotes itself to convincing the workers that the capitalist system is in their interests. This state of affairs will inevitably come to an end, from the Marxist perspective, once the workers recognize their exploitation and rise up in revolution against the bourgeoisie, and the capitalist system itself, replacing it with communism – a radical form of selfgovernance. Notably, the most well-known historical communist revolution – in Russia in 1917 – was not, however, in a bourgeois capitalist society but in a semi-feudal one. MARXISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL This exploitative capitalist class system, which was by the nineteenth century a transnational mode of production including most large-scale societies in the world, transcends state borders and is often described as ‘global’. Imperialism and colonialism were driving forces behind the globalization of capitalism, as capitalist states violently exploited natural resources and labour overseas, while also creating new potential consumer markets for their own exports. The necessity for capitalism of extending beyond state borders led Lenin to call imperialism its ‘highest stage’ – at some point, the accumulation of surplus-value, and therefore of fresh capital, will reach its limits at the national level, so imperial expansion offers a solution to this potential economic crisis. Socialist thinkers and activists, even predating Marx, have always considered the international a pivotal social domain, and for many Marxists it is the only terrain on which class struggle can be won for the workers. In his lifetime, Marx was a central figure in the First International Workingmen’s Association (1864–76), the transnational European social movement that brought together socialists such as Marx and anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin (1814–76) in the struggle to free working-class people from the brutal conditions of industrial capitalism. The works of Marx and Engels, but especially also of the Russian revolutionary theorist and member of the Second International Vladimir Lenin, reflected this internationalism. Marx’s critique of capitalism helped CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 113 establish the field now known as international political economy or IPE (see p. 140), while Lenin’s reflections on imperialism as ‘the highest stage of capitalism’ informed internationalist and anti-imperialist politics throughout the twentieth century. STRANDS OF MARXISM Marxism, as opposed to the works of Marx and Engels themselves, has been an internally diverse body of social, political, and economic theory. Apart from more orthodox or ‘classical’ versions, a number of different strands of Marxist thought have emerged that are used to explain global politics today. In particular, the turn to Stalinist authoritarianism in the USSR from the 1920s led many Marxists in Western Europe to reconsider the revolutionary potential of orthodox versions of the theory. Few wanted to repeat the mistakes that had turned workers’ emancipation into brutal dictatorship in the East, and so from the mid-twentieth century, a wide range of ‘new’ and even ‘post-’Marxisms emerged. Despite significant internal diversity of Marxian international thought – from Leninism and Trotskyism to the Frankfurt School and post-Marxism – it remains united in some key respects. Marxian theories of global politics coalesce around a fundamental critique of capitalism as an arbitrarily elitist, brutal, and inhumane economic system that puts people before profit and its commitment to abolish that system (whether through ‘gradualist’ reform or urgent revolution) and replace it with an order that does a better job of distributing social goods in the way Marx demanded: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ (Marx and Engels 1968, p. 321). ‘Western Marxist’ Thought The most prominent schools of ‘Western Marxist’ thought that remain influential today originated with the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and with ‘Frankfurt School’ theorists including Theodor Adorno (1903–69), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). These thinkers drew on the earlier works of the ‘Young Marx’, which took a less economistic and more ‘humanistic’ approach to the critique of capitalism, exploring the significance of its more social and cultural dimensions – such as the alienation of workers from both the means of production and the things they produce. Gramsci and the Frankfurt School thus emphasized that culture and cultural institutions – schools, churches, newspapers, literature, music, film, television – are not mere epiphenomena of the economic base but rather play an absolutely central role in its reproduction. In other words, for Western Marxism, without capitalist ideological cultural production – from schools and churches to TV shows and video games – to convince people of the naturalness and goodness of capitalism, there could be no capitalist economy. While many contemporary international relations theorists draw on concepts popularized by the Frankfurt School, Andrew Linklater has perhaps offered the most prominent and focused Frankfurt-inspired critical theory of international relations. Drawing both upon the early theorists Adorno and Horkheimer and the late twentieth-century Frankfurt School of thought epitomized by the work of Jürgen Habermas (1929–) – which blurs the edges of critical theory and liberalism – 4 114 GLOBAL POLITICS Linklater’s work focuses on communication, the prospects for an international form of ‘political community’, and a variety of cosmopolitanism (see p. 94). This broad trajectory of critical theory in IR emphasizes the need to emancipate human beings as a species from the oppressive and violent social structures, including capitalism, that make for so many lives of misery, poverty, and suffering. The aim is to (re)discover the common, cooperative nature of human beings and establish a transnational or global form of political community predicated on democratic decision-making that involves everyone. Critics of this position highlight its Eurocentric (see p. 101) roots and concepts, its elision of potentially contradictory Marxist and liberal ideas, and its somewhat utopian horizon. Gramscian international relations theory – sometimes termed ‘neo-Gramscianism’, though the terms are often used interchangeably – was really instigated by the Robert Cox article quoted at the beginning of this chapter and developed by him and others in the 1980s and 1990s. Gramsci’s work was complex and open to interpretation (most of his writing took place under imprisonment by Mussolini’s fascist regime in 1920s and 1930s Italy, necessitating a degree of obfuscation to evade the prison’s censors). But the central themes are the cultural and political dynamics of the reproduction of economic order and of resistance to and revolution against such order. In particular, Gramsci’s conceptualization of ‘hegemony’ (see p. 302) understood as uncontested or stable dominance over other states involving more than military might (the Realist view – see) was, and remains, highly influential. Gramscians understand hegemony as a process including economic, social, and cultural forms of power. On this view, for example, US hegemony is not achieved only through its nuclear arsenal and massive armed forces but also through the dominance of American capital and culture in the world, which win consent and cooperation for a US-led world order. From the global consumption of mainstream American cinema, which often depicts the United States as a benevolent force in the world, and branded goods to the international political and financial institutions (the UN, IMF, WTO, and so on) that the United States created and/ or dominates, American hegemony is not simply a matter of ruling through fear and coercion. ‘Neo-’/‘New Marxist’ Thought ‘Neo-’ or ‘New Marxist’ theorists draw upon the work of Leon Trotsky – the Russian revolutionary sidelined, exiled, and ultimately assassinated by Stalin – and have used his theory of ‘uneven and combined development’ to explain contemporary global politics. Whereas Stalinism entailed a belief that societies must progress through a series of ‘stages’ of economic and social development, Trotskyists argue that the global capitalist economy can develop different societies at different rates, including different economic stages. This is perhaps most easily observed in terms of the technological advancements underpinning industrial trends. Some African societies, for instance, established mobile, digital telecommunications networks in the early twenty-first century, essentially leapfrogging the widespread traditional ‘landline’ telephony system that had connected the vast majority of homes and businesses in Western European and North American societies for most of the twentieth century. Justin Rosenberg, the most prominent of CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 115 these theorists working on IR, devoted his most well-known work to both advocating a Marxist theory of international relations and showing realism up as another ideology of capitalism; an ostensibly ‘explanatory’ theory of international relations that really exists to justify violent and structural international inequalities (Rosenberg 1994). World-systems theory, meanwhile, offers an approach rooted in both the philosophy of historical materialism and the practice of historical sociology, seeking to explain politics at the global level in terms of an integrated economic system. Its most esteemed proponent, Immanuel Wallerstein (see p. 154), argued that the capitalist world system consists of a ‘core’, ‘periphery’, and ‘semi-periphery’. The core states are those where production processes tend to be more specialized and require highly skilled workers, and where consumption levels of commodities are higher. The ‘core’ in this sense roughly equates to the same global political geography as what is sometimes referred to as the ‘West’ or the ‘Global North’: the states with higher GDP, average income, and living standards. The ‘periphery’, on the other hand, consists of those states once referred to as the ‘Third World’ and today more commonly known as the ‘developing countries’ of the ‘Global South’. In these societies, production processes tend to be more dangerous and polluting – the collection and processing of raw materials, for example, or ‘sweatshop’ factory labour – while average incomes, national GDP, individual consumption, and living standards are all much lower. The semi-periphery includes countries combining a mixture of core and peripheral production and consumption trends. For example, consider China in the early twenty-first century; it is a country with an enormously productive economy resulting from fast but sustained growth, where ultra-high-technology design and manufacture and a vast and advanced service sector sit alongside mineral mining and processing, plentiful factories, sweatshops, and mass agriculture. ‘Commodity chains’ span the world system, meaning that the raw materials for a sports shoe, for instance – crude oil to make the plastic parts, cotton or leather, adhesives, dyes, and other chemicals – can be produced and processed in the periphery, with the shoe assembled, finished, and packaged in either the periphery or semi-periphery, while the retail destination may be in the core. Wallerstein emphasizes that this system runs for the benefit of the ‘core’ countries of the day, with transnational commodity chains enabling higher levels of profit-making (through more brutal forms of exploitation) at the peripheral end and more marginal gains at the core. Post-Marxism ‘Post-Marxism’, a theory forged by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), advocates an approach to understanding politics rooted in ‘ideology and discourse analysis’. In other words, post-Marxist thought draws upon both the Marxist conceptual vocabulary of ideology, class antagonism, and economic structure and the post-structuralist concepts of discourse and knowledge-as-power. It advocates ‘radical democracy’ as an alternative to more orthodox Marxist calls for proletarian revolution and offers ways of viewing global politics that are more about the critique of liberal discourses and ideologies of ‘democracy’ than of a simple confrontation between labour and capital. As the name suggests, post-Marxism seeks to get ‘beyond’ Marxism in some ways while retaining its core insights in others. Well-known post-Marxists such as Slavoj Žižek and David 4 116 GLOBAL POLITICS Howarth fuse Marxist theory with the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to show how capitalist ideology is often actually ‘enjoyed’ by the masses, despite its deleterious effects on them. Post-Marxist theory is thus better able to explain the persistence of capitalism, even after all the economic crises it has been implicated in, and all the suffering and exploitation Marxists allege that it causes. Ultimately, from the post-Marxist perspective, the power of capitalist ideology is that it elicits our deep psychological and emotional investment in it as a system. POST-STRUCTURALIST THEORY Post-structuralism emerged partly as a critical response to Marxism. Michel Foucault (1926–84) and Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) – the two leading lights in post-structuralist theory – were former communists, whose intellectual projects were both indebted to, and offered critical developments of, Marxist theory. Marxism, especially in its more ‘orthodox’ variants, tends toward ‘economistic’ and ‘deterministic’ explanations, rendering global politics and culture a mere effect or ‘superstructure’ of the mode of production, which is the real economic ‘base’ of society. The post-structuralists, rather like the Gramscians, reject this economistic model of theorizing social change. Instead, they focus on language, meaning, and what Foucault called ‘discourse’ as a key determinant of political power. Discourse: A contested concept; for poststructuralists, ‘discourses’ mean something like ‘structured ways of representing the world’ and are a key location of social power. Deconstruction: An approach to critical reasoning that seeks to analyse concepts and beliefs by ‘deconstructing’ the assumptions upon which they stand, revealing their contingency. Genealogy: Like deconstruction, a method of critically analysing particular concepts, beliefs, or discourses by denying their universal, abstract, and timeless status and situating them in real social histories of power. Whereas pioneers of the discipline of linguistics, for instance the ‘structuralist’ Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), concerned themselves with structural similarities within and between different languages, post-structuralists were influenced especially by the linguistic subfield of ‘semiotics’ – the study of ‘signs’ and meaning-making. ‘Semioticians’ such as Roland Barthes (1915–80) were interested in the role of communication, symbolism, signs, and meaning in producing culture. One of Barthes’ most famous essays, for instance, explored how winning and fairness are relatively unimportant to the modern performance sport of wrestling, which should be understood as a form of classic ‘drama’, with the wrestlers embodying ‘roles’ and ‘meanings’ in their physical confrontation. Post-structuralist semiotics considers the production of meaning and knowledge as radically arbitrary, unconstrained by structure, and therefore subject to change and manipulation. Post-structuralists such as Foucault and Derrida turned this focus on meaning-making to explore the key domain of social power: politics. Taking what Derrida called a ‘deconstructionist’ approach to social critique and explanation, or adopting the similar method of Foucauldian ‘genealogy’, post-structuralists begin from the critical premise that our most taken-for-granted or unexamined categories can be implicated in power politics. Foucault’s approach was to take an idea or institution – in his early work, the idea of madness – and imagine that this supposedly unproblematic and universal social category ‘does not exist’. If ‘madness’ does not exist, what are the social practices associated with it – psychiatry or confinement in institutions, for example – actually about? Whereas the traditional usage of the term ‘discourse’ connotes a lengthy spoken or written examination of a topic, post-structuralists after Foucault use the term in a special way. A discourse in its Foucauldian-influenced usage is a way of representing the CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS world – of representing reality and morality, what is true and false, and what is right and wrong. For instance, discourses on sexuality have variously represented homosexuality as morally wrong (and criminal) in some social and historical contexts and as normal and acceptable in others. As such, discourses are powerful. They exclude certain other ways of seeing or representing the world as ‘wrong’ (either factually or morally) and in so doing they promote and perpetuate some ways of doing things or being in the world over other possible ways. Discourses are therefore communicative and linguistic ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault 1972 p. 54). Thus, while Marxists traditionally see the material economic base of society – the mode of production, the ownership of the means of production, and so on – as that which orders and reproduces its social, cultural, and political configuration, post-structuralists consider discourses (ways of speaking and writing about, and communicating in, society) at least equally as important. On this view, capitalism, patriarchy, and racism are structurally unequal ways of organizing society in a very material sense, yet each is reproduced discursively. A further important distinction is that Foucault and Foucauldian post-structuralists view power as politically ‘productive’ rather than as purely repressive and negative, as it is represented by Marxists. The post-structuralist project is critical but not necessarily emancipatory – in fact, one post-structuralist view of Marxism is that it patronizes and essentializes the ‘working class’ or the ‘masses’, ascribing most ordinary working people limited agency and consciousness in their lives and imposing an allegedly emancipatory project upon them. POST-STRUCTURALISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL The sociological approach of post-structuralists has been highly compatible with exploring the field of global politics and the theoretical imagination and concepts of other IR theorists. The key shared assumptions underpinning neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, for example, include the existence of a world states system wherein sovereign states interact, pursue their interests, and compete for security under conditions of anarchy, sometimes resulting in war (see p. 86). Post-structuralists question or ‘deconstruct’ each of the core concepts at stake here. Some have critically explored the concept of the sovereignty (Bartleson 1995), borders, and territorial definition (Walker 1992) of states. Rather than a static, achievable state of being, international security for post-structuralists is first and foremost a set of discourses and practices (Bigo 2011). Others have highlighted the ways in which power and knowledge are bound up in global governance, using Foucault’s concept of ‘governmentality’ (see p. 179), while a great many post-structuralists (and constructivists – see below) have re-theorized the concept of international security (Campbell 1992; Buzan et al. 1998; Lipschutz 1995). The concept of globalization itself, meanwhile – central to contemporary liberal theories of global politics – has been deconstructed by post-structuralist theorists (Kelly 2010), who have shown how Western liberal democracies have in fact pursued aggressive imperial projects in the guise of ‘humanitarian intervention’, fighting wars in the name of protecting societies from themselves or their leaders (Dillon and Reid 2009). War – the central focus of much IR theory, and according to realists the ultimate ‘high politics’ issue with which it should be concerned – has been a particularly productive 117 4 118 GLOBAL POLITICS subject for post-structuralists. But whereas realists make a neat distinction between the ‘high’ politics of statecraft, war, peace, and diplomacy on the one hand and the ‘low’ politics of language, culture, and the ‘domestic’ sphere on the other, post-structuralists argue that the two are interdependent. Wars are prosecuted not only with soldiers, bullets, and bombs but also with discourses. To justify and lend legitimacy to an armed conflict – a costly and dangerous endeavour – the pertinent actors, including states and their governments, must win popular support discursively. They must be able to successfully represent the war as right, and at least as necessary, if not as a moral good. Post-structuralists have highlighted in particular the role of what Foucault called ‘biopolitics’ and ‘biopower’ in the prosecution of wars by Western liberal democracies. Essentially, this means that such states tend to justify their wars as humanitarian endeavours aimed at protecting life itself, or ‘killing to make life live’ (Dillon and Reid 2009). According to liberal discourses on war, violent ‘humanitarian interventions’ (see Chapter 14) – like the NATO interventions in Kosovo in 1999 or Libya in 2011, or even the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 – are campaigns of bombing and fighting that are necessitated to ultimately save the lives of ordinary people from the caprice of dictators or the threat of ethnic cleansing. Political leaders talking about humanitarianism and ‘human security’, the ‘responsibility to protect’ (see p. 424), and the use of ‘surgical strikes’ to minimize casualties are drawing upon a liberal biopolitical discourse that emphasizes the human-as-species as the key object of care and protection and depicts non-liberal elements (‘rogue states’, dictatorships, violent non-state actors, and ‘terrorists’, for instance) as a threat to the health of ‘humanity’ as a biological entity in need of evisceration. Ironically, liberal democracies may then wage wars of choice or aggression against states or non-state actors that pose them no direct threat at all, in the name of preserving international order and security, and may even kill – as ‘collateral damage’ – the very foreign civilians they claim their wars will protect. But it is not only state discourses on war that post-structuralist theory critiques. It is also the nature of war itself. Far from an immutable practice, unchanged in its essential character as a form of violent security competition – as the realists would have it – war has been through some profound changes, according to post-structuralists. ‘Postmodern’ or post-structuralist thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard and James Der Derian have emphasized the role of simulation in contemporary forms of war, and its performative character as something to be witnessed by an audience. From the Gulf War of 1990–1, which was the first major war in the age of 24-hour ‘rolling’ news television, and the so-called ‘CNN effect’, to the twenty-first-century wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, war has been increasingly communicated as a ‘spectacle’ to be consumed by viewers, while combatants have been trained in virtual reality simulations and are often recording or live-streaming war ‘content’ and propaganda themselves. Such is the centrality of these dynamics to contemporary war, according to Der Derian, that the ‘military industrial complex’ – a term the American President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously coined to warn Americans of the country’s vast ‘defence’ private sector pushing the state to war – has been extended into what he calls the ‘military industrial media entertainment network’ or ‘MIME-NET’. Der Derian argues that the increasingly ‘virtual’ character of war, with soldiers training in virtual reality software simulations, but also gamers playing video games that were designed with input from experienced soldiers and militaries (and sometimes even with military funding), is characteristic of war in the age of MIME-NET. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 119 FOCUS ON . . . ‘FAKE NEWS’: A POST-TRUTH WORLD ORDER? Events: Post-structuralist theory can be applied to explore one of the major controversies in global politics of recent years: so-called ‘fake news’. During the 2016 US presidential election campaign, there was a widely documented trend for ‘news’ stories – largely disparaging Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton – that were partially or entirely false, and often including wildly fantastical conspiracy theories, to be shared extensively on social media. Perhaps most notorious were the ‘Pizzagate’ stories, which presented as ‘fact’ a bizarre conspiracy according to which Clinton and her husband and former president, Bill, were involved in the sexual abuse of children at a Washington DC pizza parlour. Weeks after Trump won the election, a man armed with a rifle attempted to storm the pizza parlour and release ‘prisoners’ from its (nonexistent, as it happened) basement. He did fire a shot from the rifle, and while nobody was injured, this event led Clinton in a speech to decry ‘the epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year’. From this point on, in addition to those concerns about the circulation of misinformation on social media, many of Trump’s supporters – and the president himself – began to use the term ‘fake news’ to describe unfavourable media coverage of his campaign, inauguration, and presidency. Source: Photo by Marten Bjork via Unsplash A few weeks later, in the days following Trump’s inauguration, his advisor Kellyanne Conway told journalists questioning a false statement from the White House Press Secretary about the scale of inauguration attendance that the statement had been based on ‘alternative facts’. This sparked further media debate about so-called ‘post-truth’ politics. Significance: From a post-structuralist perspective, ‘truth’ is a socially mediated category rather than an absolute or universally experienced reality. A very simple demonstration of the salience of this claim lies in the historical changes to ‘truth’ resulting from shifts in normative and scientific consensus. It was widely believed to be ‘true’ that the earth was the centre of the universe when Galileo was imprisoned for claiming otherwise. Similarly, Newtonian laws of physics were the one ‘true’ knowledge to a majority of scientists and citizens until Einstein demonstrated that they were not and made a new ‘truth’. Even more powerfully and dangerously, the ‘truth’ of European ‘race science’ in the nineteenth century, according to which Black Africans were ‘inferior’ to white Europeans – perhaps to ‘humanity’ itself – was so widely accepted that it arguably continues to structure global politics today (see p. 100). Political power, from a poststructuralist perspective, has always been produced through truth claims and the production of knowledge. On this view, fake news is not a novel phenomenon but rather one episode in the struggle for power, which takes place in the form of a struggle to define the truth – a struggle to control the production of legitimate knowledge. This is to put a postmodern spin on the timeless wisdom that ‘knowledge is power’, but it is not to suggest that there are no facts or to draw a false equivalence between one set of observed facts on the one hand and another manufactured set of ‘alternative facts’ on the other. While post-structuralists have been caricatured as deniers of ‘reality’ by their critics (and even blamed for the rise of ‘post-truth’ – see D’Ancona 2017), in fact their emphasis has been on epistemological rather than ontological concerns. That is to say, they do not contest the existence of a ‘real’ but rather highlight the fact that our access to it is inescapably partial, shifting, and tied to our ‘subject positions’ – the social experiences and identities that make us who we are. From a post-structuralist perspective, the proliferation of conspiracy theories and the rise of ‘fake news’ or ‘post-truth’ global politics in recent years are more a symptom of the destabilizing of the ‘politics of truth’, with politicians’ and journalists’ truth claims, as well as natural and social scientific forms of knowledge, carrying less authority in a digital ‘information age’ where knowledge production is increasingly decentralized and harder for states and governments to police. 4 120 GLOBAL POLITICS CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES If any of the critical theories has come close to attaining a ‘mainstream’ status comparable to the realist and liberal traditions, it is social constructivism (or, more commonly in contemporary IR theory, simply ‘constructivism’). It is often contended that, from the 1990s, constructivists displaced Marxists as the key challengers to the realist-liberal intellectual hegemony in theorizing international relations (Vitalis 2015). Constructivism, like other critical IR theories, has its roots in national-level and ‘microsocial’ theories about everyday life inside societies and was only later extrapolated to the international level. The origins of constructivism as a distinct theory are most often attributed to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s (1966) The Social Construction of Reality. Berger and Luckmann’s book was a meditation on the sociology of knowledge – on how knowledge of ‘reality’ is produced, mediated, and authenticated. They noted that: ‘[T]he sociological understanding of ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ falls somewhere in the middle between that of the man in the street and that of the philosopher. The man in the street […] takes his ‘reality’ and his ‘knowledge’ for granted. The sociologist cannot do this, if only because of his systematic awareness of the fact that men in the street take quite different ‘realities’ for granted as between one society and another […]. The philosopher, on the other hand, is professionally obligated to take nothing for granted, and to obtain maximal clarity as to the ultimate status of what the man in the street believes to be ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’. (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 14) Recent socially divisive issues in global politics can help to illustrate this insight. The ‘reality’ of, say, Donald Trump’s leadership, or the desirability of Brexit, is radically different according to which ‘person in the street’ one speaks to. For some Americans, Trump is a brilliant leader, ‘making America great again’ through shrewd and successful economic and immigration policies that protect its citizens’ interests. For others, he is a bigoted, racist misogynist, cynically exploiting the fears of ordinary Americans for his own gain, brazenly lying to the media and public alike, and putting lives at risk through his incompetence. Similarly, a polarized split in UK public opinion means that for every British ‘person in the street’ for whom the ‘reality’ of Brexit is a successful reclamation of sovereignty from a democratically deficient or illegitimate supranational organization, and an opportunity for economic renewal, there is one for whom Brexit is an unmitigated economic catastrophe rooted in xenophobic or racist ‘imperial nostalgia’ and peddled by cynical politicians who stand to benefit personally from it. A constructivist reading of this situation is not that there is no reality but rather that reality is always mediated by our world view – the social conditions and conditioning we are each born into. Reality is socially constructed. The most important implication of this insight is that reality is made and changed through social interaction: The reality of everyday life further presents itself to me as an intersubjective world, a world that I share with others. This intersubjectivity sharply differentiates CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 121 everyday life from other realities of which I am conscious. I am alone in the world of my dreams, but I know that the world of everyday life is as real to others as it is to myself […]. The reality of everyday life is taken for granted as reality. It does not require additional verification over and beyond its simple presence. It is simply there, as self-evident and compelling facticity. I know that it is real. (Berger and Luckmann 1966: 37) If the reality of ‘everyday life’, as Berger and Luckmann put it, is ‘intersubjective’, so is the reality of global politics. What we believe ‘the international’ is – what kinds of entities, processes, and events it includes – as well as how we interpret and explain what happens in that social domain, is dependent upon our interactions with one another. And even more importantly for the theorization of international relations, how different societies, governments, leaders, and international organizations perceive one another is shaped through interactions with one another. This process is sometimes called the ‘coconstitution’ of ‘self ’ and ‘other’. Constructivist theorists demanded that we consider the extent to which the ‘things’ we take for granted in everyday life are ‘socially constructed’ rather than ‘given’, natural, unchanging, or inevitable. While Berger and Luckmann conceptually distilled constructivism, this idea that the social world – including the domain of global politics – is ‘socially constructed’ was implied in many older traditions of critical theory as we have already seen. Constructivism takes this basic theoretical insight into the character of the social world, unpacks its implications, and applies them to a range of social domains, from education to business. 4 122 APPROACHES TO . . . The so-called ‘structure-agency problem’ has been central to theoretical debates right across the social sciences, from politics and IR to anthropology and sociology, since the late twentieth century. Similarly to the ‘nature-nurture’ debate in psychology, the issue at stake is whether societies as groups of people structured around particular principles and practices (inherited or established ways of doing and seeing things) have more or less influence over what happens than the ‘agency’ (decision-making and free will) of individuals. REALIST VIEWS While realists are less explicitly concerned, on the whole, with questions in the philosophy of social science, they demonstrate a range of conflictual views on the structure-agency problem in global politics. Classical realists, with their focus on human nature and statecraft, tend to emphasize agency – especially the agency of political leaders – in shaping outcomes in international relations. Neorealists, on the other hand, are convinced that social structure – specifically, the inescapably anarchic structure of the international system– determines the decisions that state leaders make. Neoclassical realists, meanwhile, take something of a ‘third way’ between these poles, acknowledging the important role of both structure and agency, or international anarchy combined with national foreign policy-making, in producing outcomes in global politics. LIBERAL VIEW Liberal political theory, in both national and international contexts, really emphasizes individual agency as the engine of global politics. Liberalism is rooted in ontological (see p. 67) and political individualism: the belief that the basic social unit is the human individual (and not, for example, the wider society). This necessitates a commitment to the idea that individual people have a significant amount of agency over what happens in the world and a refutation of the more ‘structuralist’ accounts of global politics offered by neorealists and Marxists, for example. For liberals, both national and international society consists of the sum total of preferences and decisions made by individual actors. They have little interest in social structures such as capitalism and patriarchy and instead believe that prevailing beliefs or ‘norms’ are determined by the continuous choices people make in the global ‘marketplace of ideas’. This is not simply a metaphor – for liberals, social progress is coded into society through capitalist markets as the ‘natural’ mode of human exchange and interaction, which tend towards equilibrium and stability. ‘Bad’ ideas will ultimately be ‘cold product’, while ‘good’ ideas and reason will eventually prevail, and capitalist liberal democracy as the ultimate ‘good idea’ about how to structure societies will, as Fukuyama foretold (see p. 86), eventually become the universal social structure. CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW Constructivism targets the intersection between structure and agency, and in this endeavour constructivist IR theory is closely aligned to ‘Third Way’ political and sociological theory (Giddens 1998). Third Way social theorists such as Anthony Giddens proposed a ‘structuration theory’, which refused both the highly 123 SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND AGENCY structuralist approach of Marxists and the agency-centred thinking of liberals in favour of a view that structure and agency are ‘co-constituted’ through social practice and are both influential over outcomes. Constructivist theorists apply this line of thinking to global politics, highlighting the ‘mutually constitutive’ nature of structure and agency in international relations, as individual states and political leaders, international organizations, and wider world orders in fact produce one another in complex transnational and global social relationships. MARXIST VIEW Marxism is often characterized as a quintessentially structuralist theory because of Marx and Engels’ claims about the ways in which the material economic structure or ‘base’ – in particular, the mode of production (see p. 112) – determines what happens in the social ‘superstructure’ of politics and culture. While some Marxists – including the influential French Marxist theorist Louis Althusser, for example – do see global politics through this strictly structuralist lens, it is fair to say that this image of Marxism is more often articulated by its critics. Marx himself, and many subsequent Marxist thinkers, in fact recognized the mutually constitutive nature of capitalism as a powerful social structure into which we are born and the (more or less ‘conscious’) decisions and behaviours of individual people that produce and reproduce this structure. In fact, the Marxist theory of revolution entirely depends on this recognition, since it acknowledges not only the reproduction of social structures but the possibility of their sudden overthrow, as the result of the agency and practices of individuals and groups (especially the revolutionary party) within society. POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEW As the name suggests, post-structuralists are theorists seeking to get beyond structuralism, in some respects. Specifically, their ideas emerged from the fields of linguistics and semiotics (see p. 116), where forms of structuralist thinking had been traditionally influential. In stressing the arbitrariness and historically shifting nature of social structures such as language, culture, and ‘discourse’, post-structuralists resist the idea that such structures can be all-encompassing and deterministic of all social life. In particular, they reject the deterministic structuralism of Marxism and its theory of ‘ideology’ – that powerful ideas promoted by the capitalist economic mode of production largely determine how people think and behave in global politics – in favour of a less rigidly structural understanding of social change. POSTCOLONIAL VIEW From a postcolonial perspective, European imperialism and colonialism – rather than an abstract and universal ‘anarchic international system’ – created the dominant structure that pervades global politics today. Hierarchical ‘world order’ is the direct result of this colonial history and still constrains to a large degree – through Western-dominated international bureaucratic and military mechanisms, including the UN and 124 the IMF – what formerly colonized societies can achieve. From military ‘humanitarian interventions’ (see Chapter 14) to the extortionate use of international debt and the failure to pay reparations for colonialism and slavery, the structure of the international system as presently constituted is designed by, and works for, the powerful countries of the Global North at the expense of the rest of the world. Postcolonial accounts of global politics that are centred on race (see p. 100) emphasize ‘whiteness’ as a dominant structuring principle emerging from colonial world order, which places the various societies of people of colour in the world into hierarchical order. These orders largely reflect colonial constructions of race, with white people at the ‘top’, Black African people at the ‘bottom’, and other ‘races’ in between. This order of whiteness continues to structure global politics, constraining to some degree the options for both Global South countries and people of colour within Global North countries to exercise their agency. FEMINIST VIEW Feminists tend to take a strong interest in social structures – and patriarchy in particular. From the perspective of radical second-wave feminists, and intersectional third-wave feminists in particular, social structures are the key object of critique. Patriarchy – or even ‘imperialist, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’, as bell hooks has it (see p. 110) – is a transnational, potentially global phenomenon from this perspective. The male-centred and masculinist world order is sustained by patriarchal social structures both within and between societies. These structures are realized through gender pay differentials or ‘gaps’, women’s widespread confinement to menial and domestic labour, their targeting for sexual violence in war and domestic abuse in the home, and a wide range of other inequalities. Postcolonial feminists add to this analysis the fact that some ‘white feminists’ of the Global North are disciplined by the white supremacist character of patriarchy in their countries into taking a patronizing ‘white saviour’ attitude to women of colour in the Global South, portraying them as victims of a patriarchy that is worse than that in the ‘developed’ north. Global patriarchy as a social structure is also seen as disciplining gender identities – restricting people to the male/female binary and oppressing those who identify as transgender or non-binary. That said, both liberal and post-structuralist feminists question the deterministic status of patriarchal social structures, emphasizing instead the neglected agency of women to shape their own destiny and social roles through struggle and argument within broadly sexist or patriarchal societies. CONSTRUCTIVISM AND THE INTERNATIONAL The post-structuralist approach to theorizing global politics was simply too radical a departure for many mainstream theorists to accept. The tendency of what the neoliberal institutionalist Robert Keohane dubbed ‘reflectivist’ approaches to IR to reject positivist (see p. 68) ontological and epistemological commitments altogether led some to respond cynically. ‘The postmoderns’, according to their fiercest critics in traditional IR theory, are pretentious, and ‘muddy and elusive’ in their writing, reducing the theorization of global politics to a ‘word game’ (Østerud 1996). Constructivism arrived on the IR theory scene in the 1990s in the midst of what is sometimes called a ‘fourth debate’ in the discipline: a deep schism over the ontological and epistemological assumptions of traditional realist and liberal approaches on the one hand and critical (especially ‘postmodern’ or poststructuralist) approaches on the other. Constructivists actively sought to bridge this divide, accepting some of the ontological commitments of traditional and positivist approaches about what international relations consists of – the ‘furniture’ of global CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS politics – but insisting on a post-positivist epistemology that shapes their conceptual and analytic insights. Alexander Wendt, for instance, acknowledges that the international system is characterized by an anarchic structure – a central claim of contemporary realist and liberal theories – but adds that ‘anarchy is what states make of it’ (Wendt 1992). In other words, while anarchy may be a structuring principle of the world system, whether that anarchy leads to cooperation or conflict is up to the states that populate the system. The types of interactions that these states have with one another – their ‘intersubjective’ experiences with one another – and their related sense of identity and difference, will determine to a large degree how they go on to interact with one another in future. Constructivism made some of the key ideas inherent to post-structuralism more tolerable to traditional realist and liberal theorists, and this is why it was more successfully ‘mainstreamed’ in the intellectual project of IR theory. IR theory constructivists replace the post-structuralist focus on linguistic structures, discourse, and power/knowledge in favour of a simpler analysis of how ‘interests’ – including the interests of states – are really perceived interests and are therefore socially constructed. In other words, what a state (or more accurately, a state’s political leaders, diplomats, or citizens) identifies and pursues as its national interest very much depends on its self-image or identity, which is something that is formed by its historical and contemporary interactions with other states and non-state actors. Australia, which is geographically located far nearer to Indonesia, China, and India than it is to the United States, knows it is part of ‘the West’, for example, not because of any ‘given’ or ‘natural’ geographical characteristics but because of shared (and perceived) cultural, linguistic, economic, and historical-colonial ties to other states deemed ‘Western’. The social construction of the West includes the belief in a relatively homogeneous set of ‘Western interests’ in the international relations between these states and those deemed ‘non-Western’ (such as Asian, Middle Eastern, and African states). As Western states tend to proceed on this basis in their global political activities, so they tend to reproduce and reinforce this socially constructed distinction between ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’, effectively ‘othering’ societies that fall outside of what they imagine to be a stable and coherent, given collective identity. Ted Hopf (1998) distinguishes between what he calls ‘conventional’ and ‘critical’ (or ‘postmodern’) forms of constructivism. The former has been successful in IR theory, Hopf argues, because, rather than offer a ‘radical’ constructivist critique of social truth and reality, it adopts ‘defensible rules of thumb, or conventions’. In so doing, conventional constructivists are able to engage in direct argument with realists and liberals about the problems those theorists are typically interested in. IR constructivists share some (positivist) epistemological and methodological assumptions – principles about how we can come to generate knowledge and explanations of global politics – with ‘traditional’ theories, and Hopf suggests four examples of ‘constructivist solutions’ to ‘mainstream puzzles’ in global politics that result from this compatibility: z The balance of power, a concept favoured by the realist tradition (see p. 81), is better understood as a ‘balance of threat’ – as the neorealist Stephen Walt calls it – and as such, requires something constructivists have but realists do not: a theory of threat perception, rooted in an account of identity. 125 4 126 GLOBAL POLITICS z The security dilemma, another central plank of realist thought (see p. 80), is dependent upon different states attributing different meanings to one another’s strategic and military activities. Far from being universal, how and where security dilemmas emerge depends on these meanings: to India, for instance, Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons means something very different from the UK’s possession of the same weapons, even if neither state has used or directly threatened to use them. Constructivism highlights how the social construction of meaning like this – attached again to identity – is critical to outcomes in international relations. z Neoliberal institutionalism draws upon economic models, including game theory, to suggest that states can tend towards cooperation and interdependence (see p. 84) through ‘iterative interactions’ even where they ‘prefer to exploit one another’. Though constructivists agree that cooperation can prevail in anarchy, contrary to neoliberal institutionalists, they view this as a result of the ‘distribution of identities and interests of the relevant states’. How states understand their own interests affects what goals they pursue through international institutions, regimes, and rules, and how they pursue them, as well as which states they are more or less able to cooperate with. z The liberal peace thesis (see p. 87) – often cited as one of the most powerful and wellevidenced explanatory theories of global politics – is also amenable to constructivist reinterpretation, Hopf argues. CONSTRUCTIVISM, CONFLICT, AND CHANGE IN THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM The success of constructivism as a theory of global politics was established by its ability to offer more plausible explanations for significant changes in the world system than realism, liberalism, or Marxism. The significance of the 1990s as the point at which constructivism was embraced within the study of international relations is twofold. On the one hand, it made a timely intervention into the ‘fourth debate’ (see p. 124), offering a potential route out of the epistemological impasse the ‘traditional’ and ‘critical’ theories had reached, but on the other hand it also began with efforts to theorize the seismic event of the late twentieth century: the end of the Cold War. If the failure to prevent the outbreak of the Second World War was the failure of interwar Wilsonian ‘liberal idealist’ theory (see p. 552) to offer pragmatic or ‘realistic’ solutions, then the failure to predict or adequately explain the sudden end of the Cold War between 1989 and 1992 was the explanatory failure of all traditional IR theory, and some critical approaches too. Constructivism, with its focus on the ‘ideational’ nature of actors and processes in international relations, and its focus on the potential for identities and interests to change through social interaction, offered a plausible explanation where other theories had failed. The Cold War ended because communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, but the collapse of communism resulted not from a devastating war or other cataclysmic event but rather because the beliefs of ordinary people in communist societies changed. It became increasingly hard for states in communist East Germany, or the Soviet Union CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 127 itself, to sustain the view among their population that these societies had a superior way of life to, and were fundamentally different from or ‘other’ to, those of the liberal democratic, capitalist West. Regimes crumbled and walls fell – literally and metaphorically. The 2000s and 2010s saw constructivist theory thrive as its proponents highlighted the highly and often obviously ‘socially constructed’ nature of international relations in the ‘war on terror’ age. Constructivists highlighted the fact that to speak of a ‘war on terror’ is already to use a series of metaphors rather than describe a simple material reality. They further noted that the emphasis of the United States in prosecuting this war is on explicit references to identity and difference. The end of the Cold War, and with it the collapse of the bipolar world system, structured around the United States and the USSR as the two great poles of power in the world, came as a shock to most IR theorists. It also led to hurried explanations and predictions from them, few of which held up to scrutiny or the historical change that has followed. Neorealists such as John Mearsheimer (see p. 318) and Marxian world-systems theorists like Immanuel Wallerstein (see p. 154) claimed that the collapse of bipolarity would lead to great international disorder and a potential re-emergence of armed conflict within Europe and the ‘West’. Francis Fukuyama imagined a liberal ‘End of History’ would follow the ‘defeat’ of communism in Eastern Europe, with capitalist markets and liberal democratic constitutions gradually becoming the norm around the world, as humankind as a species discovers its final form of political organization. All were seemingly proven wrong. Instead of chaotic multipolarity, the immediate post-Cold War period of the 1990s and 2000s was widely characterized as a ‘unipolar’ moment of American hegemony, with the United States launching military interventions around the world as a global ‘policeman’, while its economy boomed as its corporate and popular culture, and ‘Washington consensus’ economic policies (see p. 145), were imposed and consumed across the world in a global ‘McDonaldization of society’ (Ritzer [1993] 2019). While its ‘policing’ interventions from Somalia to Afghanistan and Iraq were not obviously ‘successful’ in their goals, and may have had deadly ‘unintended consequences’ including further armed conflict, the United States was not, during this first post-Cold War phase, engaged in vast proxy wars such as those it waged in Korea and Vietnam, and faced no serious contenders for the title of the most economically and militarily powerful state in the world. In the late 2000s and through the 2010s, this changed, as China’s meteoric economic rise, coupled with an increasingly assertive strategic and military posture in its region (together with a souring of relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia), seemed to hail the end of the unipolar moment. But it is arguably bipolarity, rather than multipolarity, that has re-emerged – this time between the United States and China, with Sino-American relations descending into a ‘trade war’ under the Trump administration and increasingly belligerent accusations of foul play on both sides. Neorealists, neoliberal institutionalists, and neo-Marxist IR theorists had all developed their theories in the context of the Cold War to explain the global politics of the era they found themselves in (though they made grander claims for the transhistorical 4 128 GLOBAL POLITICS applicability of their insights). Some of their most important theoretical insights relied on the bipolar structure of the Cold War world system for validity, and in particular each of them struggled to explain how and why that structure might have suddenly collapsed. Along came constructivism to offer a theoretical and explanatory framework that showed how such a dramatic political transformation was made possible by ideational factors, including shifts in national identities and international norms resultant from the interaction of states in the late Cold War era. Constructivism’s early successes in explaining the end of the Cold War were replicated and extended following what arguably constituted the next watershed moment in global politics, the ‘9/11’ attacks in the United States in 2001 and the subsequent ‘global war on terrorism’ launched by the United States and its allies in response (see p. 303). On announcing the ‘war’ in 2001, President George W. Bush bifurcated the world in a selfother relationship, proclaiming that people and states outside of America are ‘either with us or with the terrorists’. He, and his successors, frequently invoked ‘evil’ as the spirit of the ‘Islamist’ terrorist project. In particular, constructivists drawing upon the ‘speech act’ theory of J. L. Austin applied the concept of ‘securitization’ to show how the war on terror allowed states to transform once political issues into the realm of security, where emergency rules and ‘states of exception’ could be imposed, effectively suspending civil and democratic rights for targeted populations (especially Muslim minorities in the West and regions/states that are majority-Muslim). Constructivism’s unprecedented success, among the critical theories of global politics, in achieving ‘mainstream’ status results from a combination of adapting, simplifying, or watering down the claims of other critical theories and offering detailed and plausible explanations of the same kind of ‘high politics’ international events that realists and liberals traditionally concern themselves with. Whereas other critical theories seek to force the debate around international relations into a space where, for example, the politics of race, gender, and class are considered valid objects of inquiry, constructivism instead tries to appease traditional theory by bringing its critical vocabulary and analysis to bear on problems a realist or liberal would want to be able to explain too. THE FUTURE OF CRITICAL THEORY IN GLOBAL POLITICS TENSIONS AND SYNERGIES WITHIN CRITICAL THEORY As discussed in Chapter 3, the traditional theories of realism and liberalism have moved closer together in many respects; however, several important tensions persist amongst critical theories. Post-structuralism emerged in part as a critical response to Marxism, and as such some post-structuralist theory suggests that Marxist concepts such as ideology and class are essentialist, while Marxist praxis is dangerously totalizing. The universalist ideas underpinning Marxist thought are highly suspect to the ‘epistemically relativist’ post-structuralist thinkers. While many strands of feminism are also anti-capitalist, CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS feminist theory tends to suggest that Marxism has a reductionist approach to inequality, reducing gendered inequalities to mere effects of the capitalist class system and failing to recognize patriarchy’s longer roots. Postcolonial theory makes similar points about race in relation to Marxism’s reductionist approach, though again many postcolonial theorists also draw productively on Marxist thought. Marxists, for their part, often see post-structuralism – and some cases of feminist and postcolonial thought – as running dangerously close to liberalism/neoliberalism, the chief ideology of contemporary capitalism. More orthodox Marxists deride feminist and anti-racist theory and activism as ‘identity politics’ (see Chapter 9) that suits the capitalist mode of production, erasing vertical class antagonisms to highlight horizontal differences in individuals’ identities. Constructivism, meanwhile, tends to view post-structuralism – and sometimes other critical theories – as going ‘too far’ in their critical analyses, becoming incomprehensible and therefore not useful as IR theories, which should be ‘parsimonious’. The fundamental question of social change and how ‘radical’ particular theories are is also at the heart of these tensions. Where Marxism (and the neo-Marxist and post-Marxist theories), postcolonialism, and feminism all meet the ‘critical’ criterion of seeking to change the world rather than merely explain it, neither post-structuralism nor constructivism is attached to such a political project. All of that being said, synergies among these critical theories are perhaps equally significant to tensions. As this chapter has shown, the rise of more ‘intersectional’ approaches has helped to address allegations of ‘reductionism’, as postcolonial, feminist, Marxist, and other critical theories have increasingly been fused and used together to analyse and advocate for change in the social construction of reality, and to challenge social injustices and inequalities. NEW CRITICAL THEORIES FOR NEW CRISES AND NEW INJUSTICES? While not without precedent in global politics, a host of ‘new’ global challenges have gained greater prominence in recent years: environmental degradation and climate change, viral pandemics, forced migration, crises of capitalism, and the fragmentation or decline of the post-war US-dominated ‘liberal’ world order. While traditional theorists – realists and liberals of various stripes – seek to apply, with questionable success, what they consider to be timeless wisdom from their usual pool of explanatory resources, critical theories have been rather more responsive to this new crisis-oriented global politics and opened up avenues for new strands of theoretical thought. Ecological or ‘green’ theory has become an important, though still marginalized, strand of IR theorizing. Thinkers drawing upon post-structuralist and post-Marxist theory, as well as feminist and postcolonial thought, have developed approaches to global environmental politics that focus on the ‘Anthropocene’ (see p. 503) and demand a ‘posthuman’ order. The ‘anthropocentric’ social theories to date, including critical theories, have, on this view, been responsible for propagating ecologically irresponsible attitudes, which in turn produce climate change and other environmental disasters. As scientific evidence and warnings from international institutions become ever more stark about the threat posed to humans and the wider ecosystem, so these critical theories and concepts gain wider attention among those interested in explaining and changing global politics. 129 4 130 GLOBAL POLITICS ‘New materialist’ and ‘actor network theory’ thinkers have challenged traditional – but also many critical – ideas of what matters in international relations, suggesting that the scope of inquiry should extend beyond relations between individuals, societies, states, and organizations to also consider the physical and non-human ‘things’ that intervene in, and constrain or enable, such relations. Inspired by the philosophical and social thought of Jane Bennett and Bruno Latour, these IR theorists explore the ‘agency’ and ‘actorness’ of things ranging from security cameras used at borders to plastic bottles dropped by migrants to understand how international relations between people are embedded in a wider world of relations between non-human things, animals, and environments. The Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe has coined the increasingly popular concept of ‘necropolitics’, drawing upon postcolonial and post-structuralist thought – including Fanon (see p. 282) and Foucault (see p. 19) – to explore the centrality of death to sovereignty, as a form of power. In the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic that spread around the world in 2020 infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands of people, such new critical thinking on global politics is gaining traction. Pandemic responses involve political decisions, and as such are shaped by existing structures of social power. For example, vastly disproportionate numbers of deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic among poorer and racialized minority communities in ostensibly ‘prosperous’ countries highlighted the reproduction of social injustice in public health policies. The ‘letting die’ of marginalized and working-class people can be viewed through this critical theoretical lens of necropolitics as an active choice, and an expression of political power. Finally, the concept of intersectionality and especially the increasingly high-profile political debates over race and racism have, in recent years, forced many critical theorists to reassess their position. The claim of some scholars (for example, Howell and Richter-Montpetit 2019) that many allegedly ‘critical’ theories in fact rely on, and reproduce, racist international thought has led to a range of responses, from serious engagement and critical self-reflection to hostile rejection and claims of ‘libel’. Those in fields more accustomed to serious discussions of race and racism than IR have suggested the discipline lacks the historical literacy and conceptual vocabulary to make the basic necessary distinctions – such as that between racism or white supremacy as a social structure on the one hand and as a set of conscious beliefs and interpersonal attitudes on the other. CRITICAL THEORIES OF GLOBAL POLITICS 131 SUMMARY y The ‘critical’ in critical theory tends to have two meanings: first, an injunction to ‘think critically’ – to reflect on the ways in which our production and sharing of knowledge about the world is embedded in power relations, and may serve specific interests or groups – and second (in many, but not all cases), an ethical approach that emphasizes that theory itself should exist to change the world for the better. y Traditional theories of international relations such as realism and liberalism tend to reproduce the status quo of power in world politics from a critical perspective. Although critical theory incorporates a wide range of divergent approaches – from postcolonial theory and feminism to Marxism and post-structuralism – this critique of traditional or ‘mainstream’ theories of global politics is common to them all. y While critical theorists have often been marginalized within the academic institutions that study international relations – universities, scholarly journals, and so on – the meteoric rise of social constructivism after the end of the Cold War has seen many critical concepts and approaches attain more ‘mainstream’ status. Constructivists have achieved this mainstreaming by addressing the same questions that realists and liberals are concerned with. More radical critical theorists consequently tend to view constructivism as a rather superficial approach to critical concepts and analysis. y Increasingly, the ‘established’ critical approaches are themselves facing critique and challenge, and new critical theories are emerging to explain newly prominent global political problems (e.g. climate change) or to look at older problems (e.g. inequality) through new lenses. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y Do all theories of global politics simply serve the interests of the theorists who devised them? y In what ways can realist and liberal theories be complicit in reproducing the status quo of global politics? y Are all Western theories of global politics Eurocentric? y To what extent is the world still characterized by a ‘global colour line’? y Are global politics more violent because they are dominated by men? y Do economic inequalities and class relations still matter in the twenty-first century? y How do language and ‘discourse’ shape global politics? y Why has constructivism been more successfully mainstreamed than other critical theories? FURTHER READING Anievas, A. and S. Shilliam (eds), Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (2014). An influential collection of essays by critical IR scholars working in postcolonial and anti-racist traditions. Guzzini, S. and A. Leander (eds) Constructivism and International Relations: Alexander Wendt and His Critics (2006). A critical appraisal of the work of foundational constructivist thinker Alexander Wendt, including essays by post-structuralists and constructivists and a response from Wendt himself. Tickner, J. A. and L. Sjoberg (eds), Feminism and International Relations: Conversations about the Past, Present and Future (2011). Essays on feminist approaches to IR. Weber, C., International Relations Theory: A Critical Introduction, 5th Edition (2021). A wide-ranging and accessible introduction to key critical theories and concepts in global politics and to some of the key problems with traditional theory. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e 4 132 THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 5 Source: ProPIC/ Getty Images PREVIEW Many of the most dramatic and widely debated recent changes in global politics have been driven, at least in part, by economic issues. In Western countries, for example, economic narratives about globalization, jobs, and immigration have underpinned major, successful new right-wing political movements and a backlash against liberal ‘globalism’. China, meanwhile, has seen its power and prestige in the world greatly increased due to unprecedented economic growth in the post-Cold War era. With economic power comes geopolitical power too: Chinese leaders and diplomats are increasingly assertive in their approach to various regional territorial claims. And states across Asia, Africa, and Latin America continue to press for a better deal in the world economy than the legacies of colonialism and structural inequalities have thus far afforded them. This chapter explains and clarifies what we mean when we talk about the ‘global economy’ and its foundations – capitalism (in its many forms) and neoliberalism – which are politically contentious. How do forms of capitalism differ, and what are the implications of such differences? Moreover, a particular form of capitalist development has gained global ascendency since the 1980s, usually dubbed neoliberalism. What have been the chief consequences of the ‘triumph’ of neoliberalism? A further (and many would say related) development has been a significant acceleration in the process of economic globalization. Has neoliberal globalization promoted prosperity and opportunity for all, or has it spawned new forms of inequality and injustice? These questions have become particularly pressing in the light of a tendency towards seemingly intensifying crises and economic instability. Are economic crises a price worth paying for long-term economic success, or are they a symptom of the fundamental failings of global capitalism? 133 134 GLOBAL POLITICS KEY ISSUES z What are the main types of capitalism in the modern world? z Why has neoliberalism become dominant, and what are its chief implications? z How can economic globalization best be explained? z To what extent has the modern world economy been ‘globalized’? z Why does capitalism tend towards booms and slumps? z What have recent economic crises told us about the nature of global capitalism? CAPITALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM VISIONS AND MODELS OF CAPITALISM Capitalism: A system of generalized, profitmotivated commodity production in which wealth is owned privately and economic life is organized according to market principles. Market: A system of commercial exchange shaped by the forces of demand and supply and regulated by the price mechanism. Division of labour: The process whereby productive tasks become separated and more specialized to promote economic efficiency. Capital: In a general sense, any ‘asset’, financial or otherwise; Marxists use the term to refer to accumulated wealth embodied in the ‘means of production’. The origins of capitalism can be traced back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, developing in predominantly feudal societies. Feudalism was characterized by agrarian-based production geared to the needs of landed estates, fixed social hierarchies, and rigid patterns of obligation and duties for bonded serfs. Capitalist practices initially took root in the form of commercial agriculture that was orientated towards the market and increasingly relied on waged labour. The market mechanism, the heart of the emerging capitalist system, certainly intensified pressure for technological innovation and brought about a substantial expansion in productive capacity. This was reflected in the eighteenth-century ‘agricultural revolution’, which saw the enclosure of overgrazed common land and the increased use of fertilizers and scientific methods of production. Nevertheless, the most significant development in the history of capitalism came with the Industrial Revolution, which developed from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, first in the United Kingdom but soon in the United States (see p. 36) and across much of Europe. Industrialization entirely transformed societies through the advent of mechanized and often factory-based forms of production, the increasing use of the division of labour, and the gradual shift of populations from the land to the expanding towns and cities. In the process, industrialization massively expanded the productive capacity of capitalism, enabling industrial capitalism to emerge by the mid-nineteenth century as the dominant socio-economic system worldwide. The development of industrial capitalism also marked a key phase in the evolution of the world economy, in that it resulted in the export of capital from Europe to North America, South America, and Asia, also leading to a sharpening of the division of labour between states and between different regions of the world. In these ways, as discussed later, the foundations of modern global capitalism were laid during the late nineteenth century. However, capitalism does not constitute just a single socio-economic form but a variety of socio-economic forms (Brown 1995; Hall and Soskice 2001). It is possible to identify at least four types or visions of capitalist system: z enterprise capitalism z social capitalism THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE z state capitalism z racial capitalism ENTERPRISE CAPITALISM FIG U Enterprise capitalism is widely seen, particularly in the Anglo-American world, as ‘pure’ capitalism; that is, as an ideal towards which other capitalisms are inevitably drawn (Friedman 1962). The home of enterprise capitalism is the United States and the UK, despite its early post-1945 flirtation with Keynesian social democracy. Nevertheless, the principles of enterprise capitalism have been extended far beyond the Anglo-American world through the impact of economic globalization (see p. 147), which has gone hand in hand with the advance of marketization. Enterprise capitalism is based on the ideas of classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo (1772–1823) and updated in the form of neoliberalism by modern theorists such as the Austrian economist and political philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) and Milton Friedman (see p. 143). Its central feature is faith in the untrammelled workings of market competition, born out of the belief that the market is a self-regulating mechanism (or, as Adam Smith put it, an ‘invisible hand’). This idea is expressed in Adam Smith’s famous words: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest’ (Smith [1776] 1999, p. 15). RE Social democracy: A moderate or reformist brand of socialism that favours a balance between the market and the state, rather than the abolition of capitalism. Marketization: The extension of market relationships, based on commercial exchange and material self-interest, across the economy and, possibly, society. ADAM SMITH (1723–90) Scottish economist and philosopher, often seen as the founder of modern economics. After holding the chair of logic and then moral philosophy at Glasgow University, Smith became tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch, which enabled him to visit France and Geneva and to develop his economic theories. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) developed a theory of motivation that tried to reconcile human self-interestedness with unregulated social order. Smith’s most famous work, The Wealth of Nations (1776), was the first systematic attempt to explain the workings of the economy in market terms, emphasizing the importance of the division of labour. Although he is often viewed as a free-market theorist, Smith was nevertheless aware of the limitations of the market. In the United States, such free-market principles have helped to keep public ownership to a minimum and ensure that welfare provision operates as little more than a safety net. US businesses are typically profit-driven, and a premium is placed on high productivity and labour flexibility. Trade unions are usually weak, reflecting the fear that strong labour organizations are an obstacle to profit maximization. The emphasis on growth and enterprise of this form of capitalism stems, in part, from the fact that productive wealth is owned largely by financial institutions, such as insurance companies and pension funds, that demand a high rate of return on their investments. 135 Source: iStock 5 136 GLOBAL POLITICS Social market: An economy that is structured by market principles and largely free from government interference, operating in a society in which cohesion is maintained through a comprehensive welfare system and effective welfare services. The undoubted economic power of the United States bears testament to the vigour of enterprise capitalism. Despite clear evidence of relative economic decline (whereas the United States accounted for half of the world’s manufacturing output in 1945, it saw a steady decline to less than one-fifth by 2007 and has remained at this level since, having been overtaken by China), the United States is still the largest economy by GDP. The United States clearly enjoys natural advantages that enable it to benefit from the application of market principles, notably a continent-wide domestic market, a wealth of natural resources, and a ruggedly individualist popular culture, seen as a ‘frontier ideology’. Enterprise capitalism also has serious disadvantages, however. Perhaps the most significant of these is a tendency towards wide material inequalities and social fragmentation. This is demonstrated in the United States by levels of absolute poverty that are not found, for example, in Europe and in the growth of a poorly educated and socially dependent underclass. SOCIAL CAPITALISM Social capitalism refers to a form of capitalism that took root in much of Central and Western Europe, especially after the Second World War. Germany is its natural home, but the principles of social capitalism were adopted in various forms in Austria, the Benelux countries, France, and much of Scandinavia (van Kersbergen 1995). This economic form drew heavily on the flexible and pragmatic ideas of economists such as Friedrich List (1789–1846), an influential theorist of economic nationalism. The central theme of this capitalist model is the idea of a social market; that is, an attempt to marry the disciplines of market competition with the need for social cohesion and solidarity. This is reflected in an emphasis on long-term investment rather than short-term profitability. Business organization in what has been called Rhine-Alpine capitalism also differs from Anglo-American capitalism in that it is based on social partnership. Trade unions enjoy representation through works councils and participate in annual rounds of wage negotiation that are usually industry-wide. As the Marxist geographer and economic theorist David Harvey put it: ‘One condition of the post-war settlement in almost all countries was that the economic power of the upper classes be restrained and that labour be accorded a much larger share of the economic pie’ (2007: 15). The strengths of social capitalism were clearly demonstrated by the ‘economic miracle’ that transformed war-torn Germany into Europe’s leading economic power by the 1960s. High and stable levels of capital investment, together with a strong emphasis on education and training, particularly in vocational and craft skills, enabled Germany to achieve the highest levels of productivity in Europe, a position it retains today. However, the virtues of social capitalism are by no means universally accepted. One of its drawbacks is that, because it places a heavy stress on consultation, negotiation, and consensus, it tends to lead to inflexibility and makes it difficult for businesses to adapt to market conditions (for example, economic globalization and intensified competition from East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere). Further strains are imposed by the relatively high levels of social expenditure required to maintain high-quality welfare provision. These push THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 137 up taxes and so burden both employers and employees. Whereas supporters of social capitalism insist that the social and the market are intrinsically linked, its critics argue that social capitalism is nothing more than a contradiction in terms. STATE CAPITALISM The term ‘state capitalism’ has been defined in a number of ways. For instance, Trotskyists used it to highlight the tendency of the Soviet Union under Stalin to use its control of productive power to oppress the working class, in a manner similar to capitalist societies. However, in its modern usage, state capitalism is more commonly used to describe capitalist economies in which the state plays a crucial directive role. These are often non-liberal capitalist societies. Hall and Soskice (2001) distinguished between ‘liberal market economies’, in which firms coordinate their activities on the basis of competitive market arrangements, and ‘coordinated market economies’, which depend heavily on non-market arrangements. This was the model that the East and Southeast Asian ‘tiger economies’ eagerly adopted, and it has influenced emergent Chinese capitalism as well as, in some respects, Russian capitalism. The distinctive character of state capitalism is its emphasis on cooperative, long-term relationships, for which reason it is sometimes called ‘collective capitalism’. This allows the economy to be directed not by an impersonal price mechanism, but through what have been called ‘relational markets’. An example of this is the pattern of interlocking share ownership that ensures that there is a close relationship between industry and finance in Japan, enabling Japanese firms to adopt strategies based on long-term investment rather than on short-space or medium-term profit. Firms themselves provide the social core of life in state capitalism. Workers (particularly male workers in larger businesses) are ‘members’ of firms in a way that does not occur in the United States or even social market Europe. In return for their loyalty, commitment, and hard work, workers have traditionally expected lifetime employment, pensions, social protection, and access to leisure and recreational opportunities. Particular stress is placed on teamwork and the building up of a collective identity, which has been underpinned by relatively narrow income differentials between managers and workers. The final element in this economic mix is the government. Although East Asian levels of public spending and taxation are relatively low by international standards (often below 30 per cent of GNP), the state has played a vital role in ‘guiding’ investment, research, and trading decisions. The model here was undoubtedly the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), which oversaw the Japanese ‘economic miracle’ in the post-1945 period. The Japanese version of state capitalism appeared to be highly successful in the early post-1945 period, accounting for Japan’s ability to recover from wartime devastation to become the second largest economy in the world and helping to explain the rise of the Asian ‘tiger economies’ (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and so on). However, Japan’s slowdown during the 1990s (the ‘lost decade’) and the Asian financial crisis of 1997 cast a darker shadow over state capitalism, highlighting its inflexibility and its failure to respond to the ever-changing pressures of the global economy. Moreover, a 5 138 GLOBAL POLITICS Mercantilism: An economic philosophy, most influential in Europe from the fifteenth century to the late seventeenth century, which emphasizes the state’s role in managing international trade and guaranteeing prosperity. Protectionism: The use of economic measures such as taxes and tariffs on international trade to protect domestic industries from the vicissitudes of global market competition. price had to be paid for Japan’s economic success, in terms of heavy demands on workers and their families. Long hours and highly disciplined working conditions can mean that individualism is stifled and work becomes the centrepiece of existence. In these circumstances, China (see p. 314) has become the standard-bearer for state capitalism, having consistently achieved growth rates of about 9 per cent since the late 1980s and having become the second largest economy in the world in 2010. China’s mixture of burgeoning capitalism and Stalinist political control has been remarkably effective in delivering sustained economic growth, benefiting from a huge supply of cheap labour and massive investment in the economic infrastructure. Russia’s conversion to state capitalism occurred in the aftermath of the chaos and dislocation of the 1990s, when ‘shock treatment’ market reforms were introduced under Boris Yeltsin. From 1999 onwards, Vladimir Putin acted to reassert state power in both political and economic life, in part to wrest power back from the ‘oligarchs’, newly rich business magnates who had been criticized for siphoning off wealth out of the country and for contributing to the 1998 Russian financial crisis. A key aspect of Putin’s economic strategy was to exploit Russia’s vast energy reserves, both as a motor for economic growth and to give Russia (see p. 186) greater leverage over neighbouring states and, indeed, over much of Europe. The strength of state capitalism derives from its pragmatism and flexibility, strong states being able to pursue economic priorities with a single-mindedness, even, at times, ruthlessness, that liberal democracies cannot match. Major infrastructural projects and economic restructuring can thus be pursued more easily, and the vagaries of capital and currency markets have a reduced impact on economic decision-making. Some have even speculated that what has been called the ‘Beijing consensus’ (Ramo 2004) may be in the process of displacing the ‘Washington consensus’ (see p. 145). However, the major weakness of state capitalism is the contradiction between economic liberalism and non-liberal political arrangements. For example, critics have argued that China’s version of state capitalism, based on a blend of market economics and one-party communist rule, is ultimately unsustainable, in that a widening of economic freedom must, sooner or later, generate pressure for a widening of political freedom (Hutton 2007). 139 APPROACHES TO. . . The study of international political economy (IPE) or global political economy (GPE), which can trace its roots back to Smith, Marx, and Ricardo, has become a distinct field or discipline of its own within the study of international relations (IR). Key IR theories have elaborated approaches to IPE that correspond to their wider views of the world. REALIST VIEW Realist economic theory is firmly rooted in and sometimes seen as being synonymous with ‘economic nationalism’ or ‘mercantilism’. Mercantilism takes the state to be the most significant economic actor, highlighting the extent to which economic relations are determined by political power. In this view, markets are not ‘natural’ but exist within a social context largely shaped by the exercise of state power. As the state system is anarchical, the global economy tends to be characterized by conflict as states compete with each other for power and wealth in a zero-sum game. The classic mercantilist strategy is to build up a state’s wealth, power, and prestige by developing a favourable trading balance through producing goods for export while keeping imports low. The chief device for achieving this is protectionism. Defensive mercantilism is designed to protect ‘infant’ industries and weaker economies from ‘unfair’ competition from stronger economies, while aggressive mercantilism aims to strengthen the national economy to provide a basis for expansionism and war. The global economy has thus been fashioned by the interests of the most powerful states, sometimes through neocolonialism but also through free trade arrangements that force weaker states to open up their markets. For some realists, a stable world economy requires the existence of a single dominant power, as implied by hegemonic stability theory (see p. 308). LIBERAL VIEW Liberal economic theory is based on the belief that individuals, as rationally self-interested creatures, or ‘utility maximizers’, are the key economic actors (utility maximizers act to achieve the greatest pleasure over pain, calculated in terms of material consumption). In this light, businesses are an important means of organizing production and thus of generating wealth. In line with the deeper liberal belief in balance or harmony amongst competing forces, the key idea of economic liberalism is that an unregulated market economy tends towards long-run equilibrium (the price mechanism, the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, brings ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ into line with one another). From the perspective of classical liberal political economy, this implies a policy of laissez-faire (see p. 158), in which the state leaves the economy alone and the market is left to manage itself. Economic exchange via the market is therefore a positive-sum game, in that greater efficiency produces economic growth and benefits everyone. The global economy is thus characterized by cooperation as trading and other economic relationships promise to bring mutual benefit and general prosperity. This further implies a positive view of economic globalization, which is seen as the triumph of the market over ‘irrational’ impediments such as national borders. Such thinking has been taken furthest by neoliberalism (see p. 143). Since Keynes (see p. 160), however, an alternative tradition of liberal political economy has recognized that markets can fail or are imperfect, in which case they need to be managed or regulated on a national and global level. 140 INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY MARXIST VIEW Critical approaches to the economy have been dominated by Marxism, which portrays capitalism as a system of class exploitation and treats social classes as the key economic actors. As class allegiances are taken to be more powerful than national loyalties, political economy always has an international dimension, in the Marxist view. In modern economic circumstances, the interests of the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie, are increasingly identified with those of transnational corporations (see p. 149), which are widely seen as more powerful than national governments, economics having primacy over politics. Capitalism therefore has inherently globalizing tendencies, an unceasing need to expand regardless of national borders. The global economy is nevertheless characterized by conflict, stemming from the oppressive nature of the capitalist system itself. For some Marxists, this is expressed through imperialism (see p. 112) and the desire to secure raw materials and cheap labour. Other ‘neo-’ Marxists, including Immanuel Wallerstein (see p. 154), have interpreted global capitalism as a world system, which is structured by an exploitative relationship between so-called ‘core’ areas and ‘peripheral’ ones, and specifically between transnational corporations and the developing world. Others have adopted a neo-Gramscian approach that stresses the role of hegemony (see p. 302), highlighting the extent to which economic, political, and cultural power are bound up together. FEMINIST VIEW More recently, feminist approaches to IPE have come to the fore. Scholars such as Shirin Rai, Juanita Elias (see p. 163) and Johnna Montgomerie have emphasized the contribution of women to the global economy (and their erasure in more traditional IPE views), as well as exploring the uneven, gendered impact of global inequalities. Feminist IPE internationalizes and politicizes the ‘domestic’ economies in which women toil, and brings into view overlooked forms of labour, including social care. POSTCOLONIAL VIEW Postcolonial perspectives on IPE, meanwhile, have long emphasized gendered and racialized inequalities in the global economy, and their intersections, from Ester Boserup’s (1970) classic Woman’s Role in Economic Development to Lourdes Benería and Gita Sen’s (1981) reappraisal of her thesis a decade later. Indeed, some of the first efforts to ‘bridge’ IR theory and postcolonialism (Darby and Paolini 1994) viewed the global economy through a racialized and gendered lens. Contemporary international political sociologists and postcolonial theorists such as Robbie Shilliam (see p. 105) and Gurminder Bhambra have recently engaged in political-economic analysis in their work on issues like the role of race and class in the politics of Brexit, while Bhambra proposes ‘colonial global economy’ as an alternative approach to studying the world economy than the IPE or GPE paradigms. 141 CONSTRUCTIVIST AND POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEWS IPE is not a field of study that is often associated with the theoretical tradition of post-structuralism. But Michel Foucault’s (see p. 19) later work was concerned precisely with the logics of neoliberalism as a transnational mode of political economy, and with the triumph of what he called the ‘American’ model of neoliberalism – at an increasingly global level – over the German ‘ordoliberal’ tradition that had advocated a somewhat stronger role for the state in managing the economy. And post-structuralists continue to explore the discourses that shape the world economy today. Constructivists, for their part – always keen to demonstrate their theory’s ability to engage with the same real-world problems as liberalism and realism – have addressed IPE more directly. Constructivist scholars have, since the 1990s, offered new theorizations and analyses of a wide range of IPE topics, including the politics of international trade, money, finance, and crises (Nelson 2020). Constructivists tend to eschew the rationalist and individualist assumptions that underpin the realist and liberal IPE mainstream in favour of exploring how ‘social facts’, including the interplay of malleable identities, are at stake in the representation and practices of the world economy. RACIAL CAPITALISM To place the historical emergence of all of the above varieties of capitalism in a truly global context, we must also consider their relationship to colonialism. The global capitalist economy emerged alongside, and was dependent upon, European colonialism (see p. 31). The logics of capitalist entrepreneurship and accumulation quickly necessitated expansion beyond European states’ territorial borders. The practices of colonialism, including the racialization (see p. 100) of some of the world’s peoples as ‘inferior’, as a justification for seizing their land and labour, were central to enabling early European capitalist states to find new sites of accumulation around the world. ‘Colonial capitalism’ (Ince 2018) or ‘racial capitalism’, as Cedric Robinson (see p. 105) and others have called it, is not therefore the name of a ‘variety’ of capitalism as such. It is rather a way of envisioning capitalism in general as rooted in, and still reliant upon, colonialism and racism. The evidence for this vision of capitalism is stark. As Eric Williams’ 1944 classic Capitalism and Slavery showed, the abduction and enslavement of Africans and others – perhaps the most egregious form of racist violence in colonial history – was a logical extension of capitalist enterprise as it expanded into newly colonized territories. Capitalist imperatives to keep wages low and profits high, and to find new markets and sources of profitability, enabled the transformation of human beings themselves into commodities to be bought and sold and otherwise disposed of as their ‘owners’ saw fit. Racism was – and remains – on this view, the system of thought through which such violent exploitation is organized and justified. The positioning of so many African, Asian, Latin American, and more broadly ‘Global South’ states (see p. 464) at the ‘periphery’ of today’s global economy (see p. 115) is, according to theorists of racial capitalism, effectively a ‘feature’ rather than a ‘bug’ of the economic system, as is the range of unequal economic opportunities and outcomes for people of colour in the postcolonial citizenry of Global North countries. 142 GLOBAL POLITICS FOCUS ON . . . A CHINESE ECONOMIC MODEL? What is the source of China’s remarkable economic success since the introduction of market reforms in the late 1970s? Is there such a thing as ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’? China’s economic model has a number of clear features. First, with a population of 1.4 billion, and with a historically unprecedented shift in people from the countryside to fast-expanding towns and cities, particularly on the eastern coast, China has benefited from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labour. Second, in common with Japan and the Asian ‘tigers’ before it, China has adopted an export-led growth strategy founded on manufacturing industry and the goal of becoming the ‘workshop of the world’. Third, a high savings ratio means that, unlike the United States and many Western economies, investment in China largely comes from internal sources. This not only suggests that the Chinese banking system is more robust than those of the United States, the UK, and other Western states but it also allows China to lend massively abroad. Such lending keeps China’s currency cheap in relation to the US dollar, thereby boosting the competitiveness of Chinese exports. Fourth, economic success is underpinned by interventionist government, which, amongst other things, invests heavily in infrastructure projects and gears its foreign policy towards the goal of achieving resource security, guaranteeing the supplies of oil, iron ore, copper, aluminium, and many other industrial minerals that an ever-expanding economy desperately needs. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of China’s ‘market Stalinism’, and the allegiance of its fast-growing middle class and business elite, is closely linked to China’s ability to keep expanding its GDP. A variety of factors threaten the Chinese economic model or are forcing China to develop a new economic model. These include the fact that since the mid2000s there have been signs of wage inflation in China, suggesting that cheap labour may not be an inexhaustible supply and putting at risk China’s ability to undercut the rest of the world in manufacturing goods. An over-dependence on export markets creates the need to boost domestic consumption levels in China, particularly demonstrated by the global economic recession in 2008–9. However, increased domestic consumption may ‘suck in’ more imports, reducing China’s currently strongly positive trade balance. And China’s one-child policy had to be abandoned from 2016 in an effort to stem a sharp fall in fertility rates that would reduce working-age populations. The introduction of a two-child policy in its place had an initial impact, although fertility rates have since resumed falling. The greatest threats to continued Chinese economic improvement today may be its ‘trade war’ with the United States under Donald Trump’s leadership, with retaliatory import and export tariffs being imposed between the two countries, and – more fundamentally – the contradiction between China’s economic and political models. The violent unrest and repressive government response in the semi-autonomous Chinese region of Hong Kong have recently rendered this latter contradiction more visible, if not more acute. The city is a global capitalist hub, and its citizens have enjoyed more economic, social, and political rights than mainland Chinese people, yet this settlement appears increasingly unstable. THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE THE ‘TRIUMPH’ OF NEOLIBERALISM Since the 1980s, however, economic development has, to a greater or lesser extent in different parts of the world, taken on a neoliberal guise. Neoliberalism reflects the ascendancy of enterprise capitalism over rival forms of capitalism, its chief belief being a form of market fundamentalism. The ‘neoliberal revolution’ was, in fact, a counterrevolution: its aim was to halt, and if possible reverse, the trend towards ‘big’ government and state intervention that had characterized much of the twentieth century, and especially the early post-1945 period. The chief academic exponents of neoliberalism were Hayek and Friedman. A central object of their attack was Keynesianism and the ‘tax and spend’ policies that they claimed were responsible for the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s (a combination of economic stagnation, and therefore rising unemployment, and high inflation [a general rise in the price level]). The neoliberal solution was to ‘roll back’ the frontiers of the state and to give free, or at least a much freer, rein to market forces. 143 Market fundamentalism: An absolute faith in the market, reflected in the belief that the market mechanism offers solutions to all economic and social problems. Keynesianism: A theory (developed by J. M. Keynes [see p. 160]) or policy of economic management, associated with regulating aggregate demand to achieve full employment. CON The earliest experiment in neoliberalism was in Chile. Following the CIA-backed military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende in 1973, the newly installed General Pinochet introduced sweeping market reforms on the advice of a group of US and UStrained free-market economists, the so-called ‘Chicago boys’ (reflecting the influence of Milton Friedman and the ‘Chicago School’). Their influence subsequently spread to Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere in South America. During the 1980s, neoliberalism was extended to the United States and the UK, in the forms of ‘Reaganism’ (after President Reagan, 1981–9) and ‘Thatcherism’ (after Prime Minister Thatcher, 1979–90), with other countries such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand quickly following suit. The wider, and seemingly irresistible, advance of neoliberalism occurred during the 1990s through the influence of the institutions of global economic governance and the growing impact of globalization. During the 1980s, the World Bank (see p. 587) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) (see p. 584) were converted to the ideas of what later became known as the ‘Washington consensus’, which was aligned to the economic agenda of Reagan and Thatcher and focused on policies such as free trade, the liberalization of capital markets, flexible exchange rates, balanced budgets, and so on. After the Eastern European revolutions of 1989–91, such thinking informed the ‘shock therapy’ transition from central planning to free-market capitalism in states such as Russia, Hungary, and Poland, with dramatic and immediate cuts to public spending coupled with swift privatization of C E PT NEOLIBERALISM Neoliberalism (sometimes called ‘neoclassical liberalism’) is an updated version of classical liberalism. With regard to economics, its central theme is the idea that the economy works best when left alone by government, reflecting a belief in free market economics and atomistic individualism. While unregulated market capitalism delivers efficiency, growth, and widespread prosperity, the ‘dead hand’ of the state saps initiative and discourages enterprise. In short, the neoliberal philosophy is ‘market: good; state: bad’. Key neoliberal policies include privatization, low public spending, deregulation, tax cuts (particularly corporate and direct taxes), and reduced welfare provision. The term ‘neoliberalism’ is also used to describe modern developments in liberal international relations theory (as discussed in Chapter 3). 5 144 GLOBAL POLITICS national industries. Free-market reforms were also extended to many developing states through the imposition of ‘structural adjustment’ programmes (see p. 476). FIG U Economic globalization supported the advance of neoliberalism in a number of ways. In particular, intensified international competition encouraged governments to deregulate their economies and reduce tax levels in the hope of attracting inward investment and preventing transnational corporations (TNCs) (see p. 149) from relocating elsewhere. Strong downward pressure was exerted on public spending, and particularly welfare budgets, by the fact that, in a context of heightened global competition, the control of inflation has displaced the maintenance of full employment as the principal goal of economic policy. Such pressures, together with the revived growth and productivity rates of the US economy and the relatively sluggish performance of other models of national capitalism, in Japan and Germany in particular, meant that by the late 1990s neoliberalism appeared to stand unchallenged as the dominant ideology of the ‘new’ world economy. Only a few states, for instance China, were able to deal with neoliberal globalization on their own terms, limiting their exposure to competition by, for instance, holding down their exchange rate. RE FRIEDRICH HAYEK (1899–1992) An Austrian political and economic theorist, Friedrich Hayek had an international career, including a stint at the University of Chicago, where – alongside Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, and others – he shaped what came to be known as a the ‘Chicago School’ of economic thought, closely associated with neoliberalism. Hayek’s central argument, honed during his two decades at the London School of Economics (LSE), from 1931 to 1950, and most concisely stated in his short book The Road to Serfdom (1944), was that the capitalist market mechanisms of free enterprise and supply and demand offer a morally superior way of organizing society to their socialist, or even moderately social democratic, welfarist alternatives. Hayek opposed nearly all forms of social security, and unemployment benefits in particular. But he also rejected laissez-faire (see p. 158), and argued that the state has an important role to play in implementing and refereeing market solutions to political problems. A hugely influential thinker, Hayek is said to have been championed by the British Prime Minister (1979–90) Margaret Thatcher, just as his fellow neoliberal Milton Friedman shaped the Reagan administration’s (1981–9) economic policies, effectively mainstreaming Anglo-American neoliberalism in the global economy from the 1980s onward. Hayek’s other key works include Individualism and Economic Order (1948) and The Constitution of Liberty (1960). IMPLICATIONS OF NEOLIBERALISM Financialization: The reconstruction of the finances of businesses, public bodies, and individual citizens to allow them to borrow money and so raise their spending. The apparent global ‘triumph’ of neoliberalism has provoked considerable debate. For neoliberals and their supporters, the clearest argument in favour of market reforms and economic liberalization is that they stimulated growth, not just for three decades in the United States with its renewed economic ascendancy (firmly burying, for example, widely made predictions in the 1970s and 1980s that the United States was about to be eclipsed by Japan and Germany) but also in the world economy. In this light, neoliberalism was based on a new growth model that has clearly demonstrated its superiority over the Keynesian-welfarist orthodoxy of old. At the core of the neoliberal growth model are financial markets and the process of ‘financialization’. This was made possible by a massive expansion of the financial sector of the economy, explaining the growing importance of Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, Singapore, and THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 145 elsewhere. In the process, capitalism was turned into ‘turbo-capitalism’, benefiting from greatly expanded monetary flows that were seeking an outlet in increased investment and higher consumption. Although this process involved a considerable growth of public and often private debt, this was thought to be sustainable due to the underlying growth that the debt fuelled. Other key features of the neoliberal growth model were a deeper integration of domestic economies into the global economy (and so an acceleration of economic globalization), the shift in many of the leading economies from manufacturing to services, and the enthusiastic introduction of new information technologies, often seen as the growth of the ‘knowledge economy’ (see p. 146). Neoliberalism, nevertheless, has its critics. They have, for example, argued that in rolling back welfare provision and promoting an ethic of material self-interest (‘greed is good’), neoliberalism struggles to maintain popular legitimacy as an economic doctrine because of its association with widening inequality and social breakdown. This led to a modification, although not a rejection, of the ‘neoliberal revolution’ in countries such as New Zealand, Canada, and the UK during the 1990s, and even to a reappraisal of neoliberal priorities in the United States under President Obama from 2009 onwards. Moreover, the limitations of neoliberalism as a programme for development were exposed by the failure of many ‘shock therapy’ experiments in market reform, not only in the pioneering case of Chile but also in the disappointing outcomes of many structural adjustment programmes (see p. 476 [Chapter 19]) in the developing world. In cases such as Russia, the growth of unemployment and inflation and the deep insecurities unleashed by the ‘shock therapy’ application of neoliberal principles created a backlash against market reform and led to strengthened support for nationalist and authoritarian movements, ultimately seeing the country move to state capitalism. A further problem is that neoliberalism’s ‘turbo’ features may have less to do with the dynamism of the market or technological innovation than with the willingness of consumers to spend and borrow, and the willingness of businesses to invest, making this economic model particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of financial markets and the shifts in consumer or business confidence. This is examined in greater depth later in this chapter in association with the crises of capitalism. FOCUS ON . . . THE ‘WASHINGTON CONSENSUS’ The term the ‘Washington consensus’ was coined by John Williamson (1990, 1993) to describe the policies that the international institutions based in Washington, the IMF and the World Bank, and the US Treasury Department had come to favour for the postcolonial reconstruction of economies in the developing world. Based on the ‘orthodox’ model of ‘development as modernization’ and drawing on the ideas of neoliberalism, the essence of the Washington consensus was ‘stabilize, privatize and liberalize’. In its longer version, the Washington consensus favoured the following: z fiscal discipline (cutting public spending); z tax reform (cutting personal and corporate taxes); z financial liberalization (the deregulation of financial markets and capital controls); z floating and competitive exchange rates; 5 146 GLOBAL POLITICS z trade liberalization (free trade); z openness to foreign direct investment; and z privatization. In the light of a backlash against such policies, and at times their failure, an ‘augmented’ Washington consensus has emerged that also stresses policies such as legal/political reform, anti-corruption, labour market flexibility, and poverty reduction. In the view of Robert Cox (see p. 180), neoliberalism, or what he calls ‘hyper-liberal globalizing capitalism’, is rooted in major contradictions and struggles, meaning that its dominance is destined to be challenged and eventually overthrown. These contradictions include the ‘democratic deficit’ that is generated by the ‘internationalization of the state’ (the tendency of the state to respond to the dictates of the global economy rather than public opinion), the growing pressure to protect the environment from the ravages caused by relentless economic growth, and the surrender of state authority to corporate financial and economic interests. A still darker interpretation of neoliberalism has been developed by Naomi Klein (2008). In highlighting the rise of ‘disaster capitalism’, she drew attention to the extent to which the advance of neoliberalism has been implicated in ‘shocks’, states of emergency and crises of one kind or another, thus suggesting that the United States’ foreign policy adventurism, from the overthrow of Allende to the ‘war on terror’, has been linked to the spread of neoliberalism. For many, the 2007–9 global financial crisis, discussed later in the chapter, exposed the underlying weaknesses of the neoliberal model. FOCUS ON . . . FROM THE ‘KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY’ TO A GLOBAL ‘GIG’ ECONOMY? The ‘knowledge economy’ is a term, popularized in the early twenty-first century, used to describe a new global economic order in which knowledge is supposedly a key source of competitiveness and productivity, especially through the application of information technologies (IT). Knowledge economies are sometimes portrayed as the economic expression of the transition from an industrial society to an information society. Proponents of the idea imagined a more fluid and mobile global economy and less tangible, physical, and exploitative modes of work. But has the IT revolution that started in the late twentieth century actually produced such a ‘techno-utopia’? Recently, the concept of a ‘gig’ economy has become popular among commentators. In an age of what critical international relations theorist Nick Srnicek calls ‘platform capitalism’, transnational corporations in the IT sector increasingly offer a hardware or software ‘platform’ on which nominally self-employed workers and producers can connect with and sell their goods and services to consumers. The US-based ‘peer-to-peer’ rideshare, minicab, and food delivery company, Uber, operates on this basis in more than sixty countries, while another Silicon Valley giant, Airbnb, connects individuals with rooms or homes to rent with travellers looking for accommodation in more than 190 countries. The key benefit of this economic model is supposed to be flexibility. A rideshare driver might have other paid work or domestic responsibilities and can choose when and where they wish to work based on convenience, for example, while a customer can find the closest car to them rather than waiting for one to be dispatched from a central location. However, critics have argued that gig economy firms are exploitative, taking large percentages of workers’ income, while affording them few rights and benefits in return, often dodging national labour laws because their workers are classified as self-employed, even where they do work for only one firm. Airbnb has also faced a political backlash, including protests and even new legislation designed to restrict its operation in some parts of Spain, where local communities found their quiet neighbourhoods transformed into noisy, seasonal tourist hubs. THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 147 ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION Internationalization: The growth of relations and movements (for instance, of goods, CAUSES OF ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION money, people, messages, How can the emergence of economic globalization best be explained, and how far has and ideas) across borders it progressed? There is nothing new about economic globalization. The development and between states, of transborder and transnational economic structures has been a central feature of creating higher levels of interdependence. CON imperialism (see p. 35), and, arguably, the high point of economic globalization came in the late nineteenth century with the scramble of European states for colonies in Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, modern and past forms of globalization differ in important ways. Earlier forms of globalization, sometimes seen as ‘proto-globalization’, usually established transnational economic organizations on the back of expansionist political projects. For example, the British East India Company, a state-backed but effectively ‘private’ and profit-seeking business, was instrumental to the establishment of British colonialism in the Indian subcontinent. Regardless of their spread and success, empires never succeeded in obliterating boundaries and borders; they merely readjusted them to the benefit of politically dominant powers, often establishing new boundaries between the ‘civilized’ world and the ‘barbarian’ one. In the case of the contemporary phenomenon of globalization, in contrast, the web of economic interconnectedness and interdependence has extended so far that it is possible, for the first time, to conceive of the world economy as a single global entity. This is the sense in which economic life has become ‘borderless’ (Ohmae 1990). C E PT ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION Economic globalization refers to the process whereby all national economies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been absorbed into an interlocking global economy. Globalization has thus been defined as ‘a shift from a world of distinct national economies to a global economy in which production is internationalized and financial capital flows freely and instantly between countries’ (Kinabo 2004). However, economic globalization should be distinguished from internationalization. The latter results in intensified interdependence between national economies (‘shallow integration’), while the former marks a qualitative shift towards ‘deep integration’, transcending territorial borders through the construction of a consolidated global marketplace for production, distribution, and consumption. The modern globalized economy developed in the second half of the twentieth century as a product of two phases. The first phase, which lasted from the end of the Second World War to the early 1970s, was characterized by new arrangements for the management of the international financial system in the post-war period, which became known as the Bretton Woods system (discussed in Chapter 20). Through a system of fixed exchange rates, regulation, and support, Bretton Woods aimed to prevent a return to the ‘beggarthy-neighbour’ economic policies that had contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s and, in the process, helped to fuel political extremism and aggression. Together with the Marshall Plan, which provided US financial aid to Europe, in particular to support post-war reconstruction, and the wide adoption of Keynesian economic policies aimed at delivering sustained growth, the Bretton Woods system underpinned the so-called ‘long boom’ of the post-1945 period. In substantially expanding productive 5 148 GLOBAL POLITICS capacity and helping to fashion a consumerist form of capitalism, it laid the basis for the later ‘accelerated’ economic globalization. Nevertheless, the collapse of Bretton Woods in the 1970s (see p. 580 [Chapter 20]), allowing major currencies to float instead of staying fixed, initiated the second phase in the development of globalized capitalism. The Bretton Woods system had been based on the assumption that the world economy consisted of a series of interlinked national economies: its purpose was to guarantee economic stability at the national level by regulating trading relations between and amongst nation states. However, the shift from fixed to floating exchange rates prompted by the breakdown of the system exposed national economies to greater competitive pressures. As a result, and in conjunction with others factors, such as the growing significance of transnational corporations, national economies were increasingly drawn into a web of interconnectedness. This economic interconnectedness achieved truly global dimensions in the 1990s thanks to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and elsewhere and the opening up of the Chinese economy. However, although there may be broad agreement about the events through which the global economy came into existence, there is much more debate about the deeper forces and underlying dynamics that helped to shape, and perhaps determine, these events. These debates reflect competing perspectives on international political economy and contrasting positions on whether economic circumstances are best explained by structural factors, such as the organization of production, or by the free choices made by economic actors, be these states, firms, or individuals. 149 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS A transnational corporation, or TNC, is a company that controls economic activity in two or more countries. The parent company is usually incorporated in one state (the ‘home’), with subsidiaries in others (the ‘hosts’), although subsidiaries may be separately incorporated affiliates. Such companies are now generally referred to as transnational corporations rather than multinational corporations – as TNCs as opposed to MNCs – to reflect the extent to which their corporate strategies and processes transcend national borders rather than merely crossing them. Integration across economic sectors and the growing importance of intra-firm trade has allowed TNCs to operate as economies in their own right, benefiting from geographical flexibility, advantages in product innovation, and the ability to pursue global marketing strategies. Some early transnational corporations developed in association with the spread of European colonialism, the classic example being the East India Company, established in 1600. However, the period since 1945 has witnessed a dramatic growth in their number, size, and global reach. Initially, the spread of transnational production was a largely US phenomenon, linked to enterprises such as General Motors, IBM, Exxon Mobil, and McDonald’s. European and Japanese companies quickly followed suit, extending the TNC phenomenon across the world. Today, US IT giants such as Apple and Google are among the biggest TNCs, with Chinese IT firms such as Huawei also becoming serious contenders. Significance: TNCs exert enormous economic power and political influence. Their economic significance is reflected in the fact that they often dwarf states in terms of their economic size. In 2018, the US retailer Wal-Mart collected more revenue from customers than Spain or Australia did from taxpayers. Oil firms such as Exxon Mobil, and technology TNCs such as Apple are, by this measure, bigger ‘economies’ than India, Russia, Turkey, or Mexico. However, economic size does not necessarily translate into political power or influence; states, after all, can do things that TNCs can only dream about, such as make laws and raise armies. What gives TNCs their strategic advantage over national governments is their ability to transcend territory through the growth of ‘trans-border’, even ‘trans-global’, communications and interactions, reflected, in particular, in the flexibility they enjoy over the location of production and investment. TNCs can, in effect, shop around, looking for circumstances that are conducive to profitability. They are likely to be drawn to states or areas that can offer, for instance, a stable political environment, low levels of taxation (especially corporate taxation), low levels of economic and financial regulation, available supplies of cheap or wellskilled labour, weak trade unions and limited protection for labour rights, and access to markets preferably composed of consumers with high disposable incomes. This creates a relationship of structural dependency between the state and TNCs whereby states rely on TNCs to provide jobs and capital inflows but can only attract them by providing circumstances favourable to their interests. Defenders of corporations argue that they bring massive economic benefits and that their political influence has been much exaggerated by the anti-globalization movement. Arguments in support of TNCs point to their two huge economic benefits: efficiency and high level of consumer responsiveness. Greater efficiency has resulted from their historically unprecedented ability to reap the benefits from economies of scale and from the development of new productive methods and the application of new technologies. The consumer responsiveness of TNCs is demonstrated by their huge investment in research and development and product innovation. Critics nevertheless portray a much more sinister image of TNCs, arguing that they have accumulated excessive economic power, unacceptable levels of political influence, and created a ‘brand culture’ that pollutes the public sphere through the proliferation of commercial images and manipulates personal preferences. 150 GLOBAL POLITICS In practice, complex economic developments such as the emergence of the global capitalist system are best explained through the dynamic relationship between structures and agents (O’Brien and Williams 2020). The most influential structuralist explanation of the emergence of a global economy is the Marxist argument that capitalism is an inherently universalist economic system. In short, globalization is the natural and inevitable consequence of the capitalist mode of production. As Marx (see p. 111) put it in the Grundrisse ([1857–8] 1971), the essence of capitalism is to ‘pull down every local barrier to commerce’ and ‘to capture the whole world as its market’ (quoted in McLellan 1980, p. 128). This occurs because the underlying dynamic of the capitalist system is the accumulation of capital, which, in turn, creates an irresistible desire to develop new markets and an unquenchable thirst for new and cheaper economic resources. According to Marxists, just as imperialism in the late nineteenth century had been fuelled by the desire to maintain profit levels, the acceleration of globalization from the late twentieth century onwards was a consequence of the end of the post-1945 ‘long boom’ and the onset of a global recession in the 1970s. Although liberals fiercely reject the critical Marxist view of capitalism, they nevertheless accept that globalization is fuelled by an underlying economic logic. In their case, this is linked not to the impulses of a capitalist enterprise but, in essence, to the content of human nature, specifically the innate and rational human desire for economic betterment. In this view, the global economy is merely a reflection of the fact that, regardless of their different cultures and traditions, people everywhere have come to recognize that market interaction is the best guarantee of material security and improved living standards. This is particularly expressed in the doctrine of free trade and the theory of competitive advantage, examined more closely in Chapter 19. As far as explaining when and how this inclination towards ‘globality’ started to be realized, liberals often emphasize the role of technological innovation. Technology, needless to say, has long played a role in facilitating transborder and even transworld connections between peoples – from the introduction of the telegraph (1857) and the telephone (1876) to the development of the aeroplane (1903), and the introduction of containerization in sea transport (1960s and 1970s). However, advances in IT – notable examples include the invention of optical fibres in the late 1960s, and the introduction of commercial silicone chips in 1971 and of personal computers in 1981 – have played a particularly important role in spurring progress towards globalization, especially by facilitating the development of global financial markets and the global administration of corporations. In the view of so-called ‘hyperglobalists’, globalized economic and cultural patterns, in effect, became inevitable once technologies such as computerized financial trading, mobile phones, and the internet became widely available in the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, the global economy is not the creation of economic and technological forces alone; political and ideological factors also played a crucial part. Realist theorists, reviving the ideas of mercantilism, have countered the liberal and Marxist idea that globalization represents the final victory of economics over politics by emphasizing that, in crucial ways, the global economy is a product of state policy and institutional regulation. Far from sidelining states, globalization may, in certain respects, be a device through which powerful states, and especially the United States, have achieved their objectives. For example, the United States was instrumental in both the creation of the THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE Bretton Woods system and its collapse. In this sense, globalization may be a response to the relative decline of the US economy in the 1970s and 1980s; a period of transnational recession in Western economies characterized by ‘stagflation’ (see p. 143) and triggered in part by the 1973 oil crisis, when OPEC embargoed the United States and other Western powers for their support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In this context, the shift towards a more open and ‘liberalized’ trading system could be viewed as a means of widening opportunities for US-based transnational corporations, thereby underpinning the health of the US economy. Indeed, much of this was achieved through, rather than in spite of, the institutions of economic governance that were constructed in the post1945 period. The disproportionate influence that the United States exerts over the World Bank and the IMF, and the role played by the United States in transforming the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the more strongly pro-free-trade World Trade Organization (WTO), demonstrates the extent to which economic globalization was structured in line with US priorities, laid out through the Washington consensus. Finally, these developments also have an ideological dimension. Unlike, for example, nineteenth-century imperialism, twentieth- and twenty-first-century globalization has not been brought about through coercion and explicit political domination. While liberals may argue that ‘globalization by consent’ – observed, for example, in an eagerness of states to join the WTO – reflects an underlying recognition of mutual economic benefit, critical theorists, who emphasize that the benefits of globalization are unequally shared, argue that this consent is manufactured through the spread of pro-market values and a culture of consumerism and materialism. In this view, the progress of economic globalization is underpinned by the advance of the ideology of neoliberalism, which preaches both that there is no viable economic alternative to the global capitalist system and that the system is equitable and brings benefit to all. HOW GLOBALIZED IS ECONOMIC LIFE? Is economic globalization a myth or a reality? Have national economies effectively been absorbed into a single global system, or does the world economy continue to consist of a collection of interlinked national economies? Two starkly contrasting positions are often adopted in this debate. On the one hand, hyperglobalists present the image of a ‘borderless’ global economy, in which the tendency for economic interaction to have a transborder or transworld character is irresistible, facilitated, even dictated, by advances in information technologies (which are not now going to be disinvented). On the other hand, globalization sceptics point out that the demise of the national economy has been much exaggerated, and usually for ideological purposes: economic globalization is portrayed as advanced and irresistible, to make a shift towards free market or neoliberal policies appear to be inevitable (Hirst and Thompson 1999). However, the choice between the model of a single global economy and a collection of more or less interdependent national economies is a misleading one. This does not deny the existence of a global economy, but that this image captures only part of a much more complex and differentiated reality. The world economy is better thought of as a ‘globalizing’ economy than as a ‘global’ economy: modern economic life is increasingly shaped by processes that have a regional and global, and not merely national, character. However, the significance 151 Consumerism: A psychological and cultural phenomenon whereby personal happiness is equated with the consumption of material possessions (see p. 216). 5 152 GLOBAL POLITICS of national, regional, and global levels differs markedly in different economic sectors and types of activity, and, of course, in different parts of the world. Economic globalization is certainly not an ‘even’ process. Global interconnectedness has nevertheless increased in a number of ways. The most important of these include the following: z international trade; z transnational production; z the global division of labour; and z the global financial system. DEBATING . . . DOES ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION PROMOTE PROSPERITY AND OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL? As the end of the Cold War was widely viewed as the end of a grand ideological battle between capitalist and communist economic models, post-Cold War political debate has tended to focus on the globalization of capitalism. Should economic globalization be welcomed and embraced, or should it be resisted? FOR AGAINST The magic of the market. From an economic liberal perspective, the market is the only reliable means of generating wealth, the surest guarantee of prosperity and economic opportunity. This is because the market, competition, and the profit motive provide incentives for work and enterprise, and also allocate resources to their most profitable use. From this perspective, economic globalization, based on the transborder expansion of market economics, is a way of ensuring that people in all countries can benefit from the wider prosperity and expanded opportunities that only capitalism can bring. Deepening poverty and inequality. Critics of globalization have drawn attention to the emergence of new and deeply entrenched patterns of inequality: globalization is thus a game of winners and losers. Critical theorists argue that the winners are TNCs and industrially advanced states generally, but particularly the United States, while the losers are in the developing world, where wages are low, regulation is weak or non-existent, and production is increasingly orientated around global markets rather than domestic needs. Economic globalization is therefore a form of neocolonialism: it forces poor countries to open up their markets and allow their resources to be plundered by rich states. Everyone’s a winner. The great advantage of economic globalization is that it is a game of winners and winners. Although it makes the rich richer, it also makes the poor less poor. This occurs because international trade allows countries to specialize in the production of goods or services in which they have a ‘comparative advantage’, with other benefits accruing from the economies of scale that specialization makes possible. Similarly, transnational production is a force for good. TNCs, for instance, spread wealth, widen employment opportunities, and improve access to modern technology in the developing world, helping to explain why developing world governments are usually so keen to attract inward investment. Economic globalization is thus the most reliable means of reducing poverty. The ‘hollowing out’ of politics and democracy. Economic globalization diminishes the influence of national governments and therefore restricts public accountability. State policy is driven instead by the need to attract inward investment and the pressures generated by intensifying international competition. Integration into the global economy therefore usually means tax reform, deregulation, and the scaling back of welfare. The alleged link between global capitalism and democratization is also a myth. Many states that have introduced market reforms and sought to integrate into the global economy have remained authoritarian if not dictatorial, conforming to the principles of state capitalism. THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE Economic freedom promotes other freedoms. Economic globalization does not just make societies richer. Rather, an open, market-based economy also brings social and political benefits. Social mobility increases as people are able to take advantage of wider working, career, and educational opportunities, and the ‘despotism’ of custom and tradition is weakened as individualism and self-expression are given freer rein. Economic globalization is thus linked to democratization, the two processes coinciding very clearly in the 1990s. This occurs because people who enjoy wider economic and social opportunities soon demand greater opportunities for political participation, particularly through the introduction of multiparty elections. 153 Corruptions of consumerist materialism. Even when economic globalization has succeeded in making people richer, it is less clear that it has improved, still less enriched, the quality of their lives. This is because it promotes an ethic of consumerism and material self-interest. Cultural and social distinctiveness is lost as people the world over consume the same goods, buy from the same stores, and enjoy similar working practices and living conditions. This is particularly evident in the development of a ‘brand culture’, which pollutes public and personal spaces to create a culture of unthinking consumerism, even managing to absorb radical challenges to its dominance by turning them into consumer products (Klein 2000). International Trade An increase in international trade has been one of the most prominent features of the world economy since 1945. Over this period, international trade has, on average, grown at double the rate of international production. The trade value of global exports, for instance, grew from $130 billion in 1960 to $19.5 trillion in 2019. Such trends were facilitated by the widely accepted link between trade and economic growth, exemplified by the success of export-orientated economies such as Germany and Japan from the 1950s onwards and the ‘tiger’ economies of East and Southeast Asia from the 1970s onwards, and by a general trend towards free trade, punctuated briefly by a revival of protectionism in the 1970s. One of the novel features of international trade in the contemporary world economy is the increasing proportion of it that takes place within the same industry rather than between industries (which significantly heightens price competition) and the rise of intra-firm trade, made possible by the rise of TNCs. The growth of trade within firms, rather than between separate, individual firms, is one of the clearest signs of intensifying globalization. On the other hand, sceptics argue that trends in international trade are not a strong indication of the extent of globalization. For instance, there is arguably little difference between modern levels of international trade and historical ones, and, with the exception of intra-firm trade, international trade promotes ‘shallow’ integration and greater interdependence, rather than a single globalized economy. Moreover, it is questionable whether the modern trading system has a truly global reach, in that around 80 per cent of world trade continues to take place between or among developed states, and most of this takes place within particular regions – in particular North America, Europe, and East and Southeast Asia – rather than between different regions. Transborder Production The issue of transborder production is closely linked to the growing importance of TNCs, which have come to account for most of the world’s production and around half of world trade. Such corporations take advantage of global sourcing, through their ability to draw raw materials, components, investment, and services from anywhere in the world. Intra-firm trade: Trade between two affiliates within the same company, or between a parent company and an affiliate. 5 154 GLOBAL POLITICS Crucially, they also have the advantage of being able to locate and relocate production in states or areas that are favourable to efficiency and profitability – for example, ones with cheap but relatively highly skilled sources of labour, or low corporation taxes and limited frameworks of workers’ rights. Such trends, however, stop well short of a fully globalized system of production. Not only do most TNCs maintain strong links to their country of origin, and therefore only appear to be ‘transnational’ but, moreover, production continues overwhelmingly to be concentrated in the developed world. Global Division of Labour FIG U Further evidence of economic globalization can be found in a strengthened global division of labour. Although this falls short of establishing a single, world labour market, clearer patterns of economic specialization have become evident. In particular, high technology manufacturing has increasingly been concentrated in the developed world, while for many poorer states integration into the global economy means the production of agricultural goods or raw materials for export. Neo-Marxists and world-system theorists such as Immanuel Wallerstein have argued that economic globalization is an uneven and hierarchical process, a game of winners and losers, which has seen economic power concentrated in an economic ‘core’ at the expense of the ‘periphery’. Societies in core regions benefit from the concentration of capital in its most sophisticated forms, while peripheral ones are dependent on the export of raw materials to the core, with the semi-periphery consisting of those societies in which both core and peripheral production processes are important (China today would be a good example). In the ‘commodity chains’ that connect these societies, profit margins will be highest at the peripheral end, where wages are lowest and labour less skilled (the prevalence of ‘sweatshop’ clothing manufacture in Bangladesh, for example). These disparities also, to some extent, reflect differing levels of integration within the global economy, core areas or states being more fully integrated into the global economy, and thus reaping its benefits, while peripheral ones remain outside or at its margins. RE IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN (1930–2019) US sociologist and pioneer of world-systems theory. Influenced by neo-Marxist dependency theory and the ideas of the French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–85), Wallerstein argued that the modern, capitalist world system is characterized by an international division of labour between the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery’. Wallerstein also traced the rise and decline of core hegemons (dominant powers) to changes in the world system over time, arguing that the end of the Cold War marked the decline, not triumph, of the US hegemony. For Wallerstein, ‘globalization’ was not the territorial expansion of the capitalist world economy, a process that was effectively complete by the end of the nineteenth century, but its entrenchment; globalization is the deepening rather than the widening of capitalist social and economic relations in what Wallerstein called ‘the Source: Louis MONIER/Gammacommodification of everything’. Though steeped in Marxist theory and terminology – Rapho/Getty Images including the language of class and commodification – Wallerstein was critical of both the Marxist and social democratic left. He was also a friend and noted intellectual defender of Frantz Fanon (see p. 282), the Algerian revolutionary and influential anti-colonial theorist whose arguments about race, class, and revolution prompted hostility from many white European Marxists. Wallerstein’s key works include the three-volume The Modern World System (1974, 1980, 1989), the essay Historical Capitalism (1983), and The Decline of American Power (2003). THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 155 Global Financial System The global financial system is often portrayed as the driving force behind economic globalization, even the foundation stone of the global economy. The global financial system was brought into existence through two processes. The first was the general shift towards deregulated financial markets in the 1970s and 1980s that followed the move to floating exchange rates with the collapse of Bretton Woods. This allowed money and capital to flow both within and between national economies with much greater ease. Then, in the 1990s, the application of new information and communication technologies to financial markets gave financial transactions a genuinely supraterritorial character, enabling transborder transactions to be conducted literally at ‘the speed of thought’. An example of this is the emergence of global foreign exchange markets, reflecting the fact that currencies have lost their national character in that they are traded across the globe and have values that are determined by global market forces. In 2013, approximately $5.3 trillion was traded each day in global currency markets. By 2019, this figure had risen to $6.6 trillion, an increase thought to be driven in part by the proliferation of smaller traders and the rise of algorithmic (automated) trading. The impact of financial globalization on the stability of national economies as well as global capitalism has, nevertheless, been a matter of considerable debate. In consideration of these factors of global interconnectedness it is important to remember that the conventional debate about the extent to which economic life has been globalized is conducted within narrow parameters, established by what is treated as productive labour and who are considered to be economically active. Despite the collapse of communism and the wider retreat of socialism, significant non-capitalist, or at least non-commercial, economic forms persist in many parts of the world. Feminist economists in particular have drawn attention to the vast, informal, ‘invisible’ economy that relies on unpaid labour, predominantly performed by women, in areas such housework, childcare, care for the elderly, and small-scale farming. Especially important in the developing world, this economy operates on lines of exchange and material arrangements that are entirely outside global markets. It may, nevertheless, be responsible for feeding a substantial proportion of the world’s population. For example, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has found that in societies across south and central Asia, and in the pacific islands, women contribute significantly to national agricultural production, often through home gardens. An awareness of the significance of this ‘invisible’ economy has increasingly influenced the development strategies embraced by the United Nations and the World Bank, not least because of a realization that conventional, market-based development strategies can undermine the ‘invisible’ economy. GLOBAL CAPITALISM IN CRISIS EXPLAINING BOOMS AND SLUMPS The tendency towards booms, slumps, and crises within a capitalist economy does not fit easily into classical liberal political economy. Economic liberalism is largely based on the assumption that market economies tend naturally towards a state of equilibrium, 5 156 GLOBAL POLITICS Deflation: A reduction in the general level of prices, linked to a reduction in the level of economic activity in the economy. demand and supply coming into line with one another through the workings of the price mechanism – Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’. However, the history of capitalism, at both national and international levels, does not bear out this image of equilibrium and stability. Instead, capitalism has always been susceptible to booms and slumps, even violent fluctuations and crises. As early as 1720, the collapse of the so-called ‘South Sea Bubble’ (wildly speculative trading in the South Sea Company, a UK joint stock company granted a monopoly to trade in Spain’s South American colonies) caused financial ruin for thousands of investors. One factor that appears to be linked to economic fluctuations is war. Many of the most dramatic historical episodes of sustained deflation came in the aftermath of war (see ‘Key Events’). Linkages between war and economic performance stem from a variety of factors: the cost of financing unproductive military activity, the disruption of commerce, the freezing of capital movements, the cost of reconstruction, and so on. EVE NT S WAR AND ECONOMIC FLUCTUATIONS Conflict American War of Independence (1775–83) Economic Aftermath Sustained economic depression Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)Decades of deflation characterized by costly industrial investment and several bankruptcies Speculative bubbles of the mid-nineteenth Italian (1815–71) and German (1864–71) Wars of Reunificationcentury collapsed, leading to widespread bankruptcies and stock market crashes Brief reconstruction boom before collapse of major First World War (1914–18) Western economies 1920–1, followed by the Great Depression from 1929 Inflationary surges that initially reduced and then Korean War (1950–3) and Vietnam War (1955–75) increased interest rates, which, in turn, created surges and declines in industrial investment However, other explanations of booms and slumps locate their source within the nature of the capitalist system itself. The classic example of this is found in Marx’s analysis of capitalism. Marx was concerned not only to highlight the inherent instability of capitalism, based on irreconcilable class conflict, but also to analyse the nature of capitalist development. In particular, he drew attention to its tendency to experience deepening economic crises. These stemmed, in the main, from cyclical crises of overproduction, plunging the economy into stagnation and bringing unemployment and ‘immiseration’, or wage suppression and alienation, to the working class. Each crisis would be more severe than the last because, Marx calculated, in the long term the rate of profit would fall. This would eventually, and inevitably, produce conditions in which the proletariat, the vast majority in society, would rise up in revolution. Whatever its other advantages, the Marxist image of ‘deepening’ crises of capitalism, leading irresistibly towards the system’s final collapse and replacement, has proved to be unsound. By contrast, capitalism has proved to be remarkably resilient and adaptable, capable of weathering financial and economic storms of various kinds, THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 157 while also achieving long-term growth and expansion. This has occurred not least through the fact that capitalism’s capacity for technological innovation has far outstripped Marx’s expectations. Comparatively few therefore continue to see the tendency towards boomand-bust cycles as a fatal flaw within capitalism, still less as a precursor of social revolution. Business cycle: Regular oscillations in the level of business activity over time, sometimes called a ‘trade cycle’. Amongst the most influential of non-Marxist theories were those developed by the Austrian economist and social theorist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950). Building on Marx’s theory of the capitalist business cycle, Schumpeter (1942) argued that capitalism existed in a state of ferment he dubbed ‘creative destruction’, with spurts of innovation destroying established enterprises and yielding new ones. The notion of creative destruction captures both the idea that it is entrepreneurs who drive economies, generating growth and, through successes and failures, setting business cycles in motion, and the idea that innovation is the main driver of wealth. However, Schumpeter himself was pessimistic about the long-term prospects for capitalism, arguing that the human and social costs of periodic slumps and the stifling of dynamism, creativity, and individualism through the growth of elitism and state intervention would ultimately lead to capitalism’s demise. Developments in the post1945 period, and especially in the age of accelerated globalization and ‘turbo-capitalism’, nevertheless, suggest that Schumpeter seriously underestimated capitalism’s sustained appetite for creative destruction. More conventional academic economists tend to explain boom-and-bust cycles in terms of the factors determining business investment and its effects on the level of GDP. In such views, levels of business investment are inherently unstable because of factors such as the multiplier effect (the exaggerated impact of spending and investment as it ripples through the economy) and the accelerator principle (the hypothesis that levels of investment vary with changes to the rate of output). Recession: A period of general economic decline that is part of the usual business cycle. LESSONS OF THE GREAT CRASH The greatest challenge that international capitalism has faced was posed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was precipitated by the Wall Street Crash or Great Crash of 1929. From 1926, the United States experienced an artificial boom, fed by a rash of speculation and the expectation of ever-rising share prices. However, in 1929 confidence in the economy suddenly evaporated when signs appeared that the sale of goods was starting to decline. On 24 October 1929 (‘Black Thursday’), a panic ensued on the stock market as 13 million shares changed hands in a single day. On 29 October, 16 million shares were sold. Banks subsequently failed, major businesses started to collapse, and unemployment began to rise. As a severe economic depression in the United States spread abroad, affecting, to some degree, all industrialized states, the Great Crash became a Great Depression. The Wall Street Crash is relatively easy to explain. As J. K. Galbraith argued in his classic The Great Crash, 1929 ([1954] 2021), it was just ‘another speculative bubble’, albeit on an historically unprecedented scale. It was, he argued, an ‘escape into make believe’, fuelled by the belief that it is possible to get rich without effort and without work. That stock market crises have an impact on the ‘real’ economy is not a surprise, given the fact that falling stock values inevitably lead to a decline in business and consumer confidence, reducing the funds available for investment as well as domestic demand. However, does a recession have to become a fully-fledged depression? In the case of the Great Crash, two key mistakes were made. 5 158 GLOBAL POLITICS ‘Migrant Mother’ (1936): Dorothea Lange’s widely reproduced photograph of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in a California camp, among field labourers rendered destitute by that year’s pea crop failure, is emblematic of the poverty and anxiety of the Great Depression Source: Library of Congress CON First, in view of a strong belief in ‘rugged individualism’ and the doctrine of laissezfaire, the Hoover administration responded to the Wall Street Crash by keeping public spending low and trying to achieve a balanced budget. Not only did this mean that the unemployed had to rely mainly on private charity (such as soup kitchens) for survival, but it also meant that, in withdrawing money from the economy, it helped to deepen, rather than cure, the crisis. C E PT LAISSEZ-FAIRE Laissez-faire (in French meaning literally ‘leave to do’) is the principle of non-intervention in economic affairs. It is the heart of the doctrine that the economy works best when left alone by government. The phrase originated with the Physiocrats – eighteenth-century French economists who believed land and agriculture to be the centre of value production – who devised the maxim ‘laissez faire est laissez passer’ (leave the individual alone, and let commodities circulate freely). The central assumption of laissez-faire is that an unregulated market tends naturally towards equilibrium. This is usually explained by the theory of ‘perfect competition’. From this perspective, government intervention is seen as damaging unless it is restricted to actions that promote market competition, such as checks on monopolies and the maintenance of stable prices. THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE This lesson was most crucially taught by Keynes, whose The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) challenged classical economic thinking and rejected its belief in a self-regulating market. Keynes argued that the level of economic activity, and therefore employment, is determined by the total amount of demand – aggregate demand – in the economy. This implied that governments could manage their economies through adjusting their fiscal policies, injecting demand into the economy in times of recession and high employment by either increasing public spending or reducing taxation. Unemployment could therefore be solved not by the invisible hand of capitalism but by government intervention, in this case by running a budget deficit, meaning that the government literally overspends. The first, if limited, attempts to apply Keynes’ ideas were undertaken in the United States during Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, but even then Roosevelt was unwilling to move away from the idea of a balanced budget, helping to explain why the Great Depression ran throughout the 1930s and only ended with the increase in military spending after the outbreak of the Second World War. Only in Germany did the Depression end earlier, and that was because rearmament and military expansion from the mid-1930s onwards served as a form of ‘inadvertent Keynesianism’. 159 Fiscal policies: Policies whereby a government uses public spending or taxation in an effort to produce national economic effects, such as increased growth or employment. Beggar-thy-neighbour policies: Policies pursued at the expense of other states that are believed to be in their own country’s short-term national interest; most commonly used to describe protectionism. Devaluation: A reduction in the value of a currency relative to other The second lesson of the Great Crash was that its economic impact was substantially currencies. deepened by the general trend towards ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ policies. Governments sought to reduce imports and maximize their exports with devaluation. The hope was that exports would become cheaper for overseas customers, while imports would become relatively more expensive, and less desirable. However, although countries that devalued earlier tended to recover from the Depression more quickly than the later devaluers did, competitive devaluations had a net deflationary effect and so deepened the economic crisis. Governments raised tariffs on imports too, in the hope of protecting domestic industries and reducing unemployment, a policy that even Keynes favoured. However, the overall impact of beggar-thy-neighbour policies was self-defeating, and only served to deepen and prolong the Great Depression. Countries cannot maximize their exports while minimizing their imports if all countries are trying to do the same thing. It was largely in an attempt to prevent the international economy being damaged in the post1945 period by such policies that the Bretton Woods system was set up. MODERN CRISES AND ‘CONTAGIONS’ During the early post-1945 period, Western governments widely believed that the instabilities of the business cycle had been solved by the application of Keynesian principles, which seemed to offer a means of counteracting the tendency towards booms and slumps. However, the belief in Keynesianism declined after the ‘stagflation’ crisis of the 1970s, hastened by the subsequent revival of laissez-faire thinking in the guise of neoliberalism. This nevertheless did not cure, but rather accentuated, the fluctuations within the capitalist system, intensifying its tendency towards creative destruction. This is an important aspect of the development of a ‘risk society’. In particular, greater instability was a direct result of the tendency towards ‘financialization’. 5 160 GLOBAL POLITICS Casino capitalism: A form of capitalism that is highly volatile and unpredictable because it is susceptible to speculatively orientated lifts in finance capital. FIG U Contagion: The tendency of investors, alarmed by a crisis in one part of the world, to remove money from other parts of the world, thereby spreading panic well beyond the scope of the initial problem. RE Financial markets are always susceptible to fluctuations and instability as a result of speculative bubbles. However, the emergence of a globalized financial system has accentuated these tendencies, by leaving states more vulnerable and exposed to the vagaries of global markets. This has created what Susan Strange (1986) dubbed ‘casino capitalism’. Massive amounts of ‘mad money’ surge around the world, creating the phenomenon of financial contagion. Such instabilities have been further accentuated by the fact that most modern financial growth has occurred in the form of purely money-dealing currency and security exchanges, such as so-called ‘hedge funds’, which are linked to profits from future, rather than actual, production, and ‘derivatives’, the value of which depend on the price of an underlying security or asset. Thus, although global financial flows can create artificial booms and slumps, as well as reap massive rewards for global speculators, they are, in a sense, one step removed from the performance of ‘real’ economies. The tendency for financial bubbles to form has also been linked to a ‘bonus culture’ that took root to varying degrees in banks and financial institutions across the world. The payment of massive bonuses incentivized short-term risk-taking, making banks and financial institutions more insecure and even vulnerable to collapse once the bubble burst. JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883–1946) British economist. Keynes’ reputation was established by his critique of the Treaty of Versailles, outlined in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). His major work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ([1936] 1963), departed significantly from neoclassical economic theories and went a long way towards establishing the discipline now known as macroeconomics. By challenging laissez-faire principles, he provided the theoretical basis for the policy of demand management, which was widely adopted by Western governments in the early post-1945 period. The last years of his life saw him devoting much of his efforts to shaping the nature of the post-war international monetary order through the establishment of the Bretton Woods system, including the IMF and the World Bank. The economic instability of casino capitalism and its tendency towards financial crises has been demonstrated since the mid-1990s in Mexico, East and Southeast Asia, Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere. THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS The Asian financial crisis was the most significant and far-reaching such crisis before the global financial crisis of 2008. The Asian crisis started in July 1997 when speculators in Thailand, anticipating that the government would have to devalue its currency, the baht, sold strongly, thereby turning their expectations into a reality. This led to a classic financial contagion, as similar speculative attacks were then mounted against Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea, with Hong Kong, Taiwan, and even China in danger of being drawn into the turmoil. As governments used up their entire foreign exchange reserves, economic output fell, unemployment increased, and wages plummeted. At the end of 1997, the whole of Southeast Asia was in the throes of a financial crisis that threatened to disrupt the stability of the entire global economy. Financial stability and, more gradually, economic recovery were brought about by the provision of bail-out funds by THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE the IMF to Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea. However, this occurred at the cost of the liberalization of their financial systems, and therefore a reduction in domestic economic control. By contrast, Malaysia, which had resisted IMF pressure and instituted capital controls, was successful in preventing further rapid transborder capital flows. The crisis also demonstrated the disjuncture between the performance of financial markets and that of the ‘real’ economy, in that the Asian financial crisis occurred despite higher growth rates across much of East and Southeast Asia between the early 1960s and the 1990s, and especially in the ‘tiger’ economies. 161 Credit crisis: A reduction in the general availability of loans (or credit), usually due to an unwillingness of banks to lend to one another. THE 2007 CRASH, THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS AND THE GREAT RECESSION The global financial crisis started in the middle of 2007 with the onset of a credit crisis, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, itself a consequence of a debt bubble connected with the United States’ housing market, where banks had loaned to clients likely to default, to sneak these ‘sub-prime’ mortgages into packages of debt being traded in the financial markets. However, this merely provided a background to the remarkable events of September 2008, when global capitalism appeared to teeter on the brink of the abyss, threatening to tip over into systemic failure. The decisive events took place in the United States. The two government-sponsored mortgage corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were bailed out by federal authorities; Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank, succumbed to bankruptcy; the insurance giant AIG was only saved by a $85 billion government rescue package; while Wachovia, the fourth largest US bank, was bought by Citigroup, absorbing $42 billion of bad debt. Banking crises erupted elsewhere, and stock markets went into freefall worldwide, massively reducing share values and betokening the onset of a global recession, which lasted, in most countries, until 2009, although much of Europe re-entered recession in 2011. EVE NT S CRISES OF MODERN GLOBAL CAPITALISM 1994–5The Mexican economic crisis begins with the sudden devaluation of the Mexican peso and has an impact elsewhere in Latin America (the ‘Tequila effect’). 1997–8The Asian financial crisis starts in Thailand with the collapse of the baht but spreads to most of Southeast Asia and Japan, where currencies slump and stock markets crash. 1998The Russian financial crisis sees the collapse of stock, bond, and currency markets in a context of falling commodity prices in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. 1999–2002The Argentine economic crisis begins with a loss of investor confidence in the Argentine economy in a context of falling GDP, leading to a flight of money away from the country. 2000The dot-com crisis sees the bursting of the ‘dot-com bubble’ after dramatic speculative rises in IT-related stocks since 1998. 2002The Uruguay banking crisis witnesses a massive run on banks amid concerns about the links of the Uruguayan economy with Argentina’s economic meltdown. 5 162 GLOBAL POLITICS 2007–8 The US sub-prime mortgage crisis precipitates the global financial crisis. 2007–9 The global financial crisis. 2010–13The eurozone crisis (see p. 626). 2010– The Venezuelan crisis, triggered in part by falling oil prices and major shortages of essential commodities by the end of the 2010s. 2014–15Another Russian financial crisis, with multiple economic and political causes, including falling oil prices, the devaluation of the rouble, and the sanctions imposed in response to its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine (see p. 186). 2014–16The Brazilian economic crisis, triggered in part by the slowdown of Chinese economic growth and its effect on Brazilian commodities exports. 2016The UK’s vote to leave the EU sees a sharp drop in the value of the Great British Pound against the US Dollar, the Euro, and other currencies, from which it has not yet recovered. Uncertainty over the terms of Brexit have caused ongoing volatility in exchange rates. 2020– The onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 combined with ongoing impacts of the global financial crisis a decade earlier and the outbreak of a major war between Russia and Ukraine in 2022 have led to significant global economic volatility. Debates about the implications of the global financial crisis of 2007–9 are closely linked to disagreement about its underlying causes. Was the crisis rooted in the US banking system, in Anglo-American enterprise capitalism, or in the nature of the capitalist system itself? At one level, the crisis was linked to inappropriate lending strategies adopted by US banks and mortgage institutions, the ‘sub-prime’ mortgage market. These highrisk loans to applicants with poor or non-existent credit histories were unlikely to be repaid, and when the scale of ‘toxic debt’ became apparent shockwaves ran through the US financial system and beyond. At a deeper level, however, the ‘sub-prime’ problem in the United States was merely a symptom of the defects and vulnerabilities of the neoliberal capitalism that has taken root in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere, based on free markets and an under-regulated financial system. For George Soros (see p. 163), the crisis of 2007–9 reflected the failure of the market fundamentalism that had underpinned neoliberal economic thinking. Challenging the notion that markets operate rationally to ensure that resources are allocated to their most profitable use, Soros (2008) argued that deregulated financial markets had allowed a ‘super-bubble’ to develop over a period of some twenty-five years, taking the form of massive and unsustainable debt. When this super-bubble burst, many of the financial instruments (bonds, securities, derivatives, and so on) that had been traded in ever-larger volumes were suddenly revealed to be almost valueless. Even an avowed supporter of laissez-faire capitalism such as the former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan (2008) has noted the tendency of markets towards ‘irrational exuberance’, leading to an undue escalation in asset values. FIG U THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE RES 163 KEY CONTEMPORARY ECONOMIC THEORISTS GEORGE SOROS (1930–) A Hungarian-born stock market investor, businessman, and philanthropist, Soros has been a critic of the market fundamentalist belief in natural equilibrium. He particularly emphasizes the role of reflexivity (the tendency for cause and effect to be linked, as actions ‘bend back on’ themselves) in showing why rational-actor economic models do not work. Soros’ main works include Open Society (2000) and The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (2008). 5 Source: ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images BEN BERNANKE (1953–) A US economist and Chairman of the US Federal Reserve between 2006 and 2014, Bernanke was instrumental in managing the United States’ response to the 2007–9 global financial crisis. Bernanke’s academic writings have focused largely on the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, highlighting, amongst other things, the role of the Federal Reserve and the tendency of banks and financial institutions to cut back significantly on lending. Bernanke’s main work is Essays on the Great Depression (2004). Source: Alex Wong/ Getty Images HA-JOON CHANG (1963–) A South Korean development economist working in the UK, Ha-Joon Chang has become a prominent public intellectual since the onset of the global financial crisis. Chang draws on ‘heterodox’ economic theory, rather than the narrow liberal or neoclassical tradition, and argued in Kicking Away the Ladder (2002) that powerful Western states originally acquired their economic supremacy through the ‘nationalistic use of heavy protectionism’, before going on to moralizingly promote ‘free trade’ and laissez-faire to developing countries. In the wake of the 2007 financial crash, Chang welcomed a burgeoning student movement demanding a new, heterodox curriculum under the banner of ‘postcrash economics’, and has worked to make economics intelligible and accessible to the general Source: David public through his writing and frequent media appearances. His other key works include Reclaiming Levenson/Getty Development (2004), 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (2010), and Economics: The Images User’s Guide (2014). JUANITA ELIAS A Professor of International Political Economy specializing in research on the ‘everyday’ experiences of IPE, and the racialized and gendered inequalities that are produced and sustained by multinational corporations in the global economy, Juanita Elias spent her early career in Australia, before moving to the UK in 2014. Elias has been a central figure in developing feminist IPE. In Fashioning Inequality (2004), she critiqued liberal IPE and its view of the ‘progressive Source: With permission from firm’ as an agent for globalization, exploring how TNCs replicate and reinforce local gendered Juanita Elias. divisions of labour in the societies they outsource manufacturing to. Elias is co-editor of a key feminist IPE book series on ‘Global Political Economies of Gender and Sexuality’, along with The Global Political Economy of The Household in Asia (2013, with S. J. Gunawardana), The Everyday Political Economy of Southeast Asia (2016, with L. Rethel), and the Handbook of International Political Economy and Gender (2018, with A. Roberts). She has also written many peer-reviewed journal articles. See also Joseph Stiglitz (see p. 585) 164 GLOBAL POLITICS Eurozone: The area of the EU within which the single currency (the euro) is used (in 2015, encompassing nineteen member states). Sovereign debt crisis: A structural imbalance in state finances that makes it impossible to repay, or refinance, the national debt without assistance from a third party. The 2007–9 crisis was the first genuinely global crisis in the world economy since the stagflation crisis of the 1970s, and it gave rise to the most severe falls in global production levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s, later being dubbed the ‘Great Recession’. As most major economies returned to growth in 2009, it appeared that the massive efforts quickly initiated by national governments and coordinated by the G20 (see p. 117) had been successful. These had seen the recapitalizing of banks, substantial cuts in interest rates (monetary stimulus), and a boost to domestic demand by allowing spending to exceed taxation (fiscal stimulus). Above all, international action prevented a recurrence of the most serious mistake made in the aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street Crash: a resort to protectionism, which helped to ensure that a financial crisis turned into a deep and prolonged economic crisis. However, renewed and severe economic problems emerged from 2010 onwards, not least in the form of sovereign debt crises in a number of ‘eurozone’ economies. This suggested that, for Western economies in particular, the global financial crisis may have triggered the beginning of an age of debt and austerity (see p. 165). One of the most widely anticipated consequences of the financial crisis was that it would lead to a re-evaluation, and possibly a rejection, of the neoliberal model of globalization. This was, in part, because past major crises have led to significant changes in the management of the world economy. The Great Depression of the 1930s led, via Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States, to a shift in the post-1945 world in favour of Keynesianism, while the ‘stagflation’ crisis of the 1970s contributed to the abandonment of Keynesianism and the rise of neoliberalism. Nevertheless, there has been relatively little evidence of a shift of similar proportions in response to the 2007–9 Crash. For example, progress on the construction of a ‘new Bretton Woods’, widely mooted in the immediate aftermath of September 2008, which would reorientate the institutions of global economic governance away from neoliberalism, has been slow. (The relationship between global economic governance during the Great Recession is discussed on p. 594.) The reasons for this may include the fact that political choice in such matters is constrained by the structural power of the interests most closely linked to neoliberal globalization – TNCs, the major banks, global markets, and so forth – but it also reflects the intellectual and ideological failure of the political left (be it in the form of left-wing or centre-left political parties or the anti-capitalist movement (see p. 224) to develop an alternative model of globalization that is both economically and politically viable. It is worth noting, however, that the full ideological significance of the Great Depression only became apparent in 1945, after almost a decade of mass unemployment and an intervening world war, so it may be too early to gauge the long-term effect of the Great Recession. 165 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . The West in an Age of Debt and Austerity Events: The events of September 2008 precipitated the steepest declines in global economic output since the 1930s. Although the world economy returned to modest growth in 2009, renewed economic problems emerged across the West during 2010, in the form of escalating sovereign debt (sometimes called ‘national debt’ or ‘government debt’). In some cases, this brought the creditworthiness of a country into question, as concerns over its ability to repay its loans sent interest rates soaring, necessitating external intervention. Sovereign debt crises, often linked to banking crises, were most acute in the eurozone, where bail-outs were negotiated by the EU, the IMF, and the European Central Bank for Greece (in 2010 and again in 2012), Ireland (in 2010), Portugal (in 2011), Spain (in 2012), and Cyprus (in 2013). Elsewhere, low growth and rising debt meant that states lost their prized AAA creditworthiness status; this happened to the United States in 2011, France in 2012, and the UK in 2013. Either because of conditions attached to bail-outs or because of wider anxieties about debt, many Western states shifted economic policy away from fiscal stimulus and toward ‘fiscal retrenchment’ (reduced public spending or increased taxes), helping to initiate an ‘age of austerity’. Significance: The structural weaknesses of many Western economies may have been exposed by the Great Recession, but they had deeper causes. These include a tendency, sometimes going back to the 1980s, to bring about growth by ever-higher levels of consumer borrowing (in the form of mortgages, bank loans, credit cards, and so on), made possible by an inflated and under-regulated banking and financial sector. Moreover, some thirty years of growth in the world economy had allowed Western governments to become complacent about sovereign debt, confident in the belief that growth would continue. This assumption was brutally destroyed by the Great Recession: as output plummeted, so did tax revenues, throwing the public finances into chaos with a resulting explosion of borrowing. However, there is major debate about how the blight of debt should be addressed, and especially about the link between debt and austerity. The austerity approach, adopted across much of Europe, is based on the belief that if chronic indebtedness is the problem, the solution must be debt reduction, achieved, in particular, by Source: Pacific Press/Getty Images cutting public spending. A failure to take the ‘austerity medicine’ risks passing on an escalating debt burden to future generations. Austerity, nevertheless, brings with it the problem that spending cuts and/or increased taxes take demand out of the economy, and so threatens to result in economic stagnation. A solution that makes sense for a family in debt may thus be self-defeating if applied to the economy as a whole and disastrous (because of its impact on exports) if applied to a range of linked economies. Austerity measures also triggered widespread protest movements and even civil unrest and were linked to the rise of both new ‘radical’ left and democratic socialist movements on the one hand – including the Syriza government in Greece, the rise of Podemos in Spain, and the achievements of veteran democratic socialists Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the United States – and the resurgence of the far right (see p. 252) on the other. An alternative to both austerity and democratic socialist solutions is a neo-Keynesian strategy that, whilst accepting the long-term goal of a balanced budget, maintains spending in the short and perhaps medium term on infrastructure programmes in particular. This, broadly, was the approach adopted by the Obama administration in the United States. In such a strategy, the justification for continued or increased borrowing is that it will boost growth and, in due course, tax revenues, allowing the debt problem to be resolved as the economy revives. 166 GLOBAL POLITICS The 2007–9 crisis may, nevertheless, come to be seen as a pivotal moment in the transfer of power in the global economy from the West to the East in general, and from the United States to China in particular. Not only had much of the growth in the world economy in the two decades preceding the financial crisis been generated by China, India, Brazil, and other emerging economies, but their ability to produce massive quantities of cheap manufactured goods helped to conceal deeper structural economic defects in the developed world, in part by creating the impression that inflation had been ‘cured’. In addition, China and many emerging economies weathered the storms of 2007–9 far better than did developed economies; China, for instance, experienced only a mild dip in its growth rate during this period (see Figure 5.1). Emerging economies also entered the post-crisis period with the advantage that they usually had significant trade surpluses and were often major creditor countries, having bought much of the debt of the developed world. However, such shifts in the balance of economic power are occurring in a world that is more interdependent than ever before. Just as economic recovery in the United States is important to China, because China holds much of the United States’ sovereign debt, so the developing world needs recovery in the developed world to provide a market for its manufacturing goods. One indicator of the global interconnectedness of economic activity is the reach of economic crises. Figure 5.1 shows how the financial crash of 2007–8 triggered a ‘global’ recession, in that it was followed by a severe dip in GDP growth in major economies across multiple continents by 2009. Even China, which experienced lower levels of volatility than many states in the post-crash era, saw an end to the period of sharply increasing growth it had enjoyed pre-crash. 14 12 10 8 INDIA 6 CHINA 4 UNITED STATES 2 UNITED KINGDOM GERMANY 0 FRANCE –2 BRAZIL –4 RUSSIAN FEDERATION –6 –8 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 Figure 5.1 The Great Recession and the globalization of crisis 2014 2016 2018 THE ECONOMY IN A GLOBAL AGE 167 RESURGENT NATIONALISMS AND THE LONGERTERM EFFECTS OF GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS ‘From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first’, said Donald Trump as he was inaugurated 45th President of the United States on 20 January 2017. Trump – a businessman and television personality – had risen to political prominence as a leading ‘birther’, popularizing the false claim that President Obama, the country’s first African American president, was not born in the United States (and was therefore ineligible to hold the office) and demanding to see his birth certificate. The more-or-less explicitly racist undercurrent of this movement – the presumption that a Black person is not a ‘true’ American – was typical of a whole set of resurgent ethno-nationalisms that were gaining support around the world. But as Trump’s ‘America First’ rhetoric and trade policies suggest, these nationalist movements situate themselves in opposition to ‘globalist’ internationalism, including some of the processes of economic globalization that are widely seen as the cause both of the economic success of the West at the turn of the millennium and of the scale of the catastrophic results from the global financial crisis. It has been suggested that the turn away from (liberal) globalism and toward (conservative, and far right) ethno-nationalisms may be a mid- to long-term effect of the global financial crisis and the Great Recession. Wage suppression, rising living costs, higher unemployment, and the devaluation of currencies may have complex economic causes, but a simple solution for some politicians – mainly from the right but also on the left – is to point to a shadowy ‘other’ figure, whether immigrants, ethnic minorities, or foreign powers, as the root cause. Commentators have noted how central the febrile context of economic crisis was to producing the fascist political successes of the 1930s, and that the crisis that began in 2007 was certainly the biggest since the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression of that period. Conservative commentators, on the other hand, have tended to view such dire warnings of an ascendant neo-fascism as overstatement, or even as part of a leftist ‘culture war’ against the traditional, and in the conservative view entirely morally appropriate, ethnic and national values of ‘the West’. SUMMARY y Capitalism is a system of generalized commodity production in which wealth is owned privately and economic life is organized according to market principles. Enterprise capitalism, social capitalism, and state capitalism nevertheless differ in relation to the balance within them between the market and the state. y The advance of neoliberalism reflects the ascendance of enterprise capitalism over rival forms of capitalism. While supporters of neoliberalism claim that, in association with economic globalization, it is a reliable vehicle for generating global growth, its critics have associated it with widening inequality, financial crises and political ‘shocks’ of various kinds. y Economic globalization is the process whereby all national economies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been absorbed into an interlocking global economy. However, there have been major debates about the extent to which economic life has been globalized as well as about the impact, for good or ill, of economic globalization. y Despite its global success, capitalism has always been susceptible to booms and slumps. While Marxists have explained these crises in terms of an inherent tendency of capitalism towards overproduction, Schumpeter drew attention to the business cycle, stemming from the disposition within capitalism towards ‘creative destruction’. 5 168 GLOBAL POLITICS y Modern crises and ‘contagions’ have derived from the trend – implicit, some argue, in neoliberal globalization – in favour of ‘financialization’. This has created what has been dubbed ‘casino capitalism’, a highly volatile and unpredictable economic system that allows speculative bubbles to develop and then collapse, their impact extending, potentially, across the world. y The origins of the global financial crisis of 2007–9 are hotly disputed, with disagreement about whether the crisis was rooted in the US banking system, in Anglo-American enterprise capitalism, or in the nature of the capitalist system itself. The crisis may have accelerated important shifts in global power, but it is far less clear that it will result in a major shift in favour of national or global financial regulation. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y What are the major strengths and weaknesses of enterprise capitalism? y To what extent is capitalism compatible with a comprehensive welfare provision? y Is state capitalism a contradiction in terms? y To what extent are neoliberalism and economic globalization linked? y What are the chief drivers of economic globalization? y Is the idea of a global economy a myth? y Are transnational corporations a force for good or for ill? y Is capitalism inherently unstable and crisis-prone? y What does the 2007–9 global financial crisis tell us about the nature of the modern world economy? y Will globalization survive the resurgence of nationalisms? FURTHER READING Casey, T. (ed.), The Legacy of the Crash (2011). A wideranging collection of essays that examine the nature and consequences of the 2007–9 crisis and the differing political responses in the United States and the United Kingdom. Harvey, D., A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005). A concise and critical examination of the origins, spread, and effects of neoliberalism. O’Brien, R. and M. Williams, Global Political Economy: Evolution and Dynamics (2020). A lucid and comprehensive introduction to global political economy. Ravenhill, J. (ed.), Global Political Economy (2020). A comprehensive and well-organized text in which leading experts examine the major issues of global political economy. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN 6 A GLOBAL AGE Source: Anadalou Agency/Getty Images PREVIEW The state has long been regarded as the most significant actor on the world stage, the basic ‘unit’ of global politics. Its predominance stems from its sovereign jurisdiction. If, as the German sociologist Max Weber argued, the defining feature of states as social entities is their exercise of near-unchallengeable, ‘legitimate’, power within their borders, then we might expect them to operate as independent and autonomous entities in world affairs. However, since the late twentieth century the state has been widely viewed as under threat. Economic and political globalization have transferred key powers from states to subnational, transnational, and multinational entities, from the United Nations and regional organizations such as the African Union, to the World Trade Organization, transnational corporations, and collective security organizations such as NATO. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the view that globalization was rendering state power in international relations increasingly obsolete was effectively ‘common sense’. And yet, the first two decades of the new century have demonstrated that states might be rather more tenacious actors in global politics. An anti-globalization political ‘backlash’, largely aimed at its perceived economic and demographic effects, alongside the re-emergence of old ‘great power’ rivalries, and the continuation of coercive politics and warfare, make the state’s demise much less certain. So what is the future of the state in global politics? Government within states, meanwhile, has given way to ‘governance’, with political power increasingly targeting ‘micro’ social relations at the level of individuals rather than the nation. What does this transformation mean for states and individuals, and how does it shape the development of foreign policy, as a key mechanism through which national government manages the state’s relations with other states and with international bodies? 169 170 GLOBAL POLITICS KEY ISSUES z Are sovereignty and statehood compatible with a globalized world? z Have nation states been transformed into market or postmodern states? z In what ways, and why, has the state become more important? z To what extent has national government given way to multilevel governance? z Is the concept of foreign policy any longer meaningful? z What is the most persuasive theory of foreign policy decision-making? STATES AND STATEHOOD IN FLUX STATES AND SOVEREIGNTY The state (see p. 172) is a historical institution: it emerged in fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Europe as a system of centralized rule that succeeded in subordinating all other institutions and groups, temporal and spiritual. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) is often represented as the key moment in formalizing the modern notion of statehood. By requiring the mutual recognition of states’ territorial sovereignty, it made states the principal actors on the world stage. International politics was thus thought of as a ‘states system’. The states system gradually expanded from Europe into North America, then, during the nineteenth century, into South America and Japan, becoming a truly global system in the twentieth century, largely thanks to the process of decolonization in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. In the twenty-first century, statehood appears to be more popular and sought-after than ever before. In 2019, the United Nations recognized 193 states, compared with 50 in 1945, along with two ‘observer status’ aspiring states – the Vatican (Holy See) and Palestine. Recently recognized states include Kosovo (2008, and partially recognized since Serbia still claims its territory) and South Sudan (2011). There is also a substantial list of candidates struggling for recognized statehood, from Somaliland (claimed by Somalia) to South Ossetia (claimed by Georgia). However, what is a state, and what are the key features of statehood? States have a dualistic structure, in that they have two faces, one looking outwards and the other looking inwards (Cerny 2010). The outward-looking face of the state deals with the state’s relations with other states and its ability to provide protection against external attack. The classic definition of the state in international law is found in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of the State (1933). According to Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention, the state has four features: z a defined territory; z a permanent population; THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 171 The constitutive theory of the state: The z the capacity to enter into relations with other states. theory that the political existence of a state is The Montevideo Convention advances a ‘declaratory’ theory of the state, in which states entirely dependent on become states by virtue of meeting the minimal criteria for statehood, as opposed to a its recognition by other ‘constitutive’ theory of the state. Even without recognition, the state has the right to states. z an effective government; and defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity, Sovereignty: The and consequently to organize itself as it sees fit (Article 3). principle of absolute The inward-looking face of the state deals with the state’s relations with the individuals and groups that live within its borders and its ability to maintain domestic order. From this perspective, the state is usually viewed as an instrument of domination. The German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) thus defined the state in terms of its monopoly of the means of ‘legitimate violence’. Joseph Schumpeter (1954) complemented this definition by pointing out that the state also has a monopoly of the right to tax citizens. In view of the state’s dual structure, what can be called ‘statehood’ can be seen as the capacity both to protect against external attack and to maintain domestic order, and to do them simultaneously (Brenner 2004). and unlimited power; the absence of a higher authority in either domestic or external affairs (see p. 4). Internal sovereignty: The notion of a supreme power/authority within the state, located in a body that makes decisions that are binding on all citizens, However, although not explicitly mentioned in the Montevideo Convention’s list of groups, and institutions. state features, or in Weber’s notion of a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, the underlying character of the state is established by a single core characteristic: sovereignty. In the final analysis, states are states because they are capable of exercising sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders, and so are autonomous and independent actors. In the billiard ball model of world politics, adopted by realist theorists, states are the billiard balls that collide with one another while sovereignty is the hard and impenetrable outer shell of the ball, which enables it to withstand the impact of the collision. The first major theorist of sovereignty was the French political philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–96). He defined sovereignty as ‘the absolute and perpetual power of a common wealth’. In his view, the only guarantee of political and social stability is the existence of a sovereign with final law-making power; in that sense, law reflects the ‘will’ of the sovereign. For Thomas Hobbes (see p. 16), the need for sovereignty arose from the self-seeking and power-interested nature of human beings, which meant that, in the absence of a sovereign ruler – that is, in a ‘state of nature’ – life would degenerate into a war of all against all, and would become ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. He therefore defined sovereignty as a monopoly of coercive power and advocated that it be vested in the hands of a single ruler (whether this was a monarch, his preferred form of government, or an oligarchic group or even a democratic assembly). However, in line with the dual structure of the state, sovereignty can be understood in internal or external senses. The concept of internal sovereignty refers to the location of power or authority within a state, and has been crucial to the development of state structures and systems of rule. Where, within a political system, should final and ultimate authority be located? Early thinkers, as already noted, were inclined to the belief that sovereignty should be vested in the hands of a single person, a monarch. Absolute monarchs described themselves as 6 172 GLOBAL POLITICS External sovereignty: The absolute and unlimited authority of the state as an actor representing a specific territory and population on the world stage. ‘sovereigns’, and could, as did Louis XIV of France in the seventeenth century, declare that they were the state. A radical departure from this absolutist notion of sovereignty came in the eighteenth century with the Swiss political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s rejection of monarchical rule in favour of the notion of popular sovereignty. For Rousseau, ultimate authority was vested in the people themselves, expressed in the idea of the ‘general will’. The doctrine of popular sovereignty has often been seen as the basis of the modern theory of democracy, inspiring, amongst other things, the liberal democratic idea that the sole legitimate source of political authority is success in regular, fair, and competitive elections. Nevertheless, some liberal thinkers warn that the concept of internal sovereignty is always tainted by its absolutist origins, arguing that the idea of an absolute and final source of authority is difficult to reconcile with the reality of diffused power and pluralist competition found within the modern democratic state. A state may, however, be considered sovereign by other states even where there is tension or conflict over the internal location of sovereign power. This is the notion of external sovereignty. CON External sovereignty defines a state’s relationship to other states and international actors. It establishes the state’s capacity to act as an independent and autonomous entity in world affairs. As such, it is the form of sovereignty that is of crucial importance for global politics. External sovereignty, for example, provides the basis for international law (see Chapter 15). Not only does the United Nations (UN) operate according to the principle of sovereign equality, allowing states equal participation in international relations through membership of the General Assembly, but, most importantly, external sovereignty is supposed to guarantee that the territorial integrity and political independence of each state is inviolable. Similarly, many of the deepest divisions in world politics involve disputed claims to external sovereignty. The long-standing Arab–Israeli conflict, for instance, turns on the question of external sovereignty for Palestinians (see p. 174), while the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War in 2022 (see p. 186) followed Russia’s denial of Ukrainian external sovereignty on the basis that Russian President Vladimir Putin viewed some regions of Eastern Ukraine as essentially Russian territory. C E PT THE STATE The state is a political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders. In political theory, the state is usually defined in contrast to civil society: it encompasses institutions that are recognizably ‘public’ in that they are responsible for the collective organization of communal life and are funded through taxation (the institutions of government, the courts, the military, nationalized industries, social security system, and so forth). In international politics, however, the state is usually defined from an external perspective, and so embraces civil society. In this view, a state is characterized by four features: a defined territory, a permanent population, an effective government, and sovereignty. This means, in effect, that a state is equivalent to a country. In common parlance, this equivalence is realized when we speak of ‘China’/‘the Chinese’, or ‘America’/‘the Americans’, taking some action on the international stage. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE Nevertheless, the notion of external sovereignty has been the subject of growing controversy, with questions being raised about both its moral implications and its practical significance. Moral concerns have been raised because external sovereignty appears to allow states to treat their citizens however they please, including, possibly, subjecting them to abuse, torture, and perhaps even genocide (see p. 424). There is therefore tension between the principle of external sovereignty and the doctrine of human rights, and indeed any global or cosmopolitan standard of justice. This tension has been particularly evident in relation to the issue of humanitarian intervention, as discussed in Chapter 14. Concerns about the practical significance of external sovereignty have also become more acute. In a sense, the disparity in power between and amongst states has always raised questions about the meaningfulness of sovereignty, powerful states being able, sometimes routinely, to infringe on the independence and autonomy of weaker states. However, a range of modern developments have put states under pressure perhaps as never before, leading to predictions about the ‘end of sovereignty’ and even the ‘twilight of the state’. The most important of these are linked to the advance of globalization (see p. 9). LGBTQI+ pride march in the now independent Timor-Leste. The United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor was a UN peacekeeping mission that aimed to solve the decades long crisis in the Indonesian-occupied area. This proved to be a successful example of humanitarian intervention, resulting in East Timor’s independence Source: Tanushree Rao, Unsplash 173 6 174 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . The Palestinian Quest for Statehood Events: In September 2011, Mahmoud Abbas, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), submitted a formal request for Palestine’s admittance as a full member state into the United Nations. The following month, the executive committee of UNESCO backed this bid in a 107–14 vote. In November 2012, the General Assembly of the UN voted overwhelmingly to recognize Palestine as a ‘nonmember observer state’, giving Palestine access to other UN bodies, including the International Criminal Court. The emergence of a national consciousness amongst Palestinian Arabs can be traced back to a pre-First World War reaction against increasing Jewish immigration into Palestine (then loosely part of the Ottoman Empire), which was strengthened during the First World War by British encouragement for Arab nationalism. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 meant that the majority of Arab Palestinians became refugees, a problem exacerbated by the 1967 Six-Day War, after which Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights were occupied by Israel. The Oslo Accords of 1993, the first face-toface meeting between the PLO and the government of Israel, prepared the way for the establishment in 1996 of the Palestinian National Authority, which assumed governmental authority, but not sovereignty, for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Significance: The Palestinian quest for statehood has both legal and political dimensions. The legal status of Palestine is a matter of controversy and some confusion. The founding of the PLO in 1964, uniting a disparate collection of Palestinian Arab groups, did much to strengthen the notion of the Palestinians as a nation or people, separate from the larger Arab people and from existing states, such as Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. However, it was not until the establishment of the Palestinian Authority that the Palestinians could be said to have a defined territory and an effective government, albeit one that lacked de jure and de facto sovereignty. The status of Palestine crucially underlines the role of the UN in establishing statehood through formal recognition. Palestine’s transition from being a ‘non-state entity’ with an observer status in the UN General Assembly (granted in 1974) to being a ‘non-member observer state’ has not been endorsed by the UN Security Council and Source: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images falls short of full membership of the UN, and thus full statehood. Nevertheless, as of April 2022, 138 of the UN’s 193 members had recognized the existence of the state of Palestine. The political dimension of Palestinian statehood is substantially more important, however. The ‘Palestinian problem’ lies at the heart of the Arab–Israeli conflict and has poisoned the politics of the Middle East for decades. It is thus difficult to imagine meaningful progress in building mutual respect and understanding between the West and the Arab world, without improved relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Those who support Palestine’s quest for statehood usually view the socalled ‘two-state’ solution as the only viable solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In this view, the continuing denial of the Palestinians’ right to sovereign independence can only strengthen political extremism, hostility towards Israel and, probably, violence. However, the creation of a Palestinian state may be difficult to achieve in practical terms. Not only is the Palestinian Authority divided territorially and politically (Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, controls the Gaza Strip, while the Fatah wing of the PLO governs the West Bank), but if a Palestinian state were constructed in line with the 1967 borders, this would mean that some 500,000 Israelis would be defined as living in another country. Many in Israel, nevertheless, have deeper reservations about the ‘two-state’ solution. For them, implacable Palestinian hatred of the state of Israel would mean that a sovereign Palestinian state would pose an ongoing, and intolerable, threat to the security and survival of Israel itself. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 175 THE STATE AND GLOBALIZATION Governance: Broadly, the various ways in which The rise of globalization has stimulated a major debate about the power and significance social life is coordinated, of the state in a globalized world. Three contrasting positions can be identified. In the of which government is first place, some theorists have boldly proclaimed the emergence of ‘post-sovereign merely one (see p. 189). governance’ (Scholte 2005), suggesting that the rise of globalization is inevitably marked by the decline of the state as a meaningful actor. In the most extreme version of this argument, advanced by so-called ‘hyperglobalists’, the state is seen to be so ‘hollowed out’ as to have become, in effect, redundant. Realists, on the other hand, tend to deny that globalization has altered the core feature of world politics, which is that, as in earlier eras, sovereign states retain primary control over circumstances within their borders, and remain the principal actors on the world stage. Between these two views, however, is a third position, which acknowledges that globalization has brought about qualitative changes in the role and significance of the state, and in the nature of sovereignty, but emphasizes that these have transformed the state, rather than simply reduced or increased its power. It is very difficult to argue that the state and sovereignty have been unaffected by the forces of globalization. This particularly applies in the case of the territorial jurisdiction of the state. The traditional theory of sovereignty was based on the idea that states had supreme control over what took place within their borders, implying that they also controlled what crossed their borders. However, developments such as the rise of international migration and the spread of cultural globalization (see p. 217) have tended to make state borders increasingly ‘permeable’. This can be seen in the growth of crossborder communications and information flows through, for instance, radio and satellite communication, but especially internet-based technologies such as smartphones, which occur both at a speed and in quantities that defy the capacity of many states to detect or control them. Most of the discussion about the changing nature and power of the state has, nevertheless, concerned the impact of economic globalization (see p. 147). One of the central features of economic globalization is the rise of ‘supraterritoriality’, reflected in the declining importance of territorial locations, geographical distance, and state borders. An increasing range of economic activities take place within a ‘borderless world’ (Ohmae 1990). This is particularly clear in relation to financial markets that have become genuinely globalized, in that capital flows around the world seemingly instantaneously, meaning, for instance, that no state can be insulated from the impact of financial crises that take place in other parts of the world. It is also evident in the changing balance between the power of territorial states and ‘de-territorialized’ transnational corporations, which can switch investment and production to other parts of the world if state policy is not conducive to profit maximization and the pursuit of corporate interests. Globalization, furthermore, has been closely associated with a trend towards regionalization, reflected in the growing prominence of regional trading blocs such as the European Union (EU) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). If borders have become permeable and old geographical certainties have been shaken, state sovereignty, at least in its traditional sense, cannot survive. This is the sense in which governance in the twenty-first century has assumed a genuinely post-sovereign character. Supraterritoriality: A condition in which social life transcends territory through the growth of ‘transborder’ and ‘transglobal’ communications and interactions. 6 176 GLOBAL POLITICS Economic sovereignty: The absolute authority of the state over how economic life is conducted within its borders, involving independent control of fiscal and monetary policies, and trade and capital flows. It is difficult, in particular, to see how economic sovereignty can be reconciled with a globalized economy. Sovereign control over economic life was only possible in a world of discrete national economies; the tendency of national economies to be incorporated to a greater or lesser extent into a single globalized economy renders economic sovereignty meaningless. As Susan Strange (1996, p. 4) put it, ‘where states were once masters of markets, now it is the markets which, on many issues, are the masters over the governments of states’. However, the rhetoric of a ‘borderless’ global economy can be taken too far. For example, there is evidence that, while globalization may have changed the strategies that states adopt to ensure economic success, it has by no means rendered the state redundant as an economic actor. As discussed later in this section, states retain a vital role in bringing about economic modernization. Moreover, although states, when acting separately, may have a diminished capacity to control transnational economic activity, they retain the facility to do so through macro frameworks of economic regulation, as provided by the G20, the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see p. 588), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (see p. 584). The power and significance of the state has undoubtedly been affected by the process of political globalization (see p. 178). However, its impact has been complex and, in some ways, contradictory. On the one hand, international bodies such as the UN (see p. 566), the EU (see p. 623), NATO (see p. 340), and the WTO have undermined the capacity of states to operate as self-governing units. It is clear, for instance, that membership of the EU threatens state power because a growing range of decisions (for example, on monetary policy, agricultural and fisheries policies, and the movement of goods and people within the EU) are made by European institutions rather than by member states. The range and importance of decisions that are made at an intergovernmental or supranational level has nevertheless undoubtedly increased, forcing states either to exert influence through regional or global bodies or to operate within frameworks established by them. The WTO, for instance, operates as the judge and jury of global trade disputes and serves as a forum for negotiating trade deals between and among its members. Such tendencies reflect the fact that in an interconnected world states have a diminishing capacity to act alone because they are increasingly confronted by challenges and threats that have a transnational if not a global dimension. 177 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . GROUP OF TWENTY Type Established Membership International economic forum 1999 20 countries 20 countries The Group of Twenty (G20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors was established in 1999 in response both to the financial crises of the late 1990s and to a growing recognition that key emerging states were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance. There are no formal criteria for G20 membership and the composition of the group has remained unchanged since it was established (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK, the USA, and the EU). The group includes most, but not all, of the leading economies in the world, thereby comprising, collectively, around 90 per cent of world GNP, but factors such as geographical balance (members are drawn from all continents) and population representation (about two-thirds of the global population is represented) also played a major part. Like the G7/8 (see p. 596), the G20 operates as an informal forum to promote dialogue between finance ministers, central bankers, and heads of government, with no permanent location and no permanent staff of its own. However, at its Pittsburgh Summit in September 2009, heads of government agreed to provide the G20 with wider resources and a permanent staff. Within the G20, each member has one voice, regardless of its economic strength or population size. Significance: In its early years, the G20 was a relatively peripheral body, certainly less significant than the G8. This, however, changed with the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2007–9. Developed states, recognizing that their economic fate depended largely on a globally coordinated response to the crisis, were eager to join with developing states and saw the G20 as the forum for doing this. The G8, by contrast, suddenly appeared to be hopelessly antiquated, particularly as it excluded the emerging economies of China, India, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil. The G20’s growing stature was underlined by the fact that the global response to the crisis largely emerged out of its Washington and London summits, in November 2008 and April 2009, respectively. At the heart of this response was the agreement by G20 members to contribute $500 billion to a programme of global reflation. A start was also made on reforming the institutions of global economic governance by the agreement to expand the IMF’s borrowing programme and by urging that voting shares on the IMF and the World Bank be rebalanced to boost the representation of the developing world. At the Pittsburgh summit, it was decided that the G20 would replace the G8 as the main forum for promoting international economic cooperation. The rise of the G20 has been heralded as marking a potentially historic shift. Its high degree of inclusion and representativeness may indicate the emergence of a new institutional world order that better reflects current economic realities and thereby enjoys greater global legitimacy. By comparison, the G8, the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN (through the Security Council) concentrate global decision-making in the hands of just a few states. The G20 has, nevertheless, also attracted criticism. First, its prominence may be temporary and specifically linked to the peculiarities of a global financial crisis in which developed and developing states recognized that they were ‘in the same boat’. Developing a globally coordinated response over issues such as climate change and world trade, where the interests of the developed and developing worlds often diverge, may be much more difficult. Second, the G20, even transformed into a permanent body, remains toothless. It castigates countries judged to be behaving irresponsibly, condemns weak financial regulation at national and global levels, and takes a stance on matters such as bankers’ bonuses, but it lacks the capacity to impose its will, still less to punish transgressors. Third, although the G20 clearly provides better representation than the G8, its membership is selected arbitrarily and excludes some rich states and all the world’s poorest states. The G20’s key players are also firmly wedded to a mainstream economic philosophy that favours the market and globalization, albeit a more regulated form of globalization. CON 178 C E PT GLOBAL POLITICS POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION Political globalization refers to the growing importance of international organizations. These are organizations that are transnational in that they exert influence not within a single state but within an international area comprising several states. However, the nature of political globalization and its implications for the state vary depending on whether it is modelled on the principle of intergovernmentalism (see p. 577) or supranationalism (see p. 575). Intergovernmental international organizations provide a mechanism that enables states, at least in theory, to take concerted action without sacrificing sovereignty. Supranational bodies, on the other hand, are able to impose their will on states. Most commentators nevertheless accept that political globalization lags markedly behind economic and cultural forms of globalization. Pooled sovereignty: The combined sovereignty of two or more states; ‘pooling’ sovereignty implies gaining access to greater power and influence than state/national sovereignty. Collectivized state: A state that seeks to abolish private enterprise and sets up a centrally planned, or ‘command’, economy. Welfare state: A state that takes prime responsibility for the social welfare of its citizens, discharged through a range of social security, health, education, and other services (albeit different in different counties). On the other hand, political globalization opens up opportunities for the state as well as diminishing them. Working through international organizations and regimes (see p. 89) may expand the capacities of the state, allowing them to continue to extend their influence within a globalized and interconnected world. This occurs when states ‘pool’ their sovereignty. The notion of pooled sovereignty has been most explicitly developed in relation to the EU but could just as well be applied to any other international organization. By ‘pooling’ sovereignty, member states transfer certain powers from national governments to EU institutions, thereby gaining access to a larger and more meaningful form of sovereignty. In this view, sovereignty is not a zero-sum game: the pooled sovereignty of the EU is, at least potentially, greater than the combined national sovereignties that compose it because, in this case, a regional body is able to exert greater influence in a globalized world than the member states could if each acted individually. STATE TRANSFORMATION Globalizing tendencies have not only cast doubt over the continued relevance of the principle of state sovereignty but also, arguably, reshaped the nature and role of the state itself. As a historical institution, the state has undergone a variety of transformations. The rise of nationalism from the early nineteenth century onwards led to the creation of the nation state (see p. 236), which allied the state as a system of centralized rule to nationhood as a source of social cohesion and political legitimacy. Thereafter, the quest for national self-determination became the principal motor behind state construction (as discussed in Chapter 8). For much of the twentieth century, the state was characterized by its expanding social and economic role. The most extreme example of this was the development of collectivized states, which attempted to bring the entirety of economic life under state control. The best examples of such states were in orthodox communist countries such as the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe. States in the capitalist world nevertheless also demonstrated a marked tendency towards economic and social intervention, albeit of a more modest kind. In their case, this involved the adoption of Keynesian strategies of economic management and a strengthening of social protection, leading to the development of the welfare state. The ability to deliver prosperity and to protect citizens from social deprivation thus became the principal source of legitimacy in most states. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 179 CON Since the 1980s, however, many commentators have drawn attention to the progressive ‘hollowing out’ of the state, giving rise, allegedly, to a new state form. This has been variously described as the ‘competition’ state, the ‘market’ state (Bobbitt 2002), and the ‘postmodern’ state (Cooper 2004). The most common explanation for this has been the changed relationship between the state and the market that has been brought about by the pressures generated by economic globalization. This is reflected in the general trend towards neoliberalism (see p. 143), most dramatically demonstrated by the transition from collectivized to market-based economies in former communist countries during the 1990s, but it was also evident, to some degree, across the globe through the adoption of policies of privatization, deregulation, and the ‘rolling back’ of welfare provision. The influential French post-structuralist Michel Foucault (see p. 19) documented the rise of neoliberalism across the Western world as concomitant to the rise of ‘governmentality’ – a mode of governance that relies less on violent sovereign forms of power like those centred in the Weberian definition of statehood and more on internalized, individualized government ‘of self and others’ and of personal ‘conduct’ by individual members of a society. C E PT GOVERNMENTALITY Developed in his hugely popular public lectures at the Collège de France, Paris (1970–84), Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality is now widely used among critical and post-structuralist scholars of global politics. An early exponent of Foucault’s concept, Mitchell Dean, notes that we usually identify ‘government’ and its power with the state, ‘i.e. with a sovereign body that claims a monopoly of independent territorial power and means of violence’ (Dean 2010, p. 16). Governmentality, on the other hand, is a way of thinking about governmental power as more diffuse and less state-centric. Governmentality describes a type of political and economic power that emerged from the eighteenth century, as the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ gave way to more ‘Enlightenment’ thinking on legitimate power in Europe (see p. 32). Sovereign power morphed during this period from the personalized rule of individual monarchs into what Foucault called the ‘conduct of conduct’ – the dominant ‘rationalities’ that shape how we conduct ourselves in everyday life, as much as how political leaders organize the business of states. Modern societies are therefore less ruled by individual ‘sovereigns’ exerting disciplinary and hierarchical forms of power upon their ‘subjects’, and are more governed by rationalities – dominant ways of understanding and doing things, for instance neoliberalism (see p. 143) – through which citizens to a large degree govern themselves, and one another. A good example, explored in Foucault’s lectures, is the ‘entrepreneurship of the self’ (Foucault 2008). In neoliberal societies, self-entrepreneurship is the rationality that tells us we must ceaselessly promote ourselves through our approach to work, our leisure activities, our conspicuous consumption, and our self-presentation, as exciting, dynamic, flexible individuals who are eminently employable in economies that offer ever less social security to the unemployed. In international relations, meanwhile, neoliberal governmentality is the logic through which states voluntarily adopt harsh austerity programmes, as did Greece and the UK after the global financial crisis (see p. 165), or embrace the principles of the so-called ‘Washington consensus’ on the privatization of public services (see p. 145). Critics of the concept, particularly Marxists (see p. 111), note that governmentality tends to highlight horizontal power relations between citizens, without giving due attention to vertical power relations and the ways in which ‘governmental rationalities’ (‘ideology’, for Marxists) may be designed by, and serve, powerful social groups or classes. Globalization can be seen to have promoted such developments in at least three ways. First, a greater exposure to global markets has encouraged many countries to adopt strategies designed to attract foreign capital and inward investment, namely policies of 6 180 GLOBAL POLITICS financial and economic deregulation. Second, intensified foreign competition forced countries to keep wage levels low and to promote labour flexibility, which meant scaling down welfare costs and other impediments to international competitiveness. Third, TNCs acquired growing influence at the expense of the state, by virtue of the ease with which they are able to relocate production and investment in a globalized economy if state policy is insufficiently responsive to corporate interests. FIG U However, the changed relationship between markets and states may not simply mean a reduced role for the state but, rather, a different role for the state. The state may have been transformed, not eclipsed altogether (Sørensen 2004). Robert Cox has argued that the growing global organization of production and finance had transformed conventional conceptions of government and society, leading to the ‘internationalization of the state’. This is the process whereby national institutions, policies, and practices become little more than an instrument for restructuring national economies in line with the dynamics of the global capitalist economy. Although this implies that states have lost substantial power over the economy, the process of economic globalization nevertheless requires a political framework that is provided by the state, notably in the form of the ‘militaryterritorial power of an enforcer’ (Cox 1994). In the modern global economy, this role has largely been assumed by the United States. RE ROBERT COX (1926–2018) Canadian international political economist and leading exponent of critical theory. Cox worked in the International Labour Organization (ILO), before, in the early 1970s, taking up an academic career. Cox adopted a ‘reflexive’ approach to theory, in which theories are firmly linked to their context and subject. In his seminal work, Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (1987), he examined the relationship between material forces of production, ideas, and institutions in three periods: the liberal international economy (1789–1873), the era of rival imperialisms (1873–1945), and the neoliberal world order (post-1945). His writing examines issues such as the implications of globalization and the nature of US global hegemony, in part to highlight the prospects for counter-hegemonic social forces. Cox’s other major writings include (with H. Jacobson) The Anatomy of Influence (1972) and (with Timothy J. Sinclair) Approaches to World Order (1996). Competition state: A state that pursues strategies to ensure long-term competitiveness in the globalized economy. Bob Jessop (2002) described the advent of a more market-orientated state in terms of a move away from the ‘Keynesian welfare national state’, towards what he called the ‘Schumpeterian competition state’. The competition state is a state that aims to secure economic growth within its borders by securing competitive advantages in the wider global economy. Competition states are distinguished by the recognition of the need to strengthen education and training as the principal way of guaranteeing economic success in the new technology-dependent economy, and this approach was adopted by the Asian ‘tiger’ economies from the 1970s onwards. Although they attempt to increase market responsiveness by promoting entrepreneurialism and labour flexibility, competition states are also aware of the need to combat social exclusion and bolster the moral foundations of society. To some extent, the advance of the competition state is evident in a wider shift from so-called ‘demand-side’ economics (which encourages THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 181 consumers to consume, by, for instance, Keynesian reflation) to ‘supply-side’ economics (which encourages producers to produce, by, for example, improved education and training, labour flexibility, and deregulation). BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS AND THE ‘NUDGE’ STATE One key dimension of the internal transformation of states has been the emergence of new ideas and technologies for governing. States and their governments have increasingly drawn lessons from behavioural economics, a branch of economic theory concerned with mapping and predicting real human behaviour, rather than drawing on abstract principles alone. Governments use behavioural ‘nudges’ to induce citizen behaviour that fits their policies. For example, a government wishing to reduce public spending on health will employ creative, visual health warnings on food, drinks, tobacco, and other products that may have detrimental effects on the health of the citizenry. These warnings are predicated on the behavioural insight that even though people ‘know’ that a behaviour is not healthy, they may continue with it out of habit or other psychosocial reasons; nudge interventions at the micro-social level, however, can help to target particular populations and support government policies at relatively low cost. The Behavioural Insights Team or ‘Nudge Unit’ formed by the UK government Cabinet Office in 2010 and headed by psychologist David Halpern experimented successfully with a range of nudges across a range of social policy areas, from police recruitment to welfare benefits, and pioneered this model of governance. A 2019 World Bank report included the UK, alongside Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, and the United States, as one of ten states leading the global use of ‘behavioural science’ to address ‘intractable policy problems’ – something the bank’s own behavioural science team hopes to apply in the case of ‘developing’ countries. The rise of the nudge state is open to a range of criticisms, from ‘nannying’, or even authoritarian, micro-management of citizens, to its reliance on ‘big data’ and algorithmic (automated) processing that risks dehumanizing subjects and compromising their privacy. THE POSTMODERN STATE The notion of the ‘postmodern state’ has been associated in particular with the writings of Robert Cooper (2004). In Cooper’s analysis, the post-Cold War world is divided into three parts, each characterized by a distinctive state structure – the ‘pre-modern’, ‘modern’, and ‘postmodern’ worlds. The postmodern world is a world in which force has been rejected as a means of resolving disputes, order being maintained instead through a respect for the rule of law and a willingness to operate through multilateral institutions. Security in such a world is based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence, and, above all, a recognition of mutual vulnerability. The states appropriate to such a world, ‘postmodern’ states, are more pluralist, more complex, and less centralized than the bureaucratic ‘modern’ states they have replaced, and they also tend to be less nationalistic, allowing, even encouraging, multiple identities to thrive. Postmodern states 6 182 GLOBAL POLITICS Warlordism: A condition in which locally based militarized bands vie for power in the absence of a sovereign state. are characterized by both the wider role played by private organizations in the processes of governance and the fact that government’s role is increasingly orientated around the promotion of personal development and personal consumption. As Cooper (2004, p. 53) put it, ‘Individual consumption replaces collective glory as the dominant theme of national life.’ In terms of their external orientation, postmodern states are distinguished by their unwarlike character, reflected in the application of moral consciousness to international relations and a rejection of the balance of power (see p. 343) as unworkable in the post-Cold War era. On this basis, the only clear examples of postmodern states are found in Europe, with the EU perhaps being an example of a postmodern proto-state. However, the plight of the state may be most serious in formerly colonised societies and ‘developing’ countries.’ Cooper portrayed this as a ‘pre-modern’ world of postimperial chaos, in which such state structures as exist are unable to establish (in Weber’s words) a legitimate monopoly of the use of force, thus leading to endemic warlordism, widespread criminality, and social dislocation. Such conditions do not apply consistently to the developing world as a whole, however. In cases such as India, South Korea, and Taiwan, developing world states have been highly successful in pursuing strategies of economic modernization and social development. And Cooper’s analysis fails to account for the mutually constitutive nature of colonialism (and its legacies) and modernity identified by scholars like Mignolo (see p. 102). Other states, nevertheless, have been distinguished by their weakness, sometimes being portrayed as ‘weak’ states, ‘quasi-states’, or ‘failed states’ (see ‘Concept: Failed State’ box p. 185). These states fail the most basic test of state power: they are unable to maintain domestic order and personal security, meaning that civil strife and even civil war become almost routine. Failed states are nevertheless not just a domestic problem. They often have a wider impact through, for instance, precipitating refugee crises, providing a refuge for drug dealers, arms smugglers and terrorist organizations, generating regional instability, and provoking external intervention to provide humanitarian relief and to keep the peace. 183 APPROACHES TO . . . REALIST VIEW Realists tend to view states from the outside; that is, from the perspective of the international system. Above all, they take states to be unitary and coherent actors; indeed, they are commonly portrayed as the basic ‘units’ of the international system. Their unitary and cohesive character derives from the fact that, regardless of their domestic make-up, state leaders speak and act on behalf of their respective states and can deploy their populations and resources as they wish or choose. State behaviour is determined by a single, overriding motive – ‘the wish to survive’ (Waltz 2002) – although realists disagree about whether this implies merely a defensive desire to avoid invasion and attack or an aggressive wish to maximize power and achieve domination (see ‘Offensive or Defensive Realism?’ p. 317). The social, constitutional, and political composition of the state is therefore irrelevant to its external behaviour. In this sense, the state is a ‘black box’. Neorealists in particular insist that states differ only in terms of their ‘capabilities’, or power resources (there are great powers, minor powers, and so on). All realists nevertheless agree that the state is the dominant global actor; hence they adopt a state-centric view of global politics. For example, from a realist perspective, globalization and the state are not separate or, still less, opposing forces: rather, globalization has been created by states and thus exists to serve their interests. Other actors thus only exert influence to the extent that the state allows. LIBERAL VIEW Liberals believe that the state arises out of the needs of society and reflects the interests of individual citizens. ‘Social contract theory’ suggests that the state was established through an agreement amongst citizens to create a sovereign power to escape from the chaos and brutality of the ‘state of nature’ (a stateless, or prepolitical, society). The core role of the state is thus to ensure order by arbitrating between the competing individuals and groups in society. The state thus acts as a referee or umpire. This implies that changes in the structure of society can and will alter the role and power of the state. Liberals, as a result, have been less willing than realists to view the state as the dominant global actor, usually adopting instead a mixed-actor model of world politics. Indeed, liberals have generally accepted that globalization has been marked by the decline of the state (and perhaps the transition from nation states to ‘postmodern’ or ‘market’ states), as power has shifted away from the state and towards, in particular, global markets and transnational corporations (TNCs) (see p. 149), but also to individuals. Furthermore, liberals insist that the constitutional and political makeup of the state has a crucial impact on its external behaviour. In particular, republican liberals argue that democratic states are inherently more peaceable than non-democratic states (Doyle 1986). MARXIST VIEWS Critical theorists reject both realist state-centrism and liberal assertions about the retreat of the state, but they do so in different ways. Western Marxists in the late twentieth century engaged in heated theoretical debate on the nature of the state, with the principal protagonists being Ralph Miliband, who outlined an ‘instrumental’ view of the state, and Nicos Poulantzas (and later Bob Jessop), who argued that the state is better understood as a ‘social relation’. Neo-Marxists and post-Marxist theorists may have abandoned the orthodox belief that the (capitalist) state is merely a ‘committee’ for managing the interests of the ruling class, as Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto, but they continue to argue that state structures and, for that matter, world orders are grounded in social relations. The mutual dependence between markets and states has in fact intensified as a result of globalization, leading to what Cox (1993) called the ‘internationalization of the state’. 184 THE STATE CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEWS Social constructivists deny that the state has a fixed and objective character; rather, the identity of the state is shaped by a variety of historical and sociological factors, and these, in turn, inform the interests of the state and its actions. Wendt (1999), for example, distinguished between the social identity of the state (shaped by the status, role, or personality that international society ascribes to a state) and its corporate identity (shaped by internal material, ideological, and cultural factors). States not only mutually recognize one another, but are mutually constituted by their interactions with and understandings of one another. Hopf (1998) suggests that, on the constructivist view, ‘the same state is, in effect, many different actors in world politics, and different states behave differently toward other states, based on the identities of each’. FEMINIST VIEWS Feminist theorists differ over the state. While liberal feminists have believed that it is possible to reform the state from within, by increasing female representation at all levels, radical feminists have highlighted structural links between the state and the system of male power, believing that the state has an intrinsically patriarchal character. Intersectional feminists point to the role of the state in producing raced, gendered, and classed structural inequalities; bell hooks (see p. 110), for instance, uses the term ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ when referring to the Western state model, where liberal and realist theorists would traditionally use a term such as ‘liberal democracy’. Feminist international relations theorists such as J. Ann Tickner have critiqued the centring of ‘statesmen’, and of belligerent, state-centric ‘masculinist’ approaches, in diplomacy and international politics, while Charlotte Hooper refers to the struggles among ‘manly states’ in establishing a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ through colonization. POSTCOLONIAL VIEWS The Russian Marxist revolutionary V. I. Lenin viewed imperialism – the practice of powerful states occupying and colonizing those societies less able to defend themselves, for the purpose of extracting valuable commodities and labour from them – as ‘the highest stage of capitalism’ and a key aim of the capitalist state. Postcolonial theorists and the anti-colonial movements from which they sprang, often influenced by Marxist and Leninist thought themselves, have been acutely aware of the role of the state in colonial and imperialist violence. Not only did state forces lead the invasion, occupation, and exploitation of colonized societies, they also instituted state structures in those societies. None of the fifty-four recognized states in the continent of Africa today existed in their present form prior to European colonization – each is the result of colonialism, of anti-colonial struggle, and of eventual decolonization. European powers governed their colonial ‘possessions’ through often brutal local state bureaucracies, which mobilized what postcolonial theory terms ‘colourism’, along with caste-based and racist forms of social and economic policy, to more effectively exploit the societies they had subjugated. While global politics had entered a ‘postcolonial’ era by the late twentieth century, when European states had lost control over territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, postcolonial thinkers highlight the ways in which Western, white-majority countries often maintain colonial or ‘neo-colonial’ relations with formerly colonized states across the global ‘colour line’ (see p. 106), using the mechanisms and institutions of ‘global governance’ – the IMF, for example, to do so. CON THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE C E PT 185 FAILED STATE A ‘failed state’ is a state that is deemed by other states, or international organizations, to be unable to perform its key role of ensuring domestic order by monopolizing the use of force within its territory. Examples of failed states in recent decades have included Cambodia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia, and Somalia. Failed states are no longer able to operate as viable political units, in that they lack a credible system of law and order, often being gripped by civil war or warlordism. They are also no longer able to operate as viable economic units, in that they are incapable of providing for their citizens and have no functioning infrastructure. Although relatively few states collapse altogether, a much larger number barely function and are dangerously close to collapse. The concept has been viewed with increasing scepticism, however, since even the United States, which has often applied the term to other states, has increasingly struggled to control organized non-state violence within its borders, as the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol – and wider waves of gun violence – highlighted. The failure of such states stems primarily from the experience of colonialism, which, when it ended (mainly in the post-1945 period) bequeathed formal political independence to societies that lacked an appropriate level of political, economic, social, and educational development to function effectively as separate entities. As the borders of such states typically represented the extent of colonial ambition rather than the existence of a culturally cohesive population, postcolonial states also often encompassed deep ethnic, religious, and tribal divisions. Failed states are thus failed, postcolonial states. Nevertheless, colonialism does not, on its own, explain the weakness or failure of the postcolonial state. Other sources of state failure include internal factors, such as the existence of social elites, backward institutions, and parochial value systems that block the transition from pre-industrial, agrarian societies to modern industrial ones, and external factors, notably the impact of TNCs and neocolonialism. RETURN OF THE STATE Discourse about the state in the early twenty-first century was initially dominated by talk of retreat or decline. State sovereignty was routinely dismissed as an irrelevance and states were viewed as dinosaurs waiting to die. The reality is more complex, however, and by the mid-2010s it had become apparent that states and their sovereignty remain key to understanding global politics. Realist and other state-centric commentators argue that the impact of globalization in its economic, cultural, and political forms has always been exaggerated: states remain the decisive political actors. Nevertheless, a number of developments in recent years have helped to strengthen the state and to underline its essential importance. What explains the return of the state? In the first place, the state’s unique capacity to maintain domestic order and protect its citizens from external attack has been strongly underlined by new security challenges that have emerged in the twenty-first century, notably those linked to transnational terrorism (see p. 386). This underlines what Bobbitt (2002, p. 216) viewed as a basic truth: ‘The State exists to master violence’; it is therefore essentially a ‘warmaking institution’. The decline in military expenditure that occurred at the end of the Cold War, the so-called ‘peace dividend’, started to be reversed in the late 1990s, with global military expenditure rising steeply 6 186 GLOBAL POLITICS after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the launch of the ‘war on terror’. The United States with its massive military budget (see p. 635) has been the principal determinant of the current world trend, but military spending has also grown significantly in China, France, the UK, Russia, and elsewhere. Moreover, many countries have taken steps to strengthen the inviolability of the state as a territorial unit by imposing tighter border controls. Counter-terrorism strategies have often meant that states have assumed wider powers of surveillance, control, and sometimes detention, even becoming ‘national security states’. Recently, the re-emergence of a ‘great power’ rivalry between the United States and Russia, characterized by the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in 2016 as ‘a new Cold War’ (and triggered in part by Russia’s 2008 incursion into Georgia and 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine), along with the trade war between the United States and China that broke out in 2018, suggest that state power is not entirely on the wane. FOCUS ON . . . RUSSIA RESURGENT? The Russian state has undergone a significant transformation in both its domestic politics and its approach to international relations in recent years. In the early post-Soviet period, Russia became known as a haven for transnational organized crime, and for public asset-grabbing ‘oligarchs’, while the state appeared too weak or corrupt to fulfil some of its most basic functions. But under the increasingly authoritarian ‘strongman’ leadership of President Vladimir Putin in the twenty-first century, Russia has reasserted its state power through practices some had thought were consigned to history. The Russian security state has used radioactive and chemical weapons such as polonium and novichok to carry Russian President Vladimir Putin and French out audacious Cold War-style assassinations of defector President Emmanuel Macron hold diplomatic talks ‘enemies of the state’ in the heart of the sovereign territory aimed at preventing the imminent invasion of Ukraine, 7 February 2022 of the UK, one of its old Cold War enemies. In 2008, Source: THIBAULT CAMUS/AFP/Getty Images Russia launched a short-lived but highly controversial invasion of its neighbour Georgia, in support of the latter’s largely Russian-speaking secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In 2014, it waged a ‘hybrid war’ in – and ultimately annexed – the Crimea region of Ukraine (see p. 338), another sovereign state. And in 2022, it entered into an all-out war with Ukraine under the pretext of ‘deNazifying’ the country (which has seen an increase in far-right activity, though one that is rivalled by Russia’s own) and ‘liberating’ Russian-speaking Ukrainian populations in the country’s Eastern Donbas region. Meanwhile, the Russian state has also been accused of using social media disinformation and propaganda campaigns to interfere in foreign elections (including the US 2016 presidential election), and of using violent mass arrests of demonstrators to control dissent at home. Russia’s aggression toward neighbouring sovereign states, and hostility toward many Western states, has led to angry condemnation, threats, and the imposition of economic sanctions from the West, NATO (see p. 340), and the EU (see p. 623). In response, Putin has threatened to mobilize two of its most significant material resources – placing Russia’s nuclear forces on ‘high alert’ in February 2022 and using its control of natural gas supplies to Western Europe as a bargaining chip to mitigate the impact of sanctions. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 187 Unlike the 1990s, when Russia was seen as a ‘weak’ state in the aftermath of the Cold War, Putin’s Russia has increasingly sought to demonstrate strength. Its 2022 invasion of Ukraine may yet prove a step too far though, with many predicting that the war will deplete Russia’s military resources and capabilities for the future – Ukraine is a very large country, which has received significant military aid from the West, and whatever the outcome of the war, it is possible that in the longer term the invasion will be viewed as an example of ‘imperial over-reach’ (see p. 302) by the Putin regime. Although the days of command-and-control economic management may be over, the state has sometimes reasserted itself as an agent of modernization. The myth of neoliberalism is that prosperity and growth are purely a result of the dynamism of the market. In fact, market economies can only operate successfully in conditions of legal and social order that only states can guarantee. This applies particularly in the case of the rule of law and the enforcement of property rights, without which economic activity would end up being determined by threats, bribes, and the use of violence. Beyond this, however, modernizing states develop and implement strategies to ensure long-term economic success. ‘Competition states’ do this by improving education and training to boost productivity and by providing support for key export industries. States such as China and Russia each modernized their economies by making significant concessions to the market, but an important element of state control has been retained or reimposed (these developments are examined in more detail in Chapter 5 in relation to state capitalism). On a wider level, the state’s vital role in economic affairs was underlined by the 2007–9 global financial crisis. Although the G20 may have provided states with a forum to develop a coordinated global response, the massive packages of fiscal and other interventions that were agreed were, and could only have been, implemented by states. Indeed, some have seen the crisis as marking the watershed between three decades of anti-statist neoliberal globalization and a new era of regulated globalization, in which states, through international organizations or sometimes acting alone, play a more active economic role. DEBATING . . . IS STATE SOVEREIGNTY NOW AN OUTDATED CONCEPT? State sovereignty has traditionally been viewed as the core principle of the international system. However, while some argue that globalization and other developments have changed the international system fundamentally, others suggest that the basic contours of the international system remain essentially unchanged. YES NO Permeable borders. State borders, the traditional guarantee of territorial sovereignty, are permeable in that they have increasingly been penetrated by external forces. These include international tourism and the movement of knowledge and information via the internet. Global financial markets and transnational capital flows mean that economic sovereignty has become redundant. If the conventional domestic/international divide is increasingly difficult to sustain, states are no longer meaningful territorial units. Myth of the ‘borderless world’. The image that world politics is dominated by transnational processes that elude state control is, at best, a gross exaggeration. For example, national economies have not simply been absorbed into a ‘borderless’ global economy, as much more economic activity takes place within state borders than it does across state borders. Furthermore, it is misleading to suggest that globalizing trends necessarily disempower states. Instead, states choose to engage in the global economy and do so for reasons of national self-interest. 6 188 GLOBAL POLITICS YES NO Rise of non-state actors. States are no longer the only, or necessarily the dominant, actors on the world stage. Transnational corporations (TNCs) wield greater financial power than many states, and can effectively dictate state policy through their ability to relocate production and investment at ease in a globalized economy. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International exert global influence. And state security is as likely to be threatened by global terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda as it is by other states. States remain dominant. Although states are merely one actor amongst many on the world stage, they remain the most important actor. States exercise power in a way and to an extent that no other actor can. In particular, using the administrative processes of government and relying on unchallengeable coercive power, their control over what happens within their territories is rarely challenged. Only a tiny proportion of states, those classified as ‘failed’ or ‘weak’ states, have effectively lost control over what happens within their borders. Collective dilemmas. In modern circumstances, states are increasingly confronted by collective dilemmas, issues that are particularly taxing because they confound even the most powerful of states when acting alone. Quite simply, global problems require global solutions. An increasing range of issues have acquired a collective or even global character – climate change, terrorism, transnational crime, pandemic diseases, international migration, and so on. Only international organizations, not supposedly sovereign states, can tackle these. Pooled sovereignty. The advance of political globalization and the emergence of a framework of global governance have not brought about an erosion of sovereignty. Rather, they expand the opportunities available to states, particularly for achieving the benefits of cooperation. International organizations are bodies that are formed by states, for states; they are invariably used by states as tools to achieve their own ends. Indeed, by working together, states are able to pool their sovereignty, gaining greater capacity and influence than they would have possessed working alone. International human rights. Respect for state sovereignty has been eroded by the growing belief that there are standards of conduct to which all states should conform as far as the treatment of their domestic populations is concerned. Such a view is usually based on a belief in human rights, and the idea that the fundamental individual rights are morally superior to the state’s right to independence and autonomy. This is evident in shifts in international law (examined in Chapter 15), and in the wider acceptance of humanitarian intervention (see Chapter 14). Enduring attraction of the nation state. There seems little likelihood that states will lose their dominance so long as they continue to enjoy the allegiance of the mass of their citizens. As most states are nation states, this is ensured by the survival of nationalism as the world’s most potent ideological force. Rival doctrines such as cosmopolitanism and allegiances based, for instance, on religion, culture, or ethnicity are of minor significance compared with nationalism. State-building: The construction of a functioning state through the establishment of legitimate institutions for the formulation and implementation of policy across key areas of government. Finally, there has been a growing recognition of the role of the state in promoting development. This is reflected in an increased emphasis on state-building as a key aspect of the larger process of peace-building (see p. 560). The provision of humanitarian relief and the task of conflict resolution become almost insuperably difficult in the absence of a functioning system of law and order. The wider use of humanitarian interventions since the early 1990s – later under the banner of a ‘responsibility to protect’ (see p. 424) – has meant that ordered rule is often provided, initially at least, by external powers. However, this does not constitute a long-term solution. As examples such as Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan demonstrate, externally imposed order is only sustainable for a limited period of time, both because the economic and human cost to the intervening powers may be unsustainable in the long-run and because, sooner or later, the presence of foreign troops and police provokes resentment and hostility. Foreign intervention has therefore come, over time, to focus increasingly on the construction of effective THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE indigenous leadership and building legitimate national institutions, such as an army; a police force; a judiciary; a central bank; government departments; local administration; a tax collection agency; and functioning education, transport, energy, and healthcare systems. The process of state-building is nevertheless often profoundly difficult. NATIONAL GOVERNMENT TO MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE 189 Good governance: Standards for the process of decision-making in society, including (according to the UN) popular participation, respect for the rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, and accountability. Hierarchy: An organization that is based FROM GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNANCE on graded ranks and a Changes to the role and significance of the state have also had important implications clear and usually topfor the nature and functioning of government. Government refers to the formal and down authority structure. CON institutional processes that operate at the national level to maintain order and facilitate collective action. Its central feature is the ability to make collective decisions and the capacity to enforce them. Since the 1980s, however, it has become increasingly fashionable for international theorists and political analysts to talk more in terms of ‘governance’ rather than ‘government’, with terms such as ‘global governance’ (see Chapter 20), ‘good governance’, and ‘corporate governance’ becoming commonplace. The so-called ‘governance turn’ in the study of international and domestic politics has been a consequence of a variety of developments. At the heart of these is the growing redundancy of the traditional notion of government as a hierarchy or collection of hierarchies. For Max Weber (1948), hierarchy, in the form of what he termed bureaucracy, was the typical form of organization in modern industrialized societies. It was typified by the existence of fixed and official areas of jurisdiction, clear laws or rules, and a firmly ordered and established top-down chain of command. The virtue of such a command-and-control system was supposedly its rationality: bureaucratization, according to Weber, reflected the advance of a reliable, predictable and, above all, efficient means of social organization. Bureaucracies or hierarchies thus developed in the military and the police, in schools and universities, and throughout the modern state in the growth of government departments and executive agencies. Similarly, the emergence of capitalist economies generating pressure for greater economic efficiency made large-scale corporations the dominant form of business organization in the twentieth century. C E PT GOVERNANCE ‘Governance’ is a broader term than ‘government’. Although it still has no settled or agreed definition, it refers, in its wider sense, to the various ways through which social life is coordinated. Governance is therefore a process (or a complex of processes), its principal modes including markets, hierarchies, and networks. Although government may be involved in governance, it is possible to have ‘governance without government’. Governance is typified by a blurring of the state/society distinction (private bodies and institutions work closely with public ones) and the involvement of a number of levels or layers (potentially local, provincial, national, regional, and global). The processes through which international affairs are coordinated are increasingly referred to as ‘global governance’. 6 190 GLOBAL POLITICS The shift from government to governance is a political reflection of the advent of more fluid and differentiated societies (as discussed in Chapter 7). Top-down authority structures have, in this context, been exposed as ineffective, unresponsive, and perhaps redundant. The advent of governance thus parallels economic trends that have seen a transition from ‘Fordist’ models of business organization, based on large-scale mass production, to ‘post-Fordist’ ones (see p. 203) that emphasize flexibility, innovation, and decentralized decision-making. Pressure to adjust the way governments behave and how governing is carried out came from a variety of sources. These include the fiscal crisis of the state that was precipitated by the end of the ‘long boom’ and the downturn of the global economy in the 1970s. Whereas sustained economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s had underwritten, in developed societies at least, an expansion in the welfare and social responsibilities of the state, helping to strengthen faith in the efficacy of government, reduced tax revenues created a mismatch between people’s expectations of government and what government could actually deliver. Governments had either to reduce popular expectations of government or to find new and more imaginative ways of delivering government services more cheaply and efficiently. A further set of pressures were generated in the 1980s and 1990s by the ideological shift towards free-market or neoliberal priorities. Pursued most radically through Reaganism in the United States and Thatcherism in the United Kingdom, but affecting almost all societies to some degree, this set out to dismantle ‘big government’ in the belief that the economy worked best when regulated by market forces and that the individual should be liberated from the tyranny of the ‘nanny state’. Economic globalization has also played a major role in this process. The integration of national economies to a greater or lesser degree into a single global economy has exposed all countries to intensified competitive pressures, creating a ‘race to the bottom’ as governments seek to attract or retain private investment by cutting taxes, deregulating economic life and promoting more flexible labour markets. How have governments adapted themselves in the light of these circumstances? The shift to a governance mode of governing has been evident in at least three, albeit related developments. First, the role of government has been redefined and in some senses narrowed. Instead of ‘rowing’ (that is, administering and delivering services), the tasks of government have increasingly been confined to ‘steering’ (that is, setting targets and strategic objectives). This, in part, acknowledges the inefficiency and unresponsiveness of traditional public administration by comparison in particular with private businesses or ‘third sector’ bodies such as charities, community groups, and NGOs (see p. 8). In the United States, where such ideas were born and most enthusiastically embraced, the shift in responsibility for ‘rowing’ has been described as ‘reinventing government’ (Osborne and Gaebler 1992). Second, there has been a significant blurring of the distinction between government and markets and thus between the public and private realms. This has happened in a variety of ways: for example, through the ‘contracting out’ of public services or full-scale privatization, by the growth in public–private partnerships and the introduction of ‘internal markets’ in public service delivery, and by the introduction into the public sector of private sector management styles and structures through the so-called ‘new public management’. Third, there has been a shift from hierarchies to networks within the processes of government, which has led Castells (1996) to proclaim the emergence of a ‘network state’ alongside the ‘network society’ and the ‘network THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 191 corporation’. For instance, the tasks of developing and sometimes implementing policy Policy network: A have increasingly been transferred from hierarchical departments to policy networks, systematic set of relationships between as networks have proved to be particularly effective in facilitating the exchange of and political actors who share coordinating social life in a context of increasing complexity. a common interest or general orientation in a particular area. MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE The transition from government to governance is reflected not only in the more complex ways through which social life is now coordinated within modern societies – for example, through a wider role for markets and networks and the weakening of the public/private divide – but it is also evident in the ‘stretching’ of government across a number of levels. In other words, government can no longer be thought of as a specifically national activity which takes place within discrete societies. This has led to the phenomenon of ‘multilevel governance’. Policy-making responsibility has both been ‘sucked up’ and ‘drawn down’, creating a complex process of interactions (see Figure 6.1). The ‘sucking up’ of policymaking responsibility has occurred through the advent of political globalization and the growing importance of regional and global governance, as discussed earlier. International organizations National government Devolved bodies Local government Figure 6.1 Multilevel governance The ‘drawing down’ of policy-making responsibilities reflects a process of decentralization. For much of the twentieth century, most states exhibited a distinct trend towards centralization, largely as a consequence of their expanding economic and social roles. Central government has clear advantages over peripheral bodies in terms of its ability to manage the economy and deliver a widening range of public services, not least because of its significantly greater fiscal capacity. However, since about the 1960s this trend has often been reversed, giving way to a countervailing tendency towards localization. In many cases, this has been reflected in the growth or strengthening of peripheral or subnational political bodies (see Table 6.1). Multilevel governance: A pattern of overlapping and interrelated public authority that stems from the growth, or growing importance, of supranational and subnational bodies. Decentralization: The expansion of local autonomy through the transfer of powers and responsibilities away from national bodies. Localization: A trend that favours the local as the basis for political action, cultural identity, or economic organization, usually associated with the growing importance of subnational governance. 6 192 GLOBAL POLITICS Table 6.1 Examples of localization India Spain Post-independence, a US-style federal system was chosen rather than a UK-style unitary one. After the death of General Franco in 1975, in its transition to democratic government a system of devolution was adopted, with seventeen autonomous communities, each based on an elected assembly invested with broad control of domestic policy. France In 1982, the strategy of ‘functional regionalism’ became a fully-fledged system of regional government, based on twenty-two directly elected regional councils. United Kingdom The introduction of devolution in the late 1990s led to the creation of a Scottish Parliament, a Welsh Assembly, and a Northern Ireland Assembly, and the emergence of a form of quasi-federalism. Devolution: The transfer of power from central government to subordinate regional or provincial institutions that have no share in sovereignty; their responsibilities and powers being derived entirely from the centre. Although localization may appear to be the antithesis of globalization, the two processes are closely, and perhaps intrinsically linked, as reflected in the notion of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson 1992). One of the key driving forces of localization has been the rise of cultural and ethnic politics, itself linked to the declining purchase of classical nationalism. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, secessionist groups and forms of ethnic nationalism sprang up in many parts of Western Europe and North America. This was most evident in Quebec in Canada, Scotland and Wales in the UK, Catalonia and the Basque area in Spain, Corsica in France, and Flanders in Belgium. It created pressure for political decentralization, and sometimes, precipitated major constitutional upheavals. Similar manifestations of ethnic assertiveness were evident among the Native Americans in Canada and the United States, the Aboriginal peoples in Australia, and the Maoris in New Zealand. Other examples of localization include the tendency towards religious revivalism, through which Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews, and even Buddhists have ‘gone local’ to reaffirm their faith through the adoption of fundamentalist beliefs and practices, and the stress within the anti-capitalist movement (see p. 224) on the politics of protest and political activism, reflected in the slogan: ‘Think globally, act locally’. Native Americans hold up flags noting the names of Native American people who have been killed. They stand on the spot where a statue of Christopher Columbus was toppled in protest during the 2020 global Black Lives Matter demonstrations Source: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images CON THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE C E PT 193 FEDERALISM Federalism (from the Latin foedus, meaning ‘pact’, or ‘covenant’) refers to legal and political structures that distribute power between two distinct levels of government, neither of which is subordinate to the other. Its central feature is therefore the principle of shared sovereignty. ‘Classical’ federations are few in number: the United States, India, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, and Australia. However, many more states have federal-type features. Most federal, or federal-type, states were formed by the coming together of a number of established political communities; they are often geographically large and may have culturally diverse populations. Federalism may nevertheless also have an international dimension, providing the basis, in particular, for regional integration, as in the case of ‘European federalism’ (discussed in Chapter 21). 6 Localization, in its cultural, economic but especially in its political form, has had profound implications for the process of governance, making the policy process yet more fragmented and decentralized. The EU provides the best example of multilevel governance, operating as it does through complex processes involving subnational as well as national and supranational levels and actors. Local authorities and devolved bodies often bypass national governments and seek direct representation in Brussels, strengthening their involvement in EU-level economic planning and infrastructure development. Moreover, since the late 1980s the idea of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ has taken root, as regional and provincial levels of government have lobbied for, and benefited from, the direct distribution of aid from the European Regional Development Fund. Over time, regional aid has eclipsed agriculture as the largest single area of EU spending. Shared sovereignty: A constitutional arrangement in which sovereignty is divided between two levels of government, each exercising supreme and autonomous control over a specific range of issues. FOREIGN POLICY International relations (IR) theories (see Chapters 3 and 4) have tended to take for granted that the state is the key entity in global politics, and to focus on analysing structures and events through the lens of state interactions. An alternative approach, which first emerged in the United States in the late 1950s, emphasizes the importance of individuals as decision-makers within societies. Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) is a subfield that emerged out of the behaviouralist turn in IR, and the wider social sciences, in the mid-twentieth century. For FPA scholars, what happens within ‘the international’ is the result of decisions made by individuals at the national and subnational level: presidents and prime ministers, foreign ministers, diplomats, bureaucrats, and even members of the public. FPA approaches therefore analyse not the grand structures of world politics but rather how particular foreign policy decisions are made by particular, relevant individuals. These policies in turn elicit responses from other individuals, in the form of other states’ foreign policies, and true ‘international relations’ lie in the interaction of these policies. FPA scholarship draws upon a diverse range of other social scientific disciplines, from personal and social psychology to media studies and history, to make sense of foreign policy decision-making by individuals. It also explores a huge range of relevant variables. Behaviouralism: A broad approach to the social sciences premised on the view that to explain the social, political, and economic world we must analyse human behaviour, rather than develop abstract theories of ‘human nature’ or analyses of social structures. 194 GLOBAL POLITICS Many FPA studies focus on leadership styles and the personal characteristics, beliefs, and psychology of particular decision-makers in positions of power. Others analyse the role of bureaucracy – the machinery of foreign policy-making, including government committees, the powers conferred upon individuals by holding particular offices of state, and so on – as a space in which ‘pulling and hauling’ takes place between individual policymakers with differing foreign policy agendas (Allison 1969). Constructivist (see p. 120) FPA, meanwhile, tends to focus on identities and perceptions as the causes of foreign policy decisions (for example, Campbell 1992). In FPA, the influence upon foreign policy decision-makers of everything from religious beliefs to cognitive bias, ‘groupthink’, and public opinion is studied for clues as to why particular outcomes in world politics come about. While FPA has had moments of ascendancy, particularly in the 1960s, 1990s, and 2000s, it has remained somewhat marginal within the wider academic field of IR and the study of global politics. Its proponents suggest that it ‘could be poised to become one of the cutting-edge fields of social science in the twenty-first century’ (Hudson and Day 2020, p. 216), but a critical perspective on this subfield reveals some potential weaknesses. First, by their own admission, in some cases (Hermann 1980), FPA scholars tend toward journalistic – rather than social scientific – accounts of global politics. While this approach might produce engaging narratives about how powerful individuals arrived at decisions, these analyses might lack rigour, and sometimes proceed by assertions that are very hard to substantiate (about the personal psychology and inner lives of leaders, for instance). Margaret Hermann’s extensive work on the ‘personal characteristics’ and ‘traits’ of leaders, and how they come to make foreign policy decisions, for example, offers a neat FPA typology into which we can slot a range of world leaders today. For Hermann (1980), two broad varieties predominate – ‘aggressive’ leaders who are ‘high in need for power, low in conceptual complexity, distrustful of others, nationalistic, and likely to believe that they have some control over the events in which they are involved’, and ‘conciliatory’ leaders who are ‘high in need for affiliation, high in conceptual complexity, trusting of others, low in nationalism, and likely to exhibit little belief in their own ability to control the events in which they are involved’. Whether a leader is more aggressive or conciliatory will determine the decisions they make on foreign policy issues. But are there really just two basic ‘kinds’ of leader out there? Is social psychology and political decision-making ever really reducible to such a narrow typology? And what kinds of moral judgements or normative commitments are implicit in these lists of characteristics? Does ‘aggressive’ not seem to involve a negative connotation, here? Moreover, some of the very specific claims associated with the two types of leader might not stand up to scrutiny in cases outside of the United States. Kwame Nkrumah (see p. 609) was very much a ‘conciliatory’ foreign policy decision-maker on the one hand, in that he was a staunch pan-Africanist (see p. 237), and was certainly ‘high in conceptual complexity’ as a social and political theorist too, but he was also nationalistic – a trait Hermann associates only with the ‘aggressive’ leader. Perhaps this is because the context in which Hermann – and the wider field of FPA – is focused is that of the United States, THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE where nationalism has most often taken the form of right-wing reactionary, and ‘white’ nationalisms, whereas in postcolonial Ghana and the wider African continent, anticolonial nationalisms tended to be liberationist, progressive political forces (see p. 237). And therein lies a key critique of FPA; to the extent that its categories and assumptions about decision-makers, their contexts, character, and psychology are accurate, they are often limited to culturally and politically Western, or even more specifically American, examples. Understanding the motivations and decisions of individuals requires a degree of cultural, contextual embedding and understanding that presents a real challenge to FPA – a field that may be hampered by Eurocentrism (see p. 101). Its tendency toward methodological individualism, meanwhile, offers a rather limited lens on how wider social forces – structures, traditions, established practices, and so on – might shape outcomes in global politics. For this reason, broader approaches to foreign policymaking, focused less on the individual, are also important. THE END OF FOREIGN POLICY? The making of foreign policy has traditionally been regarded as one of the key features of international politics. It reflects the importance of statecraft as an activity through which national governments manage their relations with other states and international bodies. Indeed, foreign policy-making has sometimes been thought of as a noble activity, seen as ‘high’ politics in that it deals with issues of sovereignty and security – in fact, the very survival of the state – as opposed to the ‘low’ politics of economics and other less important state activities. However, recent developments have called the concept of ‘foreign policy’ into question, certainly casting doubt on the conventional notion of foreign policy as a discrete activity, engaged in at a senior political level and involving formal diplomatic interactions between and amongst states. These pressures have come from various directions. In the first place, the ascendancy of neorealism in the late 1970s appeared to suggest that foreign policy, and indeed the wider process of decision-making in international politics, was simply no longer relevant. In the view of Kenneth Waltz (see p. 80) and others, state behaviour could essentially be explained through the power balances that shape the international system. As systemic factors were seen as decisively important, little or no role discretion was left to foreign policy actors, such as heads of government, foreign ministers, defence ministers, leading diplomats, and so forth. The ‘logic of anarchy’ explained everything. Further pressures have been generated by the advance of globalization and the growth of ‘complex interdependence’ (see p. 84). These developments dramatically widened and deepened the scope of the interactions between and amongst states. As the distinctions between home and abroad, inside and outside, and ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics became perhaps hopelessly blurred, the divide between ‘foreign’ politics and ‘domestic’ politics became increasingly difficult to sustain. If the notion of ‘the foreign’ is meaningless, can foreign policy any longer exist? The matter was made yet more problematical by the fact that globalizing trends have also been associated with the advent of post-sovereign governance and the burgeoning importance of non-state actors: TNCs, NGOs, terrorist 195 Methodological individualism: An approach to social science premised on the view that social reality is no more than the sum of the behaviour, decisions, and preferences of human individuals. It rejects the study of ‘social structures’ (see p. 123). Foreign: (from the Latin foris meaning ‘outside’) Dealing or concerned with another country, area, or people; implies strange or not familiar. 6 196 GLOBAL POLITICS groups, international organizations, and so on. At the very least, this means that foreign policy can no longer be thought of simply as ‘what states do to, or with, other states’. Nevertheless, the study of foreign policy remains a worthwhile activity, for at least two reasons. First, although the foreign/domestic divide may have become blurred, it has not been rendered redundant. The simple fact is that the world is still more separated into distinctive communities than it is a single, homogenizing entity (Hill 2003). How these communities attempt to manage the relations between and among them therefore continues to be an interesting and important issue. Second, foreign policy highlights the crucial interplay between structure and agency, emphasizing that events can neither be explained entirely through ‘top-down’ systemic pressures nor entirely through ‘bottomup’ individual decision-making (see ‘Approaches to Social Structure and Agency’, p. 123). In so doing, foreign policy underlines the crucial significance of a sphere of decision, choice, and intentionality within global politics. HOW DECISIONS ARE MADE The making of decisions, and specifically of bundles of decisions, is clearly central to the policy process. Although policy-making also relates to the acts of initiation and implementation, the making of decisions and reaching of conclusions is usually seen as its key feature. However, it may be difficult to establish how and why decisions are made. In foreign policy-making a levels-of-analysis is commonly adopted, in line with the three levels at which Waltz (1959) analysed the causes of war: z the level of the individual decision-maker (involving personal priorities, psychological and cognitive dispositions, and so on); z the nation state level (involving the nature of the state, type of government, bureaucratic structure, and so on); and CON z the systemic level (involving power balances within the international system, the web of state interdependence, dynamics of global capitalism, and so on). C E PT FOREIGN POLICY Public policy lays out courses of action for government and its various agencies. Foreign policy refers, broadly, to attempts by governments to influence or manage events outside the state’s borders, usually, but not exclusively, through their relations with foreign governments. Foreign policy-making involves the establishment of goals and the selection of means to achieve them. In view of the increased interpenetration of domestic and foreign affairs in modern global politics, the term ‘external relations’ is sometimes preferred to foreign policy, allowing for interactions that take place on multiple levels and which involve multiple actors. At the very least, the realm of foreign policy can no longer be confined simply to relations between foreign ministers/ministries or between national diplomatic services. Nevertheless, a number of general theories of political decision-making have been advanced. The most important of these are rational actor models, incremental models, bureaucratic organization models, and cognitive processes and belief-system models. THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 197 Rational Actor Models Decision-making models that emphasize human rationality have generally been constructed on the basis of economic theories that have themselves been derived from utilitarianism. Developed by thinkers such as Anthony Downs (1957), these theories are usually based on the notion of ‘economic man’, a model of human nature that stresses the self-interested pursuit of material satisfaction, calculated in terms of utility (use-value; the balance of pleasure over pain). In this light, decisions can be seen to be reached using the following procedures: z The nature of the problem is identified. z An objective or goal is selected on the basis of an ordering of individual preferences. z The available means of achieving this objective are evaluated in terms of their effectiveness, reliability, costs, and so on. z A decision is made through the selection of the means most likely to secure the desired end. CON This type of process assumes both that clear-cut objectives exist and that human beings are able to pursue them in a rational and consistent manner. The best example of such an approach to decision-making is found in the use of cost–benefit analysis in the making of business decisions. In line with the goal of profit maximization, business people make decisions that will ensure the least possible cost and the greatest possible benefit, both calculated in monetary terms. Realist theorists make similar assumptions about decision-making in international politics. In their view, foreign policy is guided by a single overriding goal: the pursuit of vital national interests, understood, at minimum, as ensuring state survival, and beyond that the pursuit of power to enable the state to achieve its national ambitions. This may be dictated by system-level pressures (as neorealists suggest) or by egoistical pressures that operate in and through the state itself (as classical realists argue); either way, it implies that the role of individual decision-makers is largely restricted to the selection of the best means of achieving a predetermined end. C E PT NATIONAL INTEREST In broad terms, the national interest refers to foreign policy goals, objectives, or policy preferences that benefit a society as a whole (the foreign policy equivalent of the ‘public interest’). The concept is often vague and contested, however. It is most widely used by realist theorists, for whom it is defined by the structural implications of international anarchy and so is closely linked to national security, survival, and the pursuit of power. For decisionmaking theorists, the national interest refers to the strategies and goals pursued by those responsible for the conduct of foreign policy, although this may mean that it degenerates into mere rhetoric. Alternatively, it may refer to foreign policy goals that have been endorsed through the democratic process. The rational actor model is attractive, in part, because it reflects how most people believe decisions should be made. Certainly, politicians and others are strongly inclined to portray their actions as both goal-orientated and the product of careful thought and deliberation. When examined more closely, however, rational calculation may not 6 198 GLOBAL POLITICS Incrementalism: The theory that decisions are made not in the light of clear-cut objectives but through small adjustments dictated by changing circumstances. appear to be a particularly convincing model of decision-making. In the first place, in practice, decisions are often made on the basis of inadequate and sometimes inaccurate information. Such difficulties encouraged Herbert Simon (1983) to develop the notion of ‘bounded rationality’. This acknowledges that, as it is impossible to analyse and select all possible courses of action, decision-making is essentially an act of compromising between differently valued and imprecisely calculated outcomes. Simon described this process as ‘satisficing’. The second problem with rational actor models is that they ignore the role of perception; that is, the degree to which actions are shaped by beliefs and assumptions about reality, rather than by reality itself. Little or no importance is thus attached to individual and collective psychology or to the values and ideological leanings of decision-makers. Incremental Models Incrementalism is often portrayed as the principal alternative to rational decisionmaking. David Braybrooke and Charles Lindblom (1963) termed this model ‘disjointed incrementalism’, neatly summed up by Lindblom (1959) as the ‘science of muddling through’. This position holds that, in practice, decisions tend to be made on the basis of inadequate information and low levels of understanding, and this discourages decisionmakers from pursuing bold and innovative courses of action. Policy-making is therefore a continuous, exploratory process: lacking overriding goals and clear-cut ends, policymakers tend to operate within an existing pattern or framework, adjusting their position in the light of feedback in the form of information about the impact of earlier decisions. Indeed, incrementalism may suggest a strategy of avoidance or evasion, policy-makers being inclined to move away from problems, rather than trying to solve them. Lindblom’s case for incrementalism is normative as well as descriptive. In addition to providing a perhaps more accurate account of how decisions are made in the real world, he argued that this approach also has the merit of allowing for flexibility and the expression of divergent views. ‘Muddling through’ at least implies responsiveness and flexibility, consultation and compromise. However, the model is clearly best suited to situations in which policymakers are more inclined towards inertia rather than innovation. It thus explains the foreign policy trends of pro-status quo states more easily than those that seek to revise or overturn the status quo. For example, incrementalism appears to explain the policy of appeasement, pursued by the UK and increasingly also France in the 1930s. This involved giving in to hostile demands from Hitler’s Germany in the hope of avoiding war but ended up emboldening Germany, if only by convincing Hitler that the Western powers would never act to prevent Nazi expansionism. On the other hand, Nazi expansionism itself, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942, and, for that matter, more recent examples, such as the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, can hardly be described as incremental adjustments. Neorealists would further argue that the different foreign policy strategies of status quo states and revisionist states can better be explained by the larger balance of power (see p. 343) than by an inclination amongst certain policymakers to ‘muddle through’. Finally, incrementalism places little or no emphasis on the role of beliefs and values, which may, for instance, have been a crucial factor driving foreign policy decision-making in Nazi Germany (see ‘Hitler’s War?’ p. 46). THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND FOREIGN POLICY IN A GLOBAL AGE 199 Bureaucratic Organization Models Both rational actor and incremental models are essentially ‘black box’ theories of decisionmaking; neither pays attention to the impact that the structure of the policy-making process has on the resulting decisions. Operating on the nation state level, bureaucratic or organizational models try, on the other hand, to get inside the black box by highlighting the degree to which process influences product. This approach was pioneered by Graham Allison (1971) in his examination of US and USSR decision-making during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Two contrasting, but related, models emerged from this study. The first, usually called the ‘organizational process’ model, highlights the impact on decisions of the values, assumptions, and regular patterns of behaviour that are found in any large organization. Rather than corresponding to rational analysis and objective evaluation, decisions are seen to reflect the entrenched culture of the government department or agency that makes them. The second theory, the ‘bureaucratic politics’ model, emphasizes the impact on decisions of bargaining between personnel and agencies, each pursuing different perceived interests. This approach dismisses the idea of the state as a monolith united around a single view or a single interest and suggests that decisions arise from an arena of contest in which the balance of advantage is constantly shifting. Although these models undoubtedly draw attention to important aspects of decisionmaking, they also have their drawbacks. In the first place, the organizational process model allows little scope for political leadership to be imposed from above. It would be foolish, for example, to suggest that all decisions are shaped by organizational pressures and perceptions, for this would be to ignore the personal role played by, say, George W. Bush in initiating the ‘war on terror’, or Hitler’s influence on Germany’s decision to invade Poland. Second, it is simplistic to suggest, as the bureaucratic politics model does, that political actors simply hold views that are based on their own position and on the interests of the organizations in which they work. Although the aphorism ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’ may often be applicable, personal sympathies and individual goals cannot be altogether discounted. Finally, to explain decisions entirely in terms of black box considerations is to fail to give any weight to the external pressures that emanate from the broader political, economic, cultural, and ideological context. SUMMARY y The state has four key features: a defined territory, a permanent population, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Its core feature, however, is sovereignty, the principle of absolute and unlimited power. There are, nevertheless, internal and external dimensions of sovereignty. y Globalization has widely been seen to curtail state sovereignty, creating ‘post-sovereign governance’. In particular, economic sovereignty has been compromised by transborder trading, capital, and other flows. Some believe that such developments have transformed the nature of the state, giving rise to the ‘competition’ state, the ‘market’ state, or the ‘postmodern’ state. y Contrary to the ‘declinist’ literature, there is growing evidence of the return of state power. This has occurred as a response to new security threats, the increasing use of the state as an agent of economic modernization and through an emphasis on state-building as a means of promoting development. 6 GLOBAL POLITICS 200 y Changes in the environment in which the state operates have also, many claim, meant that government is being displaced by governance, implying a shift away from command-andcontrol and towards coordination. This trend has been associated with the ‘stretching’ of government across a number of levels, giving rise to multilevel governance. y The making of foreign policy has traditionally been regarded as one of the key features of international politics, reflecting the importance of statecraft. However, some question whether foreign policy is any longer meaningful given factors such as the structural dynamics of the international system and the advance of globalization. y A number of general theories of foreign policy decision-making have been advanced. The most important of these are rational actor models, incremental models, bureaucratic organization models, and cognitive processes and belief-system models, although they are not necessarily incompatible. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y In what sense does the state have a dual structure? y Why is sovereignty regarded as the core feature of the state? y What are the major threats to external sovereignty? y Is the notion of ‘post-sovereign governance’ meaningful? y What are the implications for the state of the growth of international organizations? y To what extent have globalizing tendencies reshaped the nature and role of the state? y Is the ‘return of the state’ a myth or a reality? y In what ways does governance differ from government? y Is foreign policy-making best understood on an individual, national, or systemic level? y How has neorealism challenged the traditional conception of foreign policy? y Why is it so difficult for foreign policy actors to make rational and balanced decisions? FURTHER READING Bell, S. and A. Hindmoor, Rethinking Governance: The Centrality of the State in Modern Society (2009). A clear account of how modern states use a mixture of governance modes to address specific problems, which challenges the notion of the ‘decentred’ state. Davies, J., Challenging Governance Theory (2011). A critique of the prevalent idea of ‘network’ governance, suggesting that Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’ is a more useful framing. Hay, C., M. Lister, and D. Marsh (eds), The State: Theories and Issues (2006). An insightful collection that is international in scope and examines the nature of the state and the issue of state transformation. Hudson, V. M. and B. S. Day, Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory (3rd edition) (2020). An introductory but comprehensive guide to the subfield of FPA. Sørensen, G., The Transformation of the State: Beyond the Myth of Retreat (2004). A systematic analysis that accepts the changing nature of statehood but stresses the state’s continued importance in world affairs. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e SOCIETY IN 7 A GLOBAL AGE Source: iStock.com/imaginima PREVIEW The study of international relations traditionally paid little attention to social forces or social factors. ‘States’ rather than ‘societies’ were viewed as the principal actors on the world stage, and relations between and amongst them were thought to be determined by strictly political considerations (linked to power and security), not to sociological ones. In some ways, the advent of globalization accentuated this disregard for ‘the social’, as hyperglobalists in particular portrayed globalization as a strictly economic, or even technological, phenomenon. Both such views, however, fail to recognize the extent to which institutions such as the state and the economy are embedded in a network of social relationships, which both help to shape political and economic developments and are, in turn, shaped by them. Indeed, modern societies are changing as rapidly and as radically as modern economies. Key shifts include the changing nature of social connectedness, especially in the light of the rise of so-called ‘post-industrial’ societies and the massive growth in communications technology. Are ‘thick’ forms of social connectedness being replaced by ‘thin’ forms of connectedness? Furthermore, the advance of cultural globalization is reshaping social norms and values, especially, but by no means exclusively, in the developing world, not least through the spread of consumerism and the rise of individualism. What are the major drivers of this process, and is it leading to the spread of a global monoculture? Finally, the growth of transnational groups and global movements has led some to suggest that social relations and identities are in the process of being reshaped through the emergence of what has been dubbed ‘global civil society’. Is there such a thing as global civil society, and what are its implications for the future shape of global politics? KEY ISSUES z What have been the social implications of the emergence of post-industrial societies and the communications revolution? z Why have risk and insecurity become such prominent features of modern society? z How, and to what extent, has globalization altered social norms and cultural beliefs? z Why have NGOs and social movements grown in recent years? z Is global civil society a force for good or for ill? 201 202 GLOBAL POLITICS SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS: THICK TO THIN? What is a society? All societies are characterized by regular patterns of interaction; a ‘society’ is not just a collection of people who happen to occupy the same territorial area. These patterns of behaviour, over time, constitute the structures of society (see p. 123), although significantly, as the philosopher of social science Roy Bhaskar noted: ‘Because social structures are themselves social products, they are themselves possible objects of transformation and so may be only relatively enduring’ (Bhaskar 1979: 41). Societies are therefore fashioned out of relatively stable sets of relationships between and among their members, involving a sense of ‘connectedness’, in the form of mutual awareness and some degree of everyday communication and cooperation, and some sharing of resources. However, societies may exist on a number of different, and interconnected, levels. At a national or domestic level, particular countries are often referred to as societies, drawing attention to the capacity of a shared culture and political allegiances to inculcate a common sense of identity. Theorists of the so-called ‘English School’ have argued that society also has an international dimension, in that shared norms and values and regular patterns of interaction among states have created what they call ‘international society’ (see p. 641). At a still higher level, some have suggested that society has acquired a global dimension, in the form of ‘world society’ (Burton 1972) or ‘global civil society’ (see p. 221), as discussed in the final main section of this chapter. The nature of society, and therefore of social connectedness, has changed significantly over time. Mainly applying to national or domestic societies, modern society appears to be characterized by a ‘hollowing out’ of social connectedness, a transition from the ‘thick’ connectedness of close social bonds and fixed allegiances to the ‘thin’ connectedness of more fluid, individualized social arrangements. Many aspects of these changes are associated with the social and cultural implications of globalization, which are examined in the next main section, but other aspects of it are linked to developments such as the advent of post-industrial society, the emergence of the ‘information age’, and a tendency towards uncertainty, insecurity, and risk. FROM INDUSTRIALIZATION TO POST-INDUSTRIALISM Social class: Broadly, a group of people who share a similar social and economic position, based either on their relationship to the means of production or on the income and status of their occupational group. Industrialization has been the most powerful factor shaping the structure and character of modern societies. It has contributed to a dramatic increase in geographical mobility through the process of urbanization (by the early 2000s, most of the world’s then 6.3 billion people had come to live in towns and cities rather than in rural areas). The advance of industrialization also changed the structure of society, with the emergence of social class as the central organizing principle of society. Class divisions replaced the fixed social hierarchies of more traditional societies, usually linked to land ownership. In the process, however, the nature of social connectedness changed. One of the most influential attempts to convey this transition was undertaken by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936). Tönnies distinguished between Gemeinschaft, or ‘community’, typically found in traditional societies and characterized by natural affection and mutual respect, and Gesellschaft, or ‘association’, the looser, artificial, and contractual bonds typically found in urban and industrial societies. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE CON Nevertheless, class solidarity remained a significant feature of most industrial societies, even though liberals and Marxists offered quite different accounts of the nature of class inequality (the former highlighted individual differences such as ability and the willingness to work, while the latter drew attention to structural divisions related to property ownership). Class loyalties, nevertheless, usually structured political allegiance: ‘blue-collar’ (or manual) workers generally supported left-wing parties, and ‘white-collar’ (or non-manual) workers usually supported right-wing parties. However, a further shift occurred from the 1960s onwards through the emergence of so-called ‘post-industrial societies’. One of the key features of such societies has been the process of deindustrialization, reflected in the decline of labour-intensive heavy industries such as coal, steel, and shipbuilding. These tended to be characterized by a solidaristic culture rooted in clear political loyalties and, usually, strong union organization. By contrast, the expanding service sectors of the economy foster more individualistic and instrumentalist attitudes. Post-industrial societies are therefore characterized by growing atomism and the weakening of social connectedness. Piore and Sabel (1984) interpreted these changes as part of the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist era. The eclipse of the system of mass production and mass consumption, the chief characteristic of Fordism (see ‘Concept: Fordism/Post-Fordism’), has produced looser and more pluralized class formations. C E PT 203 Post-industrial society: A society based on service industries, rather than on manufacturing industries, and accompanied by a significant growth in the white-collar workforce. Atomism: The tendency for society to be made up of a collection of selfinterested and largely self-sufficient individuals, operating as separate atoms. FORDISM/POST-FORDISM ‘Fordism’ and ‘post-Fordism’ are used to explain the economic, political, and cultural transformation of modern society by reference to the changing form and organization of production. Fordism refers to the large-scale mass production methods pioneered by Henry Ford in Detroit in the United States. Ford relied on mechanization and highly regimented production-line labour processes to produce standardized, relatively cheap products. PostFordism emerged as the result of the introduction of more flexible microelectronics-based machinery that gave individual workers greater autonomy and made possible innovations such as subcontracting and batch production. Post-Fordism has been linked to decentralization in the workplace, social and political fragmentation, and a greater emphasis on choice and individuality. The shrinkage of the industrial working class has led to the development of so-called ‘twothirds–one-third’ societies, in which the two-thirds are relatively prosperous, a product of a marked tendency towards social levelling associated with mass education, rising affluence, and consumerism (see p. 216). J. K. Galbraith (1992) highlighted this tendency in pointing to the emergence in modern societies, at least amongst the politically active, of a ‘contented majority’ whose material affluence and economic security encourages them to be politically conservative. In the process, debate about the nature of social inequality and poverty in modern societies has shifted from a concern about the working class and has focused instead on what is sometimes (and controversially) called the underclass, or, more recently, the precariat. The underclass suffers less from poverty as it has been traditionally understood (deprivation of material necessities) and more from social exclusion, reflected in cultural, educational, and social impediments to meaningful participation in the economy and society. Underclass: A poorly defined and politically controversial term that refers, broadly, to people who suffer from multiple deprivation (unemployment or low pay, poor housing, inadequate education, and so on). 7 204 GLOBAL POLITICS Precariat: People mainly dependent upon ‘precarious’ labour; working short, part-time, and fixed-term contracts, often without guaranteed hours or pay, and with little or no economic or social capital to fall back on when such work is lacking. COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION Arguably nothing has reshaped the world’s societies so greatly, nor rendered them so ‘global’, as the history of colonization and decolonization. Contemporary world order itself – the prevalent perceptions of which states have more economic, military, and political power in the world and which have less – is a product of this history, but so too is the internal make-up of societies. As Barnor Hesse and Salman Sayyid (2006) note, while we might live in formally ‘postcolonial’ times, many societies remain structured by the dynamics of ‘coloniality’ (see p. 102). Western European societies, for instance – Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and others – colonized much of the rest of the world from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, justifying their empires through discourses of white racial ‘superiority’ (see p. 100). The reality is, such societies had never been all-white, and were themselves the product of mass migrations from outside of what came to be called ‘Europe’. The existence of ‘African Europeans’ in ancient Rome (Otele 2020) and the ‘Black Tudors’ in medieval England (Kaufmann 2017) is well documented by today’s historians. But from the mid-twentieth century, as European empires crumbled and were overthrown, migration of people from formerly colonized societies to Europe increased significantly. People from the West Indies arriving in the United Kingdom, 30 June 1962 Source: Mirrorpix/Getty Images SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 205 The major waves of post-war migration to Europe that resulted from decolonization inevitably changed the cultural constitution of European societies. And considerable social conflict also followed. In Britain, for example, the 1948 British Nationality Act gave citizenship status to subjects of the country’s fast dissolving empire. In part, this measure was specifically aimed at enabling rebuilding, following the colossal loss of life (especially of young men) and destruction of infrastructure caused by the Second World War. Yet new arrivals, many coming from Britain’s former colonies in the Caribbean, including Jamaica, were subject to racist abuse and intimidation, from the public and media as well as some politicians. Alongside further migration, including subsequent waves from the Indian subcontinent, anti-immigrant sentiment spread and the country’s far right was rebuilt around it. Disparities in income, housing, education, and health outcomes became entrenched in many postcolonial European societies, between white populations, on the one hand, and people of colour from former colonies, on the other. These disparities persist today and are widely seen as a root cause of the injustice that produced the Black Lives Matter movement (see p. 103). 7 ‘Postcolonial people’, often represented simply as ‘immigrants’, even where they are in fact second- or third-generation citizens born in the country where they are given this label, have been central to diversifying and globalizing social and cultural life (Hesse and Sayyid 2006). Racial and religious diversity, along with a wide range of different cultural practices and products, from music to cuisine, is now commonplace in many societies. Such diversity, and the conceptions of nation (see Chapter 8) and identity (see Chapter 9) at stake in it, still inspires considerable social conflict and controversy, yet seemingly constitutes an inevitable aspect of societies in a global age. NEW TECHNOLOGY AND ‘INFORMATION SOCIETY’ Technological change has always been closely linked to social change. For example, the introduction of industrial technology, through innovations such as steam power and the mechanization of heavy industries (iron and steel), led to rapid population growth and greatly increased social and geographical mobility, in the process significantly altering patterns of family, friendship, and working relationships. This has certainly also applied to developments in information and communications technology, from the birth of printing through to what are sometimes called the three modern information revolutions. The first of these involved the development of the telegraph, telephone, and radio; the second centred on television, early-generation computers, and satellites; while the third witnessed the advent of the so-called ‘new’ media, notably mobile phones, cable and satellite television, cheaper and more powerful computers, and, most importantly, the internet. The third information revolution has concerned the technologies of connectivity, and has been particularly significant. The extraordinary explosion that has occurred in the quantity of information and communication exchanges has marked, some argue, the birth of the ‘information age’ (in place of the industrial age), with society being transformed into an ‘information society’ and the economy becoming a ‘knowledge economy’ (see p. 146). Connectivity: An information and communication technology ‘buzzword’ that refers to the links between one device (a computer, smartphone, or domestic appliance, for example) and others, affecting the speed, ease, and extent of information exchanges. Information society: A society in which the most important resource or commodity is knowledge/information, its primary dynamic force being the process of technological development and diffusion. 206 APPROACHES TO . . . REALIST VIEW Realist theorists have given very little attention to society, in any sense of the term. This reflects the fact that the focus of their attention falls on the state, which they view as a ‘black box’, in that internal social, political, constitutional, and, for that matter, cultural arrangements are irrelevant to its behaviour in the global system. As realists view states as robust, autonomous units that are capable of extracting resources from society and imposing their will on society, foreign policy is determined first and foremost by considerations of power and security. Moreover, relations between and amongst states are essentially ‘strategic’ rather than ‘social’: the international system is characterized by competition and struggle, not by regular patterns of social interaction that develop through the emergence of norms, shared values, and a willingness to cooperate. LIBERAL VIEW The liberal view of society is based on individualism (see p. 220). Liberals thus regard society not as an entity in its own right but as a collection of individuals. To the extent that society exists, it is fashioned out of voluntary and contractual agreements made by self-interested human beings. Pluralists, nevertheless, have drawn attention to the role of groups in articulating the diverse interests within society. However, whether society is understood simply as a collection of self-interested individuals or as a collection of competing groups, liberals hold that there is a general balance of interests in society that tends to promote harmony and equilibrium. This harmony is largely brought about through the state, which acts as a neutral arbiter amongst the competing interests and groups in society, so guaranteeing social order. This task also has implications for foreign policy, which may therefore be shaped by the different groups in society and the political influence they can exert. In this way, liberals accept that foreign policy decision-making may be society-centred, by contrast with the realist model of state-centrism. Liberals have typically welcomed the emergence of global civil society, seeing this as a way of pluralizing power and making intergovernmental decision-making more considered and popularly accountable. They also tend to assume that interactions among states have a significant social component, favouring the notion of ‘international society’ and believing that interactions among states and non-state actors tend to be structured by principles, procedures, norms, or rules, often leading to the formation of international regimes (see p. 89). CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW Constructivists have placed sociological enquiry at the centre of global politics by emphasizing that identities and interests in world affairs are socially constructed. Social, cultural, and historical factors are therefore of primary interest in affecting the behaviour of states and other actors. Whereas realist and liberal theorists tend to view society as a ‘strategic’ realm, in which actors rationally pursue their various interests, constructivists view society as a ‘constitutive’ realm, the realm that makes actors who or what they are, shaping their identities and interests. However, constructivism is more an analytical tool that emphasizes the sociological dimension of academic enquiry than a substantive social theory, as advanced, for instance, by neo-Marxists and feminists. 207 SOCIETY MARXIST VIEW Marxism is a ‘social theory’ first of all – a theory of how societies historically emerged, how they are structured, and how they can (and should) change. The ‘Young Marx’ was particularly sociological and philosophical in his critique of capitalism, while the ‘mature Marx’ was more focused on economic analysis. Orthodox Marxists tend to explain society in terms of an economic ‘base’ (mode of production), upon which a social and cultural ‘superstructure’ (including a class system) is built. In capitalist societies, their view was that the proletariat, as the most exploited and alienated social class, will inevitably become an emancipatory force for revolutionary social change and radical equality. ‘Neo-Marxists’ and Frankfurt School critical theorists (see p. 113) have instead tended to place their faith more in cross-class ‘counter-cultural’ social movements and alliances, such as the women’s movement (see p. 524), the green movement, and the peace movement. In this view, global civil society in general, or the anti-capitalist movement (see p. 224) in particular, has sometimes been seen as a counter-hegemonic force, resisting the social and cultural dominance of capitalist ways of being. FEMINIST VIEW Feminists, for their part, have analysed society primarily in terms of gender inequality, seeing almost all contemporary and historical societies as being characterized by patriarchy – women’s subordination and exploitation by men. The later ‘waves’ of feminist thought and activism (see p. 107) stressed the intersections between gender, race, class, and other vectors of structured social inequality, such as disability and sexuality. Contemporary feminists often point to the masculinist nature of oppressive and violent social structures, including colonialism and capitalism, suggesting that the positioning of the heterosexual, cisgendered, white male as the supreme or universal social subject is the root of many problems in global politics historically and today. POSTCOLONIAL VIEW Like Marxism and feminism, postcolonialism is a form of fundamentally social, as well as international, theory. That is to say, it offers deep explanations for human behaviour that include causes manifested both at the level of ‘the international’ (e.g. imperialism, colonialism) and ‘the domestic’ (e.g. racism, ‘coloniality’ – see p. 102). From a postcolonial perspective, contemporary societies are scarred by the history of European colonialism (see p. 31) in particular. This historical process produced binary structures and identities within all the societies it touched, distinguishing ‘colonizer’ from ‘colonized’, or ‘settler’ from ‘native’ (Fanon 1961), in an effort at legitimizing violence and exploitation. In the societies that were once colonized, this legacy is found in structurally disadvantaged global economic positions, internal political and economic strife, and the continuation of colonial or ‘neocolonial’ (see p. 102) exploitation by former colonisers. In former colonizer societies, meanwhile, the colonial legacy structures patterns of racist social and political discourse against people racialized as minorities, while normalizing violent and exploitative foreign policies towards the world’s formerly colonized societies. Postcolonial social theory is therefore thoroughly transnational or global in its scope. 208 POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEW The emergence of post-structuralism as a form of French social theory in the 1960s marked a decisive break with Marxist traditions of understanding society. From the post-structuralist perspective, social structures such as class do not necessarily determine all human behaviour. The politics of language and ‘discourse’ (see p. 116), and the intimate relationship between knowledge and power, mean that individuals within society might be able to exercise considerably more agency than orthodox Marxists had allowed for. While poststructuralism does not, as might be imagined, reject the existence of social structures altogether, it does stress their contingency and ‘context dependence’, emphasizing the fact that they are no more than sets of social meanings and interpretations. How some structures of meaning (discourses) become dominant in society, while others are marginalized or delegitimized, are key considerations for understanding the social dynamics of power, on this view. But the significance of communication and interpretation in this theory credits people with more social ‘agency’, and potential for ‘resistance’ to dominant discourse, than the more ‘structuralist’ strands of Marxist social theory allowed for. Technological determinism: A theory of history in which technological innovation and development is assumed to be the principal motor of social, economic, or political change. The emergence of the ‘new’ media has given huge impetus to the process of globalization. Indeed, hyperglobalists subscribe to a kind of technological determinism, in that they argue that accelerated globalization became inevitable once such technologies became widely available. The clearest evidence of the globalizing tendencies of the new media is that national borders have become increasingly permeable (if not irrelevant) as far as communications are concerned. While the industrial age created new mechanisms for communicating at a national rather than a local level (via national newspapers, telephone systems, radio and television services, and so on), the technologies of the information age are by their nature transnational – mobile phones, satellite television, and the internet (usually) operate regardless of borders. This, in turn, has facilitated the growth of transborder groups, bodies, and institutions, ranging from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as Amnesty International (see p. 411), social movements such as Black Lives Matter (see p. 103), and transnational corporations (TNCs) such as Google (see p. 211) to international criminal organizations and global terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda (see p. 388). Not only do states struggle to control and constrain groups and organizations that have transborder structures, but they also have a greatly reduced capacity to control what their citizens see, hear, and know. For instance, although states such as China, Myanmar, and Iran have, at various times, tried to restrict transborder communications via mobile phones and the internet, the pace of technological change is very likely to weaken such controls in the longer term. In 2000, US President Bill Clinton famously likened China’s attempts to control the internet to trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Not only have information societies brought about a historically unprecedented change in the scope of social connectedness (even giving it, at times, a transborder character); they have also altered the nature of social connectedness. More people are connected to more other people, but in different ways. One of the most influential attempts to explain this was advanced in Manuel Castells’ (1996) notion of the ‘network society’. Whereas SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE EV E the dominant mode of social organization in industrial societies had been hierarchy, more complex and pluralized information societies operate either on the basis of markets (reflecting the wider role of market economics as well as the impact of economic globalization [see p. 147]) or on the basis of looser and more diffuse networks. According to Castells, businesses increasingly function as ‘network corporations’. Many TNCs, for instance, are organized as networks of franchises and subsidiaries. Similar trends can be witnessed in social and political life. For example, hierarchical bodies such as trade unions and pressure groups have increasingly lost influence through the emergence of network-based social movements, such as the anti-globalization movement and the environmental movement, and even terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda have adopted a network form of organization. The increased use of the ‘new’ media in general and the internet in particular, especially facilitated by search engines such as the nearubiquitous Google (see p. 211), has also led to a boom in social networking and massively expanded popular access to information. Although the impact of such developments cannot be doubted, their social implications remain a matter of considerable controversy. NT 209 Network: A means of coordinating social life through loose and informal relationships between people or organizations, usually for the purpose of knowledge dissemination or exchange. World Wide Web: A hypertext-based system that gives users of the internet access to a collection of online content stored on servers around the world; often simply called WWW or ‘the Web’. S ADVANCES IN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) 1455 Gutenberg Bible is published, initiating the printing revolution through the first use of removable and reusable type. 1837 The telegraph is invented, providing the first means of substantially superterritorial communication. 1876 The telephone is invented by Alexander Graham Bell, although the first telephone device was built in 1861 by the German scientist Johann Philip Reis. 1894 The radio is invented by Guglielmo Marconi, with a transatlantic radio signal being received for the first time in 1901. 1928 Television is invented by John Logie Baird, becoming commercially available in the late 1930s and reaching a mass audience in the 1950s and 1960s. 1936 First freely programmable computer is invented by Konrad Zuse. 1957 The Soviet Sputnik 1 is launched, initiating the era of communications satellites (sometimes called SATCOM). 1962 ‘Third generation’ computers, using integrated circuits (or microchips), started to appear (notably NASA’s Apollo Guidance Computer). 1969 Earliest version of the internet developed, in the form of the ARPANET link between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute, with electronic mail, or email, being developed three years later. 1991 Earliest version of the World Wide Web became publicly available as a global information medium through which users can read and write via computers connected to the internet. 1994 Netscape Navigator, the first commercially available web browser, enables people to begin browsing, creating, and posting to the World Wide Web at home. 7 210 GLOBAL POLITICS 1998 Google, which would swiftly become the most widely used search engine on the World Wide Web, a corporate giant of ‘Silicon Valley’, and a leading developer of artificial intelligence (AI), is launched. 2003 MySpace, the first globally successful web-based social media platform is launched. It would be succeeded by even more successful platforms including Facebook and Twitter, attracting hundreds of millions of users globally to create and share content with one another as part of ‘Web 2.0’. 2007 Apple launches its first iPhone, while Google releases the Android mobile operating system; two new products that inaugurated the ‘smartphone’ age. More than 3 billion people are estimated to use a smartphone today. RISK, UNCERTAINTY AND INSECURITY Web 2.0: A play on the version numbering used by software developers, Web ‘2.0’ represents a dramatic shift in use from the early 2000s onward, with ordinary users no longer just ‘browsing’ or downloading content but increasingly creating and uploading it too, via social media posts, blogs, vlogs, and podcasts. Although the ‘thinning’ of social connectedness has had profound implications, the widening of its scope may be no less significant. People are exposed as never before to influences (people, events, and processes) that are beyond the parameters of their faceto-face interactions, based on family, friends, work colleagues, and so on. For Zygmunt Bauman (2000), the combination of the thinning and widening of social connectedness has changed every aspect of the human condition. Society has moved away from a ‘heavy’ or ‘solid’, hardware-based modernity to a ‘light’ or ‘liquid’ software-based modernity. What he calls ‘liquid society’ is characterized by the new remoteness and un-reachability of global processes coupled with the unstructured and under-defined, fluid state of people’s everyday lives. This has, moreover, led to a substantial increase in the levels of uncertainty and insecurity in society: when everything is short-lived and nothing stands still, people feel anxious and are constantly on alert. 211 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . GOOGLE Type Established Headquarters Staff Public corporation 1998 1999 Mountain View, California, USA More than46,000 100,000 About full time employees Google (the name originates from the misspelling of the word ‘Googol’, which refers to 10 to the power of 100) was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, while they were students at Stanford University. The company’s remarkable growth derives from the fact that Google quickly became the world’s predominant search engine (a tool designed to retrieve data and search for information on the World Wide Web), quickly sidelining other engines such as Yahoo and Alta Vista. By 2022, an estimated 85 per cent of internet searches worldwide were made using Google. Google has expanded rapidly through a strategy of acquisitions and partnerships, and it has also significantly diversified its products, which include email (Gmail), applications and storage, online mapping (including Google Earth), video sharing (YouTube), and social networking sites. Subsidiaries such as ‘Google X’ and ‘Google AI’, meanwhile, capitalize on the firm’s success in creating the world’s most effective and popular search algorithms, seeking to apply this code to other areas of social and economic life. As well as developing into one of the most powerful brands in the world, Google cultivated a reputation for environmentalism, philanthropy, and positive employee relations. Its unofficial slogan is ‘Don’t be evil’. Significance: Google’s success as a business organization cannot be doubted. Its widespread use and everexpanding range of products has helped to turn Google from a noun into a verb (as in ‘to Google someone or something’). However, Google’s impact on culture, society, and politics is a matter of considerable debate. Supporters of Google argue that in facilitating access to websites and online data and information, Google has helped to empower citizens and non-state actors generally and has strengthened global civil society at the expense of national governments, international bureaucrats, and traditional political elites. The oftrepeated truism that knowledge is power conventionally worked to the benefit of governmental bodies and political leaders. However, in the cyber age, easier and far wider access to news and information means that, for the first time, citizens and citizens’ groups are privy to a quality and quantity of information that may sometimes rival that of government. NGOs, think tanks, interest groups, and protest movements have therefore become more effective in challenging the positions and actions of government, and may even displace government as an authoritative source of views and information about specialist subjects ranging from the environment and global poverty to public health and civil liberties. In this sense, Google and other search engines have turned the World Wide Web into a democratizing force. On the other hand, Google and the bewildering array of knowledge and information available on the internet have also been subject to criticism. The most significant drawback is the lack of quality control on the internet: we cannot be sure that what we read on the internet is true. The rise of conspiracy theories, ‘fake news’, and ‘post-truth’ or ‘alternative’ facts (see p. 119) is testament to this problem. Neither can we always be certain, when we ‘Google’ for a particular piece of information, what the standpoint is of the content the search engine throws up. Linked to this is the fact that the internet does not discriminate between good ideas and bad ones. It provides a platform for the dissemination not only of socially worthwhile and politically balanced views but also of political extremism, racial and religious bigotry, and pornography. A further danger has been the growth of a ‘cult of information’, whereby the accumulation of data and information becomes an end in itself, impairing the ability of people to distinguish between information, on the one hand, and knowledge, experience, and wisdom, on the other (Roszak 1994). The Google generation may therefore know more, but have a gradually diminishing capacity to make considered and wise judgements. Such a criticism is linked to allegations that ‘surfing’ the internet actually impairs people’s ability to think and learn by encouraging them to skim and jump from one piece of information to the next, ruining their ability to concentrate. Google may therefore be making people stupid rather than better informed (Carr 2008, 2010). 212 GLOBAL POLITICS Tragic individualization: The condition in which the individual, through the failure of science, politics, and other expert systems to manage risk, is forced to cope with the uncertainty of the global world by him or herself. Anthropogenic: Generated or caused by human beings. At a general level, the widening of connectedness fosters, in itself, greater risk, uncertainty, and instability, because it expands the range of factors that influence decisions and events. As chaos theory (see p. 94) suggests, as more things influence more other things, not only do events have more far-reaching consequences, but these consequences also become more difficult to predict. An interconnected world thus assumes a random, unstable, even crisis-prone character. Ulrich Beck (1992) has taken this analysis further by suggesting that the prevalence of risk in modern societies reflects the transition from the ‘first modernity’, the period during which, at least in the West, the state could be relied on to provide democracy, economic growth, and security, to the ‘second modernity’, a world ‘beyond controllability’. One of the consequences of the emergence of what he calls ‘risk societies’ is the growth of ‘tragic individualization’. In industrial societies, political conflict was defined by the distribution of ‘goods’, typically goods or resources that were supplied by government, such as benefits, subsidies, jobs, health care, and pensions. In risk societies, by contrast, political conflict is defined by the distribution of ‘bads’ – risks, threats, or problems. Furthermore, these ‘bads’ are usually not natural catastrophes but created hazards; examples include pollution, industrial waste that is not easily disposed of, nuclear radiation, resource depletion, and anthropogenic climate change. FIG U Modern society is replete with ‘manufactured’ risks and instabilities of various kinds. The spread of industrialization and the dismantling of regulatory frameworks has created a range of environmental threats that do not respect borders and, indeed, may affect the entire world. Amongst the most obvious of these are the chemical pollution of rivers and lakes, ozone depletion, acid rain, and climate change (examined in Chapter 17). The advance of economic globalization also means that economic conditions and livelihoods in one part of the world can be more easily affected by events that occur, or decisions that are taken, in other parts of the world. This applies, for instance, to investment or relocation decisions that are made by TNCs, and to the wider, and almost instantaneous, impact of stock market crashes in the globalized financial system (examined in Chapter 5, in connection with the crises of capitalism). Furthermore, levels of personal safety and security have been undermined by the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the growth in global terrorism (see p. 386). Wider access to chemical and biological weapons and to nuclear weapons has dramatically increased the threat to civilian populations of armed conflict between or within states, while terrorism, by its nature, poses a threat that is unpredictable and seemingly random. RES KEY THEORISTS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF GLOBALIZATION MANUEL CASTELLS (1942–) A Spanish sociologist, Castells is especially associated with the idea of information society and communications research. He suggests that we live in a ‘network society’, in which territorial borders and traditional identities have been undermined by the power of knowledge flows. Castells thus emphasizes the ‘informational’ basis of network society, and shows how human experience of time and space have been transformed. In 2020, Castells became a senior governing politician, as Spain’s Minister of Universities. His works include The Rise of the Network Society (1996), The Internet Galaxy (2004), and Communication Power (2009). SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 213 ULRICH BECK (1944–2015) A German sociologist, Beck’s work has examined topics as wide-ranging as the new world of work, the perils of globalization, and challenges to the global power of capital. In The Risk Society (1992), he analysed the tendency of the globalizing economy to generate uncertainty and insecurity. Individualization (2002) (written with his wife, Elizabeth) champions rights-based individualization against free-market individualism. In Power in the Global Age (2005), Beck explored how the strategies of capital can be challenged by civil society movements. Source: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images ROLAND ROBERTSON (1938–2022) A UK sociologist and one of the pioneers in the study of globalization, Robertson’s psychosocial view of globalization portrays it as ‘the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole’ (Robertson 1992). He has drawn attention to both the process of ‘relativization’ (when local cultures and global pressures mix) and the process of ‘glocalization’ (through which global pressures are forced to conform to local conditions). Robertson’s key work in this field is Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (1992). SASKIA SASSEN (1949–) Source: Alexis Sciard/IP3/Getty Images A Dutch sociologist, Sassen is noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. In The Global City (2001), she examined how cities such as New York, London, and Tokyo have become emblematic of the capacity of globalization to create contradictory spaces, characterized by the relationship between the employees of global corporations and the vast population of the low-income ‘others’ (often migrants and women). Sassen’s other works include The Mobility of Capital and Labour (1988) and Territory, Authority, Rights (2006). JAN AART SCHOLTE (1959–) A Dutch sociologist and globalization theorist, Scholte argues that globalization is best understood as a reconfiguration of social geography marked by the growth of transplanetary and supraterritorial connections between people. Although by no means a critic of the ‘supraterritorialism’ that globalization brings about, he highlights the tendency of ‘neoliberalist globalization’ to heighten insecurities, exacerbate inequalities, and deepen democratic deficits. Scholte’s main works include International Relations of Social Change (1993) and Globalization: A Critical Introduction (2005). ZYGMUNT BAUMAN (1925–2017) A Polish sociologist, Bauman’s interests ranged from the nature of intimacy to globalization, and from the Holocaust to reality television programmes such as Big Brother. Sometimes portrayed as the ‘prophet of postmodernity’, he highlighted trends such as the emergence of new patterns of deprivation and exclusion, the psychic corruption of consumer society, and the growing tendency for social relations to have a ‘liquid’ character. Bauman’s main writings include Modernity and the Holocaust (1994), Globalization (1998), and Liquid Modernity (2000). Source: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images 7 214 GLOBAL POLITICS GLOBALIZATION, CONSUMERISM, AND THE INDIVIDUAL UNDERSTANDING THE GLOBAL THROUGH THE SOCIAL As we noted at the beginning of this chapter, traditional theories of international relations (IR) tend to conceive of global politics as a space in which states are ‘things’ or ‘actors’, entities interacting with one another in a system. These perspectives downplay the social character of IR. The IR scholar Jonathan Joseph has argued that there is a need to understand ‘the global’ through social theory and sociological analysis (Joseph 2012), noting that IR as the academic discipline most concerned with the global has been slow to incorporate such theory and analysis (in part because of its early fixation on the Cold War). Traditional theories of IR (see Chapter 3) emphasize what they see as unique to the domain of the ‘inter-national’ (relations between discrete nations, or rather states), rather than exploring the ways in which social relations within societies also constitute relations across societies. And while many critical approaches (see Chapter 4) do take a more social approach, and often emphasize the ‘global’ nature of social relations, it is Joseph’s contention that they tend to acritically embrace globalism without always reflecting on its social roots and powerful effects: ‘But if the idea of the global is problematic, then there are such things as global politics and global governance, and these in turn help to construct an image of the global, however misleading this might be. If there were such a thing as the global, then we would have to argue the importance of seeing its social nature’ (Joseph 2012: 20). In the 2000s, an entire academic subfield of IR – international political sociology (IPS) – was established to explore global politics through a more ‘social’ lens. Complementing long-standing subfields such as international political economy (see p. 139), IPS scholars make the point that IR has traditionally ‘neglected’ sociological traditions (not least because it was historically dominated by state-centric theories such as realism and liberalism), whereas it should really be a field concerned precisely with ‘the analysis of what people do’ in the international or global space (Bigo and Walker 2007). The proliferation of research, books, and articles rooted in an IPS perspective has broadened the picture of global politics in the early twenty-first century. This new approach to theorizing and analysing global politics highlights how social and political trends cut across societies, and may be realized at the level of the international – the rise of ‘global white nationalism’ in the 2010s for example (see p. 252). This does not mean that IPS approaches neglect the state altogether, but rather that they conceive of it in the tradition of state theorists such as Nicos Poulantzas and Bob Jessop (see p. 183) as a ‘social relation’, emerging from societies, rather than as a relatively autonomous ‘actor’ in IR. The work in this field tends to be dominated by critical – and especially Marxist, feminist, postcolonial, and post-structuralist – theories. For realists studying the international, the sociological lens may be useful for understanding the ‘low’ politics within states but is irrelevant to the study of states interacting in the international system, while for liberals IPS is rather too deconstructive, critically undermining or denaturalizing concepts and categories, such as capitalism, that they take as ‘givens’. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 215 SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBALIZATION Deterritorialization: The process through which social spaces can no Globalization is a multidimensional process. Although it is often understood primarily longer be wholly mapped in economic terms, linked to the establishment of an interlocking global economy, its in terms of territorial places, territorial distance, social and cultural implications are no less important. Human societies, for instance, and territorial borders. have traditionally had clear territorial foundations. People knew and interacted with others within their community and, to a lesser extent, with people from neighbouring communities. In short, geography and distance mattered. Globalization, however, has led to the rise of ‘supraterritoriality’ or ‘deterritorialization’ (Scholte 2005), through which the constraints traditionally imposed by geography and distance have been substantially overcome. This process has occurred, most obviously, through improvements in the technologies of communication and transport. However, not only have mobile telephones, the internet, and air travel revolutionized our understanding of space; they have also transformed our notion of time, particularly through seemingly instantaneous information flows. In this light, David Harvey (1990, 2009) associated globalization with the phenomenon of ‘time/space compression’, meaning that, for the first time, human interaction could take place outside the restrictions of both space and time. Time/space compression alters people’s experience of the world in a variety of ways. For instance, it means that the speed of life is increasing, as, quite simply, events, transactions, and travel happen more quickly. The process of cultural globalization (see p. 217) has sometimes been seen to be yet more significant. In this view, the essence of globalization is the process whereby cultural differences between nations and regions are tending to be ‘flattened out’. Such an approach to globalization links it to cultural homogenization, as cultural diversity is weakened or destroyed in a world in which we all watch the same television programmes, buy the same commodities, eat the same food, support the same sports stars, follow the antics of the same ‘global celebrities’, and so on. The chief factors fuelling cultural globalization have been the growth of TNCs, and especially global media corporations (including traditional media companies such as Apple, Disney, AT&T, and Fox, and social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), the increasing popularity of international travel and tourism, and, of course, the information and communications revolution. Many commentators portray cultural globalization as a ‘top-down’ process, the establishment of a single global system that imprints itself on all parts of the world; in effect, a global monoculture. From this perspective, cultural globalization amounts to a form of cultural imperialism, emphasizing that cultural flows are between unequal partners and are used as a means through which powerful states exert domination over weaker states. Some therefore portray cultural globalization as ‘westernization’ or, more specifically, as ‘Americanization’. The image of globalization as homogenization is at best a partial one, however. Globalization often goes hand in hand with localization, regionalization, and multiculturalism (see p. 269). The fear or threat of homogenization, especially when it is perceived to be imposed ‘from above’, or ‘from outside’, provokes cultural and political resistance. This can be seen in the resurgence of interest in declining languages and minority cultures as well as in the spread of religious Time/space compression: The idea that, in a globalized world, time and space are no longer significant barriers to communications and interaction. Cultural homogenization: The tendency for national and local cultural differences to be lost in the face of (usually US-led corporate) globalization. Cultural imperialism: The displacement of local cultural traditions and practices by the imposition of foreign beliefs, values, and attitudes, usually associated with consolidating or legitimizing economic and/ or political domination. 7 216 GLOBAL POLITICS FIG U fundamentalism and forms of nationalism (see Chapter 8). Nevertheless, the two main ingredients of cultural globalization have been the spread of consumerism and the growth of individualism. RE NAOMI KLEIN (1970–) Canadian journalist, author, and anti-corporate activist. Klein’s No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (2000) is a wide-ranging critique of lifestyle branding and labour abuses, and discusses emerging forms of resistance to globalization and corporate domination. It has been described as ‘the book that became part of the movement’ but has had wider significance in provoking reflection on the nature of consumer capitalism and the tyranny of brand culture. In Disaster Capitalism (2008), she drew attention to the extent to which the advance of neoliberalism has been implicated in ‘shocks’, states of emergency and crises of one kind or another. Klein is a frequent and influential media commentator. Source: Carsten Koall/Getty Images Klein travels widely throughout North America, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, supporting movements campaigning against the negative effects of globalization. Increasingly, through books such as This Changes Everything (2014) and On Fire (2019), Klein has focused on the imminent dangers posed by climate change as a consequence of globalized capitalism. Brand: A symbolic construct, typically consisting of a name, logo, or symbol, which conveys the promise, ‘personality’, or image of a product or group of products. CON Commodity fetishism: The process whereby commodities are invested with symbolic and social significance, allowing them to exert sway over human beings. C E PT CONSUMERISM GOES GLOBAL Cultural globalization has most commonly been associated with the worldwide advance of a culture of consumer capitalism, sometimes seen as ‘turbo-consumerism’. One aspect of this has been what is called ‘Coca-Colonization’, a process first highlighted by French communists in the 1950s. Coca-Colonization refers, on one level, to the emergence of global goods and global brands (Coca-Cola being a prime example) that have come to dominate economic markets in more and more parts of the world, creating an image of bland uniformity. However, at a deeper level, it also captures the psychological and emotional power that these brands have come to acquire through highly sophisticated marketing and advertising, allowing them to become symbols of freedom, youthfulness, vitality, happiness, and so on. It is therefore a manifestation of what Marxists have called commodity fetishism. Consumerism has become one of the key targets of modern anti-corporate criticism, highlighted by Naomi Klein, amongst others, and it has been particularly emphasized by the green movement, as discussed in Chapter 17. CONSUMERISM Consumerism is a psychological and cultural phenomenon whereby personal happiness is equated with the consumption of material possessions. It is often associated with the emergence of a ‘consumer society’ or of ‘consumer capitalism’. Consumer capitalism was shaped by the development of new advertising and marketing techniques that took advantage of the growth of the mass media and the spread of mass affluence. A consumer society is one that is organized around the consumption rather than the production of goods and services. Whereas ‘productionist’ societies emphasize the values of discipline, duty, and hard work (the Protestant work ethic, for example), consumer societies emphasize materialism, hedonism, and immediate rather than delayed gratification. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE CON In one of the most influential accounts of trends in global consumerism, Benjamin Barber (2003) portrayed the emerging world as a ‘McWorld’. McWorld is tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce, creating a ‘shimmering scenario of integration and uniformity’ in which people everywhere are mesmerized by ‘fast music, fast computers, fast food – with MTV, McIntosh and McDonald’s pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous theme park’. Alongside and reflecting such developments has been the increasing standardization of business organizations and practices, commonly referred to as ‘McDonaldization’ (see p. 280). Underpinning the emergence of McWorld has been the seemingly relentless spread of materialist values, based on the notion of an intrinsic link between wealth and happiness. For many, these trends have a markedly Western, and more specifically American, character. The ‘westernization’ model of cultural globalization derives from the fact that the West (see p. 33) is the home of consumer capitalism and industrial society, and is backed up by the belief that the ethic of material self-seeking is a specifically Western value, stemming as it does from Western liberalism. The ‘Americanization’ model of cultural globalization reflects the disproportionate extent to which the goods and images that dominate modern commerce and the media derive from the United States, meaning that the world is being taken over not just by consumer capitalism but by a very particular US model of consumer capitalism. C E PT 217 Americanization: Either or both the politicoeconomic dominance of the United States or the spread of American cultural values and practices to other parts of the world. CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION Cultural globalization is the process whereby information, commodities, and images produced in one part of the world enter into a global flow that tends to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences between nations, regions, and individuals. Cultural globalization is closely linked to and emerged in association with economic globalization and the communication and information revolution. However, cultural globalization is a complex process that generates both homogenization, or cultural ‘flattening’, and polarization and diversity. The latter may occur both because cultural products spread more easily if they adapt to local traditions and understandings and because perceived domination by foreign ideas, values, and lifestyles can fuel the rise of ethnic, religious, or national movements. The trends associated with cultural globalization have by no means been universally condemned, however. For many, the advent of consumer culture and access to a wider range of goods and cultural products could also broaden opportunities, providing them with a wider appreciation of cultural diversity and overcoming the parochialism of ‘tradition’. Cultural globalization may, for instance, be compared favourably with insular nationalism. However, most interpretations of cultural globalization have been critical or pessimistic. At least three main lines of attack have been adopted. First, cultural globalization has been seen to serve the interests of economic or political domination. In this view, cultural globalization has been driven by the dominant interests in the new globalized economy – TNCs, the West generally, and the United States in particular – and its role has been to shape values, appetites, and lifestyles so as to ensure market penetration and the ascendancy of global capitalism. Second, cultural homogenization has been condemned as an assault on local, regional, and national distinctiveness. A world in which everything looks the same and everyone thinks and acts in the same way is a world without a sense of rootedness and belonging. Third, consumerism and materialism have been condemned as a form of captivity, a form of manipulation that distorts values and denies happiness. 7 218 GLOBAL POLITICS FOCUS ON . . . SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE? What do societies of the 2020s have in common with those of the 1960s? In 1967, against the backdrop of cultural, political, and sexual revolutions around the world, the French ‘situationist’ Guy Debord published The Society of the Spectacle. A work of political philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism, the book opens with a nod to Marx’s famous economic work, Capital. Whereas Marx opens Capital Vol. 1 ([1867] 1990) with the claim that ‘The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities”’, Debord tells us that: ‘In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles’ ([1967] 1984). The ‘spectacle’, Debord goes on, is ‘a social relation among people, mediated by images’. He has in mind the rise of cinema and television, and his critique of contemporary culture in the book extends to nascent celebrity culture of the time, and the rise of the ‘star’. Consumer capitalism in the 1960s – including the booming advertising industry, itself later fictionalized in the popular TV show Mad Men (2007–2015) – promoted ‘stars’, in Debord’s view, to simulate ‘lifestyles’ and encourage aspiration among people who are oppressed by their real working and living conditions: ‘Being a star means specializing in the seemingly lived […] Celebrities exist to act out various styles of living.’ To what extent does this analysis ring true in the 2020s? Cinema and television may have given way to social media and streaming, but Debord’s critique of ‘shallow’, consumerist spectacular societies, ‘mediated by images’, might equally be applied to the culture of YouTube and Instagram – multibillion dollar corporations promoting unattainable lifestyles through their own ‘stars’ (or ‘influencers’). Meanwhile, though traditional television has declined, the rise of multinational streaming platforms such as Netflix, and the phenomenon of the smartphone (see p. 210), in addition to social media and gaming addictions among growing segments of the global population, mean that we spend more time looking at screens – and less time communicating with one another in-person – than ever before. In 2019, the global average ‘screen time’ (time spent using smartphones, laptops, PCs, and tablets) was estimated at 6 hours and 49 minutes per day. This figure is likely to be significantly increased since the 2020 onset of the global coronavirus pandemic, as more work, study, and leisure time was spent online. Thus Debord’s social criticism that the ‘spectator’s consciousness’ is, in modern societies, ‘imprisoned in a flattened universe, bound by the screen of the spectacle’ might be even more relevant today than it was when he wrote it. Situationism: A movement of students, artists, and intellectuals that emerged in 1960s Paris. The vanguard of a social revolution, situationists used subversive street art, and (sometimes violent) protest, to attack traditional social order and nascent consumer capitalism. Community: A principle or sentiment based on the collective identity of a social group, bonds of comradeship, loyalty, and duty. RISE OF INDIVIDUALISM The trend towards ‘thin’ social connectedness and the pressures generated by globalization have combined in modern societies to place greater emphasis on the individual and, arguably, less emphasis on community. In many parts of the world, the notion of ‘the individual’ is now so familiar that its political and social significance, as well as its relatively recent origins, are often overlooked. In the traditional societies, there is typically little idea of individuals having their own interests or possessing personal and unique identities. Rather, people are seen as members of the social groups to which they belong: their family, village, tribe, local community, and so on. Their lives and identities are largely determined by the character of these groups in a process that changes little from one generation to the next. The rise of individualism is widely seen as a consequence of the establishment of industrial capitalism as the dominant mode of social organization, first in Western societies and, thanks to globalization, beyond. Industrial capitalism meant that people were confronted by a broader range of choices and social possibilities. They were encouraged, perhaps for the first time, to think for SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 219 themselves, and to think of themselves in personal terms. A peasant, for example, whose family may always have lived and worked on the same piece of land, became a ‘free man’ and acquired some ability to choose who to work for, or maybe the opportunity to leave the land altogether and look for work in the growing towns or cities. As individuals, people were more likely to be self-seeking, acting in accordance with their own (usually material) interests, and they were encouraged to be self-sufficient in the sense of taking responsibility for their economic and social circumstances. This gave rise to the doctrine of economic individualism. Economic individualism: The belief that individuals are entitled to autonomy in matters of economic decision-making; economic individualism is sometimes taken to be synonymous with private property and implies laissez-faire (see p. 158). However, there is deep disagreement over the implications of the spread of individualism. For many, the spread of individualism has profoundly weakened community and our sense of social belonging, perhaps implying that society in its conventional sense no longer exists. For instance, academic sociology largely arose in the nineteenth century as an attempt to explore the (usually negative) social implications of the spread of industrialization and urbanization, both of which had encouraged increasing individualism and competition. For Tönnies, this had led to the growth of so-called ‘Gesellschaft’ relationships, which are artificial and contractual, reflecting the desire for personal gain rather than any meaningful social loyalty. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) emphasized the degree to which the weakening of social codes and norms had resulted in the spread of ‘anomie’; that is, feelings of isolation, loneliness and meaninglessness, which, in Durkheim’s ([1897] 1997) view, had led to an increase in the number of suicides in industrial societies. Similar misgivings about the rise of individualism have been expressed by modern communitarian thinkers, who have linked the growth of egoism and atomism to a weakening of social duty and moral responsibility. As people are encouraged to take account of their own interests and their own rights, a moral vacuum is created in which society, quite literally, disintegrates. Robert Putnam (2000), for instance, has highlighted the decline of social capital in modern societies, reflected in the decline of community activity and political engagement, including voting and party membership. A particular source of communitarian concern has been on what the Israeli-American sociologist Amitai Etzioni (1993) called the ‘parenting deficit’, the failure of modern parents concerned about their own enjoyment and well-being to adequately control or socialize their children, resulting in a general decline in civility and a rise in levels of delinquency and crime. Social capital: Cultural and moral resources, such as networks, norms, and trust, that help to promote social cohesion, political stability, and prosperity. On the other hand, liberal theorists in particular have viewed rising individualism as a mark of social progress. In this view, the forward march of individualism has been associated with the spread of progressive, even enlightened, social values, notably toleration and equality of opportunity. If human beings are thought of first and foremost as individuals, they must be entitled to the same rights and the same respect, meaning that all forms of disadvantage or discrimination, based on factors such as gender, race, colour, creed, religion, or social background, are viewed as morally questionable, if not indefensible. All modern industrial societies have, to a greater or lesser extent, been affected by the spread of such ideas, not least through changing gender roles and family structures that have resulted from the spread of feminism. The link between individualism and the expansion of choice and opportunity has also been 7 220 GLOBAL POLITICS Social reflexivity: The tendency of individuals and other social actors to reflect, more or less continuously, on the conditions of their own actions, implying higher levels of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and contemplation. Collectivism: Where political doctrines such as liberalism and conservatism have tended to be underpinned by ontological (see p. 67) and political individualism, collectivist doctrines including socialism, Marxism, and some strands of anarchism and feminism stress the primacy of the social over the individual. CON Individuality: Self-fulfilment achieved though the realization of one’s own distinctive or unique identity or qualities; that which distinguishes one person from all other people. C E PT highlighted by the spread in modern societies of social reflexivity (Giddens 1994). This has occurred for a variety of reasons, including the development of mass education, much wider access to information through radio, television, the internet, and so on, and intensified cultural flows within and between societies. However, social reflexivity brings both benefits and dangers. On the one hand, it has greatly widened the sphere of personal freedom, the ability of people to define who they are and how they wish to live, a tendency reflected in the increasing domination of politics by so-called ‘lifestyle’ issues. On the other hand, its growth has coincided with a strengthening of consumerism and materialist ethics. Nevertheless, it is important not to overstate the advance of individualism or, for that matter, the erosion of community. Individualism has been embraced most eagerly in the Anglophone world, where it has been most culturally palatable given the impact of Protestant religious ideas about personal salvation and the moral benefits of individual self-striving. By contrast, Catholic societies in Europe and elsewhere have been comparatively more successful in resisting individualism and maintaining the ethics of social responsibility, reflected in a stronger desire to uphold welfare provision as both an expression of social responsibility and a means of upholding social cohesion. However, the best examples of successful anti-individualist societies can be found in Asia, especially in Japan, China, and Asian ‘tiger’ states such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore. This has led to a debate about the viability of a set of so-called ‘Asian values’, and especially those associated with Confucianism (see p. 283), as an alternative to the individualism of Western liberal societies. In addition, the image of modern societies being increasingly dominated by ‘thin’ forms of social connectedness is undermined by evidence of the resurgence of ‘thick’ social connectedness in many societies, especially in the form of identity politics (see Chapter 9) and linked to the growing importance of culture, ethnicity, and religion in world affairs. The notion of an emerging global monoculture may therefore be a myth, as globalization may be associated as much with the rise of ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism (see p. 276) as it is with the spread of consumerism and self-seeking individualism. Barber (2003), indeed, argued that the rise of McWorld is symbiotically linked to the emergence of militant Islam, or ‘Jihad’, the latter being, in part, a reaction against the imposition of foreign and threatening Western cultural and economic practices. The growing importance of culture and religion in global politics is examined in more detail in Chapter 9. INDIVIDUALISM Individualism is the belief in the supreme importance of the individual over any social group or collective body; it is the antithesis of ‘collectivism’. As such, individualism has two key implications. First, each individual has a separate, indeed unique, identity, reflecting his or her ‘inner’ or personal qualities. This is reflected in the idea of individuality, and is linked to the notion of people as self-interested and largely self-reliant creatures. Second, all individuals share the same moral status as ‘persons’, irrespective of factors such as race, religion, nationality, sex, and social position. The notion that individuals are of equal moral worth is reflected in the idea of rights, and especially in the doctrine of human rights (see Chapter 14). SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 221 GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY EXPLAINING GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY The advance of globalization, and the progressive ‘de-territorialization’ of economic, cultural, and political life, has gradually weakened the idea that society should be understood merely in domestic or national terms. If societies are fashioned out of a usually stable set of relationships between and among their members, involving mutual awareness and at least a measure of cooperation, it has sometimes been suggested that one of the consequences of globalization has been the emergence of ‘transnational’ or ‘world’ society (Burton 1972; Buzan 2004). However, the extent to which societal identities have been, or are in the process of being, established across the global population as a whole should not be over-stated. A perhaps fruitful way of thinking about the transnational dimension of society is in terms of what is called ‘global civil society’ (see p. 222). Interest in the idea of global civil society grew during the 1990s, as a mosaic of new groups, organizations, and movements started to appear, which both sought to challenge or resist what was seen as ‘corporate’ globalization and articulate alternative models of social, economic, and political development. This happened against a backdrop of the spread of demands for democratization around the world, in the aftermath of the Cold War, and in the light of the intensifying process of global interconnectedness. Increasing ‘transnational solidarity among social movements’ (Colas 2002: 1) has been an especially visible manifestation of global civil society: think, for example, of the global reach of the ‘Me Too’ (see p. 107) and Black Lives Matter (see p. 103) movements in the 2010s. In some cases, these groups and organizations rejected globalization altogether, styling themselves as part of an ‘anti-globalization’ movement, but in other cases they supported a reformed model of globalization, sometimes seen as ‘social democratic’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ globalization. The development of emergent global civil society can best be explained through the theory of countervailing power, as developed by J. K. Galbraith (1963). In this view, emergent global civil society is a direct reaction to the perceived domination of corporate interests within the globalization process. The rise of global civil society is therefore part of a backlash against the triumph of neoliberalism (see p. 143). This helps to explain the ideological orientation of most of these new groups and movements, which broadly favour a global social justice or world ethics agenda, reflected in a desire to extend the impact and efficacy of human rights, deepen international law (see Chapter 15), and develop citizen networks to monitor and put pressure on states and international organizations (Kaldor 2003). The growth of such groups has also been facilitated by the emergence of a framework of global governance, which has both provided civil society groups with sources of funding and given them the opportunity to engage in policy formulation and, sometimes, policy implementation. Other factors include the wider availability of advanced ICT to facilitate transnational communication and organization; and the development of a pool of educated professionals in both developed and developing countries who, albeit in different ways and for different reasons, feel alienated by the globalized capitalist system. 7 Countervailing power: The theory that concentrations of power tend to be temporary because they stimulate oppositional forces and the emergence of rival centres of power; often used to explain challenges to corporate power. CON 222 C E PT GLOBAL POLITICS GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY The term ‘civil society’ refers to a realm of autonomous groups and associations that operate independently of government. Global civil society thus highlights a realm in which transnational non-governmental groups and associations interact. These groups are typically voluntary and non-profitmaking, setting them apart from TNCs. However, the term ‘global civil society’ is complex and contested. In its ‘activist’ version, transnational social movements are the key agents of global civil society, giving it an ‘outsider’ orientation and a strong focus on humanitarian goals and cosmopolitan ideals. In its ‘policy’ version, NGOs are the key agents of global civil society, giving it an ‘insider’ orientation and meaning that it overlaps significantly with global governance (see Chapter 20). DEBATING . . . IS GLOBALIZATION PRODUCING A GLOBAL MONOCULTURE? The dominant image of globalization is that it tends to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences, advancing sameness and diminishing difference worldwide. However, modern societies have also exemplified a strong tendency towards diversity and pluralization. FOR AGAINST Globalization as homogenization. One aspect of globalization is universalization: the dispersal of objects, images, ideas, and experiences to people in all inhabited parts of the world. For example, economic globalization and the rise of TNCs have led to the emergence of ‘global goods’ (Starbucks coffee, Barbie dolls, and so on). The spread of communications technologies, such as television, film, radio, and, of course, the internet, has homogenized global cultural flows and led to the creation of ‘global celebrities’ (such as Beyoncé and LeBron James). And English is well on its way to becoming the dominant global language – it is the language of instruction at universities in many non-Anglophone countries, it is the base language of most dominant programming languages used to produce computer software and online content, and it is the most popular language among internet users (though in the 2020s, Chinese comes a close second). Meanwhile, English-language film and television are consumed the world over. Globalization as hybridization. Cultural exchange is by no means a top-down or one-way process; instead, all societies, including economically and politically powerful ones, have become more varied and diverse as a result of the emergence of a globalized cultural market place. So-called ‘reverse cultural flows’ reflect the growth of what postcolonial thinkers (see p. 99) such as Homi Bhabha and Edward Said call ‘hybridity’ or creolization (the cross-fertilization that takes place when different cultures interact). In return for Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and MTV, the United States and wider West has increasingly been influenced by nonWestern cultures. Eastern religions and philosophies are more influential than ever in the West, with the concept of ‘mindfulness’, drawn from Taoist and Buddhist thought, at the heart of a multibillion dollar Western ‘wellness’ industry and a staple of workplace ‘occupational health’ initiatives. Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is similarly a multibillion dollar, transnational industry, based in the United States but influenced by global cultures; its most popular discipline, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ), is a South American spin on a traditional Japanese fighting style. Meanwhile, South Korean food, film and television, and popular music (‘K-pop’) have become hugely popular in Western countries in the early twenty-first century, thanks in part to the large Korean diaspora in the United States itself. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 223 ‘Americanization of the world’. For many, the globalizationas-homogenization thesis conceals a deeper process: the advance of westernization and, more especially, Americanization. Global sameness reflects the imposition of a dominant economic, social, and cultural model on all parts of the world. The rise of an increasingly homogenized popular culture is underwritten by a Western ‘culture industry’, based in New York, Hollywood, London, and Milan. Western, and more specifically US, norms and lifestyles therefore overwhelm more vulnerable cultures, leading, for instance, to Palestinian youths wearing Chicago Bulls sweatshirts. The economic and cultural impact of the United States is also reflected in the ‘McDonaldization’ of the world, reflecting the seemingly unstoppable rise of American-style consumer capitalism. Return of the local. The globalization-as-homogenization thesis is undermined by the extent to which globalization either adapts to local circumstances or strengthens local influences. In developing states, for instance, Western consumer goods and images have been absorbed into more traditional cultural practices through a process of indigenization (through which alien goods and practices are adapted to local conditions and needs). Examples include the Bollywood film industry and the Al-Jazeera television network. The process of cultural borrowing by which local actors select and modify elements from an array of global possibilities has been described by Robertson (1992) as ‘glocalization’. Global liberalization. A third version of the homogenization thesis highlights a growing worldwide ascendancy of liberal ideas and structures. In economic terms, this is reflected in the global trend in favour of free markets and free trade. In political terms, it is evident in the spread of liberal democracy, based on a combination of electoral democracy and party competition. In cultural and ideological terms, it is reflected in the rise of individualism, an emphasis on technocratic rationalism, and the development of the doctrine of human rights into a cosmopolitan political creed. Cultural polarization. Where economic and cultural globalization have imposed alien and threatening values and practices, a backlash has sometimes been provoked, resulting not in homogenization but in polarization. This can be seen in Barber’s (2003) image of a world culture shaped by symbiotic links between ‘McWorld’ and ‘Jihad’. Similarly, Samuel Huntington (see p. 276) dismissed the idea of a global monoculture in proclaiming, instead, the emergence of a ‘clash of civilizations’. This suggested that with the end of the Cold War, global politics had moved out of its Western phase, its centrepiece increasingly becoming interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations as well as among non-Western civilizations. Key civilizational conflict would thus occur between the United States and China and between the ‘Western and Islamic civilizations’. The ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 is often cited as the earliest evidence of a functioning global civil society. The formation of the World Social Forum in 2001 gave the global civil society sector a greater sense of focus and organizational direction, enabling it to challenge its great capitalist rival, the World Economic Forum. In this sense, global civil society has emerged as a third force between TNCs and international organizations, representing neither the market nor the state. However, the concept of global civil society remains controversial. A neologism of the 1990s, the idea of global civil society quickly became fashionable, being used by world leaders and policymakers as well as by political activists. But is it a reality, or merely an aspiration? Participation in global civil society, for instance, is restricted to a relatively small number of people. None of its groups yet constitutes a genuine mass movement, comparable, say, to the trade union movement or the mass membership of political parties of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, there are doubts about the degree of interconnectedness within global civil society: is it one thing or a number of things? In particular, there are differences between the two main actors within global civil society: transnational social movements and NGOs. 7 224 GLOBAL POLITICS New Left: A current in leftist thought, ascendant in the 1990s and 2000s, that rejected both orthodox communism and social democracy in favour of a new politics of liberation based on decentralization and participatory democracy. New politics: A style of politics that distrusts representative mechanisms and bureaucratic processes in favour of strategies of popular mobilization and direct action. Self-actualization: Personal fulfilment brought about by the refinement of sensibilities; selfactualization is usually linked to the transcendence of egoism and materialism. TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND NGOS Transnational social movements, sometimes called ‘new’ social movements, developed during the 1960s and 1970s against the backdrop of growing student radicalism, antiVietnam war protest, and the rise of ‘counter-cultural’ attitudes and sensibilities. Key examples included the women’s movement, the environmental or green movement, and the peace movement. These movements attracted the young, the better-educated and the relatively affluent, and typically embraced a ‘post-materialist’ ethic. They tended to be more concerned with quality of life issues and cultural change than with social advancement in the traditional sense. Although they articulated the views of different groups, they nevertheless subscribed to a common (if not always clearly defined) ideology, linked broadly to the ideas of the New Left. From the outset, these movements had a transnational, even global, orientation. This reflected the fact that, in many cases, support for them spills naturally across borders (for example, the women’s movement) and also that, given the nature of their concerns, national divisions are seen as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution (for instance, the peace movement and the green movement). Such tendencies were accentuated by the development, from the 1990s onwards, of a new wave of social movement activism, with the emergence of what has variously been called the ‘anti-globalization’, ‘anti-capitalist’, ‘anti-corporate’, or ‘global justice’ movement. This loose and ideologically diverse ‘movement of movements’ has been in the forefront of the so-called ‘new politics’, stressing decentralization and participatory decision-making and embracing a more innovative and theatrical form of protest politics. Examples of this have included the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999, in which mass demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see p. 588) degenerated into violent clashes between the police and groups of protesters, and other similar anti-capitalism protests that now regularly accompany meetings of groups such as the WTO, the OECD, and the G20 (see p. 177), as well as the ‘Occupy’ movements that began in 2011 (see p. 12). CON As such, transnational social movements represent the ‘outsider’ face of global civil society. Their ‘outsider’ status is largely a result of the nature of their ideological and political goals, which are radical rather than mainstream, and so are generally incompatible with those of conventional policymakers at both national and global levels. Their use of ‘outsider’ strategies, such as marches, demonstrations, and protests, is a way of attracting media attention and of turning potential supporters into activists. However, ‘outsider’ status also places massive limitations on the policy impact of global social movements. Insofar as they have influence, it is more in terms of bringing about C E PT POST-MATERIALISM Post-materialism is a theory that explains the nature of political concerns and attitudes in terms of levels of economic development. It is loosely based on Abraham Maslow’s (1908–70) ‘hierarchy of needs’ (see p. 459), which places esteem and self-actualization above material or economic needs. Post-materialism assumes that conditions of material scarcity breed egoistical and acquisitive values, meaning that politics is dominated by economic issues. However, in conditions of widespread prosperity, individuals express more interest in post-material or quality of life issues. These are typically concerned with morality, political justice, and personal fulfilment, and include feminism, world peace, poverty reduction, racial harmony, environmental protection, and animal rights. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 225 a wider and more nebulous shift in values and cultural awareness. This can clearly be seen in relation to the environment movement and the women’s movement. The antiglobalization movement, though much younger, has already contributed to a politicocultural shift in terms of attitudes, particularly amongst young people, towards free-trade practices and consumerist values. Many, nevertheless, view NGOs as the key actors within global civil society, their advantage being that they are institutionalized and professionalized ‘insiders’. There can be little doubt that major international NGOs and the NGO sector as a whole now constitute a significant group of political actors on the global stage. Advocacy NGOs have had a variety of high-profile successes, often constraining the influence of TNCs and altering the policy direction of national governments and international organizations. NGO pressure during the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, exerted by some 2,400 representatives of NGOs and a parallel NGO ‘Global Forum’ that attracted about 17,000 people, initiated the process for controlling the emissions of greenhouse gases. The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, a network of more than 14,000 NGOs working in 90 countries, was effective in 1997 in getting the agreement of some 120 states to ban the production, use, and stockpiling of anti-personnel landmines. Without concerted pressure from NGOs, the International Criminal Court may never have been established, an influence that continues to be vital for the effective working of the Court (see p. 226). And the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a network of 607 NGOs in 106 countries, won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its leading role in persuading 122 UN member countries to vote in favour of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which came into force in 2021 (see p. 372). As NGOs have been accepted as key policymakers, policy-influencers, and even policyimplementers, they have developed into ‘tamed’ social movements. The price for their participation in the process of global governance has been the adoption of more mainstream or ‘responsible’ policy positions. This trend is reflected in the fact that distinctions between NGOs and governments and international organizations, and between NGOs and TNCs, have become increasingly blurred. Not only do NGOs have formal rights of consultation within international organizations, being accepted as a source of specialist advice and information, but NGOs and international organizations will often work together in formulating and carrying out a range of humanitarian projects. Many NGOs are also part-funded by government – Médecins Sans Frontières (known in English as ‘Doctors Without Borders’), for example, receives almost half its funding from governmental sources. Indications of the growing links between NGOs and TNCs can be found, for instance, in the fact that the World Economic Forum now embraces representatives of leading NGOs, and that a ‘revolving door’ has developed through which TNCs demonstrate their commitment to corporate social responsibility by employing former NGO leaders and specialists. 7 226 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . NGOs and the International Criminal Court Events: The International Criminal Court (ICC) came into operation in 2002, when the minimum required sixty states ratified the 1998 Rome Statute. NGOs played an unprecedented role in helping to bring the ICC into existence, doing much to set the international political agenda over the prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and participating in drafting the Rome Statute. This was accomplished largely through the Coalition for an International Criminal Court (CICC), formed in 1995, which has come to have a membership of over 2,500 NGOs worldwide. Some 235 NGOs attended the Rome Conference, larger ones such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch sending more delegates than most countries, and with the World Federalist Movement’s delegation of sixty experts exceeding even the largest government delegation. Once the Rome Statute was approved, the CICC mounted a huge lobbying campaign designed to pressure UN member states into signing and ratifying the treaty. By 2019, 154 countries had signed the treaty, 123 having also ratified it. NGOs also play a significant and ongoing role in supporting the workings of the Court. Amongst other things, they provide support for victims and witnesses in giving evidence and submit legal analyses and policy arguments through so-called Amicus Curiae (‘Friend of the Court’) briefs. Significance: The uniquely influential role played by NGOs in the establishment of the ICC can be explained in at least three ways. First, the CICC was highly effective in bringing together and coordinating diverse NGOs with different goals and focus areas (such as gender justice, victims, children), enabling them to act in a cohesive manner to achieve set ends. Second, NGO influence was closely linked to their expertise and, sometimes, political skills. Governments were keen to utilize reports and documents prepared by NGOs, benefiting both from their legal expertise and their ability to supply services, including translating and interpreting services. During the Rome Conference’s five weeks of negotiations, the CICC not only ensured that government delegates were adequately informed but also helped to broker compromises when difficulties emerged. Third, NGOs took full advantage of the UN’s willingness, dating back to the early 1990s, to encourage non-governmental as well as governmental participation Source: SOPA Images/Getty Images in global policy-making. Over this issue, policy was therefore made through a process of international cooperation, structured around diverse global networks of NGOs in collaboration with governments and the UN. Some commentators have viewed the establishment of the ICC as a crucial stage in the emergence of global civil society, marking the point in which NGOs, acting as the ‘conscience of humanity’, were first able to place constraints on the state-centric politics of old. Certainly, the CICC had injected an urgency into the campaign for an ICC just as the support of governments started to falter, the creation of ad hoc UN-backed tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda having created a fear that the ICC might come for them one day. Moreover, the ICC moves significantly beyond the principles enshrined in the International Court of Justice, in that the ICC may, potentially, breach state sovereignty by prosecuting citizens of states that have not ratified the Rome Statute. The notion that NGOs are in the process of superseding states is, nevertheless, misleading. Although NGOs undoubtedly provided much-needed encouragement for states to sign and ratify the Rome Statute, they did not, and could not, force reluctant governments to act against their perceived interests. The simple fact is that humanitarian sensibilities have not only underpinned the growth of NGOs but also, in many cases, led to adjustments in state behaviour. Finally, for all the energies expended in the establishment of the ICC, its impact continues to be restricted, not least by the refusal of many of the world’s most powerful states, including the United States, China, India, and Russia, to sign the Rome Statute. SOCIETY IN A GLOBAL AGE 227 GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW? Has global civil society contributed to a reconfiguration of global power? Does it represent an alternative to top-down corporate globalization, a kind of bottom-up democratic vision of a civilizing world order, or ‘globalization from below’? Optimists about global civil society argue that it has two main advantages. First, it provides a necessary counter-balance to corporate power. Until the 1990s, the advance of TNC interests met little effective resistance, meaning that international organizations in particular fell too easily under the sway of a neoliberal agenda committed to free markets and free trade. Transnational social movements and NGOs help to ensure that such interests and ideas are checked, challenged, and scrutinized, not (necessarily) to block corporate interests or inhibit economic globalization, but to strengthen the global policy-making process by bringing more views and voices to the table. Second, emergent civil society is often seen as a form of fledgling democratic global politics. This has occurred because civil society bodies have articulated the interests of people and groups who have been disempowered by the globalization process, acting as a kind of counter-hegemonic force. Similarly, by introducing an element of public scrutiny and accountability to the workings of international bodies, conferences, summits, and the like, global civil society functions as a channel of communication between the individual and global institutions. However, emergent global civil society also has its critics. In the first place, the democratic credentials of NGOs and, for that matter, social movements are entirely bogus. For example, how can NGOs be in the forefront of democratization when they are entirely non-elected and self-appointed bodies? Large memberships, committed activists, and the ability to mobilize popular protests and demonstrations undoubtedly give social movements and NGOs political influence, but it does not give them democratic authority, when there is no mechanism for testing the weight of their views against those of society at large. Second, the tactics of popular activism and direct action, so clearly associated with social movements and certain NGOs, have also attracted criticism. For instance, the violence that has accompanied many major anticapitalist protests has, arguably, alienated many potential supporters, giving the entire movement an image of recklessness and irresponsibility. A final criticism is that NGOs and social movements distort national and global political agendas through their fixation on gaining media attention, both as the principal means of exerting pressure and to attract support and funding. This, nevertheless, may lead them to making exaggerated claims to ‘hype’ political issues, and to indulge in knee-jerk protest politics, aided and abetted by a mass media desperate for ‘impact’ stories in an age of 24/7 news and current affairs. 7 Direct action: Political action taken outside the constitutional and legal framework; direct action may range from passive resistance to terrorism. 228 GLOBAL POLITICS SUMMARY y Societies are fashioned out of a usually stable set of relationships between and among their members. However, the ‘thick’ social connectedness of close bonds and fixed allegiances is giving way to the ‘thin’ connectedness of more fluid, individualized social arrangements. This reflects the impact of post-industrialism and the wider use of communication technology. y The thinning and widening of social connectedness has been associated with a general increase in risk, uncertainty, and instability. The risks and instabilities of modern society include growing environmental threats, economic crises due to an increase in economic interconnectedness, and the emergence of new security threats. y Cultural globalization is the process whereby information, commodities, and images that have been produced in one part of the world enter into a global flow that tends to ‘flatten out’ cultural differences between nations, regions, and individuals. It is often associated with the worldwide spread of consumerism and the rise of individualism. y The image of an emerging global monoculture has nevertheless been challenged. Diversity and pluralization have increased in modern societies due to factors such as the adaptation of cultural products to local traditions and understandings to facilitate their spread and because of the backlash against the perceived domination of foreign ideas, values, and lifestyles. y The rise, during the 1990s, of a mosaic of new groups, organizations, and movements that sought to challenge ‘corporate’ globalization has been interpreted as the emergence of global civil society. However, global civil society has been interpreted differently depending on whether transnational social movements or NGOs have been viewed as its key agents. y Supporters of global civil society argue that it has effectively reconfigured global power, providing a kind of ‘bottom-up’ democratic vision of a civilizing world order. Critics, on the other hand, have questioned the democratic credentials of social movements and NGOs, condemned their use of direct action, and accused them of distorting national and global political agendas. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y What makes a society a society? y Why has social connectedness become ‘thinner’? y Is cultural globalization really just a form of cultural y Have new forms of communication altered the global ‘virtual’ distribution of power? y Does consumerism liberate people or enslave them? y Are NGOs little more than self-serving and unaccountable bodies? y To what extent can global civil society be viewed as a democratizing force? Bauman, Z., Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (2007). An examination of the changing human condition in the light of the emergence of ‘liquid’ or ‘light’ modernity. Beck, U., World at Risk (2009). A discussion of the nature of modern society that considers the multiple manifestations of ‘world risk’. Cohen, R. and P. Kennedy, Global Sociology (2013). A rich and diverse analysis of contemporary issues and the dynamics of social change. Joseph, J., The Social in the Global: Social Theory, Governmentality and Global Politics (2012). Applies Foucault’s theory of governmentality to explore power in global politics. Keane, J., Global Civil Society? (2003). An exploration of the contradictory forces currently nurturing or threatening the growth of global civil society. Vanden, H. E. et al., The New Global Politics: Global Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century (2017). A group of authors discuss the rise of global social movements. imperialism? y Is individualism the enemy of social solidarity and cohesion? y Has the network society substituted communities for real communities? FURTHER READING L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 8 Source: JOHN WESSELS/Getty Images PREVIEW Nationalism has, arguably, been the most powerful force in world politics for over two hundred years. It has contributed to the outbreak of wars and revolutions. It has been closely linked to the birth of new states, the disintegration of empires, and the redrawing of borders; and it has been used to reshape existing regimes as well as to bolster them. The greatest achievement of nationalism has been the establishment of the nation as the key unit for political rule, meaning that the so-called ‘nation state’ has come to be accepted as the most basic – and, nationalists argue, the only legitimate – form of political organization. However, the character of nationalism and its implications for world politics are deeply contested. Has nationalism advanced the cause of political freedom, or has it simply legitimized aggression and expansion? By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the modern nation was under pressure. Globalization is widely seen to have weakened nationalism as territorial nation states have been enmeshed in global political, economic, and cultural networks, and significantly increased international migration has led to the development of transnational communities, giving a growing number of societies a multicultural character and creating other strains. Is nationalism a political force in retreat? Can nationalism survive in a world on the move? Despite frequent predictions to the contrary, there is evidence of the resurgence of nationalism, often linked to racial or religious identities. In the last decade, the rise of white nationalism across the West, and of Hindu nationalism in India, has exemplified this resurgence. Nationalism has also re-emerged as a reaction against the culturally homogenizing impact and economic reordering of globalization. How can the revival of nationalism best be explained, and what forms has it taken? KEY ISSUES z What is a nation? How is nationalism best understood? z How, and to what extent, has nationalism shaped world politics? z Why has international migration increased in recent decades? z How has population movement affected world politics? z Why has nationalism been resurgent in the early twenty-first century? z Does contemporary nationalism differ from earlier forms of nationalism? 229 230 GLOBAL POLITICS NATIONALISM AND WORLD POLITICS CON Patriotism: Literally, love of one’s ‘fatherland’; a psychological attachment of loyalty to one’s nation or country. C E PT Modern nations and the idea of nationalism were born in the late eighteenth century; some commentators see them as a product of the 1789 French Revolution (Kedourie 1966). Previously, countries had been thought of as ‘realms’, ‘principalities’, or ‘kingdoms’. The inhabitants of a country were ‘subjects’, their political identity being formed by allegiance to a ruler or ruling dynasty, rather than any sense of national identity or patriotism. However, the revolutionaries in France who rose up against Louis XVI did so in the name of the people, and understood the people to be the ‘French nation’. Nationalism was therefore a revolutionary and democratic creed, reflecting the idea that ‘subjects of the crown’ should become ‘citizens of France’. Such ideas, nevertheless, were not the exclusive property of the French. In the early nineteenth century, a rising tide of nationalism spread throughout Europe, exploding in 1848 in a series of revolutions that affected the mainland of Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to the borders of Russia. During the twentieth century, the doctrine of nationalism, which had been honed in Europe, spread throughout the globe as the peoples of Asia and Africa rose in opposition to colonial rule. THE NATION Nations (from the Latin nasci, meaning ‘to be born’) are complex phenomena that are shaped by a collection of cultural, political, and psychological factors. Culturally, a nation is a group of people bound together by a common language, religion, history, and traditions, although all nations exhibit some degree of cultural heterogeneity. Politically, a nation is a group of people who regard themselves as a ‘natural’ political community, usually expressed through the desire to establish or maintain sovereignty. Psychologically, a nation is a group of people who are distinguished by a shared loyalty or affection, in the form of patriotism, although people who lack national pride may still, nevertheless, recognize that they ‘belong’ to the nation. Nations are therefore generally understood to be socially constructed (see p. 120) or ‘imagined’ communities (see p. 233). However, nations also have material dimensions, since the cultural, political, and psychological construction of a nation defines boundaries between those on the inside and those on the outside. These boundaries may in turn form the basis of rights to material resources, from property ownership to jobs and welfare. MAKING SENSE OF NATIONALISM Nationalism is a complex and deeply contested political phenomenon. In the simplest sense, nationalism is the belief that the nation is, or should be, the most basic principle of political organization. But what is a nation? In everyday language, words such as ‘nation’, ‘state’, ‘country’, and even ‘race’ (see p. 100) are often confused or used as if they are interchangeable. The United Nations, for instance, is clearly misnamed, as it is an organization of states, not one of national populations. It is common in international politics to hear references to ‘the Americans’, ‘the Chinese’, ‘the Russians’, and so on, when in fact it is the actions of these people’s governments that are being discussed. In the case of the UK, there is confusion about whether it should be regarded as a nation or as a state that comprises four separate nations: the English, the Scots, the Welsh, and the Northern Irish (who may, indeed, constitute two nations, Unionists viewing themselves as British, while Republicans define themselves as Irish). The Arab peoples of North Africa and NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 231 the Middle East pose very similar problems. For instance, should Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Syria be treated as nations in their own right, or as part of a single and united Arab nation, based on a common language (Arabic), a common religion (Islam), and descent from a common Bedouin tribal past? Such difficulties spring from the fact that all nations comprise a mixture of objective and subjective factors, a blend of cultural and political characteristics. On the most basic level, nations are cultural entities, collections of people bound together by shared values and traditions, in particular a common language, religion, and history, and usually occupying the same geographical area. From this point of view, the nation can be defined by objective factors: people who satisfy a requisite set of cultural criteria can be said to belong to a nation; those who do not can be classified as non-nationals or members of foreign nations. Such factors certainly shape the politics of nationalism. The nationalism of the Québécois in Canada, for instance, is based largely on language differences between French-speaking Quebec and the predominantly English-speaking rest of Canada. Nationalist tensions in India invariably arise from religious divisions, examples being the struggle of Sikhs in the Punjab for a separate homeland (Khalistan), and the campaign by Muslims in Kashmir for the incorporation of Kashmir into Pakistan. Nevertheless, it is impossible to define the nation using objective factors alone. All nations, to a greater or lesser extent, are characterized by cultural heterogeneity, and some to a high degree. The Swiss nation has proved to be enduring and viable despite the use of three major languages (French, German, and Italian), as well as a variety of local dialects. Divisions between Catholics and Protestants that has given rise to rival nationalisms in Northern Ireland have been largely irrelevant in mainland UK, and have only marginal significance in countries such as Germany. 8 The cultural unity that supposedly expresses itself in nationhood is therefore difficult to pin down. It reflects, at best, a varying combination of cultural factors, rather than any precise formula. This emphasizes the fact that, ultimately, nations can only be defined subjectively, by their members. In the final analysis, the nation is a psychopolitical entity, a group of people who regard themselves as a natural political community and are distinguished by shared loyalty and affection in the form of patriotism. The political dimension of nationhood is evident in the difference between a nation and an ethnic group. An ethnic group undoubtedly possesses a communal identity and a sense of cultural pride, but, unlike a nation, it lacks collective political aspirations: it does not seek to establish or maintain sovereign independence or political autonomy. The psychological dimension of nationhood is evident in the survival of nationalist aspirations despite the existence of profound objective difficulties, such as the absence of land, a small population, or lack of economic resources. Latvia, for example, became an independent nation in 1991 despite having a population of only 2.6 million (barely half of whom are Lats), no source of fuel, and very few natural resources. Likewise, the Kurdish peoples of the Middle East retain nationalist aspirations, even though the Kurds Ethnic group: A group have never enjoyed formal political unity and are presently spread over parts of Turkey, of people who share a common cultural and Iraq, Iran, and Syria. historical identity, typically Confusions over the factors that define the nation are compounded by controversy linked to a belief in over the phenomenon of nationalism. Is nationalism a feeling, an identity, a political common descent. 232 GLOBAL POLITICS Primordialism: The theory that nations are ancient and deep-rooted, fashioned variously out of psychology, culture, and biology. Volksgeist: (German) Literally, the spirit of the people; the organic identity of a people revealed in their culture and particularly their language. doctrine, an ideology, or a social movement? Or is it all these things at once? Moreover, how can the emergence of nationalism best be explained: is it a natural phenomenon, or has it somehow been invented? Since the 1970s, students of nationalism have increasingly fallen into two great camps: primordialists versus modernists (Hearn 2006). Primordialism portrays national identity as historically embedded: nations are rooted in a common cultural heritage and language that may long predate statehood or the quest for independence. All nationalists, in this sense, are primordialists. The dominant themes of primordialism are: z People are inherently group-orientated and nations are a manifestation of this. z National identity is forged by three key factors: common descent, a sense of territorial belonging, and a shared language. z Nations are historical entities: they evolve organically out of more simple ethnic communities. z Nationalism is characterized by deep emotional attachments that resemble kinship ties. Such views can be traced back to the writings of the German philosopher Johann Herder (1744–1803), who argued that each nation possesses a Volksgeist, which reveals itself in songs, myths, and legends, and provides a nation with its source of creativity. The implications of Herder’s culturalism is that nations are natural or organic identities that can be traced back to ancient times and will, by the same token, continue to exist as long as human society survives. Modern commentators have advanced similar ideas. Anthony Smith (see p. 237), for instance, highlighted the continuity between modern nations and pre-modern ethnic communities, which he called ‘ethnies’. This implies that nationalism is a variant of ethnicity (see p. 270), modern nations essentially being updated versions of immemorial ethnic communities. By contrast, modernist approaches to nationalism suggest that national identity is forged in response to changing social and historical circumstances. In many cases, modernism links the origins of nationalism to the process of modernization and, in particular, to the emergence of industrialization. Although different modernist theorists place an emphasis on different factors, modernism can be associated with three broad themes: z The emergence of industrial and capitalist economies weakened traditional social bonds and generated new social tensions, so creating a need for a unifying national identity. z States often play a key role in forging a sense of national identity, implying that the state predates and, in a sense, ‘constructs’ the nation. z The spread of mass literacy and mass education contributed significantly to the construction of national identity. Ernest Gellner (see p. 238) thus stressed that while pre-modern societies were structured by a network of feudal bonds and loyalties, emerging industrial societies promoted social mobility, self-striving, and competition, and so required a new source of cultural cohesion (as discussed in Chapter 7). This new source of cultural cohesion was provided NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE by nationalism, which, in effect, means that nationalism invented the nation, not the other way round. Although Gellner’s theory suggests that nations coalesced in response to particular social conditions and circumstances, it also implies that the national community is deep-rooted and will be enduring, as a return to pre-modern loyalties and identities is unthinkable. Benedict Anderson (see p. 238) also portrayed modern nations as a product of socio-economic change, in his case stressing the combined impact of the emergence of capitalism and the advent of modern mass communications, which he dubbed ‘print-capitalism’. In his view, the nation is an ‘imagined community’, in that, within nations, individuals only ever meet a tiny proportion of those with whom they supposedly share a national identity (Anderson 1983). If nations exist, they exist as imagined artifices, constructed for us through education, the mass media, and the process of political socialization. Marxists, such as Eric Hobsbawm (1992), tend to view nationalism as a device through which the ruling class counters the threat of social revolution by ensuring that national loyalty is stronger than class solidarity, thereby binding the working class to the existing power structure (See ‘Approaches to … Nationalism’, p. 234). A WORLD OF NATION STATES Nationalism has helped to shape and reshape world politics for over two hundred years. However, the nature of its impact has been the subject of considerable debate. Nationalism is a chameleon-like ideology, capable of assuming a bewildering variety of political forms. At different times, it has been progressive and reactionary, democratic and authoritarian, liberating and oppressive, aggressive and peaceful, and so on. Some, as a result, distinguish between good and bad nationalism, dispensing altogether with the idea of nationalism as a single, coherent political force. The liberating or progressive face of nationalism is evident in what is often seen as classical political nationalism. Classical nationalism dates back to the French Revolution, and embodies many of its values. Its ideas spread quickly through much of Europe and were expressed, for example, in the emergence of unification movements in the Italian states and the Germanic states in particular, and through the growth of independence movements in the AustroHungarian Empire and later in the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps the clearest expression of classical nationalism is found in US President Woodrow Wilson’s (see p. 552) ‘Fourteen Points’. Drawn up in 1918, these were proposed as the basis for the reconstruction of Europe after the First World War, and provided a blueprint for the sweeping territorial changes that were implemented by the Treaty of Versailles (1919). 233 8 234 APPROACHES TO . . . REALIST VIEW Realists do not generally place an emphasis on nationalism as such. In their view, the crucial stage in the development of the modern international system was the emergence of sovereign states in the 1500–1750 period (particularly through the 1648 Peace of Westphalia), rather than the transformation of these states, from the early nineteenth century onwards, into nation states through the advent of nationalism. The international system is thus, more accurately, viewed as an interstate system. Despite this, realists have tended to view nationalism in broadly positive terms. From the realist perspective, nationalism is a key auxiliary component of state power, a source of internal cohesion that consolidates the external effectiveness of a nation state. By interpreting state interests (generally) as ‘national interests’, realists recognize nationalism as a force that sustains international anarchy, limits the scope for cooperation between and among states, and implies that universal values, such as human rights (see p. 400), are defective. LIBERAL VIEW Liberals have long endorsed nationalism. Indeed, in nineteenth-century Europe in particular, to be a liberal meant to be a nationalist. Liberal nationalism is a principled form of nationalism, based above all on the notion of national self-determination, which portrays the nation as a sovereign entity and implies both national independence and democratic rule. Although liberal nationalists, like all nationalists, view the nation as a ‘natural’ community, they regard nations as essentially civic entities, based on the existence of common values and political loyalties. From the liberal perspective, the nation state (see p. 236) is a political ideal, representing the goal of freedom and the right of each nation to fashion its own destiny. Self-determination, moreover, is a universal right, reflecting the equality of nations (at least in a moral sense) and implying that liberals aim not merely to achieve sovereign statehood for their particular nation but to construct a world of independent nation states. Liberals view nationalism and internationalism (see p. 85) as complementary, not conflicting, principles. The most prominent forms of liberal internationalism are support for free trade to promote economic interdependence, making war so costly it becomes almost unthinkable, and the construction of intergovernmental or supranational bodies to ensure an international rule of law. MARXIST VIEWS For Marxists, nationality may be an example of ‘false consciousness’ – an illusion that serves to mystify and confuse the working classes, preventing them from recognizing their genuine interests and creating competitive and antagonistic social relations between them. In particular, in emphasizing the bonds of nationhood over those of social class, nationalism serves to distort, and conceal, the realities of unequal class power and prevent social revolution. Marxism directly opposes nationalism with socialist internationalism. That said, while Marxist theory traditionally rejects nationalism as ideological and illusory, the putting into practice of Marxism has often involved either the use of nationalist rhetoric to mobilize the proletariat, or a more full-bodied embrace of ‘liberatory’ political nationalism. Marx and Engels occasionally supported nationalist forces in their own writings, where they coincided with what they saw as the best hope for revolution in a given country. But most significantly, twentieth-century anti-colonial movements (see p. 47) were very often articulated through a combination of Marxist and nationalist ideas, as in many variants of ‘African nationalism’ (see p. 237). 235 NATIONALISM CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW Social constructivists have been particularly critical of the primordialist image of ‘fixed’ ethnic and national identities, emphasizing instead that the sense of national belonging is ‘constructed’ though social, political, and other processes. They therefore tend to argue that nations are fashioned by nationalism itself, sympathizing with Benedict Anderson’s image of nations as ‘imagined communities’. National identities, and thus nationalisms, are mutually constituted through the processes of international relations, in the constructivist view, and can be unmade or changed through these same processes. FEMINIST VIEWS For many feminists, nation – like ‘family’ – is a patriarchal social structure, rooted in a masculinist conception of power (see p. 108). The construction of a nation is about imposing a monolithic, male-centric and male-dominated, narrative of belonging upon societies that are actually constituted by a mixture of gender identities. Notably, nationalist organizations on the political right often advocate heteronormative (see p. 552) ‘family values’ and espouse anti-feminist views, emphasizing ‘traditional’, patriarchal, gender roles as the bedrock of the nation itself. That said, nationalism has also been a divisive issue in feminism since its inception. The women’s suffrage movement in Britain was split at its height by those who suspended or adapted their campaigning to support the national ‘war effort’ in the First World War, and those who formed peace movements and campaigned against the war. A century later, Sara Farris (2017) coined the term ‘femonationalism’ to explain the participation of some self-proclaimed feminists in the West in the disempowerment of women in the Global South, and the co-option of feminist argument by nationalists. Farris notes that: one of the striking features that distinguishes contemporary European nationalist parties from their older counterparts is the invocation of gender equality (and occasionally LGBT rights) within an otherwise xenophobic rhetoric. (Farris 2017: 1) POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEWS Post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches to nationalism tend to suggest that at the heart of the nationalist project is a narrative, or collection of narratives. The story of the nation is told by history books, works of fiction, symbols, myths, and so on, with particular importance being given to a foundational myth that locates the origins of the nation in a time long ago and imbues the nation with special qualities. Nationalisms are significant for post-structuralists inasmuch as they are connected to the ‘politics of difference’. Specifically, nationalisms seek to ‘solve’ or transcend the politics and power-struggles over different identities at large in societies. Nationalist narratives present those who do not identify with (or are not identified by others with) the nation as ‘deviant’, dangerous, and potentially in need of exclusion or even extermination. Post-structuralists tend to believe that nationalists can never fully achieve their goal of a cohesive national ‘self’ because there will always be ‘resistance’, deviance, and difference. 236 POSTCOLONIAL VIEWS The relationship between postcolonial theory and nationalism is nuanced and rich. On the one hand, nations and nationalism are at the root of a great deal of colonial and postcolonial racist violence. The social processes of ‘othering’ (see p. 268) within and between societies are often refracted through nationalist lenses – who does or does not ‘belong’ to the nation is part of a struggle connected to colonial history, and the structural racism that follows it. On the other hand, nationalism has played a key role in anticolonial struggles, particularly the ‘African nationalism’ that thrived in the mid-twentieth century, and was closely associated with both pan-Africanism (see p. 237) and Marxist or socialist political and economic ideas. In the sense that many of the first postcolonial ‘theorists’, such as Amilcar Cabral (see p. 325), were active anti-colonial activists and revolutionary fighters struggling to realize African nations independent of colonial control from Europe, they were also self-identified nationalists. African nationalism within Africa had strong links to Black nationalist (see p. 269) and pan-Africanist liberation movements in majoritywhite societies too. CON National selfdetermination: The principle that the nation is a sovereign entity; self-determination implies both national independence and democratic rule. C E PT Classical nationalism has been strongly associated with liberal ideas and values. In common with all forms of nationalism, classical nationalism is based on the fundamental assumption that humankind is naturally divided into a collection of nations, each possessed of a separate identity. Nations are therefore genuine or organic communities, not the artificial creation of political leaders or ruling classes. The characteristic theme of classical nationalism, however, is that it links the idea of the nation with a belief in popular sovereignty (see p. 172), ultimately derived from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–78) idea of the ‘general will’. This fusion was brought about because the multinational empires against which nineteenth-century European nationalists fought were also autocratic and oppressive. Mazzini, for example, wished not only to unite the Italian states but also to throw off the influence of autocratic Austria. Woodrow Wilson, for his part, wished not only that the constituent nations of Europe should achieve statehood but also that they should be reconstructed on the basis of US-style liberal republicanism. The central theme of this form of nationalism is therefore a commitment to the principle of national self-determination. Its goal is therefore the construction of a nation state. NATION STATE A nation state is an autonomous political community bound together by the overlapping bonds of citizenship and nationality, meaning that political and cultural identity coincide. Nation states thus reflect Mazzini’s goal: ‘Every nation a state, only one state for the entire nation.’ Most modern states are nation states, in that, thanks to classical nationalism, the nation has come to be accepted as the basic unit of political rule. However, the nation state is more a political ideal than a reality, as all states are, to some degree, culturally and ethnically heterogeneous. However, the term ‘nation state’ has (often incorrectly) become a synonym for the ‘state’ in much public, and some academic, discourse. NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 237 This form of nationalism has had profound implications for world politics. From the early nineteenth century onwards, the seemingly irresistible process of nation state formation transformed the state system, reconfiguring political power, ultimately across the globe, and giving states an internal cohesion and sense of purpose and identity they had previously lacked. This was, nevertheless, a complex process. Although primordialists, such as Anthony Smith (1986, 1991), tend to view pre-modern ethnic communities as a kind of template for modern states, nation state formation changed nationalism every bit as much as nationalism changed the state system. Nationalism was an important component of the 1848 revolutions that spread across Europe, from the Iberian Peninsula to the borders of Russia. However, nationalist movements were nowhere strong enough to accomplish the process of nation-building alone. Where nationalist goals were realized, as in Italy and Germany (both were finally unified in 1871), it was because nationalism coincided with the ambitions of powerful states, in this case Piedmont and Prussia. The character of nationalism also changed. Nationalism had previously been associated with liberal and progressive movements, but was increasingly taken up by conservative and reactionary politicians and used to promote social cohesion, order, and stability, or, as discussed in the next section, projects of imperial expansion. During the twentieth century, the process whereby multinational empires were replaced by territorial nation states was extended into Africa and Asia. Indeed, in a sense, nineteenth-century European imperialism (see p. 35) turned nationalism into a genuinely global creed by triggering anti-colonial ‘national liberation’ movements. The independence movements that sprang up in the interwar period gained new impetus from the conclusion of the Second World War. The overstretched empires of the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal crumbled in the face of rising nationalism. India was granted independence in 1947. China (see p. 214) achieved genuine unity and independence only after the 1949 communist revolution. During the 1950s and early 1960s, the political map of Africa was entirely redrawn through the process of decolonization. African nationalism became a distinct variety of liberation politics, employed by African peoples in the pursuit of self-determination and the overthrow of colonial rule. Often blended with both Marxist or socialist principles, on the one hand, and commitments to pan-Africanism or ‘Négritude’, on the other, African nationalism included both ‘African’ and ‘Western’ elements, and was successful in throwing off European rule and founding dozens of new states. 8 African nationalism: A liberationist, anti-colonial model of nationalist social movement. It stresses ‘pan-Africanist’ ideals of unified ‘African-ness’, and demanded – and created – new nation states, independent from European colonizing powers. Pan-Africanism: A broad movement to acknowledge and strengthen cultural, political and economic ties between the peoples of Africa and the global The image of a world of sovereign nation states nevertheless remains misleading. In African diaspora. the first place, despite the collapse of major empires, significant unresolved nationalist tensions persist. These range from those in Tibet and the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang in China to Chechnya and elsewhere in the Russian Caucasus, the Kurds in the Middle East, and the Basques in Spain. Second, no nation state is ethnically and culturally homogeneous, and all rely, to some degree, on political circumstances to maintain themselves in existence. This can be illustrated by the rise and fall of Yugoslavia. Finally, given that nation states are, and are destined to remain, unequal in terms of their economic and political power, genuine national self-determination remains elusive for many. This is a tendency that has been further compounded by the advance of globalization (see p. 9) and the erosion of state sovereignty. Négritude: A concept coined by the postcolonial poet, literary theorist, and activist Aimé Césaire to describe a distinctly African or Black ‘way of being’, and embedded in much anti-colonial and postcolonial theory and practice, including African nationalism. FIG U 238 RES GLOBAL POLITICS KEY THEORISTS IN NATIONALISM ERNEST GELLNER (1925–95) A UK social philosopher and anthropologist, Gellner made major contributions to a variety of academic fields, including social anthropology, sociology, and political philosophy. The most prominent figure in the modernist camp in the study of nationalism, Gellner explained the rise of nationalism in terms of the need of industrial societies, unlike agrarian ones, for homogeneous languages and cultures to work efficiently. Gellner’s major writings include Legitimation of Belief (1974), Nations and Nationalism (1983), Culture, Identity and Politics (1987), and Reason and Culture (1992). MALCOLM X (1925–65) American activist Malcolm Little adopted ‘X’ as his surname when he joined the Nation of Islam movement in 1952. The Nation’s leader, Elijah Muhhamad, encouraged African American followers to relinquish the surnames they had been allocated through slavery, and instead adopt an ‘X’ until they would take on a traditional Muslim name (Malcolm X would later take the name Malik el-Shabazz but even today is often referred to as ‘X’ or simply ‘Malcolm’). Alongside Martin Luther King Jr (see p. 269) and Stokely Carmichael (see p. 292) he would become a leading figure in the American civil rights movement. Unlike King, though, X aligned himself with Black nationalism (see p. 269). The Nation of Islam Source: Bettmann/Getty Images advocated a separatist nationalism and ‘return to Africa’ for African Americans, in common with Marcus Garvey (see p. 40), and blended Islamic, rather than Christian, liberation theology with Black nationalist thought. During his membership of the group, X argued that Black Americans must ‘establish our own government and become an independent nation. And once we become separated from the jurisdiction of this white nation, we can then enter into trade and commerce for ourselves with other independent nations. This is the only solution’ (Malcolm X 1963). Though he ultimately parted with the Nation, X remained a key thinker in the Black nationalist tradition. His Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) remains a popular and influential text today, having sold millions of copies globally. X was assassinated in 1965, and members of the Nation were blamed and jailed for his killing, though none admitted responsibility. BENEDICT ANDERSON (1936–2015) An Irish academic who was brought up mainly in California, Anderson’s main publication on nationalism is the celebrated Imagined Communities (1983). He views nationalities and nationalism as cultural artefacts of a particular kind, defining the nation as an ‘imagined community’, in the sense that it generates a deep, horizontal comradeship regardless of actual inequalities within the nation and despite the fact that it is not a face-to-face community. Anderson’s other publications in the field include The Spectres of Comparison (1998) and Under Three Flags (2005). Source: Mail Today/Getty Images NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 239 NATIONALISM, WAR, AND CONFLICT Militarism: The achievement of ends by However, nationalism has not merely supported liberating causes, related to the military means; or the spread of military ideas achievement of national unity and independence. Nationalism has also been expressed and values throughout through the politics of aggression, militarism, and war. In many ways, expansionist civilian society. nationalism is the antithesis of the principled belief in equal rights and self-determination that is the core of classical nationalism. National rights, in this context, imply not respect for the rights of all nations, but the rights of a particular nation over other nations. The recurrent, and, many would argue, defining, theme of expansionist nationalism is therefore the idea of national chauvinism. Derived from the name of Nicholas Chauvin, a (possibly apocryphal) French soldier noted for his fanatical devotion to Napoleon and the cause of France, chauvinism is underpinned by the belief that nations have particular characteristics and qualities, and so have very different destinies. Some nations are suited to rule; others are suited to be ruled. Typically, this form of nationalism is articulated through doctrines of ethnic or racial superiority, thereby fusing nationalism and racialism. The chauvinist’s own people are seen as unique and special, in some way a ‘chosen people’, while other peoples are viewed either as weak and inferior, or as hostile and threatening. An extreme example of this can be found in the case of the German Nazis, whose ‘Aryanism’ portrayed the German people (the Aryan ‘race’) as a ‘master race’ destined for world domination, backed up by virulent anti-Semitism. Chauvinism: An irrational belief in the superiority or dominance of one’s own group or people; it can be applied to a nation, an ethnic group, a gender, and so on. Anti-Semitism: Prejudice or hatred towards Jewish people; Semites are by tradition the descendants of Shem, son of Noah. DEBATING . . . IS NATIONALISM INHERENTLY AGGRESSIVE AND OPPRESSIVE? Is nationalism as a whole, in principle, defensible? While some argue that its association with expansionism and oppression exposes deep and dark forces that are intrinsic to nationalism itself, others suggest that nationalism, in the right circumstances, can be peaceful and socially enlightened. YES NO Nationalism as narcissism. All forms of nationalism are based on partisanship, a preference for one’s own nation over other nations, underpinned by the belief that it has special or unique qualities. Nationalism is thus the enemy of universal values and global justice. In promoting self-love within the nations of the world, it encourages each nation to restrict its moral concerns to its own people, and to believe that their interests somehow outrank those of any other people. Nationalism is thus inherently chauvinistic and embodies, at minimum, a potential for aggression. The only question is whether national chauvinism is explicit or implicit, and therefore whether aggression is overt or latent. Nationalism and freedom. Nationalism is a chameleon ideology. Its character is determined by the circumstances in which nationalist aspirations arise and the (highly diverse) political causes that it articulates. When nationalism is a reaction against the experience of foreign domination or colonial rule, it tends to have a liberating character and is linked to the goals of liberty, justice, and democracy. Committed to the principle of self-determination, nationalism has been an anti-expansionist and anti-imperialist force that has expanded freedom worldwide. Moreover, self-determination has powerful implications for the domestic organization of political power, implying equal citizenship and democratic accountability. 8 240 GLOBAL POLITICS YES NO Negative integration. National identity is forged not only through the belief that one’s own nation is unique or ‘special’, but also through negative integration, the portrayal of another nation or race as a threat or an enemy. Nationalism therefore breeds off a clear distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’. There has to be a ‘them’ to deride or hate in order to forge a sense of ‘us’. This tendency to divide the world into an ‘in group’ and an ‘out group’ means that nationalism is always susceptible to dark and pathological forces. As a necessarily homogenizing force, all forms of nationalism harbour intolerance, hostility, and racist tendencies. ‘True’ nationalism is therefore ethnic nationalism. Civic nationalism. Nationalism only becomes intolerant and oppressive when the nation is defined in narrowly ethnic or racial terms. Some nations, however, are very clearly ‘political’ nations, constructed out of allegiances to particular values and civic ideals rather than on the basis of cultural homogeneity. The forms of nationalism that develop in such cases are typically tolerant and democratic, managing to sustain a remarkable degree of social harmony and political unity against a background of sometimes profound religious, linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity. National identity can therefore be inclusive, flexible, and always evolving, adapting itself to changing political and social circumstances. Nationalism and power. Nationalism is invariably associated with the quest for power and therefore leads to rivalry and conflict rather than cooperation. The nationalism of the weak draws from a sense of powerlessness and subjugation, a desire to assert national rights and identities in the context of perceived injustice and oppression. However, it is a delusion to believe that the quest for power is assuaged once a nation achieves sovereign statehood. In established states and even great powers, nationalism is strongly linked to self-assertion, as national identity is remodelled around aggrandizement and the quest for ‘greatness’. Cultural belonging. The central benefit of nationalism is that it gives people a sense of cultural inheritance, a sense of who or what they are, binding them together and promoting sociability. Nationalism’s success in this respect helps to explain why citizenship and nationality are invariably overlapping ideas. The ‘inner’ benefits of nationalism, which help to promote political stability and social cohesion, are not always, or necessarily, associated with projects of expansionism, conquest, and war. The link between nationalism and militarism is therefore strictly conditional, and tends to occur in particular when nationalist sentiments are generated by international rivalry and conflict. Xenophobia: A fear or hatred of foreigners; pathological ethnocentrism. Pan-nationalism: A style of nationalism dedicated to unifying a disparate people through either expansionism or political solidarity (‘pan’ means all or every). Ethnic cleansing: A euphemism that refers to the forcible expulsion of an ethnic group or groups in the cause of racial purity, often involving genocidal violence. From this perspective, the advance of nationalism is associated not so much with balance or harmony amongst independent nation states as with deepening rivalry and ongoing struggle. Some, indeed, argue that nationalism from its inception was infected with chauvinism and has always harboured at least implicit racist beliefs, based on the assumption that it is ‘natural’ to prefer one’s own people to others. In this light, nationalism may appear to be inherently oppressive and expansionist. All forms of nationalism may thus exhibit some form of xenophobia. The aggressive face of nationalism became increasingly prominent from the late nineteenth century onwards, as European powers indulged in the ‘scramble for Africa’ in the name of national glory and their ‘place in the sun’. Aggression and expansion were also evident in the forms of pan-nationalism that developed in Russia and Germany in the years leading up to the First World War. The build-up to the Second World War was similarly shaped by nationalist-inspired programmes of imperial expansion pursued by Germany, Japan, and Italy. Nationalism can therefore be seen as a major contributory factor explaining the outbreak of both world wars of the twentieth century. Neither was this form of nationalism extinguished in 1945. The break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, for example, led to a quest by Bosnian Serbs to construct a ‘Greater Serbia’, which was characterized by militarism and an aggressive programme of ‘ethnic cleansing’. NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 241 NATIONS IN AN AGE OF MIGRATION Hybridity: A condition of social and cultural mixing or fusion, affecting One of the ironies of nationalism is that just as it was completing its greatest individual and group accomplishment – the destruction of the world’s final remaining empires – the nation identities. state was being undermined by forces within and without. This has led some to talk of a ‘crisis of the nation state’, or even the ‘twilight of the nation state’. These forces are many and various. They include the tendency for economic globalization (see p. 147) to diminish the state’s capacity to function as an autonomous economic unit (examined in Chapter 4) and the trend for cultural globalization (see p. 217) to weaken the cultural distinctiveness of the nation state (discussed in Chapter 7). However, some argue that the most potent threat to the nation stems from the upsurge in international migration and the growth, as a result, of transnational communities and hybridity generally. Population movement has thus had major implications for modern world politics. A WORLD ON THE MOVE Migration has been part of human experience throughout history. Indeed, settlement (which was brought about by the emergence of agriculture, some 8,000 years ago) is of relatively recent origin, human societies having been fluid communities of hunters and gatherers that can now be traced back for over three million years. The development of substantial villages, and subsequently towns and cities, did not put an end to migration, however. The very first humans are now believed to have originated in Africa before migrating to Eurasia and spreading across the globe (see Chapter 2). The early empires of the Hittites, the Phoenicians, and the Greeks, meanwhile, reshaped the culture of much of Europe, parts of North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia between the third and the first millennia BCE. This process is reflected most strikingly in the distribution of the closely related languages of the Indo-European group, which embraces both Sanskrit and Persian at one end, and such European languages as Greek, Latin, French, German, and English at the other. The Vikings, Magyars, and Saracens invaded much of northern and central Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Vikings also establishing settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. European expansion overseas started in the sixteenth century with the Spanish invasion of Mexico and Peru, followed by the colonization of North America, mainly by the British. Hardly any nation in the world, in short, can claim always to have lived where it does now. Migration has occurred for a variety of reasons. Until early modern times, as the examples above demonstrate, migration was usually a consequence of conquest and invasion, followed by settlement and colonization. In cases such as the United States (see p. 58), Canada, Australia, and throughout Latin America, conquest and settlement led to the emergence of nations of immigrants, as native peoples were reduced to the status of marginalized minorities through the combined impact of disease, repression, and discrimination. Mass migration has also been a forcible process, the best examples of which were the slave trade and the system of indentured labour. An estimated 40 million people in the Americas and the Caribbean are descended from enslaved people, who, between the mid-sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, were captured in Africa and transported, via Europe, to work in the expanding sugar and tobacco plantations of the Migration: The movement of a person or group of persons, either across an international border or within a state. 8 242 GLOBAL POLITICS Diaspora: (from the Hebrew) Literally, dispersion; implies displacement or dispersal by force, but is also used to refer to the transnational community that arose as a result of such dispersal. Emigration: A process whereby people leave their native country to settle in another. Climate refugees: Commonly used by NGOs and campaigners to describe those forced into international migration by climate change, this term is yet to be formally adopted by the UN, since climate change cannot be a cause of refugee status in current international law. ‘New World’. Indentured workers living in conditions little different from slavery, were taken from China and India in the nineteenth century to work in the various British, French, German, and Dutch colonies around the world. Some 37 million people were sent abroad under such circumstances, and, although many of those who had left India returned once slavery was abolished, modern-day Indian communities in the Caribbean, East Africa, and the Pacific are mainly composed of descendants of indentured labourers. Other migrants, however, have travelled for more economic reasons, albeit ones that have sometimes involved considerable privation and hardship. This applies to the voluntary mass migration from Europe to the Americas from the mid-nineteenth century until the outbreak of the First World War, which involved, for example, the migration of about a million Irish people escaping the potato famine of 1845–7 and over 3 million people from the German territories fleeing from rural poverty and periodic crop failures. A further reason for migration has been religious or political persecution. The classic example of this was the Jewish diaspora, which was initiated by Roman repression in Judea and involved the expulsion of Jews in the Middle Ages from England, France, Spain, Portugal, and many of the German cities. Emigration from Europe to North America, both in the colonial period and in the late nineteenth century, also often reflected a desire to escape from religious persecution on the part of groups of puritans, nonconformists of various kinds, Catholics, and Jews. More recently, anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a cause of actual and potential migration. As of 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that extreme weather events associated with climate change, from abnormally heavy rain and rising sea-levels to droughts and cyclones, caused more than 20 million people to move within their own countries each year. The UNHCR has been involved in major relief efforts for what are often called ‘climate refugees’ in recent years; examples include the response to 2019’s Cyclone Idai, in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, and Hurricane Eta in Central America in 2020. FOCUS ON . . . INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION: ARE PEOPLE PULLED OR PUSHED? Theories of migration can be divided into those that emphasize the role of the individual and those that highlight the importance of structural factors. In practice, it is highly likely that these factors interact, as individual decision-making cannot be understood separately from the structural context in which it takes place. Individual theories stress the role of individual calculation in making migration decisions, influenced by the pursuit of rational self-interest. This is an economic model of migration, which relies on a kind of cost–benefit analysis. It implies that migration occurs because people are ‘pulled’ by an awareness on the part of potential migrants that its likely benefits will outweigh its possible costs. In this view, migration can be contained by increasing the cost of migration (for example, through the imposition of immigration quotas and controls) or by reducing its benefits (for example, by restricting immigrants’ access to social security and imposing work restrictions). Structural theories stress the degree to which social, economic, or political factors influence, or determine, individuals’ actions. Migrants are therefore either ‘pushed’ from their country of origin (by factors such as chronic and acute poverty, political unrest, and civil strife), or they are ‘pulled’ to their country of settlement (by the need of expanding economies for additional labour, particularly in relation to jobs the domestic population is unwilling or, through lack of skills, unable to fill). From this perspective, migration can best be contained by strategies such as a reduction in global inequality and the spread of stable governance. NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE The bulk of migration has always been, and continues to be, internal (i.e. within a country). For instance, the number of internally displaced persons (45.7 million in 2019) consistently exceeds the number of international refugees (26 million); and labour migration is more commonly associated with urbanization than with globalization (in China, for example, the World Bank stated in 2014 that 260 million people have moved from the countryside to urban areas since the 1990s; in 2016 the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics recorded 281.7 million rural-to-urban migrants in one year alone). However, international migration has become an increasingly important feature of the modern world. The number of international migrants (never an easy figure to calculate in view of the proportion of irregular [or ‘undocumented’ or ‘illegal’] migrants) rose from 81 million in 1970 to 258 million in 2019, or 3.35 per cent of the world’s population. If international migrants lived together, they would constitute the fifth most populous country in the world. The idea that the modern period is an ‘age of migration’ highlights not only the intensification of cross-border migration in what has come to be a hyper-mobile planet, but also the growing significance of migration in economic, social, cultural, and political terms (Castles et al. 2013). Above all, the age of migration is characterized by the challenges posed by international migration to the sovereignty of states, seemingly unable to regulate the movements of people across their borders effectively, despite increasing efforts to do so. Transnational and transborder population flows, just like flows of money, goods, and other economic resources, thus underline how far the divide between the domestic and international spheres has been undermined. Why and how have migratory patterns changed in recent years? In addition to the acceleration of migration, international migration has become increasingly differentiated. One dimension of modern migration is clearly linked to economic globalization. The onset of globalization has intensified pressures for international migration in a variety of ways. These include the development of genuinely global labour markets for a small but growing number of high-paid and high-profile jobs, and the fact that the restructuring that globalization has fostered both creates a range of skills needs that the domestic population cannot meet and, where turbulence has caused insecurity and hardship, enlarges the ranks of those looking for, or needing to find, new economic opportunities. Such trends also serve to explain the ‘globalization of migration’; that is, the tendency both for more countries to be affected by migratory movements at the same time, and for immigration to come from a larger number of source countries. This contrasts markedly with the pattern of labour migration in the early post-1945 period, when migratory flows were predominantly from poorer countries to either their richer neighbours or their former colonial rulers. In the latter case, this was sometimes orchestrated by a deliberate policy of recruiting workers from abroad. A further dimension of modern migration is linked to refugees, and has been the result of war, ethnic conflict, and political upheaval in areas ranging from Algeria, Rwanda, and Uganda to Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. In 2021, a decade since the onset of the Syrian Civil War, the UNHCR reported that the conflict had made 6.8 million people refugees, in addition to 6.7 million internally displaced people. The large-scale displacement of people across borders remains a major issue in many developing countries, which, together, host about 85 per cent of the world’s 243 Internally displaced person: A person forced to flee from his or her habitual residence by the effects of armed conflict, generalized violence, or natural or man-made disaster, without leaving their country. Refugee: A person compelled to leave his or her country because their life, security, or freedom have been threatened. Immigration: A process whereby non-nationals move into a country for the purpose of settlement. 8 244 GLOBAL POLITICS Human trafficking: The recruitment and transport of persons for the purpose of exploitation, brought about by the threat or use of coercion or force. Assimilation: The process through which immigrant communities lose their cultural distinctiveness by adjusting to the values, allegiances, and lifestyles of the host society. refugees. A final dimension of modern migration is human trafficking. Although it is very difficult to assess the real extent of human trafficking, the UNHCR and the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimate that millions of people are victims at any one time, a disproportionate number of whom are women and children. In 2017, the ILO estimated that 25 million people were in conditions of forced labour around the world and that almost a quarter of these were being exploited outside their country of residence, pointing to the scale of trafficking. Of detected trafficking cases in 2020, the UNHCR found that the most commonly identified form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation (50 per cent), followed by forced labour (38 per cent). Almost always a form of organized crime, trafficking usually takes place from poorer countries to richer countries, with people being rendered vulnerable to trafficking by virtue of poverty, conflict, or other conditions. 6,673,149 4,511,575 3,968,708 2,483,780 1,353,611 Europe East and Horn Asia and the of Africa and Pacific the Great Lakes Middle East West and and North Central Africa Africa 720,533 650,932 Southern Africa The Americas Figure 8.1 Refugees worldwide, by region Source: Based on government data reported to the UNHCR, 2020 TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITIES AND DIASPORAS Modern migration flows have had significant implications for the domestic politics of states. These include the development in many societies of communities bound together by transnational, rather than national, allegiances. There is, of course, nothing new about scattered communities that have nevertheless maintained their cultural distinctiveness and resisted pressure for assimilation. The Jewish diaspora, which can be traced back to the eighth century BCE, is the classic example of a transnational community. Ironically, the remarkable resilience of Judaism and the Hebrew language in the absence of a Jewish homeland can be significantly explained by a history of discrimination and persecution NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 245 through various forms of anti-Semitism. Other examples include the Armenians, many of whom have been forced into exile by successive invasions and conquests, dating back to the Byzantine Empire. However, many argue that the emergence of transnational communities is one of the chief features of the modern, globalized world (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Blanc-Szanton 1994). CON An increase in international migration does not in itself create new, transnational social spaces: for transnational communities to be established, immigrant groups must forge and, crucially, sustain relations that link their societies of origin and of settlement. This is made easier in the modern world by a variety of developments. Whereas, say, Irish emigrants to the United States in the nineteenth century had little prospect of returning home and only a postal service to keep them in touch with friends and family, modern communities of Filipinos in the Gulf states, Indonesians in Australia, and Bangladeshis in the UK may benefit from cheaper transport and improved communications than in the past. Air travel enables people to return ‘home’ on a regular basis, creating more fluid communities that are bound neither by their society of origin nor their society of settlement. The near-ubiquitous mobile phone has also become a basic resource for new immigrants, helping to explain, amongst other things, its increasing penetration in the developing world, including the rural parts of Asia and Africa. Transnational communities, moreover, are bound together by a network of family ties and economic flows. Migration, for example, may maintain rather than weaken extended kinship links, as early immigrants provide a base and sometimes working opportunities for other members of their families or village who may subsequently emigrate. C E PT TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY A transnational community is a community whose cultural identity, political allegiances, and psychological orientations cut across or transcend national borders. In that sense, they challenge the nation state ideal, which clearly links politico-cultural identity to a specific territory or ‘homeland’. Transnational communities can therefore be thought of as ‘deterritorialized nations’ or ‘global tribes’. However, not every diasporic community is a transnational community, in the sense that its members retain allegiances to their country of origin. Transnational communities typically have multiple attachments, as allegiances to their country of origin do not preclude the formation of attachments to their country of settlement. The idea of a transition from territorial nation states to deterritorialized transnational communities should not be overstated, however. The impact of modern migration patterns, and of globalization in its various forms, is more complex than is implied by the simple notion of transnationalism. In the first place, the homogeneous nation that has supposedly been put at risk by the emergence of transnational communities is always, to some extent, a myth, a myth created by the ideology of nationalism itself. In other words, 8 246 GLOBAL POLITICS there is nothing new about cultural mixing, which long predates the emergence of the hyper-mobile planet. Second, transnational communities are characterized as much by difference and division as they are by commonality and solidarity. The most obvious divisions within diaspora communities are those of gender and social class, but other divisions may run along the lines of ethnicity, religion, age, and generation. Third, it is by no means clear that transnational loyalties are as stable and enduring as nationalism. Quite simply, social ties that are not territorially rooted and geographically defined may not be viable in the long term. Doubts about the enduring character of transnational communities are raised by the phenomenon of return migration, often stimulated by improved political or economic circumstances in the country of origin. For example, there has been a general tendency for people to return to Asia, notably China and Taiwan, to take advantage of improving economic prospects since the 1980s. Finally, it is misleading to suggest that transnationalism has somehow displaced nationalism when, in reality, each has influenced the other, creating a more complex web of hybrid identities. Hybridity or ‘creolization’, has thus become one of the major features of modern society. It is examined in Chapter 9, in relation to multiculturalism (see p. 270). Shi-men Ting, Taiwan, 2017. Many Taiwanese people have returned to Taiwan since the 1980s due to improved political and economic circumstances, in a process called ‘return migration’ Source: Tommy Tsao, Unsplash 247 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . A Migration ‘Crisis’ in Europe? Events: Armed conflict and political-economic destabilization following the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (see p. 278) have been a major cause of migration since 2011. Long-term civil war in Syria and the collapse of the state’s monopoly on violence (see p. 171) in Libya have been especially significant drivers. While the Syria conflict has rendered more than 12 million people refugees or internally displaced, Libya has been both a destination and a ‘transit country’ for migrants and refugees from neighbouring African states, because of expected employment opportunities and its location on the southern side of the Mediterranean Sea. Of the 597,611 migrants and 41,404 refugees the UN reported as residing in Libya in 2021, many may ultimately make the dangerous sea crossing to Italy, Greece, and the wider European Union, in search of better economic conditions and an escape from war. Meanwhile, many Afghans, Iraqis, Kurds, and others displaced by conflicts predating the Arab Spring continued to seek asylum and employment in Western Europe. By 2014, the scale of migration to Europe, and in particular the number of small boat crossings of the Mediterranean, led European politicians and media to declare a ‘crisis’. That year, the OECD (see p. 459) reported that 630,000 asylum requests were registered in EU states, ‘a number last reached during the conflict between Bosnia and Serbia in 1992’ (OECD 2015). Significance: Politicians and media outlets in Europe, as well as many international organizations, framed this increase in migration as a ‘crisis’. Depending on where these groups and individuals stand on the political spectrum, they named the perceived crisis slightly differently. Nationalists on the political right tend to refer to a ‘migrant crisis’, framing the people seeking refuge as themselves the problem. The crisis is represented, in this sense, as a crisis of national identity, as state borders are rendered less effective at enforcing exclusions. Many on the political left, meanwhile, have pushed back against this narrative by opting for ‘refugee crisis’, emphasizing that people are travelling out of necessity rather than choice. Organizations seeking a more ‘neutral’ framing tend to opt for ‘migration crisis’. But is there really a crisis at all? And if so, a crisis for whom? While European nationalists have sounded alarm over migration in recent years, the overwhelming majority of Near the Italian island of Lampedusa, a boat from the NGO Open Arms rescues a boat with seventy passengers, that set sail from Tunisia in September 2021 Source: Europa Press News/Getty Images all people forcibly displaced from their homes, whether internally or as international refugees, are residing in developing countries – 86 per cent according to the UNHCR in 2020. Turkey alone hosted 3.7 million refugees that year, 92 per cent of whom were seeking refuge from the conflict in neighbouring Syria. In contrast to this, the vastly wealthier UK – with a national GDP almost four times that of Turkey’s, and a somewhat smaller population – admitted only 20,000 Syrian refugees through its 2015–20 Syria Resettlement Programme. Some scholars of migration have questioned the very framing of the issue as a ‘crisis’ for Europe (Crawley 2016). If there is indeed a crisis, it might be better understood as a humanitarian crisis for the people forced to flee their homes and countries of residence, rather than a national identity crisis for Europe. The dangers are stark. From 2014 to 2022, the UN’s Missing Migrants Project reported that 23,936 people died or went missing in the Mediterranean Sea, while conditions in migrant detention centres in Libya – and even in some host countries, such as the UK – are often reported to be dire and violent. Nevertheless, xenophobic (see p. 240) discourses about crises in relation to migrants and other outsiders have historically proved politically useful to nationalist movements, and are likely to persist. 248 GLOBAL POLITICS NATIONALISM REVIVED Civic nationalism: A form of nationalism that emphasizes political allegiance based on a vision of a community of equal citizens, allowing respect for ethnic and cultural diversity that does not challenge core civic values. Ethnic nationalism: A form of nationalism that emphasizes the organic and usually ethnic unity of the nation and aims to protect or strengthen its national ‘spirit’ and cultural sameness. As the twentieth century progressed, there were growing predictions of the decline of nationalism, even of the construction of a ‘post-national’ world. Not only had the barbarism and destruction of the Second World War created a distaste for nationalism as an ideology seemingly inherently linked to expansionism and conflict, but increasing cross-border cultural, economic, and population flows appeared to render the sovereign nation state redundant. Surely political identity was in the process of being redefined, even though it was unclear whether the successor to nationalism would be multiculturalism, transnational communities, cosmopolitanism, or whatever? The reality, however, has been very different. Nationalism has demonstrated remarkable resilience and durability: in the twenty-first century, the overwhelming mass of people across the globe accept that they belong to a nation, and nationality continues to retain an unrivalled position as the basis for political allegiance. Indeed, in a number of ways, there has been a resurgence of nationalism. How and why has this happened? Primordialists, of course, may argue that the survival of nationalism simply bears out the truth of their theories: nationalism cannot be a dying doctrine because ethnic communities have not, and cannot, die out. Modernists, for their part, follow Gellner in explaining the rise of nationalism since the late twentieth century in terms of the simultaneous spread of industrial capitalism around the globe. However, resurgent nationalism has a number of manifestations, and therefore a number of underlying causes. Its main manifestations are an increase in national self-assertion in the post-Cold War period, the rise of cultural and ethnic nationalism, and the emergence of anti-globalization nationalism. FOCUS ON . . . THE TWO NATIONALISMS: GOOD AND BAD? Does nationalism embrace two, quite distinct traditions? Does nationalism have a ‘good’ face and a ‘bad’ face? The idea that there are, in effect, ‘two nationalisms’ is usually based on the belief that nationalism has contrasting civic and ethnic forms. What is often called civic nationalism is fashioned primarily out of shared political allegiances and political values. The nation is thus an ‘association of citizens’. Civic nationalism has been defended on the grounds that it is open and voluntaristic: membership of the nation is based on choice and self-definition, not on any predetermined ethnic or historical identity. It is a form of nationalism that is consistent with toleration and liberal values generally, being forward-looking and compatible with a substantial degree of cultural and ethnic diversity. Critics, however, have questioned whether civic nationalism is meaningful (Kymlicka 1999). Most citizens, even in a ‘civic’ or ‘political’ nation, derive their nationality from birth, not choice. Moreover, divorced from the bonds of ethnicity, language, and history, political allegiances and civic values may simply be incapable of generating the sense of belonging and rootedness that gives nationalism its power. By contrast, ethnic nationalism is squarely rooted in ethnic unity and a deep sense of cultural belonging. This form of nationalism is often criticized for having a closed or fixed character: it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, for noncitizens to become members of the nation. Nationalism therefore acquires a homogenizing character, breeding a fear or suspicion of foreigners and strengthening the idea of cultural distinctiveness, often interwoven with a belief in national greatness. Ethnic nationalism is thus irrational and tends to be tribalistic, even bloodthirsty. On the other hand, its capacity to generate a closed and fixed sense of political belonging may also be a virtue of ethnic nationalism. ‘Ethnic’ or ‘cultural’ nations tend to be characterized by high levels of social solidarity and a strong sense of collective purpose. NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 249 THE RESURGENCE OF NATIONALISM IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY The Cold War period certainly did not witness the eclipse of nationalism. However, during the Cold War, nationalist conflict took place within a context of East–West rivalry and the ideological antagonism between capitalism and communism. For example, the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia in 1978–9 was the only largescale conventional war waged between one revolutionary Marxist regime and another (Anderson 1983). The end of the Cold War, and the declining significance of communism as a political-economic project, nevertheless provided opportunities for the resurgence of nationalism as a modernizing force. This certainly happened in East and Southeast Asia, where ‘tiger’ states such as Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan very deliberately used nation-building as a strategy for economic success in a global context. Although globalization may provide new and challenging circumstances for nationalism, such examples also show how globalization can generate new opportunities for redefining nationhood and national identity. Singapore is a particular example of this. Lacking the ethnic and cultural unity of a conventional nation state, Singapore has nevertheless become possibly the most globalized state in the world. Basic to this process have been attempts by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) to inculcate civic nationalism by instilling a sense of pride in the public institutions of the state as well as patriotic pride in the populace itself, in part by generous investment in technologically advanced public amenities. Civic nationalism thus helps to legitimize authoritarian rule and ensure social control, which, in turn, attracts foreign capital, thereby maintaining the growth levels that underpin patriotic pride and state allegiance. National self-assertion has also become a strategy of growing significance for emerging powers, especially in the light of the fluid nature of world order in the post-Cold War world. Nationalism has thus once again proved its capacity for investing the drive for economic and political development with an ideological impetus that emphasizes strength, unity, and pride. For instance, China’s remarkable economic revival has been accompanied by clear evidence of rising nationalism. This has been apparent in the greater pressure that has been brought to bear on Taiwan to prevent moves towards the declaration of formal independence, in a firm and sometime forcible response to independence movements in Tibet and Xinjiang, and sometimes in the growth of antiJapanese sentiment. The 2008 Beijing Olympics, as well as a host of other engineering and technological achievements, have been used to instil patriotic pride at home and to project an image of China abroad as advanced and successful. Rising nationalism in India, particularly Hindu nationalism (see p. 259), led to the establishment of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; meaning ‘Indian People’s Party’) government in 1998. The BJP government intensified pressures to develop nuclear weapons, achieved in 1998, which have since remained hugely popular within India as a symbol of great power status. In the case of Russia, nationalism has been significantly more prominent since the rise of Vladimir Putin in 1999 (see p. 186). 8 250 GLOBAL POLITICS RESURGENCE OF CULTURAL NATIONALISM Cultural nationalism: A form of nationalism that is less concerned with political selfdetermination and more focused on reproducing a defined culture, including traditional language or dialect, art and music, cuisine, dress, and religious practice. There is evidence that although globalization may have weakened forms of classical nationalism, based on a nation state ideal that is increasingly difficult to sustain in an age of ‘borderless’ economic flows, it has strengthened cultural and ethnic forms of nationalism. When the conventional nation state is no longer capable of generating meaningful political collective identities, particularist nationalisms based on region, religion, ethnicity, or race may develop to take its place. Such tendencies can be traced back to the 1960s when secessionist groups and forms of cultural nationalism sprang up in many parts of Western Europe and North America. This was evident in Quebec in Canada, Scotland and Wales in the UK, Catalonia and the Basque area of Spain, Corsica in France, and Flanders in Belgium. It created pressures for political decentralization, and sometimes precipitated major constitutional upheavals. Similar manifestations of ethnic assertiveness were found in the emergence of Black nationalism in the United States and amongst the Native Americans in Canada and the United States, the Aboriginal peoples in Australia, and the Maoris in New Zealand. In the latter two cases, at least, this has brought about a major reassessment of national identity. 251 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . INDIA Type Population GDP per capita HDI ranking Capital State 1,403.5m 1.3 billion $2,104 $8,827 129/189 86/187 New Delhi Beijing Occupying more than 3.2 million square kilometres of the Indian Subcontinent, and populated by at least 1.3 billion people, the Republic of India is one of the world’s largest nation states. India is an ancient society, with the first Homo sapiens believed to have arrived in India from Africa 75,000 to 35,000 years ago. Always a highly heterogeneous society, from around 1,500 BCE the ‘Vedic’ people became one of India’s most influential groups, bequeathing the sacred texts and foundational beliefs of Hinduism – today the country’s largest religious faith. Influenced by Hellenic (Greek), Buddhist, and Muslim cultures over the millennia following Vedic settlement, India remains highly diverse. From the sixteenth century, European colonialism (see p. 31) took hold in India, first with the arrival of the Portuguese, and later the British. By the mid-nineteenth century Britain had established imperial control over the whole of India. An Indian anti-colonial nationalist movement, with leaders including Mohandas Gandhi (see p. 349) and Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), succeeded in its struggle for independence from Britain in 1947, following the ‘partition’ of India and Pakistan that year, and in 1950 the Republic of India was born. Today, India is a secular republic and parliamentary democracy, founded on a written constitution. It is the second most populous state on earth, and by far the largest parliamentary democracy. of Indo-Pakistani conflict, flaring up regularly, and relations between each of the states and China, as a rising regional hegemon, are also increasingly important. Pakistan has developed stronger ties with China, while India had significant border skirmishes with Chinese troops in the Ladakh region in 2020. Between the 1960s and 1970s, India and Pakistan became the sixth and seventh declared ‘Nuclear Weapons States’ in the world (see p. 355) – a direct result of their rivalry with one another. Significance: After partition, many Muslims left for Pakistan (and ‘East Pakistan’, which would become Bangladesh in 1971), and the Hindu majority became more entrenched in India, though the country still includes many millions of Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs, along with hundreds of thousands of Buddhists and Jains. Partition involved considerable inter-communal violence, including particularly egregious attacks by Hindus on Muslims fleeing for the newly established Pakistan. This set the tone for relations between these two new nation states, which have remained extremely tense ever since, and often descended into violence, including significant armed conflicts in 1965, 1971, and 1999. Tensions over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region in the north remain a central source While India remains one of the very largest nation states in the world, and the largest one organized as a parliamentary democracy, in 2019 its GDP was $2.875 trillion, whereas neighbouring China’s was five times greater at $14.343 trillion, and the United States’ GDP dwarfed India’s at $21.374 trillion, despite the latter country having a population more than four times greater. In this sense, India is viewed as a ‘developing’ country of the ‘Global South’ (see p. 464), and millions of its citizens live below the Purchasing Power Parity poverty line. Structural inequalities between rich and poor in India also intersect with racialized and gendered inequalities, while the ‘caste’ system inherited from the Vedic civilization remains a strong determinant of levels of prosperity among the country’s Hindu majority. Establishing a strong sense of national identity in a country with such a vast and diverse population, including many racial and religious groupings, and dozens of languages, is no mean feat. Early Indian nationalist leaders sought to unify, to an extent, across cultural differences. But the rise of ‘Hindutva’, or Hindu nationalism, has been at the expense of the country’s (very large) minority populations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a particularly divisive figure in this regard. Elected PM in 2014, Modi and his BJP have promoted a model of ethnic national identity according to which the country’s Hindus are the only ‘true’ Indians. This led to significant social conflict within India, and even accusations of fascism, but won Modi support from ‘conservative’ and especially anti-Muslim politicians and activists, not only in India, but among ‘white nationalists’ in the West too (see p. 252). 252 GLOBAL POLITICS Ethnic nationalism became significantly more prominent after the end of the Cold War. What is sometimes called ‘new nationalism’ (Kaldor 2007) led in the 1990s to a series of wars in former Yugoslavia, which also featured programmes of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and the worst massacres in Europe since the Second World War. A number of new nation states were created but other states that have emerged from this process have been subject to deep ethnic rivalries and tensions. For example, Bosnia has effectively been divided into ‘ethnically pure’ Muslim, Serb, and Croat areas, while Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 precipitated acute tensions between its Serb minority in northern Kosovo and the majority Muslim population. Other examples of ethnic assertiveness include secessionist uprisings in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Caucasus, and the genocidal bloodshed that broke out in Rwanda in 1994, when between 800,000 and 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in an uprising by militant Hutus. Rising ethnic nationalism in the post-Cold War period has been explained in terms of the tendency of communist rule and East–West rivalry to drive religious, ethnic, and national identities underground, only for these to rise dramatically to the surface once the suppressing factors were removed. However, the process is more complex and, in some senses, deep-seated. Smith (1995) highlighted three components that explain why nationalism resurfaced in the late twentieth century and persists today. The first is what he called ‘the uneven distribution of ethno-history’, meaning that underprivileged or relatively deprived communities have been drawn to emulate more powerful nations who are able to celebrate their identity without fear. The second is the ability of nationalism to call on the ‘deep resources’ of religious belief to legitimize rule and mobilize populations, helping to explain the parallels that exist between ethnic nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Finally, the idea of an ‘ancestral homeland’ has remained, and will continue to remain, a potent symbol. This highlights the fact that the quest for selfdetermination can never be fully achieved in a world of unequally powerful nations. (Ethnic nationalism is examined further in Chapter 9 in connection with the rise of identity politics.) Whiteness: A term used to describe both a form of ‘racialized’ identity (see p. 100) and a set of related, dominant social norms and structures in majority-white societies. Latinx: The genderneutral way of describing people of Latin American heritage in the United States, where they are often racialized as nonwhite (though they may not view themselves as such). RESURGENCE OF WHITE NATIONALISM In recent years, the term ‘white nationalism’ has been popularized in Western political discourse to describe a set of anti-globalist, anti-immigration, right-wing social movements and political parties that centre whiteness as the key criterion of national identity and citizenship. Migration, especially in the postcolonial era of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, has led to highly diverse, ‘multicultural’ societies in the contemporary West (see p. 241). This includes ‘racial’ diversity, with the proportion of people racialized as something other than ‘White’ (as ‘Black’, ‘Latinx’, or ‘Asian’, for example) growing steadily in many majority-white countries from the mid-twentieth century onward. White nationalists seek to stop or reverse this trend, and do so by appeals to rights of ‘indigeneity’ for White people, and racist claims about the supposedly dangerous and ‘diluting’ nature of non-White migration into the West. In Europe, influential white nationalist political parties emerged in the 2000s and 2010s, including the French National Front (FN), which found some success under the leadership of Marine Le Pen (daughter of the party’s founder, convicted Holocaust-denier NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE 253 Jean-Marie Le Pen) in this period. UK examples include the British National Party (BNP) and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) – which began as a single-issue anti-EU party before pivoting to a white nationalist agenda – and later the Brexit Party. All of these parties have included at least some elements of white nationalism, and have run on antiimmigration – and in some cases explicitly racist – platforms. In the United States, older white nationalist and racist networks such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and American Nazi Party, and newer white nationalist movements such as the ‘Proud Boys’ and the neo-Nazi National Policy Institute, rallied around the 2016 General Election in support of Donald Trump’s candidacy. The shared values and increased profile of these groups are emblematic of the resurgence of a white nationalist, anti-Black, anti-Semitic, antiMuslim, and anti-Latinx racism that has deep historical roots in American politics and society, stretching back through opposition to the civil rights movement (see p. 269), to the imposition of segregation and the Confederate defence of slavery. In Australia, meanwhile, the white nationalist One Nation party achieved a degree of legitimization through deals with the more mainstream National Party of Australia in recent years. Mainstreaming: A concept originally popularized by feminists who sought to achieve ‘gender mainstreaming’, which means pushing a marginal group or issue It has been widely acknowledged that, during the 2010s, white nationalist and white into the centre of political supremacist politics moved from the political fringes in the West to the mainstream. This agendas. mainstreaming of white nationalism has entailed major concessions to white nationalist policies and demands by more established and successful right-wing political parties. The US Republican Party’s nomination of the white nationalist-endorsed Donald J. Trump as its presidential candidate in 2016 and again in 2020, the UK Conservative Party’s targeting of potential UKIP voters from 2015 onward (including through offering the 2016 Brexit referendum), and Italy’s Northern League pivoting from regionalist, anti-Southern cultural nationalism within Italy, to anti-EU and anti-immigrant white nationalism, can all be understood as examples of this mainstreaming. Notably, antiMuslim racism or Islamophobia has been central to the resurgence of white nationalism in many Western societies. Increasingly suspicious and hostile attitudes toward Muslim minorities in the West have formed a bridge through which extreme white nationalism has been able to access more mainstream political and media debates in the post-9/11 era. Islamophobia has also helped foster seemingly unlikely alliances between far-right white nationalist movements in the West, and non-white and non-Western cultural nationalisms such as Hindutva nationalism in India, and among nationalist and anti-EU politicians and parties within the EU’s European Parliament. Islamophobia: Defined as both an irrational fear of Muslim religious communities and a form of racism that targets expressions of (perceived) ‘Muslim-ness’. White supremacy: A social, political, and economic order designed by, and for the benefit of, people racialized as ‘white’, and rooted in the conviction that such people are morally and intellectually superior to all others. White supremacists are advocates of this order The rising tide of white nationalism in the West should be understood as a resurgence and its maintenance or rather than an emergence, in the sense that this political project is an old one, and one that re-establishment. never completely receded (Geary, Schofield, and Sutton 2020). Arguably emerging from the project of European colonialism (see p. 31), the racist ideology of white supremacy was explicitly articulated in the twentieth century. In the United States, white supremacist contemporary of and interlocutor with the influential anti-racist thinker W. E. B. Du Bois (see p. 106), Lothrop Stoddard rose to prominence with an influential book lamenting ‘The Threat Against White World Supremacy’ in 1920; a work cited favourably by the segregationist Republican President Warren Harding, in support of his policies. This followed hot on the heels of the release in 1915 of the influential controversial early Hollywood film The Birth of a Nation, which was the first film ever shown at the White House (by Harding’s Democrat predecessor Woodrow Wilson). The film included racist Segregationism: The support for systems of socially separating – from housing to public services – the lives of people of different ‘races’, perhaps most closely associated with the ‘Jim Crow laws’ in the United States and the Apartheid regime in South Africa. 8 254 GLOBAL POLITICS depictions of Black Americans (played by white actors in ‘blackface’) and offered a narrative sympathetic to the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan – its influence was such that the KKK was reformed in the months after the film’s release, having been outlawed as a ‘terrorist’ organization in the late nineteenth century. White supremacist and white nationalist thought and activism were not confined to the United States in the twentieth century, though. In the UK, for example, the Conservative Party politician Enoch Powell, who was later a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, became synonymous with white nationalism after his 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, in which he lamented post-war migration, and warned that ‘In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.’ Powell’s ethnic nationalism – he insisted that Black and Asian British citizens would never be truly ‘British’ – had antecedents in Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists, which was active in the interwar period, and would later influence other far-right movements, including the fascist British National Party (BNP). Similar white nationalist and white supremacist movements remained active – with varying degrees of success – in other European countries too. In this sense, the upsurge in white nationalist activity in the early twenty-first century can be understood as another ‘wave’, or resurgence, of a preexisting movement that has been widely present in Western, majority-white societies. In fact, anti-racist thinkers like bell hooks (see p. 110) suggest that white supremacy is one of the characteristic social structures underpinning modern Western society in general. SUMMARY y Nationalism is a complex and deeply contested political phenomenon. This stems in part from the fact that all nations comprise a blend of cultural and political, and objective and subjective, characteristics. Nationalism has also been a cross-cutting ideology, associated with a wide range of doctrines, movements, and causes. y From the perspective of primordialism, national identity has been seen to be rooted in a cultural heritage and language that may long predate statehood or the quest for independence. From the contrasting perspective of modernism, national identity is forged in response to changing social and historical circumstances, especially linked to industrialization. y The liberating ‘face’ of nationalism is reflected in the reconfiguration of the world into a collection of nation states, based on the principle of self-determination. However, its oppressive face is evident in a common link to the politics of aggression, militarism, and war. While some argue that nationalism is inherently aggressive and oppressive, others suggest that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalisms. y Nationalism in the modern world was weakened by an upsurge in international migration, which has led to the growth of hybridity and cultural mixing in most, if not all, societies. Migratory flows have led to the formation of transnational communities and the diasporas that some believe provide an alternative to conventional nations. y Nations and nationalism have demonstrated remarkable resilience. Indeed, nationalism has revived in that it has been used to underpin state self-assertion in a ‘de-ideologized’ post-Cold War period. It has also re-emerged in the forms of cultural and ethnic nationalism, including white nationalism, and it has provided a vehicle through which the transformations brought about through globalization have been challenged or resisted. NATIONS AND NATIONALISMS IN A GLOBAL AGE QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y How can nationality and ethnicity be distinguished? y Are nations simply nothing more than ‘invented’ or ‘imagined’ communities? y Why has the nation state been such a successful political form? y To what extent is nationalism a single doctrine? y Is nationalism inherently oppressive and destructive? 255 y Is increased international migration an inevitable consequence of economic globalization? y Do transnational communities constitute a viable alternative to conventional nations? y How and why has nationalism revived in the post-Cold War period? y Does nationalism have a future in a globalizing world? FURTHER READING Castles, S., H. de Haas, and M. J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (2019). An up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the nature, extent, and dimensions of international population movements. Farris, S., In the Name of Women’s Rights: The Rise of Femonationalism (2017). A critical analysis of the ways in which Western feminism has been co-opted or complicit in nationalist (and especially Islamophobic) projects. Geary, D., C. Schofield, and J. Sutton, Global White Nationalism: From Apartheid to Trump (2020). This volume offers ‘the first transnational history of white nationalism’. Sutherland, C., Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century (2012). An insightful analysis of the continuing importance of nationalism in contemporary global politics. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e 8 256 THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 9 Source: Anand purohit/Getty Images PREVIEW Identity and difference – our sense of who we are, and of where we stand in relation to others – have always been central to politics. This is not least because identity shapes ‘interests’ – the outcomes that we or others believe are best for us. In this respect, our very understanding of social and political reality is a product of our identity, and for this reason it is sometimes suggested that ‘all politics are identity politics’. Identities are multifaceted and can include real or perceived characteristics ranging from gender, sexuality, and race to religion, language, and culture. From the confrontation between militant ‘Islamist’ networks such as al-Qaeda and ISIS with Western state power after 9/11 to the national ‘culture wars’ organized along religious and political lines in India, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, identity and difference are central to global politics in the twenty-first century. What are identity and difference, and how have they structured global politics? How important are cultural politics in the globalized world of the twenty-first century? To what extent are the ‘war on terror’, the twenty-first-century global politics of migration, and postcolonial world order defined by identity, difference, and culture? And what role do religious identities play in world politics today? KEY ISSUES z What are identity and difference, and how are they political? z How do identity, difference, and culture shape contemporary conflict? z Can radically different identities coexist peacefully? z Which identities are able to shape world politics the most? z How does identity connect global politics to global religion? 257 258 GLOBAL POLITICS IDENTITY AND ITS POLITICS IDENTITY AND CULTURE In its modern, common parlance sense, our identity is perhaps most often understood to be ‘who we are’ or ‘what we are like’. This stems from the more formal definition of identity as: ‘The quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties […]; absolute or essential sameness; oneness’ (OED 2020). In other words, more than just who we are, our identity is really our sense of what, or whom, we are the same as. We might ‘identify’ with a particular gender, or sexuality, for example, or with a particular ‘ethnic’, national, or religious community, to name but a very few examples. One key determinant of identity is how we are ‘racialized’ (see p. 100). Racialization illuminates the ‘two-way street’ of identity, since one does not necessarily get to choose to ‘identify with’ a particular ‘race’; we are instead most often racialized (socially classified, and assigned a ‘race’) by others – ‘identified as’. Identity is not, then, simply about our self-perception or an individual, internal process of personal psychology. It is very much a part of social and public life. As such, it is also shaped by social power and is thus entangled with politics. CON The politics of identity can be viewed through a range of lenses. One such lens is political affiliation. Many people’s identities are defined in part – by themselves and/or by others – through their affiliations to political parties, theoretical traditions, activist groups, and communities. A Marxist, a liberal, and a conservative all have a political identity – their affiliation to one of these broad systems of thought confirms their ‘sameness’ as or ‘oneness’ with a wider community of political thinkers, actors, groups, and individuals. More specifically, in party-based political systems – found in multiparty liberal democratic states, but also in authoritarian and one-party states – support for or membership of a political party constitutes a key facet of identity. In countries where ‘two-party systems’ prevail, which of the main parties one supports may be a key determinant of how one is perceived, who one mixes with socially, and one’s stance on a range of key political issues. For instance, whether one tends to support the Democrats or the Republicans in the United States is likely to correlate to views on controversial national issues such as racism, gun control, sexuality, or abortion laws. C E PT CULTURE Culture, in its broadest sense, is the way of life of a people; their beliefs, values, and practices. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to distinguish between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, the former encompassing that which is passed on from one generation to the next by learning, rather than through biological inheritance. Culture therefore embodies language, religion, arts, traditions, social norms, and moral principles – it is how we give meaning to our shared lives in nature. A distinction is sometimes drawn between ‘high’ culture, represented especially by the arts and literature, which is supposedly the source of intellectual and personal development, and ‘low’ or ‘popular’ culture, which is orientated around mass consumption and populist instincts, and may even have a debasing impact on society. IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 259 In party political systems where the politics of major parties is explicitly ‘cultural’ – based in explicitly stated, particular group identities – party affiliation can also signify broad or narrow religious identity. In India, for instance, supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has ruled the country since 2014, are today associated with the brand of ‘Hindutva’, or Hindu nationalism, associated with the Party’s leader Narendra Modi – a movement to define the ‘nation’ along religious lines and exclude non-Hindus from Indian national identity. In Israel, meanwhile, the major political parties are all ‘Zionist’. That is to say that each party is committed to the historical narrative and religious doctrine according to which the establishment and maintenance of a ‘Jewish state’ in the region where the territory of modern-day Israel (established on 14 May 1948) lies is a matter of theological and historical necessity. But which of these major parties one supports may signify a specific broader or narrower remit for Zionism, and an attitude towards the rights and territories of Palestinians, while a range of smaller parties, including ‘Orthodox’ Jewish religious parties, reject Zionism altogether. EVE NT S THE ARAB–ISRAELI CONFLICT 1880s Jewish immigration into Palestine begins and Zionist ideology emerges. 1917The Balfour Declaration, at the beginning of the British mandate (1917–47), establishes UK support for the creation of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine. 1947The UN partition plan proposes the creation of Arab and Jewish states in Palestine, rejected by the Arabs. 1948Declaration of the State of Israel precipitates the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which leads to many Palestinians becoming refugees in surrounding Arab countries. 1956The Suez crisis leads to an Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, although it later withdraws under US and international pressure. 1967Israel defeats Egypt and Syria in the Six-Day War, leading to the occupation of the Gaza Strip (from Egypt), the West Bank (from Jordan), and the Golan Heights (from Syria). 1973Israel defeats Egypt and Syria in the Yom Kippur War, after a surprise joint attack on the Jewish day of fasting. 1978–9The Camp David Accords, negotiated by the United States, lead to the 1979 Israel–Egypt Peace Treaty. 1982Israel attacks Lebanon in response to Palestinian terrorist attacks, retreating from most Lebanese territory by 1985. 1987–93The First Intifada (rebellion) witnesses a Palestinian uprising against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988. 1990–1 The Gulf War involves Iraqi missile attacks on Israeli cities and Israel’s nuclear facilities. 1993–2000Oslo Accords negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), preparing the way for the establishment of a self-governing Palestinian authority. 9 260 GLOBAL POLITICS 2000–2005 The Second Intifada marks a resurgence of Palestinian protest and militancy. 2006Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah lead to Israeli attacks on Beirut and much of southern Lebanon and a Hezbollah bombardment of northern Israeli cities. 2008–9Israel launches full-scale invasion of Gaza Strip, ‘Operation Cast Lead’, after a ceasefire negotiated with Hamas breaks down. Israel again launches a full-scale assault on Gaza, ‘Operation Protective Edge’, in response to the 2014 kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers. 2017–18In a controversial move, widely seen as inflaming tensions in the region, US President Donald Trump orders the recognition of Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv, as Israel’s capital, and moves the US embassy there. Importantly, religious and ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ identity can also intersect with this politics of identity, since not all members of the religious communities in question accept that outsiders may ‘convert’ to their faith, and instead view their community as defined by ‘descent’: for instance, some Jewish people would not accept that one can convert to Judaism and instead insist that an ‘unbroken’ matrilineal line of descent (having a Jewish mother, herself born to a Jewish mother, and so on) is the key criterion for Jewish identity. In this way, ‘race’, religion, and nation are bound together by the politics of identity. ‘Nation’ has arguably been the most important facet of identity in shaping contemporary global politics, since the rise of the ‘nation state’ model from at least the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 (see p. 6). National identity very often includes notions of ‘race’ and/ or ‘culture’ and also with language, territory, and political community in a broad, nonparty sense (see Chapter 8). Whether a person from Edinburgh considers themselves primarily (or exclusively) Scottish or British, or a person from Barcelona considers themselves Catalan or Spanish, is a very direct expression of their identity politics in relation to the nation. And though these examples do not today trigger associations with ‘race’, since Scots and Catalans are racialized by most if not all British and Spanish people as white, this has not necessarily always been the case. As historians of ‘race’ and racism have shown, the historical development of Europe involved the outcasting of a range of ‘racially’ defined peoples who would today be racialized as white – as recently as the twentieth century, Irish people were not considered ‘white’ by all British people, for instance. The significance of the politics of national identity is at its starkest in its mobilization through war. People are called up by the governments and militaries of nation states to fight ‘for your country’ and against other nationally defined enemies; an injunction to identify with the nation strongly enough that one will kill and die for it. But relatedly, in specific international wartime contexts, there may also be an internal national identity politics at play. In the Second World War, for example, German Jews were not considered part of the nation and its forces by Hitler’s Nazi government, nor ‘enemies’ by the Allied nations, but were rather persecuted, IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 261 imprisoned, and systematically murdered by the German nation state through the genocidal Nazi Holocaust, on the one hand, and (to an extent) accepted as refugees and later liberated from concentration camps by the Allies, on the other. Meanwhile, Japanese Americans spent the war imprisoned in ‘internment camps’ on the basis of their racial identity and a national political ‘discourse’ (see p. 116) that represented them as outside of, and potential threats to, the American nation. Wars are, in this sense, crucial engines for (re)making or (re)defining ‘nation’, and ‘race’, by determining who is included and who is excluded by reference to national allegiance, perceived racial identity, and representations of ‘the enemy’. GLOBAL IDENTITIES, GLOBAL INEQUALITIES A further lens through which the politics of identity may be viewed is that of experiences of structural social and economic inequalities, in relation to race, class, or gender, for example. Today, the term ‘identity politics’ is often invoked in a critical, negative way to describe the approach of theorists, activists, and other political actors who seek to force political debate and action onto the terrain of these inequalities. The Black Lives Matter movement (see p. 103), for example, is dismissed by some as merely a form of ‘identity politics’, just as feminist movements (see p. 107) have also been branded by their critics. In this usage, ‘identity politics’ is a way of labelling some political struggles and issues as highly individualist, and in many cases as socially ‘divisive’ of what is otherwise perceived to be a ‘cohesive’ social whole (very often, the ‘nation’). Politically conservative, liberal, and in some cases socialist traditions take issue with some or all strands of anti-racist and feminist politics on this basis. These political traditions portray their own primary concerns – tradition, for conservatives; individual rights and responsibilities, for liberals; class struggle and equality, for socialists – as concerning ‘real’ or valid human interests, by contrast with a vacuous ‘identity politics’ focused on other, ‘lesser’ issues. Politically conservative, liberal, and socialist thought is also, to varying degrees, universalist. This means that they are committed to the belief, closely associated with the ‘Enlightenment’ (see p. 32), that national or global political communities are defined by some shared fundamental sameness of identity and experience. The alleged ‘identity politics’ of anti-racists and feminists, meanwhile, are viewed with suspicion by these more established ‘Enlightenment’ traditions, at least in the ‘West’ (see p. 33), as ‘particularist’ and therefore as potentially undermining moral and political projects of universalism. The pejorative common parlance usage of ‘identity politics’ may, however, be somewhat confused. Black and ‘intersectional’ (see p. 111) feminist thinkers and activists such as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Patricia Hill Collins emphasize the urgent need to understand and address gender, race, and class (and very often, sexuality, disability, and other issues) as key political issues and planes of social existence through which people experience ‘structural’ or ‘systemic’ forms of inequality, oppression, exploitation, and violence. In other words, they highlight the intersectional 9 262 GLOBAL POLITICS and constitutive role of not simply ‘beliefs in’ but rather social structures of (see p. 122) racism, classism, capitalism, homophobia, misogyny, and other oppressions, in people’s experiences of power and (in)equality. They view the struggle for a more just social order as the struggle against these systemic oppressions and inequalities. And it is precisely this approach that is most often dismissively branded as ‘identity politics’ by many conservative, liberal, and socialist political actors. Yet in the writings of every one of these most influential intersectional feminist thinkers – Davis, hooks, Crenshaw, and Hill Collins – we find the explicit, clear rejection of what they also, sometimes pejoratively, term ‘identity politics’. This is because these theorists are concerned not with highlighting the individuality or particularity of personal experiences, as is sometimes supposed. On the contrary, they wish to draw attention to widespread, systemic social trends that saturate and structure everyone’s experiences of social life. What hooks calls ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (see p. 110), for example, is not about ‘identity politics’ in the sense of a politics emerging from one’s own, narrow, personal experience, but rather about the social structures of inequality and oppression that are coded into the very political ‘DNA’ of majority-white, Western societies. The attention such intersectional feminists demand we pay to the voices of ‘lived experience’ are not about individualizing our understanding of our political interests, but rather about socializing our understanding of our individual circumstances and experiences. This is a demand (not unlike Karl Marx’s – see p. 111) to derive social theory from actual social practice, rather than impose abstract theoretical concepts on a real social world that they cannot explain. 263 APPROACHES TO . . . REALIST VIEW Realists have given relatively little attention to the issue of identity, which they would consider a form of ‘low’ politics. Their primary focus is on the interests and behaviour of the state, seen as the dominant global actor, rather than on the make-up of its constituent population. Nevertheless, since states are viewed as unified and cohesive entities, this reflects assumptions about political allegiance and social belonging. Notably, as most states are nation states (see p. 236), realists tend to assume that identity is forged through the overlapping ties of nationality and citizenship. National identity, indeed, may be ‘natural’ on this view, in that it reflects an irresistible psychological disposition for people to identify with others who are similar to themselves. LIBERAL VIEW Liberals generally understand identity in individualistic terms. Human beings are first and foremost individuals, possessed of a unique identity. However, emphasizing the importance of the individual has two contrasting implications. Individuals are defined by ‘inner’ qualities and attributes that are specific to themselves, but such thinking is also universalist, in that it implies that, as individuals, all human beings share the same status and so are entitled to the same rights and opportunities. This is reflected in liberal support for the doctrine of human rights (see p. 400). For liberals, then, identity is both unique and universal. The liberal commitment to individualism has important implications for any theory of social or collective identity. In particular, it suggests that factors such as race, religion, culture, gender, and social class are at best of secondary importance: they are not ‘core’ to human identity. Nevertheless, liberals have adopted a wide range of views on such issues, and have also recognized the social dimension of personal identity. This is evident in the ideas of liberal communitarianism (Taylor 1994) and liberal nationalism (Miller 2007). MARXIST VIEW Theorists in the Marxist tradition have conventionally understood identity in terms of social class positions. Our relative class-position determines our interests, but our ‘real’ interests (which for the great mass of wage-labouring workers or ‘proletarians’ is emancipation from exploitation by the ‘bourgeois’ ruling class) are often obscured by powerful political ideas (‘ideology’) that teach us to align our views and interests with those of the ruling class. This perspective, sometimes viewed as ‘reductionist’ in its class focus, tends to relegate racialized, and gendered, forms of identity and difference, for example, as less significant or even illusory. Class identities, nevertheless, are provisional, not fundamental. They are essentially a manifestation of the inequalities of the capitalist system, and will be swept away once a classless, communist society has been established. CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW Social constructivists, for their part, have emphasized the extent to which the interests and actions of global actors, be they states or individuals, are fashioned by their sense of identity, which is in turn conditioned by non-material factors. As Wendt (see p. 125) put it, ‘identities are the basis of interests’. Such a position 264 IDENTITY rejects any fixed or unchanging notion of identity, as it does the idea that actors encounter each other with predetermined sets of preferences. Individuals can thus adopt different identities in different cultural and ideational circumstances, including, potentially, cosmopolitan identities. That said, constructivists are sensitive to the fact that identity is produced through interaction – between states, for example – and that repeated negative interactions can therefore lead to a hardening of a sense of difference and diametric opposition such that a sense of ‘existential’ difference and enmity may prevail for some time (as between the USA and the USSR in the Cold War). POSTCOLONIAL VIEW From a postcolonial perspective, identity – especially ‘racialized’ identity (see p. 100) – is something that may be imposed at least as much as assumed by individuals and groups. The invention and pseudoscience of ‘race’ during the period of European colonialism entailed identifying colonized peoples with specific, limited and stereotypical, characteristics and capabilities. This identity politics depicted non-European populations as inherently ‘inferior’, and it is the contention of postcolonial theory – such as Edward Said’s conceptualization of ‘Orientalism’ (see p. 104) – that this representation of identity and difference continues to structure social relations between the Western and non-Western worlds (and ‘race relations’ within Western and some non-Western societies) in the postcolonial era too. ‘White supremacy’ today is, on this view, a global social structure of identity politics, securing the privileged position of white people within and among the world’s societies by reference to more-or-less coded or explicit assertions about their ‘superiority’ over non-white others, in terms of intelligence; culture; creativity; historical and ‘civilizational’ significance; and scientific, political, and economic ‘rationality’. FEMINIST VIEWS For feminists, gender – and for many, sexuality – is a hugely important aspect of how we identify ourselves and are identified by others in terms of outcomes in global politics. From ‘gender pay gaps’ to violent homophobic and transphobic attacks, women – and people whose gender or sexual identity is socially minoritized – are systematically subject to inequalities and injustices. Additionally, many feminists stress the indispensable significance of gender (and often, race, class, sexuality, disability, or other markers of identity and difference) in terms of perspective, ‘standpoint’, or ‘lived experience’. In other words, they insist that to properly understand the unequal experiences of women (or women of colour in particular, or lesbians, gay men, transgender, and non-binary people), their voices must be heard. In societies structured to disadvantage women and groups minoritized by gender or sexuality, this listening and understanding is often absent, and feminist critique is directed at dominant or relatively privileged social identities, such as (in Western societies) the white, middle-class, middle-aged, cis-gendered, heterosexual man. Feminist critique highlights the way that this figure is often presumed the ‘universal’ subject for whom society is, and should be, designed. As a consequence, individual men who fit this broad categorization may be the most resistant to hearing marginalized voices or to addressing the structural inequalities that tend to privilege their own identity. 265 POST-STRUCTURALIST VIEW Post-structuralist accounts of global politics are primarily interested in identity in its relation to the category of difference. The whole linguistic or ‘semiotic’ turn in social theory that made post-structuralism possible (see p. 116) revolves around the insight that systems of language (and therefore also thought) are rooted not in fixed, essential structures of meaning, but rather in more arbitrary and changeable forms of opposition and difference. Words, and ‘signs’ more broadly, chiefly contain meaning through opposition to other words or signs, not by some intrinsic, permanent relationship to the thing they are meant to signify. This is what makes the existence of multiple human languages possible, and this focus on difference was especially important to the mainly French, ‘continental’ theorists – such as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes – closely associated with structuralist and post-structuralist philosophy and cultural theory. For Foucault, and Foucauldian scholarship, meanwhile, the centrality of identity to the representations inherent to ‘discourses’ render it politically powerful. William E. Connolly is perhaps the most well-known post-structuralist theorist of global politics and international relations of recent times. In Identity/Difference (1991), Connolly rejects a purely critical ‘deconstructionist’ approach to global politics, proposing instead that a positive democratic order can be built around ‘agonistic’, conflictual, principles; a form of political pluralism. Graffiti on a wall demonstrating the changeable nature of words as arbitrary forms of difference, and as signs defined by their opposition to other signs Source: Andreas Fickl, Unsplash 266 GLOBAL POLITICS DIFFERENCE AND GLOBAL SOCIAL CONFLICT If identity amounts to a sense of ‘sameness’ or ‘oneness’ with others, then it is invariably articulated in opposition to something that is perceived as ‘difference’. The Catalan nationalist or independentist perceives themselves to be Catalan in part because they perceive themselves not to be Spanish (or French, Portuguese, or some other nationality). They have beliefs about what Spanish-ness and Catalan-ness entail, and see themselves as fitting into the latter category rather than the former. Identity is, in other words, partly defined by difference. The significance and co-constitution of identity and difference is an ancient social fact. While political philosophers in the Western tradition, such as G. W. F. Hegel (1770– 1831), emphasized how our identities emerge from interactions with others and thus from difference itself, this ‘dialectical’ idea – that identity and difference may overlap or contain one another – was already present in Taoist, and later Buddhist philosophy, in ancient China, at least 2,000 years earlier. Think of the ‘Yin and Yang’ symbol, which represents the philosophical insight that light/dark, hard/soft, and other binary oppositions are actually pairs of things where the existence of one is the precondition for the existence of the other. In global politics, we can think about this in terms of identity being expressed through difference between national cultures, between states, between international organizations, and even between individuals. As constructivists (see p. 120) have pointed out, in the context of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR defined their identities (and consequently their ‘interests’ and aims) in opposition to one another. It has even been suggested that the United States’ policies of military interventionism or ‘world policing’, and the ‘wars on terror’ of the post-9/11 era, are an effort to construct new enemies to fulfil the role once played by the Soviet Union, and restore the raison d’être to American power and foreign policy identity. Many of the Western concerns about the ‘rise of China’ seem to amount to a fear of difference. In the Western global ‘imaginary’ (see p. 14), China represents a different pole of power than the United States, characterized by very different political and cultural norms, including a rejection of the liberal democratic multiparty state model, and the individualist rights-based order that is supposed to underpin it. Chengxin Pan (2012) draws on theoretical approaches including postcolonialism (see p. 99), constructivism, and post-structuralism (see p. 116) in his analysis of the ‘rise of China’ to show how representation of difference is central to this global political shift. China is represented as different to the West, and its difference is represented as a set of ‘threats’ and ‘opportunities’ for the West, rather than a distinct social, political, economic, and cultural force in the world. The function of ‘China watching’ in the early twenty-first century (a practice realized in the proliferation of books and ‘expert’ consultants on the ‘rise of China’) functions, Pan argues, as a way of articulating ‘Western/American self-imagination’ as well as ‘a construction of Otherness’ (Pan 2012: 51). In other words, representing China as profoundly ‘different’, and imposing a set of imagined Chinese sociocultural characteristics and stereotypes on the country’s domestic and foreign policies, allows Western analysts of global politics to define their own identity more sharply; difference is the means through which identity is established in global politics. IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE CON Nowhere is the question of identity and difference starker than in forms of social conflict. From the US-China ‘trade war’ inaugurated by the Trump administration (see p. 320) to the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and minority Muslim populations elsewhere (see p. 305), and even the rise of a global Black Lives Matter movement (see p. 103), it can be said that the interplay of identity and difference is at the root of much, or most, conflict. At the end of the Cold War, the American scholar Samuel P. Huntington predicted that ‘civilization’ and culture would become the drivers of global conflict in the future, as the ideological conflict over how to organize states and economies (i.e. capitalism vs communism) receded, and the primary lines of difference became focused on other aspects of individual, local, national, and regional identity. Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis was controversial, not least because it entailed cultural essentialism and racialization (see p. 100) to explain what he – a white American scholar – saw as profound and essential differences among the peoples of the world. For example, Huntington reduced the world to ‘seven or eight major civilizations’, consisting of the ‘Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization’ (Huntington 1993). Problems abound with these categories. First, they are not of the same kind – some are religious groupings (e.g. Hindu), while others are philosophical (e.g. Confucian), regional (e.g. Latin American), and even national (Japanese). Second, the placement of African as merely ‘possibly’ an eighth civilization, and something of an afterthought in his work, can be seen as an extension of European colonialist views of Africa as essentially ‘uncivilized’. Moreover, as a measure of likelihood of future conflict, the categories have not stood the test of time – consider, for example, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine; two states that Huntington would categorize as ‘Slavic-Orthodox’. Neither presumed racial identity and affiliation (‘Slavic’) nor common religious culture (‘Orthodox’) renders these two societies part of the singular ‘civilization’ Huntington envisioned. But Huntington’s thesis also constituted a more conservative vision of the ‘End of History’ thesis presented by another American scholar at that same time, Francis Fukuyama (see p. 640). Whereas Fukuyama envisioned the slow but more-or-less inevitable spread of liberal democracy (see ‘Concept: Liberal Democracy’), reducing difference in terms of political culture, Huntington predicted a sharpening of the lines of difference in global politics, and perhaps increasing conflict. C E PT 267 Essentialism: An approach to philosophical or social-scientific reasoning that supposes people or things have an unchanging ‘essence’. LIBERAL DEMOCRACY A liberal democracy is a political regime in which a ‘liberal’ commitment to individual rights and freedoms, including rights to political representation and economic enterprise, is blended with a ‘democratic’ belief in popular rule. Its key features are: (1) the right to rule is gained through success in regular and competitive elections, based on universal adult suffrage; (2) constraints on government imposed by a constitution, institutional checks and balances, and protections for individual rights; and (3) a vigorous civil society including a capitalist, private enterprise economy, independent trade unions, and a free press. Some view liberal democracy as the political expression of Western values and economic structures, and others argue that it is universally applicable, as it allows for the expression of the widest possible range of views and beliefs, but critics point out that it prohibits radical political and economic change that would undermine its own normative commitments (such as the abolition of capitalism). Some critics go so far as to describe the political culture of contemporary Western liberal democracy as synonymous with ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (see p. 110). 9 268 GLOBAL POLITICS CON Both of these American thinkers, however, noted the potential for ‘political Islam’, an Islamic ‘world’ or ‘civilization’, to be a particularly different – and challenging – identity to US-led Western power in the post-Cold War world. When, a decade after the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks took place (see p. 23), many conservative, and some liberal, Americans involved in theorizing and policy-making around US foreign affairs saw this moment as proving some version of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis. The ‘global war on terrorism’ instigated by President George W. Bush in response to the 9/11 attacks was as much rooted in the politics of identity, difference, and representation, as the ‘rise of China’ narratives that followed. As postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said had long contended, the West has often identified itself in opposition to the ‘Islamic world’, and the cultural politics in Western societies has represented ‘Muslims’ and ‘Islam’ as fundamentally different to ‘Westerners’ and ‘the West’. This cultural essentialism and ‘othering’ (see ‘Concept: Othering’) entails stereotyping – the projection of specific beliefs and behaviours onto wider culturally defined groups and whole societies – and a hardening of claims about identity and difference. C E PT OTHERING FIG U The concept of othering is today most commonly associated with critical and particularly postcolonial approaches to global politics, but its roots lie in more ‘traditional’ philosophy. ‘Phenomenological’ philosophers such as G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) and Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), and later psychoanalytic theorists such as Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), who were interested in how experiences shape our consciousness, argued that any sense of ‘self’ is really made or ‘constituted’ through our experiences of ‘others’ (things or people that we perceive to be outside of, or apart from, the ‘me’, ‘I’, or ‘us’). This philosophical ‘constitutive other’ is adapted in postcolonial theory, such that ‘othering’ is specifically understood as the process through which colonizing societies understand and seek to morally justify the violence they enact upon the societies they colonize. In the work of Frantz Fanon (see p. 282), for instance, the ‘settler-native’ relation that characterizes colonial world order (and persists in postcolonial contexts too) is one in which the white European ‘settler’ represents the Black, or other person of colour, ‘native’ as fundamentally different to him or herself, and specifically as inferior and in need of control and domination. Similarly in Edward Said’s critique of ‘Orientalism’ (see p. 104), the ‘Occidental’ finds their sense of superiority and ‘Western civilization’ through ‘othering’ the ‘Oriental’ as intellectually and culturally inferior. Othering in global politics is therefore a process of representing and treating people as fundamentally or ‘essentially’ different, and, usually as inferior. RE EDWARD SAID (1935–2003) Jerusalem-born US academic and literary critic. Said was a prominent advocate of the Palestinian cause and a founding figure of postcolonial theory. He developed, from the 1970s onwards, a humanist critique of the Western Enlightenment that uncovered its links to colonialism and highlighted ‘narratives of oppression’, cultural and ideological biases that disempower colonized peoples by representing them as the non-Western ‘other’, particularly applying this to the Middle East. He is best known for the notion of ‘Orientalism’, which operates through ‘the history of popular anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice in the West’ (Said [1978] 2003). Said’s key works include Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism (1993). Source: Bettmann/ Getty Images IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 269 The global politics of identity and difference in relation to the ‘war on terror’ has shed light on wider related issues, not least because – in a globalized, twenty-first-century world – some of the Western governments and political groups that have done most to ‘other’ Muslims hail from countries which in fact contain very large Muslim minorities (for example, the UK, where approximately 3.4 million people – more than 5 per cent of the population – are Muslim today). While the representational politics of identity and difference often stokes conflict through outcasting or othering (see above) – representing some people as not ‘belonging’ to a society or culture – the simple fact is that many societies in the twenty-first century are highly mixed, composed of people with widely varying senses of identity and cultural, national histories. Consequently, the politics of identity and difference leads to at least as much social conflict within and across societies as it does between them. However, the global politics of identity and difference can also be a source of liberation and empowerment. It can offer social and political advancement through a process of self-realization and self-assertion for groups that have been socially marginalized, or othered. In many ways, the archetypal model for this liberation politics in recent history was the Black consciousness movement that first emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by activists such as Marcus Garvey (see p. 40). Black nationalism gained greater prominence in the civil rights movement of the 1960s with an upsurge in both the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement. In its reformist guise, the movement took the form of a struggle for civil rights that reached national prominence in the United States under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr (1929–68) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The strategy of protest and non-violent civil disobedience was nevertheless rejected by the emerging Black Power movement, which supported Black separatism and, under the leadership of the Black Panthers, founded in 1966, promoted the use of physical force and armed confrontation. Black Muslim organizations in the United States, meanwhile, such as the Nation of Islam (see ‘Malcolm X’, p. 238), offered a Black nationalist project rooted in a form of Islamic ‘liberation theology’. The underlying strategy of Black nationalism was, however, to confront a dominant white culture through a process of consciousnessraising that has subsequently been adopted by other forms of identity politics. One of the most significant manifestations of the global politics of identity in modern societies is multiculturalism (see ‘Concept: Multiculturalism’, p. 270). This emerged as, thanks to increased international migration since the 1970s (examined in Chapter 8), more and more societies came to accept and even (although with different degrees of enthusiasm) embrace their multicultural characters. Multiculturalism proclaims the idea of ‘togetherness in difference’ (Young 1995), taking particular account of cultural differentiation that is based on race, ethnicity, religion, or language. Multiculturalism not only recognizes the fact of cultural diversity, but also holds that such differences should be respected and publicly affirmed. Although the United States, an immigrant society, has long been a multicultural society, the cause of multiculturalism in this sense was not taken up until the rise of the Black consciousness movement in the 1960s. Australia officially committed to multiculturalism in the 1970s. In New Zealand, it is linked to a recognition of the role of Maori culture in forging a distinctive national identity. In Canada, multiculturalism was associated with attempts to achieve reconciliation between French-speaking Quebec and the English-speaking majority population, and an acknowledgement of the rights of the indigenous Inuit peoples. 9 CON 270 C E PT GLOBAL POLITICS MULTICULTURALISM Multiculturalism is used as both a descriptive and a normative term. As a descriptive term, it refers to cultural diversity arising from the existence within a society of two or more groups whose beliefs and practices generate a distinctive sense of collective identity, usually linked to racial, ethnic, or language differences. As a normative term, multiculturalism implies a positive endorsement of communal diversity, based either on the right of different cultural groups to respect and recognition or on the alleged benefits to the larger society of moral and cultural diversity. Multiculturalism, in this sense, acknowledges the importance of beliefs, values, and ways of life in establishing selfunderstanding and a sense of self-worth for individuals and groups alike. CON Multiculturalism, however, is a broad term that encompasses a range of ambiguities as well as different approaches to the challenge of diversity. The ambiguity that lies at the heart of multiculturalism is reflected in the tension between the idea of ethnic belonging, on the one hand, and the embrace, even celebration, of diversity, on the other. Multicultural theorists highlight the importance of ethnicity as a basis for identity. Multiculturalism can be seen as a form of communitarianism, in that it focuses on the group and not the individual, seeing an individual’s self-worth as being inextricably linked to respect and recognition for the beliefs, values, and practices of his or her ethnic community. The advance of multiculturalism has therefore gone hand in hand with campaigns for minority rights, sometimes called ‘special’ or ‘polyethnic’ rights. These are rights that acknowledge and seek to protect a community’s ethnic distinctiveness, and affect matters such as dress, language, schooling, and public holidays. In states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, they extend to special representation or territorial rights for Indigenous peoples. Similarly, in formerly colonized countries in the Global South, such as Brazil, the land rights of Indigenous people have been afforded specific constitutional protections (though these have proved controversial with some other social groups in the country in recent years). However, at the same time, multiculturalism proclaims the supposed benefits of cultural mixing and hybridity, the value each community derives from living within a society characterized by cultural difference. Cultures can thus learn from and enrich each other, widening cultural opportunities and strengthening intercultural understanding. The result is a kind of ‘mix-and-match’ multiculturalism that operates in tandem with cultural globalization to create deeper levels of social and cultural mixing in modern societies, blurring national distinctiveness in the process. C E PT ETHNICITY Ethnicity is the sentiment of loyalty towards a distinctive population, cultural group, or territorial area. The term is complex because it has both racial and cultural overtones. The members of ethnic groups are often seen, correctly or incorrectly, to have descended from common ancestors, meaning that they tend to be thought of as extended kinship groups, united by blood. More commonly, however, ethnicity is understood as a form of cultural identity, albeit one that operates at a deep and emotional level. An ‘ethnic’ culture encompasses values, traditions, and practices, but, crucially, it also gives people a common identity and sense of distinctiveness, usually by focusing on their origins and descent. IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE There are, moreover, competing models of multiculturalism, offering different approaches to how diversity and togetherness can be reconciled, and providing rival views on the complex relationship between multiculturalism and nationalism. Liberal multiculturalists tend to stress the importance of civic unity, arguing that diversity can and should be confined to the private sphere, leaving the public sphere as a realm of integration. Moral, cultural, and lifestyle choices can thus largely be left to the individual, while common political or civic allegiance help to bind people together. In this view, multiculturalism and nationalism are compatible, even creating a new, possibly twentyfirst-century model of national identity in the form of multicultural nationalism, which balances cultural diversity against a common citizenship. Insofar as this destroys the link between nationality and ethnicity, it is very clearly based on a form of civic nationalism. However, conservatives, who argue that stable and successful societies must be based on shared values and a common culture, argue that nationalism and multiculturalism are fundamentally incompatible. In this view, human beings are limited and dependent creatures, who are naturally drawn to others similar to themselves but, by the same token, fear or distrust people who are in some way different. Multicultural societies are therefore inherently fractured and conflict-ridden: suspicion, hostility, and even violence between different ethnic communities are not products of intolerance, ignorance, or social inequality, but are a simple fact of social psychology. Ethnic and cultural diversity are therefore the implacable enemy of national unity and political stability. The record of multicultural societies nevertheless suggests that there is nothing natural or inevitable about interethnic conflict or hostility. This can be seen in relation to the revival of ethnic nationalism in the late twentieth century (discussed later in the chapter), but it is also evident in the close relationship between ethnic conflict and socioeconomic divisions. In a sense, communal tensions have often been as much about social class as they have been about ethnicity: different ethnic groups tend to occupy differing positions within the economy and enjoy different levels of economic and social security. The way people are racialized (see p. 100), for example, can correlate closely to income, access to welfare, and other economic goods. People who are racialized as the majority in a multicultural society often enjoy forms of structural privilege or unearned advantage within their national economy, being considered more employable, or having access to professions from which minoritized groups are barred (either explicitly, by racist laws as in Apartheid, or implicitly, by racist hiring practices). In some respects, these economically based ethnic tensions have become more acute in an age of globalization. This has happened in at least two ways. First, as Amy Chua (2003) argued, in many developing countries, the increased concentration of wealth in the hands of those in a position to exploit the benefit of global markets has often allowed small ethnic minorities to acquire hugely disproportional economic power. Examples of what Chua calls ‘market-dominant’ economic minorities include the Chinese in much of Southeast Asia, Indians in East Africa, and the Igbo people in West Africa. In such circumstances, widening economic divisions have provoked growing hostility and racial prejudice on the part of ethnic majorities, which are increasingly expressed in violence, creating what Chua called a ‘world on fire’. The second way in which economic and ethnic tensions intermingle is in Global North countries, where ethnic minorities are often confined to marginal, low-status, and low-income occupations. Such circumstances 271 Privilege: A sometimes controversial concept, especially for the political Right, privilege simply means an unearned social advantage, which may be conferred through one’s proximity to majority racial or gender identities, for example. 9 272 GLOBAL POLITICS are often linked to discrimination, structural racism, and state violence, and have sometimes led to serious civil unrest amongst ethnic minority youths. Examples of this occurred in various parts of the UK in 1981, 2001, and 2011, in Los Angeles in 1992, in Queensland, Australia in 2004, and across much of France in 2005. ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations, meanwhile, have swept across the United States and other majoritywhite Western societies since 2014, and reached a particular peak after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 (see p. 103). THE END OF MULTICULTURALISM? In 2011, the then recently elected UK Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference, which later became known as his ‘Munich Speech’. Cameron proclaimed the failure of ‘the doctrine of state multiculturalism’, signalling not only the turn to conservative politics in the UK after thirteen years of Labour Party government, but also a wider vision of European – and global – prospects for international security. Cameron’s Munich Speech, which focused on ‘Islamist extremism’ as the primary threat to international security, blamed the multiculturalism of what he called the ‘soft left’ in Europe for suggesting that terrorist attacks committed by Muslims against Western targets were motivated by ‘grievances’ and that ‘if only governments addressed them, this terrorism would stop’. Cameron instead demanded that state multiculturalism be replaced with ‘muscular liberalism’, to be achieved by building ‘stronger societies and identities’. In practice, Cameron and other right-wing leaders in Western states began to advocate much more strongly assimilationist policies, targeting racially minoritized people in general and Muslims in the West in particular. Multiculturalism predates, in some forms, the modern, Western, liberal ‘doctrine of state multiculturalism’ by a long way. India’s pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial history, for instance, has been characterized by the coexistence of vast numbers of people of different faiths, languages, tribal affiliations, and ‘castes’. While this coexistence has not always been peaceful (far from it), and some social groups have successfully exerted dominance over others, the possibility of a plurality of cultures living together with a degree of autonomy and self-determination has long been evident in non-Western contexts. But Cameron’s Munich Speech was significant precisely because it represented a turn away from the specific, twentieth-century model of liberal multiculturalism that had become central to the narratives Western liberal democratic states told about themselves (even if these narratives did not always match up to the experiences of their own racially minoritized citizens). While the UK specifically developed more assimilationist criteria for citizenship and developed what its future Prime Minister, Theresa May, called a ‘hostile environment’ for undocumented migrants (and, as it turned out, for the so-called ‘Windrush Generation’ of people who came to the UK as citizens of the British Empire, and their descendants), it was not alone among Western liberal democracies in moving away from multiculturalism. In France, the (2007–12) presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy was marked by a similar trend. Sarkozy echoed Cameron’s comments a few days after the Munich Speech, declaring the failure of multiculturalism and stating that ‘We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 273 the identity of the country that was receiving him.’ And both of these world leaders were speaking in the wake of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s claim in late 2010 that multiculturalism had ‘failed, utterly failed’. Among the ‘Western’ societies of Europe, North America, and Oceania, the decade of the 2010s was marked by the rise not only of ‘mainstream’ conservative politics articulating these concerns around multiculturalism but also a new wave of far-right political activism and violence that echoed (and took further) these arguments (see p. 252). In many of these countries, however, some politicians belonging to major, mainstream political parties have been seen to repeat or endorse the claims of the far right, to the extent that critics from the political left and centre refer to the ‘normalization’ or ‘mainstreaming’ of far-right politics. These claims and counterclaims were made especially in relation to the national election campaigns and subsequent political leadership of Donald Trump in the United States and Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom. But the so-called ‘culture wars’ between the political right and left has been a thoroughly transnational, if not global, affair, enabled in part by the blurring of political lines between social media communication and formal politics. The ‘turn’ – backlash or even ‘whitelash’ – against socially liberal values, and against the project of economic and political ‘globalism’ (see p. 14) in major Western states may be interpreted also as a turn away from multiculturalism and towards assimilationist or exclusionary models of nationalism. The extent to which these relatively recent developments will displace the much older structures of multiculturalism, however, remains to be seen. 9 RELIGIOUS REVIVALISM RELIGION AND POLITICS One of the most prominent aspects of the growing political importance of culture has undoubtedly been religious revivalism and the rise of religious movements. In Huntington’s (1996) view, religion is the ‘central defining characteristic’ of civilizations, in which case the ‘clash of civilizations’ effectively implies a clash of religions. Such a view is difficult to sustain, however. Not only are there considerable parallels and overlaps amongst the world’s religions: for example, Buddhism developed out of Hinduism, and Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the ‘religions of the book’, are rooted in a common belief in the Old Testament of the Bible – but the role of religion in different societies and cultures varies considerably. For instance, although Judeo-Christian beliefs are clearly a component of Western ‘civilization’ (one that is, nevertheless, shared with Orthodox and Latin American civilizations), it is not necessarily its defining feature, Greco-Roman influences and the related tradition of Enlightenment rationalism being at least equally important. Indeed, one of the features of some Western, and particularly European, societies is their formal, constitutional secularism. That said, the United States, where at least 70.6 per cent of the population is Christian, and about one-quarter of voters define themselves as evangelical or ‘born-again’ Christians, and countries where Catholicism remains a powerful social and political force, such as Italy, are less clearly ‘secular’ political spaces. The advance of secularism, nevertheless, does not necessarily Secularism: The belief that religion should not intrude into secular (worldly) affairs, often reflected in the demand to separate ‘church and state’. 274 GLOBAL POLITICS CON imply the decline of religion. Rather, it is concerned to establish a ‘proper’ sphere and role for religion, in line with the liberal belief in a so-called ‘public/private divide’. Its aim is to fence religion into a private arena, in which people are free to do as they like, leaving public life to be organized on a strictly secular basis. Freedom of religious belief therefore developed into a key liberal democratic principle. However, other forces, such as the advance of rationalism and scientific doctrines and the growth of materialistic and consumerist values, have strengthened ‘this-worldly’ concerns in many societies. C E PT RELIGION Religion, in its most general sense, is an organized community of people bound together by a shared body of beliefs concerning some kind of transcendent reality. However, ‘transcendent’ in this context may refer to anything from a belief in a distinctly ‘other-worldly’ supreme being or creator God to a more ‘this-worldly’ experience of personal liberation, as in the Buddhist concept of nirvana. There are major differences between monotheistic, Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), which have a single or limited number of sacred texts and a clear authority system, and pantheistic, non-theistic, and natural religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and so on), which tend to have looser, more decentralized and more pluralized structures. However, advocates of the secularization thesis have been confounded by developments from the late twentieth century onwards. Religion has become more important, not less important. This has been evident in the emergence of new, and often more assertive forms of religiosity, in the increasing impact of religious movements and, most importantly, in a closer relationship between religion and politics, through both the religionization of politics and politicization of religion. This became evident in the 1970s within Islam, and was most dramatically demonstrated by the 1979 ‘Islamic Revolution’ in Iran, which brought the Ayatollah Khomeini (see p. 275) to power as the leader of the world’s first Islamic state in recent history (historically, however, Islamic states such as the vast Caliphate of Cordoba [292–1031 CE], which comprised most of the Iberian Peninsula – modern-day Spain and Portugal – existed in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe). This was not an exclusively Islamic trend, as so-called ‘fundamentalist’ movements within Christianity, particularly in the form of the ‘new Christian Right’ in the United States, began to thrive, as did ‘political’ Hinduism and Sikhism in India. Other manifestations of this include the spread of US-style Pentecostalism in Latin America, Africa, and East Asia; the growth in China of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that has been taken by the authorities to express anti-communism and is reportedly supported by 70 million people; the regeneration of Orthodox Christianity in post-communist Russia; and the emergence of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult in Japan. Secularization thesis: The theory that modernization is invariably accompanied by the victory of reason over religion and the displacement of spiritual values by secular ones. Although religious revivalism can be seen as a consequence of the larger upsurge in identity politics, religion has proved to be a particularly potent means of regenerating personal and social identity in modern circumstances. As modern societies are increasingly atomistic, diffuse, and pluralized, there is, arguably, a greater thirst for the sense of meaning, purpose, and certainty that religious consciousness appears to offer. This applies because religion provides believers with a world view and moral vision that has higher, or indeed supreme, authority because it stems from a supposedly IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE divine source. Religion thus defines the very grounds of people’s being; it gives them an ultimate frame of reference as well as a moral orientation in a world increasingly marked by moral relativism. In addition, religion generates a powerful sense of social solidarity, connecting people to one another at a ‘thick’ or deep level, as opposed to the ‘thin’ connectedness that is conventional in modern societies. FIG U Religious revivalism has nevertheless served a variety of political purposes. Three of these have been particularly prominent. The first is that religion has been an increasingly important component of social conservatism, offering to strengthen the moral fabric of society through a return to religious values and practices. Such a religiously orientated moral conservatism has been particularly evident in the United States since the 1970s, as the new Christian right sought to fuse religion and politics in attempting to ‘turn America back to Christ’. Through its influence on the Republican Party, and particularly on presidents such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the new Christian right has made moral and cultural issues, such as anti-abortion, ‘creationism’, opposition to gun control, gay rights, and stem cell research, as prominent in US politics as traditional ones such as the economy and foreign policy. Second, religion has been an increasingly significant component, even the defining feature, of forms of ethnic nationalism. The attraction of religion rather than the nation as the principal source of political identity is that it provides a supposedly primordial and seemingly unchangeable basis for the establishment of group membership. India has witnessed an upsurge in both Hindu nationalism and Sikh nationalism. Hindu nationalists in the BJP, the more radical World Hindu Council and its parent body, the RSS, have sought to make Hinduism the basis of national identity and called for the ‘Hinduization’ of Muslim, Sikh, Jain, and other communities. Sikh nationalists have looked to establish ‘Khalistan’, located in presentday Punjab, with Sikhism as the state religion and its government obliged to ensure its unhindered flourishing. In Israel, a collection of small ultra-orthodox Jewish parties and groups have become more prominent in transforming Zionism into a defence of the ‘Greater Land of Israel’. This has often been expressed in a campaign to build Jewish settlements in territory occupied in the Six-Day War of 1967 and then formally incorporated into Israel. Third, religion has gained its greatest political influence through providing the basis for militant politico-cultural regeneration, based on the belief that, in Khomeini’s words, ‘Politics is religion’. This notion of religion as a theo-political project is usually referred to as ‘religious fundamentalism’. RE 275 Moral relativism: The belief that there are no absolute values, or a condition in which there is deep and widespread disagreement over moral issues. AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI (1900–1989) Iranian cleric and political leader. The son and grandson of Shi’a clergy, Khomeini was one of the foremost scholars in the major theological centre in Qom until being expelled from Iran in 1964. His return from exile in 1979 sparked the ‘Islamic Revolution’, leaving the Ayatollah (literally, ‘gift of Allah’) as the supreme leader of the world’s first Islamic state until his death. Breaking decisively with the Shi’a tradition that the clergy remain outside politics, Khomeini’s world view was rooted in a clear division between the oppressed, understood largely as the poor and excluded of the developing world, and the oppressors, seen as the twin Satans: the United States and the Soviet Union, capitalism and communism. Islam thus became a theo-political project aimed at regenerating the Islamic world by ridding it of occupation and corruption from Source: Bettmann/ Getty Images outside. 9 276 GLOBAL POLITICS Fundamentalism: A style of thought in which certain principles are recognized as essential truths that have unchallengeable and overriding authority, often associated with fierce, and sometimes fanatical, commitment. CON Scriptural literalism: A belief in the literal truth of sacred texts, which as the revealed word of God have unquestionable authority. C E PT THE FUNDAMENTALIST UPSURGE The term ‘fundamentalism’ was first used in debates within American Protestantism in the early twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1915, evangelical Protestants published a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals, upholding the inerrancy, or literal truth, of the Bible in the face of modern interpretations of Christianity. However, the term is highly controversial, being commonly associated with inflexibility, dogmatism, and authoritarianism. As a result, many of those who are classified as fundamentalists reject the term as simplistic or demeaning, preferring instead to describe themselves as ‘traditionalists’, ‘conservatives’, ‘evangelicals’, ‘revivalists’, and so forth. However, unlike alternative terms, fundamentalism has the advantage of conveying the idea of a religio-political movement or project, rather than simply the assertion of scriptural literalism (although this remains a feature of certain forms of fundamentalism). Religious fundamentalism is thus characterized by a rejection of the distinction between religion and politics. Politics, in effect, is religion. This implies that religious principles are not restricted to personal or private life, but are seen as the organizing principles of public existence, including law, social conduct, and the economy as well as politics. Although some claim that fundamentalist tendencies can be identified in all the world’s major religions – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Sikhism – others argue that they tend to be confined to Islam and Protestant Christianity, as only these religious traditions have the capacity to throw up comprehensive programmes of political renewal, albeit with very different characters and ambitions. RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM The word ‘fundamentalism’ derives from the Latin fundamentum, meaning ‘base’. The core idea of religious fundamentalism is that religion cannot and should not be confined to the private sphere, but finds its highest and proper expression in the politics of popular mobilization and social regeneration. Although often related, religious fundamentalism should not be equated with scriptural literalism, as the ‘fundamentals’ are often extracted through a process of ‘dynamic’ interpretation by a charismatic leader. Religious fundamentalism also differs from ultra-orthodoxy, in that it advances a programme for the moral and political regeneration of society in line with religious principles, as opposed to a retreat from corrupt secular society into the purity of faith-based communal living. It is difficult to generalize about the causes of the fundamentalist upsurge that has occurred since the late twentieth century because, in different parts of the world, it has taken different doctrinal forms and displayed contrasting ideological features. What is clear, nevertheless, is that fundamentalism arises in deeply troubled societies, particularly societies afflicted by an actual or perceived crisis of identity. Ruthven (2005) thus emphasized that fundamentalism is driven by a ‘search for meaning’ in a world of growing doubt and uncertainty. A variety of developments have helped to generate such doubt and uncertainty. Three factors in particular have strengthened the fundamentalist impulse in religion by contributing to such crises: secularization, globalization, and postcolonialism. Secularization has contributed to a decline of traditional religion and a weakening of established morality. In that sense, fundamentalism represents a moral protest against decadence and hypocrisy; it aims to restore ‘rightful’ order and IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 277 re-establish the link between the human world and the divine. Fundamentalism can therefore be seen as the antidote to moral relativism. Religious fundamentalism may also be intrinsically linked to the advance of globalization. As traditional societies are disrupted by increased global flows of people, goods, ideas, and images, religious fundamentalism may emerge as a counter-revolutionary force, a source of resistance to the advance of amorality and corruption. This helps to explain why fundamentalists generally possess a Manichaean world view, one that emphasizes conflict between ‘light’ and ‘darkness’, or good and evil. If ‘we’ are a chosen people acting according to the will of God, ‘they’ are not merely people with whom we disagree, but a body actively subverting God’s purpose on earth; they represent nothing less than the ‘forces of darkness’. Political conflict, for fundamentalists, is therefore a battle or war, and ultimately either the believers or the infidels must prevail. 9 Protest against the overturning of Roe vs Wade, Washington D.C., 2022. The debate around abortion is often linked to Christian fundamentalist ‘pro-life’ beliefs Source: Gayatri Malhotra, Unsplash 278 GLOBAL POLITICS IN ACTION . . . The Arab Spring and Its Legacy Events: On 17 December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian market trader who lived in Sidi Bouzid, some 300 kilometres south of the capital Tunis, set fire to himself in protest against the confiscation of his cart and produce and his treatment by the police. Bouazizi died on 4 January 2011. This incident is often credited with having sparked the wave of protests in Tunisia which, on 14 January, led to the removal of President Ben Ali, after twenty-four years in power. Inspired by events in Tunisia, Egyptian demonstrators took to the streets on 25 January, calling for the removal of President Hosni Mubarak. Under growing pressure from the Egyptian military, and as protests escalated, Mubarak resigned on 11 February. In Libya, demonstrations quickly led to an armed uprising and a civil war, in which rebel forces were supported by NATO aerial attacks, the capture and killing of Muammar Gaddafi on 22 October effectively signalling the collapse of his regime. The following month, Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to step down as Yemeni president, formerly ceding power in February 2012. In Syria, protests that started in March 2011 against President Basher Assad developed, over succeeding months, into a highly complex and intractable civil war. Significance: The protest movements that swept through much of North Africa and parts of the Middle East in 2011 were quickly dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’. These rebellions have nevertheless unleashed a complex range of forces, meaning that debate about the significance of the Arab Spring may continue for many years. At least four interpretations have been advanced, although none is likely to be persuasive on its own. In the first, the Arab Spring is seen as the ‘Arab world’s 1989’, the beginning of its transition from authoritarianism to sustainable democracy. The overthrow of at least four dictators and the holding of the Arab world’s first free and fair elections, in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco in late 2011 and early 2012, help to support this view. However, democratization requires a process of consolidation through which key groups and interests (including those linked to the old regime) are reconciled to the new, democratic ‘rules of the game’. In the case of the Arab Spring, this applies particularly to the military and the Muslim Brotherhood (in whatever form), and, as Mohamed Morsi’s short and controversial Source: MOHAMMED HUWAIS/Getty Images presidency in Egypt demonstrated, the reconciliation of neither group can be taken for granted. In the second interpretation, the Arab Spring has sparked a resurgence of political Islam. Despite their initial marginalization, Brotherhood-linked groups were bolstered by the Arab Spring, both because it led to the lifting of restrictions on their political activities and because the introduction of elections provided them, by virtue of their level of organization and the appeal of religion, with a sure route to power. However, as once again shown by developments in Morsi’s Egypt, attempts by Brotherhood-linked parties to advance an Islamist agenda may weaken their public support and leave them politically vulnerable. In the third interpretation, the Arab Spring has been seen as a brief interlude before the (inevitable) return of dictatorship to the Arab world. In this view, the divisions and instability provoked by the Arab Spring have merely underlined the importance of the military as the only reliable source of political order, and created opportunities for it to re-enter politics sooner or later, claiming to be the ‘nation’s saviour’. In the fourth interpretation, the Arab Spring has significantly strengthened divisions in the Arab and wider Muslim world between Sunni and Shi’a forms of Islam. Although the flames of this conflict were lit in Iraq, they have burned most fiercely during the Syrian civil war, which can be seen as a ‘proxy war’ between Sunni Muslims and Shi’a Muslims, ultimately for control of the Middle East. IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 279 IDENTITY, CULTURE, AND CONTESTED WORLD ORDERS As we have seen, identity and culture – including factors such as race, class, gender, and religion – may be experienced at the level of the individual but are nevertheless deeply social phenomena. The processes through which identities and cultures are forged and contested, and the assertion or contestation of difference, are global social processes, and as such are at stake in ‘world ordering’ as much as they are in everyday life. Global politics has been the terrain of imperial competition and expressions of national and regional identity and self-determination. Issues of national and religious identity have been at stake in local, national, and regional armed conflicts, from the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) to the post-Cold War ‘Yugoslav Wars’ (1991–2001) and the so-called ‘frozen’ but recently thawed-out conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh (1988–). But they are also integral to the efforts of the United States and the wider ‘West’ to dominate, govern, or police global politics and to order the world, since this mission rooted in religious and cultural traditions such as American exceptionalism and ‘manifest destiny’ (the belief that American power is mandated by God) as well as the secularized Christian principles embodied by Anglo-American liberalism. FOCUS ON . . . PROMOTING DEMOCRACY: FOR OR AGAINST? Do democratic states have a right, even a duty, to interfere in the affairs of other states to promote democracy? If ‘democracy promotion’ is a legitimate foreign policy goal, how should it be pursued? Democracy promotion can be justified in at least four ways. First, as democracy is founded on values such as human dignity, individual rights, and political equality, democratic rule is a universal good, applicable to all societies regardless of their history, culture, and values. All those who have the ability to promote democracy therefore have a duty to do so. This assumes that there is, in effect, a thirst everywhere for democratic governance. Second, as authoritarian regimes repress opposition and deny citizens the right of political participation, democracy cannot be built through internal pressures alone and therefore needs external support. This support is likely to involve the use of force, as authoritarian regimes will rarely give up power willingly. Third, as suggested by the ‘democratic peace’ thesis, democracy increases the likelihood of peace and cooperation, at least in terms of relations amongst democratic states themselves. Fourth, democracy may have the practical advantage that, in widening access to political power, it reduces levels of discontent and disaffection and so helps to counter political extremism and even terrorism. In this view, authoritarian or despotic rule is one of the chief causes of instability and political violence. The policy of democracy promotion has been widely criticized, however. For some, it is based on specious and selfserving reasoning, providing a high-sounding justification for what in practice amounts to an imperialist project designed to expand Western hegemony and ensure access to vital energy resources. A second concern arises from doubts about the supposed universality of Western-style democracy. While some argue, crudely, that Arab and wider Muslim populations are simply ‘not ready for democracy’, others suggest that democracy will legitimately take different forms in different parts of the world. In this case, a narrow focus on liberal democratic reform is an example of Eurocentrism and is likely to fail. A third concern is that the link between democracy and political moderation is by no means assured. 9 280 GLOBAL POLITICS For example, the introduction of multiparty elections in Algeria in 1991 looked likely to result in a sweeping victory for the militant Islamic Salvation Front, before the Algerian army intervened to repress a popularly backed tide of religious fundamentalism. Finally, the idea of intervention to promote democracy has been criticized as both morally and politically confused. Violating national self-determination to promote political freedom appears to be, at best, a contradictory position. Aside from moral qualms about this approach, it also risks arousing widespread resentment and hostility, which, in turn, makes the process of state-building (or democracy-building) intensely difficult. CULTURAL HEGEMONY: FROM AN AMERICAN TO A CHINESE WORLD ORDER? Cultural homogenization: The erasure or marginalization of the wide range of diverse cultural forms and traditions in the world by a single, dominant or hegemonic culture. Consumer culture: A transition from ‘workerist’ socio-economic models, wherein social status is largely accorded by what one produces, to ‘consumerist’ ones, where status is defined by what one consumes. Emerged in the twentieth century. McDonaldization: The process by which ever more domains of social life is transformed to fit the model introduced by corporate American fastfood chains. Perhaps the single most significant question for the role of identity and culture in shaping world order in the early twenty-first century is what impact the ‘rise’ (or more accurately, the ‘resurgence’) of China as a global power will have. In the post-Second World War era, the United States was able to dominate the design and construction of a range of key institutions of global governance (Chapter 20). As a consequence, it is sometimes argued that the world order that emerged in that context, and was further strengthened by the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, tended to embody American cultural values. In fact, some contended that ‘corporate’ and ‘US-led’ globalization had the effect of global cultural homogenization, as American brands and consumer culture came to dominate the world. Indeed, the contemporary usage of the word ‘brand’ comes directly from the European settler colonialists’ practice of branding cattle with symbols in the American ‘Old West’, and the various qualities associated with particular ‘brands’ of beef by its sellers and consumers. In the twentieth century, with the rise of mass societies and mass production (see p. 39), along with more advanced forms of capitalist culture, including the vast advertising industry the developed from the 1950s onward, consumer culture became further entrenched. Societies were increasingly encouraged to locate their identity in global brands; the mid-century Frankfurt School critical theorist (see p. 113) Marcuse argued that: ‘The people recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment’ (1964: 9). The consumer culture of American world order has only advanced since its early successes in the mid-twentieth century. The global dominance of American brands, from technology (Apple, Microsoft, Google) to food and beverages (McDonald’s, Coca-Cola), and sportswear (Nike), remains strong in the twenty-first century. Consumption of these brands’ products is often associated with particular identities, including a sense of social class or status. But they may also be integral to reshaping whole national economic models. The sociologist George Ritzer coined the term ‘McDonaldization’ – initially in an article in the early 1980s, and expanded upon in a still-popular book of the 1990s – to describe this socio-economic trend within the United States and its expansion, via globalization, to the world: ‘On a global scale, travelers are finding more familiarity and less diversity. Exotic settings are increasingly likely sites for American fast-food chains and other McDonaldized settings’ (Ritzer [1993] 2019: 180). In other words, the IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 281 fast-food model of branding, production, and consumption reshapes a range of other, non-food ‘settings’, according to Ritzer, as ‘diversity’ gives way to ‘homogenization’. If identity is about a sense of ‘sameness’ (see p. 258), then US-led corporate globalization, on this view, is an effort to impose a homogenous set of brand identities upon the global population, informed by the values of American capitalism. So what might world order look like if (or perhaps when) American dominance has been thoroughly supplanted by Chinese global power? China is among those countries where some American brands have prospered, and has certainly not been immune to the rise of consumer culture (wealthy young Chinese people today are often seen as belonging to the same global elite as wealthy young Americans and Europeans, and enjoy many of the same forms of consumption). But China’s economic model is at most ‘state capitalist’ (see p. 137), with strict controls imposed on businesses across a wide range of issues. And it is not at all clear that Chinese values are as strongly shaped by individualized rights to capitalist enterprise (see the discussion of ‘Asian Values’, below). Instead, collectivist cultural values of filial piety (honouring and supporting one’s parents and ancestors), family obligation, healthy living, and ‘balance’ may prevail in Chinese society in a way they have not in American world order. In recent years, alongside its long-term economic rise, China has also engaged in ‘soft power’ tactics through its international relations. Hundreds of universities around the world, including in the United States and Europe, now house ‘Confucius Institutes’ – centres for promoting Chinese language and culture among students and scholars. Hints at how Chinese culture and identity might influence world order may also be found in its economic power entanglements in Africa. China has made massive investments in infrastructure and business across Africa, but has also taken the opportunity to promote Chinese culture, values, and identity in the continent. While one of the concerns animating Western ‘China watchers’ (see p. 266) has been that Chinese firms have been especially exploitative or extractive in their approach to doing business in Africa, the first major academic study (Oya and Schaefer 2019), which focused on firms operating in Angola and Ethiopia and interviewed 1,500 workers, found little evidence to support this view. In fact, Chinese firms were found to be leading job-creation and offering conditions no worse than other firms. In her analysis of Chinese investment in Nigeria, Lesotho, Kenya, and Ethiopia, Irene Yuan Sun (2017) suggests that Chinese factories in Africa are a positive development that will in fact ‘create broad-based prosperity for Africans and usher in the next phase of global growth’, while Chinese firms have also invested in health care, and social and cultural activities in the African societies they operate in. In 2011, the Grand Theatre opened in Dakar, Senegal; at 1,800 seats it claimed to be the largest theatre in Africa, and its construction was largely funded by the Chinese state (at a cost of around $31 million). This investment in African cultural infrastructure allowed also for Chinese cultural exposition, with China’s Shaolin martial artist monks performing there in 2014, as part of a wider tour of African nations, and with the express intention of promoting both the martial arts and the Buddhist principles that inform their practice. Tai chi and other traditional Chinese martial arts have also been taught to factory workers and their families in African communities. 9 282 GLOBAL POLITICS But an alternative view is that the decline of American power and relative increase in Chinese power, while affecting world order deeply, will not result in a like-for-like ‘swap’, with China emerging as the new global, cultural hegemon, and imposing Chinese culture, values, and identity on the world in place of American consumerist ones. Rather, as Amitav Acharya (2018) suggests, the ‘end of American world order’ could be the harbinger of what he calls a ‘multiplex’ world: ‘a world without a hegemon, culturally and politically diverse yet economically interconnected, where security challenges are increasingly transnational but the power to break and make order is dispersed and fragmented’. ‘THE WEST’ VS ‘THE REST’? FIG U One of the most abiding visions of world order is that which divides the world into ‘the West’ and ‘the rest’, probably nowhere more so than within Western societies themselves. The advent of European colonialism (see p. 31), together with the attitudes of ‘Enlightenment’ rationalism (see p. 32), have led to a sense within many Western societies that these societies are ‘leading’ the world, while others, particularly formerly colonized societies of the ‘Global South’, amount to ‘the rest’. The ‘rest’, on this view, either follow or are dragged along by the ‘West’. This vision of the West as the leading edge of the world rests partly on the identification of ‘Western-ness’ with capitalism and the liberal democratic state model, and is at the root of, for example, Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis (see p. 127). This perspective on world order, strongly associated with Eurocentrism (see p 101), has been increasingly hard to sustain, however. RE FRANTZ FANON (1925–61) A Martinique-born French revolutionary theorist, Fanon is best known for his views on the anticolonial struggle. In Black Skin, White Masks (1952), he mixed personal reflection with social analysis to explore the psychological damage done to Black people in a ‘whitened’ world. In his classic work, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), he drew on psychiatry, politics, sociology, and the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre in arguing that only total revolution and absolute violence can help Black or colonized people liberate themselves from the social and psychological scars of imperialism. Fanon died after contracting leukaemia, and, at his request, his body was returned Source: Unknown to Algeria and buried with honours by the Algerian National Army of Liberation. His other works Photographer/Wikimedia Commons include Towards the African Revolution (1964). Asian values: Values that supposedly reflect the history, culture, and religious backgrounds of Asian societies, emphasizing the primacy on the collective (the family, wider society, and state) over the individual. ‘ASIAN VALUES’ The idea that Asian culture and beliefs may constitute an alternative to Western ones gained momentum during the 1980s and 1990s, fuelled by the emergence of Japan as an economic superpower and the success of the so-called Asian ‘tiger’ economies – Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. This position was outlined most clearly by the Bangkok Declaration of 1993, when Asian state representatives from Iran to Mongolia, meeting in preparation for the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, issued a bold statement in favour of what they called ‘Asian values’. While not rejecting the idea of universal human IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE 283 CON rights, Asian values drew attention to supposed differences between Western and Asian value systems as part of an argument in favour of taking culture difference into account in formulating human rights. Particularly keen advocates of this view included Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew, at that time the prime ministers, respectively, of Malaysia and Singapore. From this perspective, human rights had traditionally been constructed on the basis of culturally biased Western assumptions. Individualism had been emphasized over the interests of the community; rights had been given preference over duties; and civic and political freedoms had been extolled above socio-economic well-being. The recognition of Asian values sought to rectify this. At their heart, was a vision of social harmony and cooperation grounded in loyalty and embeddedness within community, and respect for authority – towards parents within the family, teachers at school, and the government within society as a whole. Allied to a keen work ethic and thrift, these values were seen as a recipe for social stability and economic success. C E PT CONFUCIANISM Confucianism is a system of ethics formulated by Confucius (551–479 BCE, see p. 34) and his disciples that was primarily outlined in The Analects. Confucian thought has concerned itself with the twin themes of human relations and the cultivation of the self. The emphasis on ren (‘humanity’ or ‘love’) has usually been interpreted as implying support for traditional ideas and values, notably filial piety, respect, loyalty, and benevolence. The stress on junzi (the virtuous person) suggests a capacity for human development and potential for perfection realized, in particular, through education. Confucianism has been seen, with Taoism and Buddhism, as one of the three major Chinese systems of thought, although many take Confucian ideas to be coextensive with Chinese civilization itself. The idea of Asian values was dealt a damaging blow by the Asian financial crisis of 1997–8. This occurred not only because it cast doubt over the image of ‘rising Asia’ but also, and more seriously, because Asian values were sometimes held to be responsible for the crisis in the first place. In this view, Asian economies had faltered because of a failure fully to embrace market principles such as entrepreneurialism, competition, and ‘rugged’ individualism, and this failure had stemmed from aspects of Asian culture, particularly an emphasis on deference, authority, duty, and loyalty. Nevertheless, the rise of China and, to a lesser extent, India has revived interest in the idea of Asian values, although in its modern form it tends to be orientated more specifically around the alleged strengths of Chinese civilization and particularly of Confucianism. However, the general notion of Asian values has also attracted criticism. For some, it simply serves as an excuse for the survival of authoritarian rule and absence of liberal democratic reform in many parts of Asia. The key Asian value, from this perspective, is political passivity, an unwillingness to question authority based on a tradeoff between economic well-being and political freedom. The notion of an ‘Asian civilization’ from which a distinctive set of values can be seen to derive has also been criticized, in line with wider concerns about the ‘tectonic’ model of civilizations. Not only does Asian culture encompass a wide range of national traditions and a mixture of religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and so on), but its national traditions are often highly diverse as well. For example, so-called ‘Chinese civilization’ is not defined by Confucianism but, rather, by the competing influences of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism overlaid, in the modern period, by a Maoist version of Marxism-Leninism. 9 284 GLOBAL ACTORS . . . THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD Type Established Location Religious movement 1999 1928 Egypt, West Asia, and North Africa Beijing The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 at Ismailia, Egypt, by Hassan al-Banna (1906–49). Initially focused on building up a network of schools, hospitals, and social services, the Brotherhood turned to politics during the 1930s and, briefly, to violence, operating in and out of the shadows until it was banned by President Nasser in 1954. By this time, it had spread into Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Libya, Sudan, and elsewhere. Although it remained outlawed in Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood fielded ‘independent’ candidates in the 2005 parliamentary election, winning eighty-eight seats and becoming, in effect, the first legitimate opposition force in modern Egypt. Following the 2011 uprising that overthrew Mubarak, the Brotherhood formally entered politics, under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party. When parliamentary elections were held in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco in late 2011 and early 2012, in each case they brought parties set up, or inspired, by the Brotherhood to power, Mohamed Morsi, the Brotherhood-backed candidate, becoming Egypt’s president in June 2012. However, Morsi was removed by the military in July 2013 after mass protests, the Egyptian courts later outlawing the Brotherhood and any organization or activity associated with it. Significance: The Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movement. It pioneered a model of political activism combined with Islamic charitable works that has subsequently been widely embraced across the Muslim world. By the end of the Second World War, the Brotherhood had an estimated membership of 2 million, about 500,000 in Egypt alone. However, although it kept alive the flame of political Islam, legal proscription and political repression consigned the Brotherhood to the political margins for most of the post-1945 period. Although the rise of Islamism from the 1970s onwards generated renewed interest in the Brotherhood, it was the Arab Spring of 2011 (see p. 278) that transformed its fortunes, allowing it to spearhead a form of pan-Islamism that promised to alter the politics of the Middle East and North Africa fundamentally. As well as winning power in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, and forming the main opposition in Jordan, the Brotherhood’s influence extended to the Gaza Strip (through Hamas, founded by members of the Brotherhood in 1987) and Iraq (through the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni party in the country). Brotherhood-linked parties have had the advantage that they were better organized and usually better funded than their political rivals; that they were untainted by association with ousted regimes; and that a religiously based appeal continues to be strong in societies that remain, despite revolutionary upheavals, socially conservative. Nevertheless, the dramatic reversal that the Brotherhood’s suffered in Egypt in 2013 highlights the movement’s vulnerability if it fails to maintain popular support and/or comes into direct conflict with the military. However, debate surrounds the ideological character of the Muslim Brotherhood. Since its inception, the Brotherhood has been committed to the establishment of an Islamic state based on the Shari’a, but the shift towards pragmatic politics that began after the 1970s has seen Brotherhood-linked parties enter the political mainstream by attempting to reconcile Islamism with democratic and, sometimes, liberal beliefs. As such, it was perhaps reconstructing itself around the goal of a Turkish-style secular state run by an Islamist party, rather than an Iranian-style explicitly Islamic state. The attempt to construct a form of democratic or constitutional Islamism may, nevertheless, weaken the Muslim Brotherhood by exposing it to attack from both the secular and liberal democratic forces that initiated the Arab Spring, and from Salafi groups pushing for bolder and more radical Islamization. Critics of the Muslim Brotherhood allege either that it has not fully broken with its violent past, or that, behind a liberal democratic façade, it remains committed to militant Islamism, meaning that commitments on women’s rights, tolerance towards religious minorities, and genuine political pluralism may be only paper thin. Developments in Egypt under Morsi, such as seizure of ‘temporary’ unlimited powers by the presidency, have been used to support the latter view. FIG U IDENTITY, DIFFERENCE AND CULTURE RE 285 SAYYID QUTB (1906–66) Egyptian writer and religious leader, sometimes seen as the father of modern political Islam. The son of a well-to-do farmer, Qutb was radicalized during a two-year study visit to the United States, which instilled in him a profound distaste for the materialism, immorality, and sexual licentiousness he claimed to have encountered. Qutb’s world view, or ‘Qutbism’, highlighted the barbarism and corruption that westernization had inflicted on the world, with a return to strict Islamic practice in all aspects of life offering the only possibility of salvation. Qutb’s primary targets were the westernized rulers of Egypt and other Muslim states. Imprisoned under Nasser in 1954–64, he was eventually Source: AFP/Getty tried for treason and executed. Images Whether it be the politics of race, class, and gender within and between societies, the legacies of colonialism, religious revivalism, or the shifting cultural forces shaping world order, identity and difference are clearly central to the making of global politics today. Politics is often defined in relation to conflict – struggles over different visions of the ‘good life’ and how we should organize our societies, negotiations and arguments in legislative assemblies and in the media, and tensions over power relations between individuals and groups, everywhere from the home to the workplace. The sources of such conflicts are very often rooted in perceptions of identity and difference. In this sense, identity – our sense of who we are (and, by extension, who we are not) – may well be a permanent feature of world politics, despite protestations about ‘identity politics’ as a fashionable but temporary zeitgeist. SUMMARY y Perceptions of identity and difference are central to the organization of societies, with social coherence being achieved partly through the process of ‘othering’ – designating what ‘we’ are not. y Our sense of identity and difference is often tied to how we understand our culture – the system of shared beliefs, practices, and traditions in which our community is embedded, and through which we make sense of the world. y Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis posed at the end of the Cold War suggested that in the absence of a grand ideological struggle between communist and capitalist societies at the global level, cultural, identity-based politics would assert itself as the primary fault line and cause of conflict. y Though Huntington’s thesis was controversial and flawed, religious revivalism has played a major role in the assertion of what are sometimes called ‘identity politics’ in recent years. In particular, especially through the ‘war on terror’ inaugurated by the United States after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a distinction between a ‘Muslim world’ and the West has been constructed as a major geopolitical fault line. y The social fact of multiculturalism – the relatively stable coexistence of many different cultural identities within societies – in a postcolonial world may be evidence that civilizational theories of global politics are less pertinent today, despite the cultural and religious sources of social conflict noted above. y One of the biggest questions for identity in global politics is how world order might be transformed by a widely anticipated ‘decline of the west’ and the long-term ‘rise of China’. This raises important questions about cultural ‘values’ and the manifestation of cultural identity in the way the world is organized, politically and economically. 9 GLOBAL POLITICS 286 QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION y Are all politics identity politics? y Why is the relationship between identity and difference y Is multiculturalism really dead? y To what extent are global politics about the West vs ‘the y Is it possible to maintain a sense of identity without y Is the Asian values debate still relevant in the twenty- y How persuasive is Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ y Are religious identities still an important factor in world in global politics? ‘othering’? thesis today? rest’? first century? politics? FURTHER READING Huntington, S. P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (2002). A bold, imaginative, and deeply controversial elaboration of the clash of civilizations thesis by its originator. Kepel, G., Jihad: The Trial of Political Islam (2006). A challenging and illuminating overview of the phenomenon of Islamism. Parekh, B., A New Politics of Identity: Political Principles for an Interdependent World (2008). A wide-ranging analysis of the impact of globalization on ethnic, religious, national, and other identities. Young, R., Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (2003). An accessible account of the nature and implications of postcolonialism. L inks to relevant web resources can be found on the Global Politics website: bloomsbury.pub/heywood-global-politics-3e POWER AND TWENTYFIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER 10 Source: guvendemir/Getty Images PREVIEW At the end of the Cold War, both Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush announced the dawn of a ‘new world order’. That order, as it unfolded in the years that followed, seemingly transformed the world from a ‘bipolar’ system dominated by the USA and the USSR, to a ‘unipolar’ one where the United States alone was accorded ‘superpower’ status. Three decades later, key aspects of that order – characterized by US-led economic globalization and US-led military interventionism – seem to be disintegrating. The issue of world order is vitally important because it reflects the distribution of power amongst states and other actors. However, this raises questions about the nature of power itself. Is power an attribute, something that states and other actors possess, or is it implicit in the various structures of global politics? Does power always involve domination and control, or can it also operate through cooperation and attraction? Answering these questions also demands reflection on specific world orders. What was the ‘new world order’, and what was its fate? Is the United States still a ‘global hegemon’ today? And how have multipolarity and the fragmentation of global power, the rise of emerging or resurgent powers such as China and Russia, the advance of globalization, and increased influence of non-state actors affected world order? Will a multipolar world order bring peace, cooperation, and integration, or new conflicts and heightened instability? KEY ISSUES z What is power? z How, and to what extent, has the nature of power changed? z What were the implications for world order of the end of the Cold War? z Is the United States a hegemonic power, or a power in decline? z To what extent is the world now multipolar, and are these trends set to continue? z How is growing multipolarity likely to affect global politics? 287 288 GLOBAL POLITICS THEORIES OF POWER AND GLOBAL POLITICS CON Politics can be understood as the struggles over how we should live together as societies, and in this sense is to a great extent about power. This notion was neatly summed up in the title of Harold Lasswell’s book Politics: Who Gets What, When, How? (1936). But this merely raises another question: what, exactly, is power? How can power, particularly in global politics, best be understood? Power is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Joseph Nye (see p. 295) likened power to love – ‘easier to experience than to define or measure, but no less real for that’ (Nye 2005). The problem with power is that it is an essentially contested concept: there is no settled or agreed concept of power, only a series of rival concepts. Power can be understood in terms of capability; that is, as an attribute, something that states or other actors ‘possess’. Power can be understood as a relationship; that is, as the exercise of influence over other actors. And power can be understood as a property of a structure; that is, as the ability to control the political agenda and shape how things are done. To add to the confusion, there are also debates about the changing nature of power, and in particular about the key factors through which one actor may influence another. C E PT POWER Power is commonly understood as the ability to influence the outcome of events, in the sense of having the ‘power to’ do something. In global politics, this includes the ability of a country to conduct its own affairs without the interference of other countries, bringing power very close to autonomy. However, power is usually thought of as a relationship: that is, as the ability to influence the behaviour of others in a manner not of their choosing, or ‘power over’ others. Power can therefore be said to be exercised whenever A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done. Distinctions have nevertheless been drawn between potential/actual power, relational/ structural, power and ‘hard/soft’ power. POWER AS CAPABILITY The traditional approach to power in international politics is to treat it in terms of capabilities. Power is therefore an attribute or possession. Such an approach has, for instance, been reflected in attempts to list the tangible or quantifiable ‘elements’ or ‘components’ of state power, such as military or economic strength. Over time, greater attention has also been paid to less tangible factors, such as morale and leadership skills. The capabilities approach to power enables states to be classified on the basis of the power or resources they possess, allowing the international system to be analysed on a hierarchical basis, classifying states as ‘great powers’, ‘superpowers’ (see p. 49), ‘middling powers’, ‘regional powers’, and so forth. SOURCES OF STATE POWER A set of capabilities commonly invoked in relation to state power were systematized in Michael Mann’s epic, four-volume work of international historical sociology, spanning the period 1760 to 2011: The Sources of Social Power (1986, 1993, 2012). Mann’s ‘IEMP’ model suggests four types of power are crucial: POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER 289 z Ideological power: This is the power to define accepted ‘norms’ of social behaviour, and therefore to shape social structures and practices. This is especially important at the national level, to achieve that key requirement of statehood: perceived legitimacy. Religions as well as political belief systems such as liberalism, fascism, and Marxism can thus be considered sources of ideological power. Ideologies, Mann suggests, have an ‘extensive geographical logic’ that can easily reach across state borders and infuse global politics – we might consider neoliberalism (see p. 143) an example of a ‘globalizing’ ideology in this sense. z Economic power: States’ ‘weight’ in international affairs is closely linked to their wealth and economic resources. This applies, in part, because economic development underpins military capacity, ensuring resources to develop large armies, acquire modern weapons, and wage costly or sustained wars. Modern technology and an advanced industrial base also give states political leverage in relation to trading partners, especially if the national currency is so strong and stable that it is widely used as a means of international exchange. z Military power: For many commentators, especially in the realist school, power in international politics boils down to military capacity. John Mearsheimer (see p. 318), for example, insists that international relations and world order are determined by the global ‘distribution of coercive capabilities’. Military capacity enables a country both to protect its territory and people from external aggression and to pursue its interests abroad through conquest and expansion. Key factors are therefore the size of the armed forces, their effectiveness in terms of morale, training, discipline, and leadership, and their access to the most advanced weaponry and equipment. z Political power: Mann’s definition of political power is rather narrower than many contemporary accounts. He labels it ‘the centralized and territorial regulation of social life’ and insists that the state is the only entity which can truly be said to exercise this form of power. Whether outward facing (international relations) or inward facing (national government), the political power of the state is, according to Mann, ‘polymorphous’, crystallizing in different ways to different political issues and according to different interests of core constituencies lobbying on these issues. Mann’s IEMP model is not exhaustive and is open to contest. Population, geography, and communication are examples of sources of state power this model may not do justice to. These are forms of ‘material’ and technological power that constitute what the transcendental philosopher Immanuel Kant (see p. 17) might call the ‘conditions of possibility’ for some elements of the IEMP. In other words, the degree of ideological, economic, military, or political power a state wields may depend upon these other factors: z A large population benefits a state both economically and materially, giving it a sizeable workforce and the potential to develop an extensive army. z Meanwhile, the significance of geographical variables, such as land area, location, climate, topography, and natural resources, has traditionally been stressed by geopolitics (see p. 517). Beneficial geographical features include access to the sea (for trading and military purposes); a temperate climate away from earthquake zones and areas where violent tropical storms are frequent; navigable rivers for transport, trade, and energy production; arable land for farming; and access to mineral and energy resources. 10 290 GLOBAL POLITICS z Finally, in a highly digital age, dominated by social media, communicative power seems to be increasingly important. The ability to shape how messages – especially news and forms of political communication – are produced and received is hugely important to achieving and maintaining other forms of power. Concerns about ‘fake news’ propagated through social media – the sophisticated digital manipulation of narratives, images and ultimately perceptions – and its alleged role in producing a ‘post-truth’ politics, point to the significance of communicative power to global politics today. Russia, for example, may be able to wield more political power in global politics – whether through interference in foreign elections, or spreading propaganda and strategic misinformation on social media as part of a ‘hybrid war’ to annex Crimea – than it would otherwise be afforded by more traditional sources of power (its ideological power and perceived state legitimacy, along with its economy, being relatively weak). What is sometimes called ‘cyber’ power, including the wielding of social media influence, but also hacking, industrial espionage and sabotage, and new forms of state spying, could be central to determining world order in the future, and may require less financial investment and political risk than other reordering tactics, such as the acquisition of nuclear weapons. However, the idea that power can be measured in terms of capabilities has a number of drawbacks, making it an unreliable means of determining the outcome of events. The often-quoted example of the Vietnam War (1959–75) helps to illustrate this. The United States (see p. 58) despite enjoying massive economic, technological, and military advantages, failed to defeat North Vietnam and its communist ally, the Vietcong. At best, capabilities define potential or latent power rather than actual power, and translating a capability into a genuine political asset may be difficult and perhaps impossible. This applies for a number of reasons: z The relative importance of the attributes of power is debatable. Is a large population more significant than geographical size? Is economic power now more important than military power? z Some elements of state power may be less beneficial than they at first appear. For example, a highly educated population may limit a state’s ability to wage or sustain warfare, and natural resources may impair economic growth, as in the so-called ‘paradox of plenty’ (see p. 519). z Subjective factors may be as significant as quantifiable, objective factors. These include the will and resolve of the armed forces and what can be called ‘national morale’. Strategy and leadership may also be decisive, allowing, for instance, weaker actors to prevail over stronger ones in so-called ‘asymmetrical’ wars. Terrorism (see p. 379) and insurrection can thus be examples of ‘the strength of the weak’ (Ignatieff 2004). z It may only be possible to translate resources or capacities into genuine political efficacy in particular circumstances. For example, the possession of nuclear weapons may be irrelevant when a state is confronting a terrorist threat or fighting a guerrilla war, and such weapons are ‘unusable’ in most political circumstances. z Power is dynamic and ever-changing, meaning that power relations are never fixed or ‘given’. Power may shift, for example, due to economic booms or slumps, financial crises, the discovery of new energy resources, the acquisition of new weapons, natural disaster, an upsurge in ethnic conflict, and so on. POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER RELATIONAL POWER An alternative way of thinking about power is to portray it as a relationship. In its classic formulation, power can be said to be exercised whenever A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done. Rather than equating power with ‘strength’ (as in the capabilities approach), a concern with relationships equates power with ‘influence’. Capabilities and relationships are clearly not distinct, however as power relations between states or other actors may be taken to reflect the balance of their respective capabilities. For this reason, relational power is often understood in terms of actions and outcomes – that is, the effect one actor has on another – rather than in terms of contrasting assessments of capabilities. This is underscored by the importance of perception when considering power. States and other actors deal with one another on the basis of their calculations of relative power. This may mean, for example, that reputation can sustain state power despite its decline in ‘objective’ terms. Foreign policy decisions may thus be based on underestimates and overestimates of the power of other actors, as well as various kinds of misinterpretation and misperception. Furthermore, especially in military matters, A may exert influence on B in one of two ways: either by getting B to do what B would not otherwise have done (compellance) or by preventing B from doing what B would otherwise have done (deterrence). Generally, the former will be riskier and require the use of greater resources than the latter. This can be seen in the contrast between the 2003 invasion of Iraq to bring about ‘regime change’ (an example of compellance) and the previous policy of preventing attacks on the Kurds and Shia Muslims by maintaining ‘no-fly zones’ (an example of deterrence). STRUCTURAL POWER Whereas the capabilities and relationship models of power clearly assume the existence of an actor or agent, usually the state, structural power links the distribution of power to biases within the social structures through which actors relate to one another and make decisions, such as race or gender. Historically, the strongest voices to highlight the operation of structural power have been theorists and activists who have themselves experienced structural inequalities – feminists and anti-racists, for example. African American thinkers, speaking and writing from the contexts first of slavery, then of segregation, and the civil rights struggles, have been especially influential in this regard. From W. E. B. Du Bois’ identification of the ‘color line’ (see p. 106) in 1903, to bell hooks’ (see p. 110) intersectional analysis of Western social structure as ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’, Black American intellectuals have noted that power is partly, if not mainly, a structural phenomenon. Kwame Ture (known until 1969 as Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton’s (1967) Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America argued that racism operates in two ways; direct (individual white people against individual Black people) and structural (collective white communities against collective Black communities). The latter, structural form of power, manifests itself in policies and practices that disadvantage Black Americans and privilege (see p. 271) white Americans. At the level of global politics, they argue that even amid the processes of decolonization, ‘black people in this country form a colony’, confined to ‘ghettos’ and subject to both economic, structural violence and direct violence (from the police, organized racist groups, and so on). In other words, the state power of the United States was a form of ‘white power’, and 291 Relational power: The ability of one actor to influence another actor or actors in a manner not of their choosing. Compellance: A tactic or strategy designed to force an adversary to make concessions against its will through war or the threat of aggression. Deterrence: A tactic or strategy designed to prevent aggression by emphasizing the scale of the likely military response (the cost of an attack would be greater than any benefit it may bring). Structural power: The ability to shape the frameworks within which global actors relate to one another, thus affecting ‘how things shall be done’. 10 292 GLOBAL POLITICS as such was wielded against people of colour in other parts of the world in the form of war (direct violence) and at home in the form of impoverishment, ghettoization, and exclusion (structural violence). Johan Galtung, the pioneering ‘peace studies’ scholar and international relations theorist, later noted that Carmichael’s arguments directly informed his own distinction between structural and direct violence in world politics. Civil rights leaders Floyd B. McKissick (left), Dr Martin Luther King Jr (centre), and Stokely Carmichael (right) marching through Mississippi to encourage voter registration FIG U Source: Vernon Merritt III/Getty Images RE STOKELY CARMICHAEL/KWAME TURE (1941–98) Leading figure in the American civil rights movement, and specifically of what became known, after his work, as the ‘Black Power’ movement. Inspired by older contemporaries including Frantz Fanon (see p. 282) and Malcolm X, Ture was a panAfricanist who attended the ‘historically Black’ Howard University, where he participated in the ‘Freedom Rides’ aimed at desegregating interstate bus travel. He was later a leading organizer and activist in civil rights organizations including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. Ture’s structural theory of power, elaborated in many speeches and later in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967), remains highly influential on anti-racist and postcolonial thought today. His relative militancy, rejection of nonviolence, and integration and coalition with white liberals made Ture a target for the FBI and CIA, whose surveillance of him continued even after he left the United States for Guinea, where he became an advisor to socialist President Ahmed Sékou Touré and where he co-founded and led the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, a socialist, anti-colonial, pan-Africanist political party. POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER 293 Another influential account of structural power in international relations was provided by Susan Strange, who defined it as ‘the power to decide how things shall be done, the power to shape frameworks within which states relate to one another, relate to people or relate to corporate enterprises’ (Strange 1988). Strange further distinguished between four primary power structures: z The knowledge structure, which influences an actor’s beliefs, ideas, or perceptions. z The financial structure, which controls access to credit or investment. z The security structure, which shapes defence and strategic issues. z The production structure, which affects economic development and prosperity. Strange insisted that the same state or states need not dominate each of these structures but, rather, that their structural power may vary across the structures. This analysis of power provides an alternative to state-centrism and highlights the important and growing role played by regimes (see p. 89) and international organizations (see p. 547). CHANGING NATURE OF POWER Recent debates about the changing nature of power reflect less on the emergence of conceptually new forms of power and more on the changing mechanisms through which relational power is exercised. 10 Military to Economic Power Three alleged shifts in this respect have attracted attention. The first is a general shift from military power to economic power. Military power has been the traditional currency of world politics. Realist theorists place a particular emphasis on military power because, in their view, the international system is structured above all by security and survival. In a self-help world, states face national disaster unless they have the capacity for self-defence. However, this image of militarily based power politics has been challenged by neoliberals who argue that growing trade links and increasing interdependence (see p. 84) make interstate war more costly and therefore less likely. Military force has thus become a less reliable and less important policy option. In the modern world, states therefore compete through trade rather than through the use of force. Hard Power to Soft Power The second shift is the alleged wider decline of ‘hard’ power, which encompasses both military power and economic power. Hard power is ‘command power’, the ability to change what others do through the use of inducements (carrots) or threats (sticks). By contrast, there has been a growth in ‘soft’ power. Soft power is ‘co-optive power’; it rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others by attraction rather than coercion (Nye 2005). Whereas hard power draws on resources such as force, sanctions, payments, and bribes, soft power operates largely through culture, political ideals, and foreign policies (especially when these are seen to be attractive, legitimate or to possess moral authority). The differences between hard and soft power are illustrated in Figure 10.1. Hard power: The ability of one actor (usually but not necessarily a state) to influence another through the use of threats or rewards, typically involving military ‘sticks’ or economic ‘carrots’. Soft power: The ability to influence other actors by persuading them to follow or agree to norms and aspirations that produce the desired behaviour. 294 GLOBAL POLITICS For some feminists, the hard/soft power distinction highlights deeper factors, linked to the relationship between power and gender. In this view, the idea of ‘power over’, particularly when it is associated with ‘hard’ strategies such as coercion and the use of threats and rewards, reflects ‘masculinist’ biases that generally underpin the realist theory of power politics (see p. 109). Feminists, on the other hand, have emphasized the extent to which, in domestic and transnational social relations especially, power is exercised through nurturing, cooperation, and sharing. Instead of conflictual and capacity conceptions of power, this suggests the alternative notion of power as collaboration, or ‘power with’ (see below). Smart power: The use of soft power backed up by the possible use of hard power. How has this alleged shift from hard to soft power come about? The key explanation is that the growth of interdependence and interconnectedness means that people see more, hear more, and know more about what happens around the globe. Increasing cross-border flows of images, information, and ideas make it easier for people to form judgements about the culture and values of other states as well as about the foreign and domestic policies of their governments. This trend is also aided by generally improving literacy levels and educational standards worldwide, and by the spread of democracy, particularly as democratic systems operate largely through soft-power mechanisms (the personalities of leaders, the image and values of political parties, and so on). In such circumstances, a state’s use of hard-power strategies may risk the loss of ‘hearts and minds’. For example, the Bush administration’s approach to the ‘war on terror’, and particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, may have been counterproductive in that it provoked increased anti-Americanism across the Arab and wider Muslim world, possibly even fuelling support for terrorism. In most circumstances, however, hard and soft power operate in tandem, leading to the idea of ‘smart power’. There are, nevertheless, some examples of soft power that operate in the absence of hard power, such as the Vatican, the Dalai Lama, Canada, and Norway, each of which has wielded power through attraction and persuasion despite tending to avoid (or formally lacking) the tools of hard power. Hard power (Punishment, reward) Compulsion Inducement Agenda-setting Smart Power (Hard and Soft Power reinforce one another) Figure 10.1 Hard, soft, and smart power Persuasion Soft Power (Attraction, identification) FIG U POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER RE 295 JOSEPH S. NYE (1937–) US academic and foreign policy analyst. Nye was, with Robert Keohane (see p. 548), one of the leading theorists of ‘complex interdependence’, which offered an alternative to the realist belief in international anarchy (Keohane and Nye 1977). In Bound to Lead (1990) and The Paradox of American Power (2002), he has emphasized the need for the United States to redefine the national interest in the light of developments such as globalization and the information revolution, recognizing that the new conditions of global interdependence placed a greater stress on multilateral cooperation. As he put it, the United States ‘can’t go it alone’. Nye has been particularly associated with the idea of ‘soft power’ (the ability to attract and persuade), a term he coined, and later with the notion of ‘smart power’, a blend of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power. Nye’s other major works include Soft Power (2005), Understanding International Conflict (2008), and The Source: Rick Friedman/ Powers to Lead (2008). Getty Images FROM ‘POWER OVER’ TO ‘POWER WITH’ Is the conventional notion of power as domination and control – that is, material ‘power over’ others – still sustainable? Until the 1980s, the prevalent understanding of power was based on realist assumptions about the primacy of states and the importance of military might and economic strength in world affairs. This was consistent with the billiard ball image of world politics (see p. 4), in which power is demonstrated when billiard balls (representing states) collide with one another. This conception of power has become less persuasive over time, due to a variety of developments. In addition to the collapse of the Cold War’s bipolar threat system and the onset of the US-led ‘war on terror’, these developments include the growing influence of states in the ‘Global South’, the greater prominence of discourses related to human rights (see p. 400), and the emergence of forms of regional and global governance (see p. 572). In this light, Barnett and Duvall (2005) proposed a more nuanced approach to power, based on four contrasting (but possibly overlapping) conceptions – ‘compulsory’, ‘institutional’, ‘structural’, and ‘productive’ power. The first two of these are familiar from conventional realist and liberal thinking on the subject, while the latter two are more commonly used by critical theorists: z Compulsory power allows one actor to have direct control over another, usually through the exercise of military or economic means. z Institutional power occurs when actors exercise indirect control over others, as, for instance, when states establish international institutions that work to their own longterm advantage and to the disadvantage of others. z Structural power operates through structures that shape the capacities and interests of actors in relation to one another, as in the tendency of the global capitalist system to create a differential relationship between capital and labour. (Strange’s [1996] conception of ‘structural power’ encompasses both this notion and ‘institutional’ power.) z Productive power emerges from the post-structuralist theory of Michel Foucault (see p. 19), himself influenced by the political philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the insight that ‘knowledge is power’. Productive power works by defining ‘legitimate’ knowledge and by determining whose knowledge matters, and this concept of power has therefore been central to much feminist and postcolonial analysis of global politics. 10 296 GLOBAL POLITICS COLD WAR BIPOLARITY AND ITS AFTERMATH World order: The actual or perceived distribution of power between and amongst states and other key actors, giving rise to a relatively stable pattern of relationships and behaviours. COLD WAR BIPOLARITY Although there is considerable debate about the nature of world order over the course of the twenty-first century, there is a broad consensus about the Cold War period. In the aftermath of the defeat of Germany, Japan, and Italy in the Second World War in 1945 and with the UK weakened by war and suffering from long-term relative economic decline, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as ‘superpowers’, powers greater than traditional ‘great powers’. Their status was characterized by their preponderant military power (particularly in terms of their nuclear arsenals) and their span of ideological leadership. This Cold War bipolarity (with the two major power blocs – the US-dominated West and the Soviet-dominated East – confronting each other) was consolidated by the formation of rival military alliances, NATO in 1949 and the Warsaw Pact in 1955, and was reflected in the division of Europe, symbolized by the Berlin Wall erected in 1961. The bipolar model of the Cold War, however, became increasingly less accurate from the 1960s onwards. This was due, first, to the growing fragmentation of the communist world (notably deepening enmity between Moscow and Beijing, the Chinese Revolution having occurred in 1949) and, secondly, to the resurgence of Japan and Germany as economic superpowers. One of the consequences of this emerging multipolarity (see p. 310) was détente between East and West. This was reflected in President Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972 and the Strategic Arms Limitation talks between 1967 and 1979 that produced the SALT I and SALT II Agreements (see Chapter 12). What were the implications for the international system of Cold War bipolarity? For neorealists in particular, bipolarity is biased in favour of stability and order. This occurs for a number of reasons. First, and most importantly, bipolar systems tend towards a balance of power (see p. 343). During the Cold War, the approximate, if dynamic, military equality between the United States and the Soviet Union inclined both of them towards a strategy of deterrence. Once a condition of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was achieved, the two superpowers effectively cancelled each other out, albeit through a ‘balance of terror’. Second, stability of this period was guaranteed by the fact that there were but two key actors. Fewer great powers reduced the possibilities of a greatpower war, but also, crucially, reduced the chances of miscalculation, making it easier to operate an effective system of deterrence. Third, power relationships in the Cold War system were more stable because each bloc was forced to rely on inner (economic and military) resources, as external (alliances with other states or blocs) means of expanding power not being available. Once the division of Europe was developed, in effect, into the division of the world, shifting alliances that may have destabilized the balance of power were largely ruled out. Bipolarity therefore led to the ‘long peace’ between 1945 and 1990, in particular bringing peace to a Europe that had been the crucible of world war twice before in the twentieth century. However, not all theorists had such a positive view of Cold War bipolarity. One criticism of the bipolar system was that it strengthened imperialist tendencies in both the USA and the USSR as, discouraged from direct confrontation with each other, each sought to extend or consolidate its control over its sphere of influence (see Table 10.1). POWER AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER 297 Table 10.1 Extending spheres of influence USA Neocolonialism Political interference in Latin America Vietnam War (1955–75) USSR Warsaw Pact invasion of Hungary (1956) Invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) Invasion of Afghanistan (1979) A further criticism of bipolarity was that superpower rivalry and a strategy of nuclear deterrents produced conditions of ongoing tension that always threatened to make the Cold War ‘hot’. In other words, the Cold War may have remained ‘cold’ more because of good fortune or the good sense of individual leaders, rather than through the structural dynamics of the system itself. THE END OF THE COLD WAR Even though neorealism may be effective in highlighting some of the benefits of Cold War bipolarity, it struggles to explain its collapse. The programme of accelerating reform, initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 onwards, ended up with the Soviet Union relinquishing many of its core strategic achievements, notably its military and political domination over Eastern Europe, as well as, ultimately, over the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, the image of equilibrium within the Cold War bipolar system may always have been misleading. As will be discussed later, in many ways the United States became the hegemonic power in 1945, with the Soviet Union always as a challenger but never as an equal. This was reflected in the fact that while the Soviet Union was undoubtedly a military superpower it, arguably, never achieved the status of an economic superpower. Moreover, the imbalance between its military capacity and its level of economic development always made it vulnerable. This vulnerability was exploited by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, when increased US military spending put massive pressure on the fragile and inefficient Soviet economy, providing the context for the Gorbachev reform process. 10 298 APPROACHES TO . . . REALIST VIEW The end of the Cold War came as a shock to the overwhelming majority of realist theorists, creating something of a crisis within realist theory. According to realist assumptions, states are meant to pursue their national interests, particularly though the maintenance of military and territorial security. However, between 1989 and 1991 under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union was prepared to relinquish its military and political domination over Eastern Europe and accepted the break-away of its non-Russian republics. This was, moreover, accomplished without the application of irresistible external strategic pressure on the Soviet Union. The sudden collapse of the Cold War’s bipolar world order therefore came as a surprise to many realists, and triggered considerable concern for the future. When, at the Cold War’s end, the neorealist John Mearsheimer (see p. 318) predicted that any collapse of bipolarity could lead to the first major interstate wars in Europe since 1945, non-realist theorists were not persuaded. But given the outbreak of a major war between Russia and Ukraine (a confrontation Mearsheimer had frequently warned of in his later work of the 2010s), the neorealist thesis may yet be validated. LIBERAL VIEW Although the end of the Cold War led to a burst of optimism amongst liberal theorists who anticipated that morality, rather than power politics, could be placed at the heart of international diplomacy, liberals fared little better than realists in predicting the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, since the 1970s, liberals had been highlighting a general trend in favour of cooperation and away from the use of military power. This was based on the tendency of economic modernization to create patterns of ‘complex interdependence’ that both favoured integration and encouraged states to compete through trade rather than war. Cold Warstyle antagonism and military confrontation in the form of the nuclear arms race were therefore seen to be increasingly outmoded, as the tendency towards détente demonstrated. In this view, the Soviet Union’s reluctance to use military force to maintain its control over Eastern Europe as well as its own territorial integrity stemmed, in part, from the recognition that ending East–West rivalry would be likely to bring economic be

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