CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDIES OF GLOBALISATION
AND INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION
S. Prozorov
Petrozavodsk State University,
Petrozavodsk, Russia
The understanding of critical attitudes to the process of globalisation has been severely hindered by
the undifferentiated approaches to the genre of «critique of globalisation» that resulted in lumping
together entirely different philosophical and theoretical orientations under the label «anti-globalism». In
this paper we attempt a structuration of the discursive field of the ‘critique of globalisation’ through a
typology of critical approaches along two criteria. Firstly, critical approaches may be distinguished on the
basis of their normative orientation. In this sense, we may speak of anti-globalism and alter- (or
alternative) globalism. In a narrow sense, anti-globalism arguably refers to the minority of critical
readings of globalisation: it rejects the very idea of globalisation as empirically incorrect, normatively
wrong, epistemologically dubious or ontologically questionable. For anti-globalism we either still live in
the world, structured according to the particularistic and pluralistic principles of sovereign statehood, or
in the world, where these principles are presently under attack from a «false universalism» of the
discourse of globalisation, which can only result in the hegemony of particular states to the detriment of
international pluralism. In contrast, alter-globalism may be said to accept the fundamental principles of
globalisation and the overriding objective of «ever-greater» and «ever-deeper» international integration,
but questions the specific modality of the contemporary processes of globalisation. In particular, alterglobalism opposes the equation of globalisation with the universalisation of neoliberal economic
doctrines and the further unobstructed development of global capitalism. Thus, antiglobalism opposes
globalisation as such, while alter-globalism accepts and welcomes the possibility of the establishment of a
global order, but is critical of the present form of such an order.
The second criterion concerns the metatheoretical orientation (both ontological and
epistemological) of the critical discourse. In this aspect we may distinguish between reconstructive and
deconstructive forms of criticism. Reconstructive (or transcendental) criticism operates with a certain
standard (transcendental criterion), against which a phenomenon or a practice could be measured and
found wanting, and alternatives could be articulated. The reconstructive critique of globalisation therefore
attempts to establish the degree of correspondence of the present condition of globalisation against its
theoretical standard and proposes alternative forms of political, economic and social organisation that are
preferable in terms of this standard. In contrast, deconstructive criticism is an immanent form of critique
that does not posit its own normative standard but focuses on the contradictions, paradoxes and aporias of
the criticised object, i.e. the discourse of globalisation itself, and infers from these either the ‘unreality’ of
the condition in question, or the non-identity of its practice to its own concept. Rather than propose
alternatives to the present process of globalisation, deconstructive criticism unravels the process itself,
whereby it loses its appearance of coherence, consistency and even reality.
Thus, our typology of critiques of globalisation features four possible articulations of criticism,
presented in the table below.
Anti-Globalism
Reconstructive Criticism
Deconstructive Criticism
Classical and Neoclassical
Realism
Carl Schmitt
Gary Ulmen
Paul Piccone (Telos)
Post-Marxism/PostStructuralism
Michel Foucault
Chantal Mouffe
Rob Walker
Mitchell Dean
Michael Dillon
Alter-Globalism
Left Critical Theory
Jurgen Habermas
Ulrich Beck
Anthony Giddens
Andrew Linklater
David Held
Deconstructionist Ethics
Jacques Derrida
David Campbell
Deleuzian Marxism:
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
Reconstructive antiglobalism is exemplified by classical and neo-classical realist approaches,
whose ontological presupposition is the existence of a pluralistic structure of international relations,
constituted by the principle of state sovereignty, with its assumptions of sovereign equality, nonintervention and the irreducible particularism of values and norms. From this perspective, globalisation
exemplifies merely another attempt at the establishment of international hegemony, this time a hegemony
of liberal-democratic capitalism. Contemporary forms of such criticism are particularly inspired by the
work of Carl Schmitt, who was sharply critical of liberal universalism with its pathos of ‘world unity’ and
can thus be viewed as the key precursor to the critique of globalisation. The alternative, proposed by
reconstructive antiglobalism, consists in the defence of the existing structure of international relations, i.e.
the principle of sovereignty, which alone can guarantee international pluralism and provide a meaningful
locus for the formation of a democratic community.
Deconstructive antiglobalism is best represented by the post-Marxist orientations (Laclau, Mouffe),
Foucauldian studies in governmentality (Dean) and the poststructuralist orientation in IR theory (Walker,
Edkins). Unlike classical realism, this approach does not operate with a transcendental criterion of the
principle of sovereignty, but targets both sovereign or statist governance and the emergent cosmopolitan
forms of rule («global governance»), demonstrating their underlying identity. The deconstruction of
globalisation from this perspective targets the discourse of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ and «global civil
society», demonstrating its inherent contradictions, which collapse it into pure abstraction and
meaninglessness. For this approach, «global democracy» is impossible, since democracy requires a
concrete and specific demos as its container, distinguished from other such particularist containers.
«Global democratisation» is thus nothing other than the authoritarian extension of neoliberal principles of
rule across the globe, without the introduction of any mechanisms of democratic accountability.
Similarly, the diversity and pluralism, celebrated in the discourses of globalisation, turn out to be
derivative from a fundamental monism of liberal individualism, which makes globalisation a colonising
project of the «liberal subjectivity». If reconstructive antiglobalism viewed globalisation as a period of
decline and degeneration in contrast to the era of sovereign statehood, the deconstructive approach finds
little difference between two forms of governance, which delegitimises the process of globalisation and
posits it as a variant on the recurrent theme of power politics and the drive for international hegemony.
Reconstructive alterglobalism is best represented by such theorists as Jurgen Habermas, Ulrich Beck
and Anthony Giddens, the theorists of the «second» or «reflexive» modernity. This approach is strongly
critical of the dominant neoliberal form of globalisation (as it is of the domestic neoliberal politics in
Western societies) as perpetuating inequality and obliterating substantive democracy, but see no reason for
dispensing with the ideal of globalisation as such. Instead, overcoming neoliberalism is posited as a
necessarily global project that can only be achieved in what Habermas terms a «post-national constellation».
The transcendental criterion at work in this form of criticism is a triad of justice, equality and democracy.
The alternative to the present liberal-capitalist globalisation is sought in the process of «global
democratisation», which is founded on Habermasian principles of communicative ethics, a utopian project
of arriving at a non-exclusive discursive community, whose communicative interactions eventually result in
a «rational consensus» on global political, economic and social issues. Reconstructive alterglobalism is thus
strongly utopian and progressivist in its vision of the «proper» globalisation and may be contrasted with an
ontologically pessimistic orientation of antiglobalism, both re- and de- constructive.
Finally, deconstructive alterglobalism is exemplified by two distinct orientations that both maintain
an attachment to the ideal of globalisation, yet find in the present process of globalisation insurmountable
contradictions that ultimately undermine the very logic of globalisation.
Firstly, Levinasian-Derridean «postmodern ethics» (represented in IR by e.g. the late work of David
Campbell) seeks to rethink cosmopolitanism ontologically from the perspective of «responsibility to
Otherness». All actual forms of political community are in this approach problematised as insufficiently
attuned to otherness, exclusive, intolerant and inhospitable. A non-exclusive community may only be
posited as a global one, yet contemporary «globalization» is viewed as the very opposite of «responsibility
to Otherness», since it rather effaces otherness in the homogenising and levelling progress of liberal
capitalism. Thus, deconstructive antiglobalism proposes the concept of a «New International» as an
alternative cosmopolitan project, which, in contrast to Habermasian alterglobalism, is not founded on any
transcendental criterion, but rather seeks to retain openness to the Other and such values as hospitality,
forgiveness and infinite responsibility. The arguable weakness of this approach is its almost necessary
ambiguity: the alterglobalist «community» is posited in paradoxical terms as inoperative, a «community
without community», an ideal whose implementation is always deferred and remains «to come».
The second form of deconstructive alterglobalism is represented by the post-Deleuzian approach of
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, which synthesises traditional Marxist themes of class struggle and
international solidarity with the contemporary philosophical innovations in reconceptualising the nature
of power and resistance. For Hardt and Negri, contemporary globalisation may be thought in terms of the
succession of the imperialism of particular nation-states by the «post-national» force of Empire, an
impersonal machine of global capitalism, which dissolves all individual and state identities, dismantles
borders and fragments communities. At the same time, the rule of Empire remains hierarchical, exclusive
and violent, and war remains its key instrument. Yet, for Hardt and Negri power inevitably produces its
own excess in the form of resistance, which is isomorphic to the strategies of power. Thus, resistance of
globalisation cannot be tied to the anachronistic concepts of classes, nations, states or even individual
liberties, but must be similarly global, decentred and plural. In this approach, the force that emerges out of
the contradictions of Imperial capitalism is the multitude, a decentred structure of multiple differences,
united only by the resistance to their subjection. On this basis, Hardt and Negri rework the notion of
«global democracy» as the immanent resistance of the multitude to the mechanisms of the Empire, not an
order founded on certain transcendental principles (a la Habermas) but rather contained in the movement
of resistance itself. Arguably, it is Hardt and Negri’s approach that informs the European and «antiglobalist» protests during the last decade.
This typology demonstrates that the critique of globalisation is a fragmented field, in which it is
possible to identify incompatible and even antagonistic positions. Indeed, some of the key debates in
today’s political theory take place within this field: e.g. the -debate between deconstructive antiglobalists
and reconstructive alterglobalists (Mouffe –Habermas) or within the alterglobalist grouping (Habermas –
Derrida). It is therefore impossible to approach the phenomenon of «antiglobalism» as a unitary category
either to affirm or deny it. The thematic of globalisation has generated an inherently pluralistic field of
critical discussion, which not merely proposes different alternatives to globalisation but view this
phenomenon itself in strikingly different ways.