Understanding Globalization

A Multi-Dimensional Approach

Kavous Ardalan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412854030
• eBook ISBN: 9781351296182
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book discusses eight dimensions of globalization—world order, culture, the state, information technology, economics, production, development, and Bretton Woods Institutions—from the perspective of four diverse sociological paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This multi-perspective approach forces readers to abandon their preconcieved assumptions and allows them the opportunity to view globalization through new eyes.

Kavous Ardalan argues that social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of these four key paradigms because each one is founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and each one generates useful theories, concepts, and analytical tools. This method facilitates distancing from one's favored paradigm and appreciating other available approaches to better understand social phenomena. The knowledge of paradigms increases awareness of the boundaries and limitations of each individual paradigm. While most books on the topic focus on particular aspects of globalization from specific viewpoints, this fair and unbiased volume provides readers with a balanced understanding of globalization.

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Globalization and World Order: Four Perspectives

The terms “world order” and “multilateralism” are commonly used in political discourse and journalism. The two represent concepts that are interrelated. Multilateralism plays a subordinate role to world order in the sense that multilateralism exists in the context of the political structure of world order. Although multilateralism is dependent on world order, it also shapes world order.

The term “international relations” is also commonly used, but it assumes the Westphalian state system as its basic framework, which ignores the existence of other forms of power than state power in global relations. The term “world order” does not make any assumption with respect to the nature of the entities that constitute power, and regards it as an historically specific configuration of global power relations.

In conventional diplomatic usage, the term multilateral refers to relationships among more than two states with respect to some specific issue or set of issues, for example, multilateral trade and payments, which mean free trade, convertible currencies, and freedom of capital flows. Multilateralism involves the interstate system, that is, the relations among states through diplomatic channels or interstate organizations. Multilateralism also involves the relations among the economic actors of civil society within a framework regulated by states and international organizations. It regards civil society as separate and distinct from the state, and it views the members of civil society as acting within a system of rationally deducible behavioral laws.

Multilateralism emerged in the context of the negotiations between the United States and Britain for the constitution of the post-World War II order. The United States, based on its economic power, pressured Britain to abandon the preferential trade and payments system that covered the Commonwealth and Empire. During the Anglo-American negotiations, Europe and the Soviet Union were devastated by war, and the Third World did not play any role in international affairs. That is, these countries effectively did not participate in defining the concept or in giving substance to it.

Globalization and world order, as any other phenomenon, can be explained based on different paradigms. This chapter provides four different explanations of globalization and world order from the vantage point of four different paradigms. Each explanation focuses on a certain aspect of globalization and world order. The four explanations are equally meritorious. In this chapter, Sections I through IV present the four perspectives, and Section V concludes the discussion.

I. Perspective One or Functionalist View

Associated with the drafting of the United Nations (UN) Charter has been a stream of theories—called liberal institutionalism—which has endeavored to discern the emergence of institutions that would transform the world order by progressively bringing the state system under an authoritative regulation. This stream has generated a sequence of theoretical formulations, each of which has been replaced by its successor.¹

The earliest formulation was functionalism. It envisaged a route through the “low politics” of functional or technical agencies. Its principal argument was that by associating professionals and technicians with international agencies, cooperation among states would increase. This is because professionals and technicians are primarily concerned with solving practical problems of everyday life—such as delivering the mail on time, and promoting health, education, and welfare. When these professionals and technicians are placed within international agencies that are charged with these kinds of matters, the conflictual sphere of “high politics” of diplomats and political leaders would be circumvented and diminished by the cooperative sphere of functionalism. That is, the world government would arrive through functional activities rather than by design.

Functionalism was embodied in the specialized agencies that constituted component parts of the UN system. It gained relevancy with the UN expansion of technical assistance in less-developed countries beginning in the 1960s. This was when countries were helping to build the state structures as the foundation of the world-system.

Functionalism, however, offered no theory of how a more centralized world authority would emerge. Neofunctionalist theory filled this gap by noting that the scope and authority of international institutions would increase through a conscious strategy of leadership. Innovative leadership should extend any major field of functional competence entrusted to an international institution to related fields that have no assigned international authority. This was called the “spillover” effect. Neofunctionalism added to the list of relevant actors some elements of civil society: trade unions, industrial associations, consumer groups and other advocacy groups, and political parties. The positive attitude of these interest groups toward international institutions would increase the authority of these institutions.

Neofunctionalism considered the broadening of scope and authority of international institutions as a process of integration. It enjoyed its greatest success in the process of European economic integration. This prompted its application to non-European situations. In its application to Latin America, actors such as autonomous interest groups and political parties were replaced by technocratic elites. Its application to the world as a whole was less plausible.

Functionalism and neofunctionalism were both challenged by political events. The East–West conflicts of the Cold War; the North–South unresolved political issues that remained after the decolonization of the 1960s (most notably southern African and the Arab-Israeli conflicts); and other political conflicts could not be dominated by technical cooperation. Accordingly, functionalism and neofunctionalism appeared as an ideology of the Western capitalist powers, that is, the politicization of technical work.

After functionalism and neofunctionalism lost theoretical ground, liberal institutionalism shifted its vision. It changed its focus from superseding the state through some larger regional or world integration, to cooperative arrangements among states.

Starting in the early 1970s, interest shifted to transnational relations. It intensified the emphasis that neofunctionalism placed on civil society as a network of relations that both extends and circumscribes the autonomy of state action. The world economy took the center stage, not only as business organizations that operated on a global scale, but also as the emergence of a transnational community among those people who were most directly involved. More recently, alongside interest groups, emphasis has been placed on “epistemic communities,” that is, transnational networks of specialists who share a way of conceiving and defining global problems in specific areas of concern.

Corresponding to the development of transnational civil society is the fragmentation of the state. States are perceived as containing competing agencies. An agency in one state might build a network with its counterparts in other states in order to enhance its influence within its own state. International institutions are now more complex: they are constrained both by the transnational network of global civil society such as the networks of international production and global finance; and by the transgovernmental networks constructed by bureaucratic segments within various states.

The phenomenon of “complex interdependence” led to the idea of “regimes,” which is a set of rules accepted by a group of states in dealing with a certain area of common concerns. The notion deals with how cooperation is achieved and sustained without necessarily having to deal with formal international organizations. Moreover, it deals with cooperation, not with superseding the state authority. Regime theory focuses upon “rational actors” who act under conditions of “bounded rationality,” that is, in the absence of having full information and continuous calculation of self-interest, but relying on procedures that have worked reasonably well in the past. One consequence of the predominance of regime theory in recent liberal institutionalism has been a shift of emphasis back to states as the principal actors.

Central to the regime theory is the thesis of “hegemonic stability,” according to which regimes have been constituted and protected by dominant powers. Liberal institutionalist analysis based on rational-choice assumptions suggests that even when such dominant powers decline, existing forms of cooperation survive because they continue to provide states with cost-saving, uncertainty-reducing, and flexible means of achieving the results of cooperation.

Liberal institutionalism, with its various theoretical phases, has certain basic characteristics. Its epistemology is both positivist and rational deductive. This is because its objects of enquiry are actors and their interactions; and it attempts to analyze their behavior according to models of rational choice. Liberal institutionalism takes the existing order as given and attempts to make it work more smoothly. Liberal institutionalism does not attempt to criticize and change the existing order.

Liberal institutionalism starts with the state system and world capitalist economy and tries to make these two global structures compatible; and tries to ensure stability and predictability in the world economy. Indeed, regime theory explains well the economic cooperation among the G7 and other advanced capitalist countries. However, it cannot explain as well the attempts made to change the structure of world economy. This is because regimes are designed to stabilize the world economy and prevent radical departures from economic orthodoxy, for example, through socialism. Liberal institutionalism is consistent with a conservatively adaptive attitude toward the existing structures of world order.

II. Perspective Two or Interpretive View

Realism places primary emphasis on states and analyzes the historical behavior of states, but it does not limit its vision to states. Realism is also concerned with how the economic and social phenomena are related to states and how the nature of states changes. Realism does not view the state as an absolute, but historicized.²

When states are the most significant powerful entities in global power relations, and each state is constrained in its ambitions by the threat of retaliation by other states, then the world order is conceived of a series of transitory arrangements among a group of states that find a temporary common interest in order to achieve their collective purposes. Such a system is driven by changes in the relative powers of the states and the shifts in their interests. These lead to a new composition of groupings of states that have a new set of common or compatible purposes.

In the realist conception of world order, international institutions and general principles of international law or behavior have a superstructural character. That is, they are means to achieve ends, which emanate from the real conflicts of interest that underlie the system. In the same way that the ruling class in a territorial state denounces class war and tries to maintain domestic peace in order to guarantees its own security and predominance, the international peace is of special interest to predominant powers. Indeed, such states supply the power that is necessary for the purpose of governance.

In the realist perspective, even when there is a considerable proliferation of international institutions, they lack almost any cumulative authority. International organizations are agencies with no real autonomy in articulating collective purposes and mobilizing resources to implement these purposes. They are conduits for publicly endorsing and putting into effect the purposes of those states that provide the resources necessary for attaining them. International institutions are public organizations designed to legitimate privately determined policies and actions. Such legitimizations are based on principles that are suspected to be rationalizations of ulterior motives. The critical realist analyst reveals the basic purposes at work. Claims made based on the principles invoked constitute irrelevant distraction from the real issue, which is to be revealed as the basic interests at work. Only by exposing these interests can effective counteracting forces be organized, which, in turn, might utilize international institutions and principles of law and morality to further their diff...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Globalization and World Order: Four Perspectives
• 2. Globalization and Culture: Four Perspectives
• 3. Globalization and the State: Four Perspectives
• 4. Globalization and Information Technology: Four Perspectives
• 5. Globalization and Economics: Four Perspectives
• 6. Globalization and Production: Four Perspectives
• 7. Globalization and Development: Four Perspectives
• 8. Globalization and Bretton Woods Institutions: Four Perspectives
• 9. Conclusion
• The Appendix, Four Paradigms
• Index