Constructing a Global Polity

Theory, Discourse and Governance

Olaf Corry

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349315840, 9780230238756
• eBook ISBN: 9781137313652
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Globalizzazione

This book gives a novel understanding of the globalization debate as well as the structure of world politics. Drawing on Foucault and Waltz it suggests 'polity' as a third model of political structure beyond hierarchy and anarchy.

Part I

Constructing a Theory of a Global Polity

The argument of Part I of this book is based on the premise that a different model of political structure is warranted but not because radical change or globalization has necessarily turned the world upside down or erased the system of states, nor because a global Leviathan is about to emerge above the fray rendering anarchy somehow outdated. As models, hierarchy and anarchy are simplifications of how certain elements of the world are structured, and as such they may still be useful – even indispensable – as long as they continue to help us to manage and comprehend the infinite complexity of the real world of politics. Rather, a new model is needed because having a limited range of models for understanding structure has locked scholars and practitioners into a certain circumscribed debate. This debate has been basically about the international system even when it purported to be about other things such as ‘globalization’. Within this framework any claim about a global polity can be countered by pointing to the continued pre-eminence of states since any shift towards the global necessarily implies a weakening of state efficacy – a drift towards the abstract global level contra the concrete level of states, for example (Chandler 2009b). Paradoxically, if we are to grasp a ‘global polity’ in positive terms we need a theory of a global polity that helps us do this without explicitly or implicitly positing the disappearance of the nation state or the international system. The first chapter considers existing conceptions of a global polity and argues that they ultimately remain dependent on the models of anarchy and hierarchy that underpin the standard narrative of the international system. The second critically examines the idea of global governmentality as a way beyond this but argues that it too must be freed of post-international tendencies that have recently become ever clearer. The third chapter examines what models of political structure we have and how they differ, clearing the way for the presentation in Chapter 4 of ‘polity’ as a model of structure and ‘global polity’ as a theory derived from this that highlights the significance of the emergence of global governance-objects.

1

Post-Internationalism and the Global Polity

Global polity as modified anarchy

The only decent justification for using a new term such as ‘global polity’ is if it adds some value to all the existing concepts for overall structure of world politics such as international system, world system, world state or global society. In particular, if a new term provides us with a new foundational distinction that is not state/non-state, this might be a good indication that we are dealing with an alternative approach (as opposed to repackaging existing concepts).

Finding a new foundational distinction to proceed from has been called for most explicitly by writers fashioning a ‘global polity approach’¹ (Higgott & Ougaard 2002, Brassett & Higgott 2003). They recommended a ‘reversal of strategy for theory-building’ (Ougaard & Higgott 2002: 30): instead of always beginning from the model of the international system and then adding n number of complications, they urged us to begin with ‘a conception of one world political system, or an aspect of world politics, and then add the complications arising from the persistent reality that this system lacks a unified authority structure and has formally sovereign states among its fundamental building blocks’ (Ougaard & Higgott 2002: 30). They saw this reversal as a necessary methodological move to avoid framing global politics in terms of modified anarchy rather than because they were claiming the wholesale disappearance of the state system: ‘the point is not that states have become irrelevant (…) but that the intellectual starting point is the system as a whole’ (ibid.). An alternative analytical starting point would short-circuit the statist wiring of IR, providing the option of a fresh look at contemporary world politics. They were not alone in thinking that without a new model, statism’s ‘impoverished picture of the morphology, governance and violence that characterizes global order’, remains at the root of a sterile state-versus-global debate (Coward 2006: 57). This pits the new as the inverse of the old, maintains the future of the state as the central question of globalization, and perpetuates the conceptual universe and questions that came out of the old models centred on sovereignty and the security of like units in an anarchic world.

It is therefore somewhat surprising that existing global polity literature ultimately stays within a post-international framework. While accounts vary, Higgott and Ougaard summarize the literature suggesting four basic elements to a global polity. Firstly, a relatively densely integrated set of international institutions or ‘a vast and interlocking network of global regulation and sites of decision-making where policies of a (quasi-) global nature are made’ (Higgott & Ougaard 2002: 2) forms an obvious and important core of the idea of a global polity, and this is a common theme amongst all those peddling this idea or similar concepts (Brown 1996, Reinicke 1998, Shaw 2000). In this institution-centric vein Henri Goverde sees the WTO as ‘perhaps a first example of a “global polity” ’, and polity is understood as ‘the structures of government under which groups of men live’ (Goverde 2000: 7). Polity-building is thereby effectively rendered synonymous with authoritative institution-building (Keith Griffin uses ‘global polity’ in a similar fashion, Griffin 2003).

Secondly, for existing global polity approaches another important element constituting global polityness is the growth of actors outside the complex of the international system who interact systematically with it, creating ‘a growing political interconnectedness … not only between states, but also supra-, sub-and non-state actors’ (Higgott & Ougaard 2002: 2). Both these claims can also be found outside global polity theory, of course: non-state actors or ‘independent agencies of decision’, including corporations, political movements, individuals, intergovernmental agencies and terrorist networks are often cited as increasingly salient to politics beyond the state level, rendering (according to some) a state-centric perspective, incomplete. Thus Josselin and Wallace maintain that ‘any interpretation of international relations and global politics must now take the significance of non-state actors, operating transnationally, into account’ (2001: 1). Because globality has been conceived of as corruption of the state system, non-state actors (of literally any kind) come to represent globalization.

Thirdly, ‘the significance of the global polity as a category is enhanced by the weakening effect that globalization has on the domestic polity’ (Higgott & Ougaard 2002: 4, emphasis added). This is often linked to the growth of non-state actors and international institutions, but also concerns the weakening of ‘the social bond between citizens and the state’ (ibid.). In this situation ‘[as] the role of the nation-state as a vehicle for democratic engagement becomes more problematic, the clamour for democratic engagement at the global level may become stronger’ (ibid.). In the zero-sum game whereby the global is the inverse of the international, the weakening of the state is taken to imply the growth of globality.

The fourth aspect of global polityness, occasionally suggested (though often only as an afterthought²) is that ‘discourses of globality’ or forms of ‘global consciousness’ could be an important prerequisite for the constitution of a global polity. Higgott and Ougaard mention that the ‘appropriateness of global discourse’ (2002: 3) is growing and that this, or something similar like ‘normative dimensions of a global polity’ (Brassett & Higgott 2003: 29), constitute an element of a global polity. These four elements form the basis of Higgott and Ougaard’s conception of a ‘global polity’ which can be summarized as a totality of institutions, actors and processes with transnational properties ‘that in the current historical context ha[s] developed a high level of thick interconnectedness and an element of thin community that transcends the territorial state’ (Higgott & Ougaard 2002: 12).

Given these elements, it is clear that such global polity approaches remain post-international and thus fail their own methodological ambitions as they maintain the picture of anarchy as their starting point and to some degree have movement towards hierarchy as their measure of change. The first criterion in the global polity thesis concerns the growth of international institutions and interactions between societies (as opposed to just between states), but this ‘thick interconnectedness’ is not in itself enough to constitute a global polity. This is, after all, a familiar theme of much liberal IR and does not distinguish global polity theory decisively from conventional institutional research on international organizations and an intensifying institutionalization of world politics. Realists doubt the independence of institutions vis-à-vis states and see them as extensions of state power or as auxiliary to a state system, rather than as modifiers of state interests as is the case in regime theory and neoliberal institutionalist scholarship (Krasner 1982, Keohane 1989, Young 1991). But even if international institutions are interpreted in their stronger sense as modifiers of state identities, it is not discernable whether a ‘critical mass’ of institutions has been reached that warrants a new set of global polity concepts and assumptions. How many international institutions make a global polity? The nature of the institutions also matters. Why assume that international institutions usher in a global polity? The institutions of sovereignty such as the diplomatic system strengthen the international system rather than a global one. Some other criteria are necessary to distinguish between increased (international institutional) interconnectedness and a global polity.

The second criterion cited by global polity theory is the diversification of types of actors to encompass non-state actors as well as state actors. But again, this is also inadequate. This ‘pillar’ in global polity theory is of course an irritant to statist theories of world politics, but again fails to make the case for a methodological reversal or a holistic global polity approach. There is no stipulation in the global polity literature of how many non-state actors that make a global polity (and neither could there really be any meaningful quantification of this). Also, the counterargument persists that states are still the most powerful or the defining kind of actor, even if they are not alone in the international system (any longer). Even Josselin and Wallace, who insist on the vital importance of taking non-state actors into account, concede that ‘non-state actors can only flourish within a relatively peaceful and stable international system, with an underlying consensus about the rules of international interaction and the legitimacy of the state units’ (2001: 4). Non-state actors, even for their flag-bearers, are a derivative of the international system.³ Of course this follows by definition: if ‘non-state actors’ are the unit of analysis, state/non-state is inscribed as the defining feature of the actors from the outset. But why then have a theory of a global polity and not just a theory of international relations expanded to accommodate the non-state aspect that thrives on the state system? For a theory of global polity to be justified the entity and its actors would have to be conceived of in different terms that could not be boiled down to their likeness to or difference from statehood.

The third aspect is the most blatantly post-international one in so far as it suggests that a global polity is dependent upon the weakening of the nation state. Again, how weak must states be before a global polity comes into force? Could a weakening of the state system not herald the arrival of some other non-global political structure such as empire or regional security complexes? Again this indicates that a global polity is being thought of negatively in terms of a withering of the state system rather than as a positively defined unit.

The fourth aspect of the global polity thesis – discourses of globality – therefore appears to be its last hope. As formulated in global polity theory so far, however, it is not able to lift this theoretical burden. Higgott and Ougaard hover between the terminology of (a) ‘consciousness “of the world as a single place” ’, (b) ‘a growing sense of community’ and (c) ‘recognition of the appropriateness of global discourse’ (2002: 3). These are all different terms (consciousness, sense of community, discourse), with different ontological claims attached to them.⁴ Global ‘consciousness’ implies a claim to the existence of a certain kind of mental state that conceives of the world as a single place. This has a mentalistic ring to it and could arguably best be substantiated by investigating individual mental constructs and schemas. The second claim of a growing ‘sense of community’ is thicker – the concept of community implying shared values or even common practices, rather than just an awareness of being in the same global place. The same goes for ‘world culture’ (Meyer 2001) or ‘global ethics’ (Singer 2002, Brassett & Higgott 2003) which also implies a shared set of normative or ethical assumptions. To substantiate such claims a worldwide set of global values, shared cultural systems or ethical schemas would have to be identified.

The final claim – that of the increasing ‘appropriateness of discourses of globality’ – represents a different and in many ways a more modest proposition of the existence of structures of meaning that reference the globe. It may also be the most precise interpretation of what Higgott and Ougaard are after, since they explicitly reject the ‘often overly optimistic positions to be found in many contemporary cosmopolitan understandings’ (2002: 12) concerning presence of shared global values and global (albeit thin) community. So let us assume that in global polity theory, the idea of ‘discourses of globality’ represents a third pillar of the theory.

What is meant by this remains underdeveloped, but so far, by using ‘discourse’ interchangeably with consciousness and community it has been treated as an ontologically regional phenomenon: global discourse co-exists in a linguistic dimension parallel to other aspects of reality such as trade or institution-building potentially on an equal basis. As such, discourses of globality (just like a set of global ethics or shared values) are ‘optional’: they merely add incrementally to the case for a global polity, nudging it a little further towards plausibility. But as a separate regional phenomenon, global discourse has no fundamental bearing on the other two (institutions and actors). This regional conception of global polity discourse markedly waters down the global polity argument, since it makes global polityness almost indistinguishable from traditional theories of cooperation, institution-building and non-state actors with a gloss of globalist discourse added. The intention of theorizing a global polity from a clean theoretical slate in relation to more conventional IR theory thereby falls somewhat short because the institutions and actors of a putative global polity are not seen to be constituted through global polity discourse. They remain state, interstate or non-state. With a notion of globalist discourse as constitutive of a global polity including the actors and objects of such a polity, this might be different.

Global polity as global state

Another way of conceiving of the global polity that does not begin from the model of anarchy is to begin with hierarchy. While this as a model is a mirror image of anarchy, creative use has been made of beginning from here, typically in terms of a global state (the state being the best-known embodiment of hierarchical political structure).

Martin Shaw probably provides the best-known contemporary theory of a global state based on an historical sociology of violence, legitimacy and state structure (see also Robinson 2001). Shaw’s work is promising from a global polity perspective because globality for him involves a transformation of the national–international nexus itself rather than a simple tipping further towards the international: ‘accounts of transnationalism hardly amount to theories of globality’ (Shaw 2000: 89). Although states remain and inevitably form an important part of global politics, in a global setting ‘tensions [between national and international] reappear in novel terms, which are increasingly relativised by the greater consciousness of the global human whole’ (Shaw 2000: 26). Within this emerging globality Shaw argues that state functions are gradually becoming globalized. This creates a nascent Western-global state ‘conglomerate’ of powerful units centred on the lone superpower, the United States, and shared institutions like NATO:

The globalized Western state-conglomerate, or global-Western state for short, is an integrated authoritative organization of violence which includes a large number of both juridically defined states and international interstate organizations.

(2000: 199)

The global or ‘Western-global’ state has internal structures strong enough to redefine ideas about national interest and sovereignty while it acts outwardly in relation to elements of world politics still outside it as a partially hegemonic bloc: ‘not only is western state power exercised world-wide, but it has a general (if strongly contested) global legitimacy’ (2000: 200). For Shaw, other theories of global governance underestimate the ‘striking difference between nation-states within the West and outside it’ (2000: 202). A new distinction besides the domestic–international divide is thus offered: ‘the Western state functions as a single centre of military state power in relation to other centres’ (2000: 200).

Similarly focused on the politics of globalization, though with a focus on a wider range of state functions than those related to violence and war-making, Morten Ougaard borrows concepts originally refined in domestic neo-Marxist state theory, such as ‘superstructure’, ‘persistence function’ and the ‘reproduction of relations of power’. Ougaard’s project is also motivated by a wish to go beyond the model of the state system and he urges ‘a holistic perspective on world politics as an integrated phenomenon’ (2004: 5). This he achieves in a powerful analysis of a growing global superstructure of institutions: ‘the rise of a global political superstructure can be theorized as the uneven and partial globalization of the various aspects of statehood’ (2004: 196). Like Shaw’s, Ougaard’s analysis leads him to identify a global state-like construction based on the major Western powers and global institutions. For him the ‘global polity’⁵ is made up of:

the core of industrialized market democratic countries in an increasingly integrated institutional infrastructure of national governments and international institutions marked by dense contacts, routinized information exchange, mutual surveillance and peer pressure, strong analytical and statistical resources, and a capacity for development of joint strategies and policies. (p. 199)

Shaw and Ouga...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Constructing a Theory of a Global Polity
• Part II: A Global Polity Under Construction?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index