Economic Growth, the Environment and International Relations

The Growth Paradigm

Stephen J. Purdey

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415548502
• eBook ISBN: 9781135179007
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Volkswirtschaft

The ubiquity of the commitment to economic growth, which Purdey refers to as the growth paradigm, is extraordinary. National governments around the world are seized of the same objective. Major international institutions such as the UN, the WTO, the World Bank, IMF and OECD, powerful international organizations such as regional trading blocs and multinational corporations – even civil societies of all kinds enthusiastically pursue a larger economic pie.

This book examines the deep origins and rise to prominence of the commitment to economic growth. It explains why, despite the diversity of regime types, levels of development, cultures and other divisions typical of international relations, all major actors in the modern global polity pursue an identical political priority. Purdey critically examines the growth paradigm highlighting its normative foundations and its environmental impact, especially climate change. Using a neo-Gramscian approach, Purdey re-engages the 'limits to growth' controversy, identifying the commitment to growth as a form of utopianism that is as dangerous as it is seductive.

By illuminating and interrogating the history, politics and morality of the growth paradigm, this book shifts the terrain of the limits debate from instrumental to ethical considerations. It will be of interest to students and scholars of political economy, international relations, environmental studies and ethics.

1
What is the growth paradigm?

Understanding the growth paradigm as a form of governance

International relations are shaped in large measure by the condition of anarchy. In the colloquial sense anarchy means disorder, but in the academic sense used here it means the absence of a formally constituted world government. Anarchy sets the background from which most studies of international politics begin because it stipulates immediately that there is no overarching authority, no global government, to impose order on human society as a whole. This condition – so obvious yet so important – is actually rather deceptive because it does not signify something that exists, something concrete from which people and states can take their bearings. The opposite is true: it identifies a political void at the apex of human society which provides neither rules nor goals, and which is therefore permissive of other forces that compete to fill the vacuum. And indeed, the space left vacant by anarchy is not unoccupied. Other forms of governance have intruded into it, and imposed their own kind of order on the actors and affairs of the world.

Absent a clear set of agreed policy objectives and an organized way to achieve them, such as might be provided by a world government, and given that international relations are conducted in a forum disciplined by other forms of governance which are incomplete, dissimilar and often competitive in their approach to the maintenance of order, one may ask what is the net effect of this situation on international politics. Has fragmented governance without formal oversight led to confusion and unpredictability? Or are persistent features of international relations discernible which may indicate the presence of a balance among forces, a compromise between interests or even a consensus that effectively displaces anarchy? It seems clear that many such persistent features do exist. World affairs are, in the main, conducted in an orderly fashion and, in fact, identifying the source or sources of that order has long been a particular objective of the academic discipline of international relations (IR), not only as a matter of scholarly interest, but because understanding order can lead to its improvement, if not to a world government as such; and because where order is improved, so security may be enhanced as well. The present study follows this tradition. My interest, however, is not to catalogue various forms of governance, to situate them on a hierarchy of importance, to compare their relative merits, or to examine the ways in which they interact. Instead my interest is to identify, amidst the welter of possibilities, the particular form of governance that most powerfully shapes the present conduct and perhaps the future evolution of international relations; to discover its origins and path to preeminence; to reveal the form and substance of its normative foundations; and to determine the extent to which that governance structure may be germane to the security of human society as a whole.

It would be naïve to conclude that, in the rush to fill the void of anarchy, only those ordered systems that are disabused of coercive elements, or that represent a thoughtfully considered normative consensus, have prevailed over other systems of a less benign nature. Many forces with various characteristics co-exist simultaneously on the international stage, vying for authoritative status. Some offer legitimate, if partial, governance of world affairs, such as the United Nations and other international organizations which promote an evolving corpus of international laws and regulations. Others look less like structures of governance and more like self-interested regional actors – hegemonic states, for example – which seek to impose order coercively by extending their influence over ever-wider swaths of territory. Still other contenders may promote a distinct ideology instead of national or regional interests. The Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, was a contest of strength, but it was also an argument about the relative benefits of capitalist and communist socio-economic systems. Each was advertised to better serve the common good, and each was offered to the world as the normative core around which global governance should evolve. In more recent times, conflicts between religious beliefs, or even between civilizations – ‘the West against the rest’, to express a simplistic example – also highlight ideological clashes springing from disagreement about values, and about the merit of their respective contributions to the mix of global governance systems. And, predominantly in contemporary world politics, the purportedly self-regulating mechanics of commercial activity offer yet another alternative to disorder by generating equilibria in economic relations, thereby helping to stabilize social and political affairs.

Globalization – the modern trend to tighter worldwide integration and the de-territorialization of authority – has spawned a fresh wave of new kinds of ordered systems which also contribute to governance in the emerging global arena. Typically transnational in scope and complex in structure,¹ these systems vary in type from formally constituted international organizations and regimes to policy networks and public–private partnerships which function in new political spaces which globalizing processes have created both above and below the state. Like the pre-existing systems of rule already mentioned, however, these new entities are all partial; they do not constitute, singly or collectively, truly global governance as such. ‘[T]here is little evidence’, write Grande and Pauly, ‘of the emergence of a fully integrated global political system’.²

In fact, not all patterned human behaviour is intended to induce political order, though it may do so inadvertently. The preferences of individual buyers and sellers, for example, give rise to an orderly marketplace without a shared intention of accomplishing that end, and the prevention of particular instances of abuse by Amnesty International may unexpectedly contribute to the construction of a human rights regime; but according to James Rosenau, systems that most closely represent governance are those that are ‘suffused with intentionality’.³ This is so because governance, as opposed to mere order, has purpose. It embodies a conscious and systematic effort to compensate in part for the absence of government, to help fill the void with structures responsive to what people need or want, to create and maintain some degree of stability and predictability based on shared expectations. On this view, governance can be summed as ‘order plus intentionality’,⁴ and it will be effective as a surrogate or partial government only to the extent that agreement with its premises and intentions can be sustained.⁵ I endorse this understanding of governance. In addition, I note that the inclusion of a purposive element in its definition implies that objectives chosen will conform with a given value set, so this conception of governance unavoidably includes a normative dimension. To the extent that international relations are guided by systems of governance, then, they are also shaped fundamentally and necessarily by a collective sense of what purposes should be pursued, and what kind of morality should prevail. ‘Norms are at the heart of all governance structures’,⁶ as one analyst has succinctly expressed this important point.

The most salient and influential form of governance in international relations will be identifiable in the first instance by the extent to which its premises and purposes are agreed and sustained; the wider the support for it, the more closely it will approximate truly global governance.⁷ The United Nations (UN) and its associated family of agencies and institutions is certainly the most institutionally sophisticated world body extant today, and its diverse purposes – from maintaining peace and security to resolving economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems – are laudable and widely endorsed. On the other hand, however, like the League of Nations before it, the UN represents liberal ideals which do not necessarily hold sway in the gritty world of international relations. It seems as likely that those relations are dominated by the exercise of power and the overriding pursuit of national interest. The tension between liberalism and realpolitik is palpable on the world stage, in the various personalities and policies of state leaders, and among IR scholars whose analyses cannot categorically determine whether right or might rules international political behaviour.

Despite these controversies and a plethora of candidates, the first question raised by this discussion – what is the form of governance that most powerfully shapes contemporary international relations? – can in fact be answered straightforwardly. Despite the remark by Grande and Pauly that a fully integrated global political system does not exist, I argue that it does. Whether international relations are fundamentally conflictual or cooperative in nature, and notwithstanding key roles played by powerful states, institutions and ideologies, a single shared purpose clearly reveals the presence of one dominant ordered system with which all major actors voluntarily comply, and with which all major international institutions willingly conform. I refer to this form of governance as the growth paradigm. Its central feature is a common commitment to economic growth.

The ubiquity of the political – and, I will argue, normative – commitment to growth as a policy priority is unique in international relations. It encompasses all types of state government, and remains constant despite variations in domestic policies which reflect divergent opinions about how best to achieve it. Without important exception, all national governments of North and South, East and West, share the commitment. International organizations whose objectives are to promote social development, such as the UN, recognize the dependency of development objectives on robust economic growth;⁸ and interstate alliances whose objectives are to enhance military security, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), are at least tacitly constrained to support growth by the close association of wealth and power. More explicitly, major institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) strive to optimize economic growth. As well, the G8, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and informal organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the World Economic Forum, endorse and encourage growth. All regional trading blocs in the Americas, Europe and Asia were constructed to enhance the potential for growth. Multinational corporations pursue growth as a formal responsibility and raison d’être, and civil society itself, whether conceived as a national or transnational entity, is not indisposed to its crucial role as consumer in a growth economy.

If governance can reasonably be understood as order plus intentionality, then one may say that order within the growth paradigm is provided by the structure, common orientation and collective influence of the various organizations named above, and intentionality is indicated by the shared commitment to pursue economic growth. The normative dimension of this form of governance is implicit in the fact that growth is intended to improve social welfare by elevating standards of living and, in the general case, to ensure a safe and prosperous future for all. I note further that safety, prosperity and betterment of the human condition are the quintessential goals of enlightened government. Given the uniquely preeminent status of the commitment to economic growth and its conformity with these same goals, I begin from the premise that the growth paradigm represents the most salient form of global governance, and the most powerful surrogate of world government, in the anarchic domain of international relations.

It remains to determine how and why this particular form of governance gained its uniquely preeminent status, and to assess the moral legitimacy of its normative foundations; much of what follows will address these questions. Before outlining the approach I take to them, however, I return first for a closer look at the purpose to which the paradigm is oriented. Of the three broad goals listed above, the first is safety. This goal identifies the primordial obligation of any government or system of governance to answer the needs of security, defined in terms of the preservation of human life and the orderly continuation of social systems through time. I noted before that scholarly interest in discovering the source or sources of order in international relations is motivated in large part by the fact that understanding order can lead to its enhancement (through the construction of new institutions, for example). I also alluded to the fact that the growth paradigm includes an inherent security dimension. Directly, economic growth generates revenue to pay for the military power which underwrites traditional forms of security in international relations; and indirectly, growth ostensibly leads to improved living standards which, in turn, are widely thought to reduce the motivation to go to war, at least from a liberal point of view. It will be a central contention of this book, however, that the growth paradigm is ultimately destabilizing to international relations: that its monolithic structure actively excludes alternative and perhaps better forms of governance, that its constant forward motion is disruptive to the social systems which structure human society, and moreover that its processes of production and consumption pose a lethal threat to the viability of natural systems which ultimately sustain the human population on Earth. I will argue that, when seen in the larger context of the planetary biosphere, the growth paradigm is unsafe: it threatens and does not enhance international security.

This threat arises because order is a necessary but not sufficient condition for security. Ordered systems may or may not enhance security, depending on how they are sustained, and on their compatibility with other entities they may impinge upon. The organized expansion of the sphere of influence of a hegemonic state, for example, may enhance the security of its citizens but at the expense of conquered or otherwise coerced neighbours. And, like an expansionist state enlarging its domain within the world’s society of states, the growth paradigm enlarges the sum total of economic activity generated by the human population relative to Earth’s singular ecosystem. In each case the process of enlargement may not be mutually beneficial. Security may be enhanced for the smaller part, but compromised or diminished for the whole. A prima facie assessment of the relationship between economic activity and the planetary ecosystem suggests a potential incompatibility because, while the political commitment to economic growth is open-ended – it does not include a provision to eventually halt growth – the biosphere in which growth occurs is finite in size. The result of this apparent incompatibility may be environmental degradation with a correspondingly negative impact on planetary habitability, and on the security of human society as a whole.

To raise the issue of ecosystemic stability and the durability of social systems vis-à-vis the growth paradigm, however, is to raise once again the ‘limits to growth’ debate which flared and subsided some 30 years ago. Seminal to that debate was research commissioned by the Club of Rome⁹ and undertaken by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to examine in detail the impact of steadily increasing human activity on natural systems, and to extrapolate the trajectory of that impact into the future, assuming no major changes in the activities being investigated. The researchers did not foresee, at the conclusion of their project, a hopeful future, but their work was challenged on substantive and methodological grounds and their gloomy prognostications were subsequently dismissed by professional analysts and political practitioners alike. Indeed, within ten years of their publication date, a new ‘neoliberal’ ideology had taken root in the United States and in Britain that supported the notion of ever more rapid growth of the global economy unconstrained by public ownership or regulatory intervention. The debate about limits to growth had by then been decisively resolved in favour of the pro-growth faction, and supporters of the contrary view were relegated to the sidelines of international politics, a position they continue to inhabit today.

Despite this situation, however, the relationship between growth and the environment remains problematic. Disagreements about the Meadows et al. report notwithstanding, it seems clear that aggregate human activity on Earth is bumping up against certain structural constraints of the planet’s biophysical systems. The human population has evidently become a force of nature, and as such is now a new and important variable in the functionality of the biosphere – significantly but not exclusively with regard to the atmosphere. The prospect of continuously increasing economic activity, continuously increasing production and consumption, seems reckless and suggests that a closer look at the premises and objectives of the growth paradigm as a form of governance might be prudent. On that basis, it is a strategic objective of this book to re-engage the currently sidelined limits to growth debate, and to help construct a suitable disciplinary forum in which that debate might continue.

Environmental issues in general, and environmental security as a particular political problem, have not yet found a conducive or permanent home in IR.¹⁰ To some extent these issues have been addressed from an institutional point of view as problems of environmental governance, or they have been gathered under the broader rubric of political ecology,¹¹ but this latter, nascent subdiscipline does not yet comprise distinctive subject matter or endorse a clearly defined research agenda. Moreover, the notion of environmental security represents, for some, an unwelcome intrusion into what is arguably the core concern of IR, namely, national security. Daniel Deudney, for example, has argued that including issues of environmental degradation under the general heading of security muddies the term and reduces its analytical utility,¹² but I take the wider view that any serious anthropogenic threat to society may reasonably be construed in such terms. This position follows naturally from the premise that the most important responsibility of political leaders is to protect life, and to ensure the durability of social systems through time. If the successf...

Table of contents

• Routledge advances in international political economy
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 What is the growth paradigm?
• 2 Systemic-, state-, and individual-level contributions to understanding the paradigm
• 3 The ideational superstructure of the paradigm
• 4 The class structure and normative foundations of the paradigm
• 5 Tensions in the paradigm and prospects for change
• Notes
• Index