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Multi-nodal politics: globalisation is what actors make of it

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2009

PHILIP G. CERNY
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Abstract

What has been traditionally conceptualised as ‘the international’ has been undergoing a fundamental transformation in recent decades, usually called ‘globalisation’. Globalisation is a highly contested concept, and even among those who accept that some sort of globalisation process is occurring, attempts to analyse it have focused on a range of structural explanations: the expansion of economic transactions; the development of transnational or global social bonds; and the emergence and consolidation of a range of semi-international, semi-global political institutions. In all of these explanations, the role of actors as agents strategically shaping change has been neglected. In this article I argue that structural variables alone do not determine specific outcomes. Indeed, structural changes are permissive and can be the source of a range of potential multiple equilibria. The interaction of structural constraints and actors’ strategic and tactical choices involves a process of ‘structuration’, leading to wider systemic outcomes. In understanding this process, the concepts of ‘pluralism’ and ‘neopluralism’ as used in traditional ‘domestic’-level Political Science can provide an insightful framework for analysis. This process, I argue, has developed in five interrelated, overlapping stages that involve the interaction of a diverse range of economic, social and political actors. Globalisation is still in the early stages of development, and depending on actors’ choices in a dynamic process of structuration, a range of alternative potential outcomes can be suggested.

      There is a tide in the affairs of men
      Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
      Omitted, all the voyage of their life
      Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
      On such a full sea are we now afloat,
      And we must take the current when it serves,
      Or lose our ventures.
      (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.ii.269–276)

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 421 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © © British International Studies Association 2009

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References

1 Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors: An Analysis of Systems Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

2 Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965).

3 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action’, International Organization, 49:4 (Autumn 1995), pp. 595–625, and Cerny, ‘The New Security Dilemma: Divisibility, Defection and Disorder in the Global Era’, Review of International Studies, 26:4 (October 2000), pp. 623–46.

4 Randall Germain (ed.), Globalization and Its Critics (London: Macmillan, 2000).

5 The argument that globalisation is a misnomer for what is really a process of ‘inter-nationalisation’ is developed in Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question? The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996).

6 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Reconstructing the Political in a Globalizing World: States, Institutions, Agency and Governance’, in Frans Buelens (ed.), Globalization and the Nation-State (Cheltenham, Glos. and Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 1999), pp. 89–137.

7 On this last point, see especially Saskia Sassen (ed.), Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

8 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Globalization, Governance and Complexity’, in Aseem Prakash and Jeffrey A. Hart, (eds), Globalization and Governance (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 184–208.

9 Philip G. Cerny, The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State (London and Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage Publications, 1990), and Cerny, ‘The Infrastructure of the Infrastructure? Towards Embedded Financial Orthodoxy in the International Political Economy’, in Ronen P. Palan and Barry Gills (eds), Transcending the State-Global Divide: A Neostructuralist Agenda in International Relations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1994), pp. 223–49.

10 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Restructuring the Political Arena: Globalization and the Paradoxes of the Competition State’, in Randall Germain (ed.), Globalization and its Critics (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 117–38; James J. Sheehan, Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008).

11 On ‘distributional changes’ and ‘social epistemologies’, see John Gerard Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations’, International Organization, 47:1 (Winter 1993), pp. 139–74, and Ronald J. Deibert, Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia: Communication in World Order Transformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 31–7.

12 On the ‘splintered state’, see Howard Machin and Vincent Wright (eds), Economic Policy and Policy-making Under the Mitterrand Presidency, 1981–1984 (London: Frances Pinter, 1985); on the ‘disaggregated state’, see Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

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16 For a theoretical analysis of structuration focusing primarily on language, see Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979).

17 Michel Crozier and and Erhard Friedberg, L'acteur et le système: les contraintes de l'action collective (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1977).

18 Stanley Hoffmann, Decline or Renewal? France Since the 1930s (New York: Viking Press).

19 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House, 2007).

20 Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, op. cit. Spruyt's analysis has been challenged as an accurate representation of the real historical transition from feudalism to the nation state. However, I believe the heuristic utility of the (necessarily oversimplified) model of change he develops is particularly useful as adapted here for understanding and explaining how the various processes added together in my definition of globalisation (above) intersect and interact.

21 On the ability of aristocracies to convert their power and influence in the context of democratisation, industrialisation and the like, see Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (London: Croom Helm, 1981).

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24 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Political Agency in a Globalizing World’: Toward a Structurational Approach’, European Journal of International Relations 6:4 (December) pp. 435–64. The distinction between ‘sectional’ and ‘value’ groups is central to traditional Political Science based pluralist theory; see V.O. Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1953).

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26 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

27 Sandra Halperin, War and Social Change in Modern Europe: The Great Transformation Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

28 David A. Lake, ‘Global Governance: A Relational Contracting Approach’, in Aseem Prakash and Jeffrey A. Hart (eds), Globalization and Governance (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 31–53, and Miles Kahler and David A. Lake, ‘Economic Integration and Global Governance: Why So Little Supranationalism?’, paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, San Francisco, California (26–29 March 2008).

29 Philip G. Cerny, ‘The Governmentalization of World Politics’, in Elinore Kofman and Gillian Youngs (eds), Globalization: Theory and Practice (London: Continuum, 3rd edition 2008), pp. 221–36.

30 The concept of ‘prismatic politics’ was first developed in Fred W. Riggs, Administration in Developing Countries: The Theory of Prismatic Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964).

31 Vincent Ostrom, C.M. Tiebout, and R. Warren, ‘The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry,’ American Political Science Review, 55:3 (September 1961), pp. 831–42, 832–5.

32 Ibid., p. 839.

33 Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1950).

34 Idem; Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom, ‘Public Goods and Public Choices’, in E.S. Savas, (ed.), Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance (Boulder: Westview, 1977), pp. 7–49; Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965); Cerny, ‘Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action’, op. cit.

35 Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The Globalization of Public Services Production: Can Government Be “Best in World”?’, Public Policy and Administration, 9:2 (Summer 1994), pp. 36–64; David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, from Schoolhouse to Statehouse, City Hall to the Pentagon (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992).

36 Richard Clayton and Jonas Pontusson, ‘Welfare State Retrenchment Revisited: Entitlement Cuts, Public Sector Restructuring, and Inegalitarian Trends in Advanced Capitalist Societies’, World Politics, 51:1 (October 1998), pp. 67–98.

37 The distinction between ‘comparative advantage’ and ‘competitive advantage’ is best developed in the introduction and conclusion to John Zysman and Laura Tyson (eds), American Industry in International Competition: Government Policies and Corporate Strategies (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983).

38 Susanne Soederberg, George Menz and Philip G. Cerny (eds), Internalizing Globalization: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Erosion of National Varieties of Capitalism (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

39 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Embedding Neoliberalism: The Evolution of a Hegemonic Paradigm’, Journal of International Trade and Diplomacy, 2:1 (Spring 2008), pp. 1–46; Soederberg, Menz and Cerny, Internalizing Globalization, op. cit.

40 Slaughter, op. cit.

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42 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Globalization and Other Stories: Paradigmatic Selection in International Politics’, in Axel Hülsemeyer, (ed), Globalization in the 21st Century: Convergence and Divergence (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 51–66.

43 Cerny, ‘Political Agency in a Globalizing World’, op. cit.

44 Andrew Hurrell, On Global Order: Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

45 David B. Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951). For an extended discussion of pluralist theory in this context, see Philip G. Cerny, ‘Plurality, Pluralism, and Power: Elements of Pluralist Analysis in an Age of Globalization’, in Rainer Eisfeld (ed.), Pluralism: Developments in the Theory and Practice of Democracy (Opladen and Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers, on behalf of the International Political Science Association, Research Committee No. 16 [Socio-Political Pluralism], 2006), pp. 81–111.

46 These conditions are discussed in more depth in Cerny, The Changing Architecture of Politics, op. cit., especially, ch. 1.

47 Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1908); Key, Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, op. cit.

48 See Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).

49 The fluidity of the group process is at the core of Bentley's seminal work on political processes and interests, The Process of Government, op. cit., usually regarded as prolegomenon of pluralist analysis – and celebrating its centenary, of course, at the time of writing in 2008.

50 Charles E. Lindblom, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977); for a more ambitious and wide-ranging attempt to develop this concept, see Andrew S. McFarland, Neopluralism: The Evolution of Political Process Theory (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2004).

51 John Holloway and Sol Picciotto (eds), State and Capital: A Marxist Debate (London : Edward Arnold, 1978).

52 McFarland, Neopluralism, op. cit.; Lindblom, Politics and Markets, op. cit.; Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989).

53 Waltz, Theory of International Politics, op. cit.

54 Hurrell, On Global Order, op. cit.

55 Bob Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).

56 Randall Germain, ‘Global Financial Governance and the Problem of Inclusion’, Global Governance, 7:4 (November 2001), pp. 411–26.

57 Gavin Kitching, Seeking Social Justice Through Globalization: Escaping a Nationalist Perspective (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2001).

58 William J. Baumol, Robert E. Litan and Carl J. Schramm, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007).

59 I argue elsewhere that economic ‘value’ is created primarily by consumers rather than by producers: Philip G. Cerny, ‘Restructuring the State in a Globalizing World: Capital Accumulation, Tangled Hierarchies and the Search for a New Spatio-Temporal Fix’, review article, Review of International Political Economy, 13:4 (October 2006), pp. 679–95.

60 Cerny, ‘Embedding Neoliberalism’, op. cit.

61 Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How the Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004).

62 Bentley, The Process of Government, op. cit.

63 Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

64 Michael Moran, The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyper-Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

65 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Terrorism and the New Security Dilemma’, Naval War College Review, 58:1 (Winter 2005), pp. 11–33.

66 Hirst and Thompson, Globalization in Question?, op. cit.

67 David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Democratic Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).

68 Holloway and Picciotto, State and Capital, op. cit.

69 Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Gill, Power and Resistance in the New World Order (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

70 Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000).

71 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Power, Markets and Authority: The Development of Multi-Level Governance in International Finance,’ in Andrew Baker, Alan Hudson and Richard Woodward, (eds), Governing Financial Globalization: International Political Economy and Multi-Level Governance (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 24–48.

72 Philip G. Cerny, ‘Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma: Globalisation as Durable Disorder,’ Civil Wars, 1:1 (Spring 1998), pp. 36–64.

73 Some of those niches may indeed exhibit certain democratic characteristics, especially where in particular sectors or issue areas elements of democratic accountability can be established, for example in specific economic industries where workers and trade unions can devise quasi-corporatist mechanisms, as in the Nicaraguan garment industry: Kate Macdonald, ‘Global Democracy for a Partially Joined-Up World: Toward a Multi-Level System of Power, Allegiance and Democratic Governance?’, unpublished paper, London School of Economics, October 2008. However, the translation of these processes to a more overarching level of ‘global democracy’ is still problematic.