Is the State Dying?

Assessing the Impact of Globalization and Transnational

Activism on State Sovereignty
Jonathan Havercroft
Ph.D. Candidate University of Minnesota

Paper Prepared for Presentation at the 2004 International Studies Association

Montreal, QC
March 17, 2004

Introduction
Since the end of the cold war IR scholars have paid increasing attention to

transnational processes such as globalization, the role of NGOs in world politics and the

rise of global social movements. While the initial interest in these fields was to draw

attention to the important role non-state actors play in the international system, in recent

years some scholars in these fields have begun to claim that transnational politics –

politics that crosses state borders – is undermining the sovereignty of the state. If these

claims are true, then these developments would represent the most profound shift in

political order since the emergence of the Westphalian system three and half centuries

ago. It would also represent a fundamental challenge to the basic theories of the

international system that IR scholars use.

In this paper I examine two emerging literature in the field of international

relations – globalization and transnational activism – to determine how IR scholars are

theorizing these challenges to the sovereignty of the nation state. My purpose is not to

assess the empirical veracity of the claims that these scholars make, instead I am

examining the unstated assumptions about the form of the international system that these

authors are making. Scholars of these phenomena tend to claim that the emergence of
transnational and global politics represents a fundamental shift in the nature of world

politics. As I shall demonstrate in this paper, however, while explicitly trumping change

to the shape of the international system, most of these scholars end up offering models of

world politics that leave the basic unit of the international system – the sovereign state –

and the principles behind it untouched. In the first part of this paper I examine the

globalization literature to see how they theorize international order. I argue that while

there is diversity in how these scholars describe globalization, their descriptions of world

politics end up reinforcing the principles of state sovereignty upon which the westphalian

system rests. I then turn to the transnational activist literature, to see if scholars in this

sub-field have developed any alternative models for the international system. I argue that

while scholars of transnational social movements do suggest that global social

movements represent a new form of politics, this form of politics actually ends up

reinforcing the principles of state sovereignty that it is supposedly transgressing. I

conclude with some brief remarks about whether obstinacy of sovereignty in theories of

globalization and transnational action represents a limit to the theoretical sophistication

of our models of the international system, or is it proof that globalization and

transnational activism do not represent significant challenges to the sovereignty of the

state?

Globalization Lit. Review

One of the major debates between scholars of globalization is twhether or not

sovereignty is being undermined by processes that are labeled under the term

globalization. How one answers this question depends upon how one defines

globalization. Within the literature there are three major ways of defining globalization –
1) as an increase in transactions across border; 2) as the opening up of borders; 3) as the

compression of time and space relations within the international system – there are three

different answers to this question: No, Yes, and Maybe. In this section I will evaluate the

globalization literature to determine how IR scholars currently theorize how globalization

is transforming sovereignty. Following Held et al,. I will label these three distinct

interpretations of globalization as hyper-globalists, skeptics, and transformationalists.1

While I am following this classificatory scheme it should be noted that I am applying it

more narrowly than Held and his co-authors originally intended. They use the scheme to

classify how scholars understand the phenomenon of globalization. My purpose in using

this scheme is to simply determine how scholars believe the phenomenon of globalization

is transforming the sovereignty of the state. Consequently the way in which I classify

some scholars might be different from how Held et al classify their scholars. For instance,

on the question of whether or not globalization is a real phenomenon, Held et al. classify

Susan Strange as a skeptic. I, however, classify her as a transformationalist, because her

work on contemporary IPE argues that state authority and power is being diffused into a

variety of institutions.

Hyper-Globalists
The first group of globalization scholars are the hyper-globalists, such as Kenichi

Ohmae and Alexander Wendt who argue that the society of states that currently

composes the international community is in the process of being eclipsed by a unitary,

global entity – either a global market or a global state – that will have ultimate authority

1
David Held et al., Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, 1st ed. (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999).
over all people living on the earth.2 Hyper-globalists tend to describe globalization as an

opening of the nation-state’s borders to the flow of goods, people, and ideas. The

globalists argue that globalization is real, and its impacts are inevitable and irreversible.

Ohmae, one of the strongest advocates of the hyperglobalist thesis has gone so far as to

argue that “globalization defines a new era in human history in which traditional nation

states have become unnatural, even impossible business units in a global economy.” The

globalists contend that a single global market is replacing the state as the center of power

within the world system. The globalist thesis has three key components. First, An

increasingly integrated global economy exists at this moment Second, globalization is

primarily an economic phenomenon. Third, globalization through market pressures

imposes a neoliberal economic ideology on all states, thereby reducing the tasks of

government to nothing more than sound economic management What evidence do the

globalists have to support their argument? They tend to point to the rise of global

institutions of governance, especially the IMF, World Bank and WTO, as evidence of a

new international system with new centers of power. They also site the increasing flow

and hybridization of cultures and cultural products as evidence of the breakdown of the

nation state

For Ohmae globalization is inevitable and irreversible, and one of its major

consequences will be to render the nation state meaningless.3 Corporations, because they

"once the genie of global information flow is out of the bottle - and it is certainly out of

the bottle now - there can be no turning back" (vii) Corporate leaders, because they are

2
Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies (New York: The Free
Press, 1995), Alexander Wendt, "Why a World State Is Inevitable: Teleology and the Logic of Anarchy,"
(2003).
3
Ohmae, The End of the Nation State, vii.
used to responding to the the marketplace have been able to quickly adapt to the new

global reality. States and their leaders, on the other hand, have been unable to adapt. Part

of the reason for the inability of states to adapt to globalization, according to Ohmae, is

that their leaders continue to operate under a state centric paradigm. The centrality of the

state is being undermined b y global forces in two ways. First, according to Ohmae,

during the mercantilist era the state’s primary function was to create markets for

corporations to invest in. Because global markets are self-producing and self-sufficient,

there is no loner a need for the state’s market generating capabilities.4 Second, because

the leaders of liberal democracies gain power through electoral politics, leaders appeal to

what voter want. In their attempt to satisfy the demands of their voters, politicians tend to

increase the benefits, subsidies, and services handed out by the state, thus making states

inefficient engines of wealth distribution. Multinational corporations, on the other hand

are efficient generators and distributors of wealth because they seek out attractive

markets, and through their investment in these markets transfer around the world are

making economic demands for a decent life for themselves and a better life for their

children. The traditional supplier of a higher quality of life has been the nation state, but

nation states now lack the resources to meet these demands. The only institutions now

capable of generating wealth and meeting the demands of people living in developing

economies are multinational corporations. Because nation states are no longer capable of

meeting the demands of their citizens, Ohmae believes that states are become

increasingly ineffective and even irrelevant. "And many of the core values supporting a

world order based on discrete, independent nation states - liberal democracy as practiced

4
Ibid., 4.
in the West, for instance, and even the very notion of political sovereignty itself - have

shown themselves to be in serious need of redefinition or, perhaps, replacement" (viii).

Benjamin Barber, tends to ascribe to the hyper-globalist thesis that a global

market exists and this moment, and that this global market is undermining the sovereign

authority of the nation state. Unlike Ohmae and other hyper-globalists, however, Barber

is decidedly pessimistic about the impact globalization is having. In Jihad vs. McWorld

Barber describes the process of globalization as leading to a type of global

totalitarianism. He argues that processes of globalization are producing two global

phenomena that are interacting with each other in such a ways as to fragment the

sovereign state and undermine democratic institutions. On the one hand, globalization is

creating the triumph of consumerism, and a profit driven global economy that Barber

labels “McWorld”. On the other hand increased global integration is producing a

backlash against a global society in the form of a militant defense of parochial identities.

While Barber is highly critical of the impact of globalization on the nation state, he does

tend to side with other hyper-globalists such as Ohmae on the question of how

globalization is altering the nation state. According to Barber, the interaction of

McWorld’s gloablism with the militant identity politics of Jihad is destroying state

sovereignty:

Yet Jihad and McWorld have this in common: they both make war on the
sovereign nation-state and thus undermine the nation state’s democratic
institution. Each eschews civil society and belittles democratic citizenship,
neither seeks alternative democratic institutions. Their common thread is
indifference to civil liberty.5

5
Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad Vs. Mcworld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1995), 6.
Barbers contention is that what is replacing the sovereignty of the nation state is a form of

global commercial totalitarianism. Jihad represents the triumph of a single value (profit)

under a single owner, “submerging all distinctions and rendering all choice tenuous and

all diversity sham”.6 While Jihad is a form of resistance to the tendencies of McWorld,

because it is based on monolithic nationalist ideology, it offers only a local version of

totalitarianism counteract the global totalitarianism of McWorld. Without the sovereignty

of the nation state to protect the public realm and civil society, Barber fears that freedom

will be the ultimate casualty of globalization.

Another version of the hyper-globalist thesis is offered by Thomas Friedman.

While Friedman claims to be agonistic about the benefits and costs of globalization, he

does contend that globalization undermines the power of the nation-state and compels

states to adopt neo-liberal economic policies. Friedman’s popular work The Lexus and

the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization argues that the emergence of a unified

global economy is inevitable.7 The end of the cold war led to the spread of free market

capitalism to virtually every country in the world. Because all nation states now share the

same “hardware” of free-market capitalism, the creation of a single global marketplace

will inevitably follow. States will become integrated into the global economy by means

of the ‘Golden Straitjacket’ that forces every country to adopt the same economic

policies.8 The golden straitjacket is composed of policies such as:

. . . making the private sector the primary sector of economic growth,

maintaining a low rate of inflation and price stability, shrinking the size of
its state bureaucracy, maintaining as close to a balanced budget as
possible, if not a surplus, eliminating and lowering tariffs on imported
goods, removing restrictions on foreign investment, getting rid of quotas

6
Ibid., 139.
7
Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), xxii.
8
Ibid., 151.
 and domestic monopolies . . . When you stitch all of these pieces together
you have the Golden Straitjacket.9

The consequences of a state “putting on” the Golden Straitjacket are that its economy will

grow because of its increased participation in the global economy, but that the states

political authority will shrink because its policies are constrained by the Golden

Straitjacket. As a consequence, “political debate in developed countries today has been

reduced to arguments over minor tailoring changes in the Golden Straitjacket, not radical

alterations.”10

Skeptics
The second group is the global skeptics – such as Stephen Krasner and Robert

Gilpin– who argue against any fundamental change to the world state system on

normative grounds. Skeptics tend to claim that the phenomenon of globalization is a lot

of hype, but that very little has changed in the international economic system, and that

most of the changes that other scholars point to, such as the end of the gold standard in

International Monetary markets, and the emergence of the WTO and the World Bank are

simply the consequence of the U.S. eclipsing the United Kingdom as the global hegemon.

These new institutions are simply part of the international system set up by the U.S.after

World War II and they will last only as long as the U.S. remains the hegemon of the

system. Is there any evidence to support this line of argument? Yes, if you define

globalization as an increase in cross-border flows. They argue that in terms of total global

trade, our contemporary era actually experiences fewer cross-border transactions than the

9
Ibid., 105.
10
Ibid., 106.
period 1870-1914. They argue that other conceptualizations of globalization

underestimate the power of the state to curb cross-border transactions through

protectionist policies. And they point to the first half of the 20th century when states did

engage in a wave of protectionism – and consequently global trade declined – as evidence

that our contemporary era of reducing trade barriers is by no means irreversible. Finally,

they argue that the WTO has been relatively ineffective at reducing trade barriers on a

global level, and that the greatest increases in cross-border activities have been within

regional trading blocks such as NAFTA or the EU. So, at best we are in a period of

increased regionalization, not globalization.

One of the strongest skeptics of the claim that globalization is eroding the

sovereignty of the nation state is Stephen Krasner. His purpose in Sovereignty: Organized

Hypocrisy is to refute the claim made by many that state sovereignty is about to be

replaced by an alternative form of organizing political communities. Krasner accepts the

observations made by many hyper-globalists that the recognition of human rights and

minority rights, and the role of international financial institutions such as the IMF and

World Bank all challenge our traditional understanding of sovereignty. His rejoinder to

the hyper-globalists is that state sovereignty was never as robust as it was presumed to be.

To make his case Krasner first examines the meanings that are attributed to the concept

of sovereignty , and comes up with four different definitions: 1) domestic sovereignty,

the public authority of a government over all the members of its state; 2)interdependence

sovereignty, the ability of public authorities to control flows of people and goods across

border; 3) international legal authority, the mutual recognition of states; 4) Westphalian

sovereignty, referring to the exclusion of actors from interfering within the territory of a
sovereign state. He argues that these concepts are norms that determine how states should

interact with each other, but that the norms have been, are, and will continue to be

frequently violated by states when it suits the interests of the rulers of these states, hence

his conclusion that the norm of sovereignty is nothing more than organized hypocrisy on

the part of rulers of states. Rulers abide by this norm to ensure the survival of their own

state, but they will violate this norm when it serves their purposes. As such, Krasner

concludes that what many people presume to be new challenges to sovereignty are simply

ongoing instances of the norm of sovereignty being violated by hypocritical world

leaders.

When Krasner applies his definition of sovereignty as organized hypocrisy to the

case of globalization he argues that processes of globaliztion are having little significant

impact on the state. “States have always operated in an integrated international

environment.”11 He points out that international capital flows are nothing new;

international banking has existed since the Middle Ages. The integration of markets was

actually higher in the 19th century than it is today. Similarly, international migration was

higher in the 19th century that it is today. Thus, Krasner concludes “There is no evidence

that globalization has systematically undermined state control or led to the

homogenization of policies and structures.”12

Like Krasner, Hirst and Thompson are skeptical of the claims made by hyper-

globalizers that there is an emerging, fully integrated global market place and that the

spontaneous power of this market place is subsuming both national economies and

national governments. In order to refute the globalization hypothesis Hirst and Thompson

11
Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999), 220.
12
Ibid., 223.
develop two models of ideal type international economies and study the current global

market to see which ideal type best describes current economic conditions. The firs ideal

type is what they call the Inter-national economy. In this economy the principle entities

are national economies. Trade and investment across borders increases the

interconnections between national economies. Trade between states results in

international specialization and a global division of labour, but the international and

domestic policy fields remain distinct. Governments continue to control domestic policy,

and the spontaneous forces of the market govern international policy. The second ideal

type is a globalized economy. In this situation national economies are subsumed into a

global system by international processes and transactions. The global market becomes

autonomous from any state structure and national governments have to take into account

global forces when developing policies. Because global actors such as Trans National

Corporations are no longer embedded in specific nation states it becomes difficult, if not

impossible for states to govern the behaviour of these entities.

On the basis of a series of empirical studies of the current international economic

orders Hirst and Thompson conclude that while the nation state’s capacity for governance

of macroeconomic policy have weakened, the state remains a major institution in

international politics. The state continues to be very important in creating the conditions

for international government. Because the international economy is not a globalized

economic system, the national state will continue to play an important role in national

and international economic processes. With respect to international institutions states will

cease to function as sovereign entities and instead will primarily be responsible for

“providing legitimacy and ensuring accountability of supra-national and sub-national

governance mechanisms.”13 Finally, while international markets and new mediums of

communication have infringed upon the state’s exclusive control of it territory, the state

will continue to regulate populations within its territory.

Perhaps the strongest skepticism about the inevitability of globalization eroding

the sovereignty of the nation state is advanced by Robert Gilpin in The Challenge of

Clobal Capitalism. Gilpin argues contra most theorists of globalization that the global

economy is actually more threatened at the present moment than it has been since at any

time since 1945. Regional economic arrangements such as the EU and NAFTA are

undermining the power of global trading regimes such as the WTO. Since the end of the

cold war, the economic policies of Europe, America, and Japan have been increasingly

drifting apart without the cold war threat of communism to keep them together. Finally,

only partial measures have been taken by the major powers to secure the global economy

and preventing global financial crises like the Asian currency crises of the late 1990s.

Gilpin’s realism commits him to the view that states continue to be the primary actors in

world politics, despite the fact that the globe has become increasingly economically and

technologically integrated. Because of this, Gilpin argues that it is up to states to build

international regimes to provide clear rules surrounding the global flow of trade and

money.14 These rules can only be developed under the leadership of the major powers of

an international system, because they must use their power to persuade and coerce the

weaker states to comply with international economic regimes.

13
Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the
Possibilities of Governance (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1996), 171.
14
Robert Gilpin, The Challenge of Global Capitalism: The World Economy in the 21st Century (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 8.
 While most scholars of globalization take the end of the cold war to mark the

beginning of the global economic era, Gilpin argues that the global economy actually

thrived from 1945 through the 1980s. It is Gilpin’s contention that strong American

leadership within the international system led to close economic and political between the

U.S. and its allies in developing a global economic regime through the Bretton Woods

system. This system has eroded since the end of the cold war because of a decline in

domestic consensus on economic affairs. Many American’s began attributing their

country’s economic problems on globalization. Other protested free trade because of its

impact on employment, wages, labour rights, and human rights. Gilpin takes the hyper

globalists to ask for mistakenly believe that the colloapse of command economies at the

end of the cold war makes the triumph of global capitalism inevitable. Gilpin argues that

these scholars forget that the laissez-faire system collapsed once before, in 1914, and as

such it is entirely possible that it could collapse again.

Global capitalism and economic globalization have rested and must

continue to rest on a secure political foundation. However, the
underpinning of the post WWII global economy has steadily eroded since
the end of the Soviet threat.15

Unless the powerful states in the international system redouble their efforts to promote a

global capitalist economic system, the world is likely to relapse into another era of

protectionism and regional trading blocks.

The skeptics tend to emphasize the prominent role that states play in enabling

processes of globalization. While skeptics will concede that new international institutions

such as the IMF and WTO do have some powers that supersede the sovereignty of nation

states, their response tends to be that these institutions are simply the temporary transfer

15
Ibid., 14.
of sovereignty by states to an institution that either serves the state’s own interests or the

interests of the great powers of the system. As Krasner argues, the sovereignty of the

state is a norm that has frequently been violated, and so recent violations of the norm of

sovereignty due to processes of globalization do not necessarily imply that the

sovereignty of the state is in danger of disappearing.

Transformationalists
The final group are the transformationalists such as Held, Rosenau, and Ruggie,

who argue that the nature of the system itself is undergoing a profound transformation the

de-centers the loci of power away from their traditional place in the state16

Transformationalists answer the question is globalization real with a definitive maybe.

They argue against the globalists that the state is in the process of vanishing, but they

argue against the skeptics that nothing significant is occurring in the world system.

Instead they argue that increases in communications and transportation technology as

well as the rise of a new set of international institutions is transforming the significance

of state sovereigny. For instance, Robert Keohane has argued that sovereignty today

should be understood “less as a territorially defined barrier than a bargaining resource for

a politics characterized by complex transnational networks”. The nation-state, according

to the transformationalists is not about to disappear, but it does exist in a more

complicated web of relationships with other, non-territorial institutions of power. Rather

than being the only significant actors in the international system, as they were under the

Westphalian system, nation-states are becoming one form of governance among many.

16
Held et al., Global Transformations, James Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring
Governance in a Turbulent World, ed. Steve Smith, vol. 53, Cambridge Studies in International Relations
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), John G. Ruggie, "Territoriality and Beyond:
Problematizing Modernity in International Relations," International Organization 47 (1993).
To support their argument transformationalists often point to the development of the

European Union, which originally began as a trade pact between European states but has

evolved into a complicated set of institutions of governance, many of which have the

power to overturn laws passed in legislatures of its member states. Nevertheless, despite

the emergence of this new form of governance, European states such as France, the U.K.,

and Germany continue to exist.

Susan Strange, in Retreat of the State stakes out a position the rejects hyper-

globalists prediction of the demise of the state and skeptical assertions that there have

been no significant changes to the nature of the state sovereignty. While she is skeptical

about the accuracy of the term ‘globalization’ to describe the changes currently occurring

in international political economy, Strange does believe that there is a diffusion of the

traditional power and authority of the state.17 The reason that scholars have been unable

to describe and diagnose these changes is because they tend to study world politics from

a state centric framework. As an alternative, Strange proposes that scholars study world

politics through what she believes are its four basic structure: 1) security; 2) credit and

finance; 3) knowledge and information; 4) production. The only structure in which the

state continues to be the leading actor is in the realm of security. Other global actors such

as international banks and multinational corporations now exercise more power than the

state in the three other basic structures of world order.

The general impression left is that the domain of state authority in

economy and society is shrinking; and / or what were once domains of
authority exclusive to the state are now being shared with other loci or
sources of authority.18

17
Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy, ed. Steve Smith,
vol. 49, Cambridge Studies in International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1996), xii.
18
Ibid., 82.
This diffusion of the authority of the state is exemplified by two changes in the behaviour

of states. First, whereas states where once accountable to their civil societies with respect

to the states role in international affairs the interaction between the state and civil society

is now reversed. Now, one of the primary functions of states is to get its civil society to

accept international rules and policies, even if they have been made without consent and

by undemocratic practices. Second, states have begun to manipulate policy outcomes by

moving the authority over a given policy either down to the local level or up to the

transnational level.

Strange argues that if scholars try to study globalization from a global governance

approach, then they will tend to underestimate the amount of transformation that is

occurring in world politics.

Since governments are the constituents of intergovernmental

organizations, the meagerness of results from research into global
governance is not to be wondered at. Starting from a state-centric
assumption it cannot surmount the obstructions raised by states against
radical institutional reform.19

The fact that states are invested in preventing reform of international institutions is very

problematic because non of these institutions to whom the states traditional authority has

shifted are democratically governed. The normative issue for Strange is how democratic

control can be placed over the new loci of power and authority in world politics.

Richard Falk is also highly critical of the determinism contained in hyper globalist

and skeptical accounts of globaliztion. Falk argues that both descriptions of the global

system are in fact what he terms “world order projects” – visions of a world to be

19
Ibid., 183.
created.20 Each of these visions of world order contain ideological and normative

assumptions that tend to go unchallenged because scholars in each camp tend to elide the

normative aspects of globalization with the descriptive. The global skeptics are engaged

in a rear guard defense of the Westphalia world order model. The most significant

challenge to this world order has been the rise of international institutions. However, Falk

is quick to point out that the emergence of these institutions:

was both intentionally and inevitably ambiguous, being a gesture in the

direction of qualifying sovereignty by deference to an emergent organized
world community and as a means to extend sovereignty by restricting
within the narrowest limits the autonomous role of such institutions and by
structuring participation beyond the state in a manner that ensured that
only states were allowed membership.21

Falk describes the world order project of hyper globalists as “globalization from above”.

While advocates of neo-liberal global markets are proclaiming the death of the state, Falk

argues that this is simply an ideological claim designed to mask the fact that neo-liberals

are in fact co-opting state power. Governments are becoming more business oriented and

decreasingly likely to take into account the interests of labour movements. Citizens tend

to leave neo-liberal dogma unchallenged, adopting an anti-governmental attitude

reflected in an increased reluctance to pay taxes and a decrease confidence in the state’s

ability to provide for social goods. Falk objects to this world order project on the grounds

that it:

Accords policy hegemony to the promotion of economic growth,

disregarding adverse social effect and shaping economic policy on the
basis of ideological ceritudes that are not attentive to the realities of
human suffering.22

20
Richard Falk, Predatory Globalization: A Critique (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999), 21.
21
Ibid.
22
Ibid., 129.
As an alternative to a continuation of the Westphalian model of world order and the

model of “globalization-from-above” Falk proposes a world order model grounded on

“globalization-from-below”.

Falk describes “globalization-from-below” as the emergence of grassroots

transnational social movements that criticize and resist the policies and actions associated

with “globalization-from-above”. These groups have yet to formulate a coherent

alternative world order model to neo-liberal globalization, but Falk does believe that

grassroots resistance to “globalization-from-above” has the potential to provide a more

just world order. Falk cites a number of issue areas in which global social movements are

beginning to have an impact, including environmental politics, labour rights, human

rights, and resistance to economic globalization.

Most impressive have been the creative tactics used by transnational

participating groups, denied formal access because of their lack of statist
credentials, yet exercising a considerable impact on the agenda and
substantive outcomes of intergovernmental activities and at the same time
strengthening transnational links.23

While globalization-from-below is still emerging as an alternative world order, Falk sees

in it the potential to counteract the homogenizing effects of globalization from above.

Specifically, Falk argues that transnational democratic policies maybe able to reconcile

the global economy with well-being of humanity, leading to the emergence of global

public goods.

One person who has developed this vision of “globalization from below” into a

comprehensive plan for “cosmopolitan democracy” is David Held. Held rejects both the

Westphalian system of sovereign states and the U.N. centered system of global

23
Ibid., 134.
governance as inadequate attempts for providing democratic world orders. Instead Held

argues that a multilayered system of democratic governance with a system of

cosmopolitian law and a series of institutional linkages between governments and non

governmental actors will gradually emerge over the next 200 years. Held’s system of

cosmopolitan democracy includes a global parliament that is associated with regional,

state and local governments, a global charter of rights attached to institutions with a

global legal enforcement mechanism, and the formal separation of the economic and

political realms.24

The transformationalists attempt to find a via media between hyper-globalist

claims that the sovereign state is dead and the skeptics claim that state sovereignty is as

strong as ever. Their solution is to concede the emergence of new actors in the

international system, but to arguing that the emergence of international regimes and the

increased power of transnational institutions and activists does not necessarily mean that

the state will wither away. The image of the emerging international system most offered

by the transformationalists is of a neo-feudal system with a network of complex power

relations and a diffuse and overlapping set of jurisdictions. One major concern raised by

almost all of the transformationalists is how are the new institutions and power structures

to be held accountable and maintain legitimacy? The answer most of these authors

provided is that global civil society and transnational activism will provide a counter-

balance to the democratic deficit being generated by many of these institutions. Having

now surveyed the different visions of globalization offered by IR scholars, in the next

section I will offer a critical assessment of all three pictures of globalization.

24
David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance
(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995).
Different Pictures of Globalization, but Common Ontological Assumptions
It is my contention that all three approaches to globalization – hyper-globalist,

skeptical and transformationalist - share a common set of ontological assumptions that

foreclose the possibility of imagining more plausible futures of political community

under conditions of globalization. The three possibilities trump change while in actuality

they propose static futures. In this section I will examine how a field ostensibly dedicated

to studying political change on a global level is only able to describe change in reference

to the present or the past.

When the three different theories of globalization are stripped down to their constituent

elements it quickly becomes clear that they are simply repackagings of three of IRs

traditional models of international systems. The globalists’ vision of either a global state

or a global market simply involves transferring the principles of state sovereignty to a

global level. International conflicts become internalized as civil wars or police actions

within a unified global state. The global economy creates the need for a global system of

law to enforce contracts and resolve disputes, and this need for a global law in turn

requires a global sovereign as the final arbitrator. While cloaking themselves in the

rhetoric of profound changes to the international system, the globalist do not envision any

fundamental changes in the form of political entities in this ‘new’ era of globalization.

Globalization simply transforms the Westphalian system into a world state – which

leaves the principles of state sovereignty intact but scales them up to a global level.

The skeptics on the other hand argue that the international system will remain

unchanged by globalization. Because states are the actors that create international

institutions, any decline in the sovereignty of states that hyper-globalists notice is nothing

more than states temporarily lending sovereignty to an international institution. Skeptics

tend to argue that most of the changes occurring in the international system are

completely compatible with the neo-realist theory of the international system. The current

system has more to do with the U.S. imposing its neo-liberal economic interests on the

international system than with any fundamental change to the international system. What

the skeptics are unable to explain is how the international system could change. In fact, as

most of the skeptics critics would be quick to point out, even faced with significant

evidence that the international system is undergoing significant change – at least in the

realm of political economy – skeptics are more interested in finding a way to save the

appearances of their neo-realist theory of the international system than offer an

explanation of these changes from a state-centric point of view. My concern with these

two ‘pictures’ of globalization is how a process that is associated with dramatic change to

the state system celebrates change while leaving the fundamental principle of the system

– sovereignty – untouched?

The third alternative is advanced by the transformationalists, who tend to describe

the emerging international system as a return to the medieval system that existed before

the Westphalian system. Transformationalists describe the emerging world political

system as a complicated network of organizations with de-centered power structures,

often drawing an analogy between world politics under conditions of globalization and

the feudal structures of medieval world. International institutions such as the International

Criminal Court, the IMF and the WTO tend to have overlapping authority with the

sovereignty of nation states. In addition, many sub-national groups, such as the Basques

and Catalonians in Spain, the Quebecois in Canada, and the Scots and Welsh in the

United Kingdom are renegotiating their respective countries constitutions with an eye
towards ‘sovereignty association’. Finally the emergence of Multinational Corporations,

Transnational Activist groups, and transnational criminal and terrorist groups, are

evidence that legitimate and illegitimate political and economic activity that once only

occurred at the domestic level is begin to have significant impacts on the international

system.

My concern with the transformationalists’ use of the feudal image is two-fold.

First, advocates of a neo-medieval ‘picture’ of globalization have been largely uncritical

about the ethical implications of such a form of political community would entail: a

return to direct appropriation of surplus labour (serfdom/slavery); a reconceptualization

of political order as a hierarchy; a return to appeals to authority, etc. Hence, the

transformationalists are not able to explain how some of the important features of

modernity (democracy, individual freedom, abolition of slavery) can be preserved in an

era of neo-feudalism.

Second, adherents of the neo-feudal picture of globalization fundamentally

misunderstand the ontological assumptions that made the medieval political system

possible. Medieval ontological assumptions are incommensurable with our modern

ontological assumptions. The medieval ontological assumptions were based on the belief

that everything in existence, including the political order was a reflection of God. States

were headed by leaders whose authority came to them from divine law, and were

supposed to rule over their subjects the way God rules over the cosmos, or the intellect

rules over the body. Conflict between Christian states was impossible unless While such

a vision of political order might be appealing to some fundamentalists seeking to

establish a global theocracy, this image of politics is completely untenable in describing

the current multi-cultural world order with its secularist tendencies. Because these

ontological assumptions are what makes particular pictures of political community

possible it is impossible to recreate a medieval political system acting upon modern

assumptions.

The modern ontological assumptions are also inadequate to understand

contemporary political conditions. Both the skeptics and the hyper globalists assume that

sovereignty is the universal, necessary and obligatory way of framing political order. This

way of understanding political order in fact rests upon a contingent image of the subject.

This image of the subject emerged in 17th century philosophy in response to a set of

challenges raised by Pyrrohnian Skepticism. The philosophical solution to this problem

was the creation of a philosophical framework of subjectivism that imposed a new set of

problems on the world that may or may no be apt. Specifically, if one assumes that

society is composed of a set of subjects, each with the capacity to interpret reality in his

or her own way, then it is likely, perhaps even inevitable that these subjects will come

into conflict with each other. The solution that 17th century political theorists proposed to

the political problem of the subject was to create a sovereign with the power to resolve

disputes between subjects, and to maintain order throughout a society of autonomous

subjects. Skeptics and globalists have adopted the modern, subjectivist vision of politics,

and consequently have come to believe that sovereignty is the necessary, universal, and

obligatory way of organizing political order. This has occurred in two ways: First,

because they are held captive by the picture of subjectivism they are unable to imagine

any other model for agency. Hence the state, through the notion of sovereignty, has

become a subject writ large. Second, subjectivism’s figure of the rational subject
produces a lack in the political order that requires a sovereign to fulfill. If we develop

alternative ways of understanding human subjectivity then it will be possible to

understand political order in an alternative manner to the sovereignty/anarchy divide.

This will free us from the constraint of believing the world must be organized into

sovereign states, and will mobilize those who feel constrained by sovereignty to act

against its oppressive aspects.

Therefore our way out of the fly bottle is to explore how our modernist

ontological assumptions produce pictures of political community that ‘hold us captive’,

thereby preventing us from understanding the significant features of contemporary

politics and limiting our ability to imagine alternative images of political community that

might be able to promote more just political solutions to the problems created by

processes of globalization. In addition to the two options of return to feudalism and a

continuation of sovereign centered politics, some theorists of globalization – most

notably David Held and Richard Falk – have suggested that transnational civil society

may be developing an entirely new form of international politics. In the next section, I

will examine the transnational activism literature to see if these theorists do in fact offer

an original picture of global politics under conditions of globalization.

Transnational Activism: A New Form of Politics
Within the transnational activist literature there is a general consensus that

transnational actors are challenging the state in a variety of ways. Most research in this

field suggests that transnational activists are becoming significant actors in world politics

that are beginning to rival sovereign states in areas such as human rights, global political

economy, and environmental issues. In this section I will briefly review the arguments of

the transnational activist literature to see if there is any basis to the claims advanced by

transnational activist scholars that transnational activism represents a challenge to

sovereign centered politics.

Among the strongest advocates for the position that transnational activism is

challenging the sovereignty of the nation state are the social constuctivsts Katherine

Sikkink and Margaret Keck. Keck and Sikkink argue that Transnational Advocacy

Networks are a challenge to the sovereignty of the state in two ways. First, they pressure

governments to alter their domestic policies. Second, through their activism they alter

norms of expected state identity and behaviour, thereby constraining the sovereignty of

the state.25

Ronald Lipshutz, approaching world politics from a Gramscian perspective,

draws a similar conclusion on the increasing significance of transnational activists in

world politics. Lipshutz attributes the rise of transnational activism to an inter-related

transformation in both the structure and agency of the world system. Structurally, the

condition of global anarchy that characterized the cold war is withering away, creating

space for non-state actors to create transnational linkages. At the level of the agent, the
25
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International
Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 36-7.
state has become unwilling and unable to meet its welfare state commitments to its

citizens. The response from citizens is to find alternative means of satisfying these needs,

this process undermines the power and hence the sovereignty of the state.26

While many scholars working within the transnational activist literature see the

rise of global civil society as a breakthrough for a new, just form of global politics, there

are those who are highly skeptical about the impact of global social movements on the

form and content of global politics. For example, Rosenberg argues that global civil

society is actually a new form of imperialism that rests upon capitalism’s distinction

between the public and the private realm. In earlier historical forms, there was no division

between the means of extraction of surplus value and political power. What is unique

about sovereignty is that the state - under capitalism - is no longer the principle apparatus

of extracting surplus value. This is signified, for Rosenberg, by a re-description of the

meaning of sovereignty between the writings of Bodin and Hobbes. Under Bodin,

sovereignty is simply the expression of the sovereign’s (i.e. the King’s) personal right to

extract surplus value from his subjects. Under Hobbes sovereignty has shifted to

represent the problem of order in a state composed of legally equal individuals engaged

in exchange relationships. Secondly, under late feudalism, the sovereign waged war for

the purpose of the state’s capacity for surplus appropriation. Under capitalism, states no

longer wage war for the purpose of expropriation of the surplus. Instead, the

private/public distinction of capitalism constitutes states in such as way that they interact

with each other in an anarchical society.27

26
Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Civil Society,"
Millenium: Journal of International Studies 21, no. 3 (1992).
27
Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of Realist Theory of International Relations
(London, UK: Verso, 1994).
 The transnational activism literature, just like globalization, has scholars who are

skeptical that global social movements represent a genuinely new for of politics. For

example, Emma Rothschild, while agreeing with many of the advocates of transnational

activism that individual rights and freedoms are of paramount importance, contends that

the only way to secure these rights is through the sovereignty of the nation state. Of

particular concern to Rothschild is the fact that, as a result of this/these new approach(es)

to security, “the individual who is ‘troubled by violence’ does not know who to ask for

protection (which agency of the United Nations, which non-governmental organization,

and in what language?), and she has no political recourse if the protection is not

provided”.28 Because human security leaves so much in doubt as to who provides

security, Rothschild’s conclusion is that we, as a species, are more secure under nation-

states than under this new international politics..

The transnational activist literature is underpinned by the same ‘ethical’ concerns

that underpin the idealist project in IR in the first half of the 20th century. Universal

principles underpin many of the problems that activist attack in response to particular

problems created by the principle of state sovereignty (i.e. human rights violations,

environmental problems, issues of disarmament, etc.). To solve these problems

transnational activists (and scholars) propose amending an aspect of state sovereignty: the

principle of non-intervention by external actors. The transnational activist literature sees

global activism as providing a democratic principle to ‘solve’ the problems created by

sovereignty through an appeal to universality. The problem is that universality is the

28
Emma Rothschild, "What Is Security?," Daedalus 124, no. 3 (1995): 71.
assumption that creates these problems in the first place. As Rob Walker has pointed out

in the broader context of international ethics:

“It will also become increasingly apparent that structural change in world
politics will not take the form of a move from particularity to universality.
. . . Yet if the principle of state sovereignty offers an inadequate account of
contemporary dynamics, as I think it does, it is important to be clear about
what state sovereignty is. . . . It is, first and foremost, a spatial resolution
of the relation between universality and particularity. International
fragmentation is only one consequence of this resolution, the other being
an account of political community and temporal progress within the state.
It therefore seems more helpful to consider how universality and
particularity might be rearticulated without capitulating to the modernist
presumption that the different must always be resolved into the same.29

So while seeming to challenge the problems created by state sovereignty, the

transnational activist literature’s solution ends up being based on the same ontological

principles that produce the problems in the first place.

29
R.B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, ed. Steve Smith, vol. 24,
Cambridge Studies in International Relations (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
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