(Morten Ougaard (Auth.) ) Political Globalization - State, Power and Social Forces

Political Globalization
State, Power and Social Forces
Morten Ougaard
International Political Economy Series
General Editor: Timothy M. Shaw, Professor of Commonwealth Governance

and Development, and Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
School of Advanced Study, University of London
Titles include:
Hans Abrahamsson
UNDERSTANDING WORLD ORDER AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE
Poverty, Conflict and the Global Arena
Francis Adams, Satya Dev Gupta and Kidane Mengisteab (editors)
GLOBALIZATION AND THE DILEMMAS OF THE STATE IN THE SOUTH
Preet S. Aulakh and Michael G. Schechter (editors)
RETHINKING GLOBALIZATION(S)
From Corporate Transnationalism to Local Interventions
James Busumtwi-Sam and Laurent Dobuzinskis (editors)
TURBULENCE AND NEW DIRECTIONS IN GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Elizabeth De Boer-Ashworth
THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND POST-1989 CHANGE
The Place of the Central European Transition
Helen A. Garten
US FINANCIAL REGULATION AND THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Randall D. Germain (editor)
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS CRITICS
Perspectives from Political Economy
Barry K. Gills (editor)
GLOBALIZATION AND THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE
Richard Grant and John Rennie Short (editors)
GLOBALIZATION AND THE MARGINS
Axel Hülsemeyer (editor)
GLOBALIZATION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Convergence or Divergence?
Helge Hveem and Kristen Nordhaug (editors)
PUBLIC POLICY IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Responses to Environmental and Economic Crises
Takashi Inoguchi
GLOBAL CHANGE
A Japanese Perspective
Jomo K. S. and Shyamala Nagaraj (editors)
GLOBALIZATION VERSUS DEVELOPMENT
Ronaldo Munck and Peter Waterman (editors)
LABOUR WORLDWIDE IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION
Alternative Union Models in the New World Order
Craig N. Murphy (editor)
EGALITARIAN POLITICS IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Michael Niemann
A SPATIAL APPROACH TO REGIONALISM IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Morten Ougaard
POLITICAL GLOBALIZATION
Markus Perkmann and Ngai-Ling Sum (editors)
GLOBALIZATION, REGIONALIZATION AND CROSS–BORDER REGIONS
Ted Schrecker (editor)
SURVIVING GLOBALISM
The Social and Environmental Challenges
Leonard Seabrooke
US POWER IN INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
The Victory of Dividends
Timothy J. Sinclair and Kenneth P. Thomas (editors)
STRUCTURE AND AGENCY IN INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL MOBILITY
Kendall Stiles (editor)
GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS AND LOCAL EMPOWERMENT
Competing Theoretical Perspectives
Caroline Thomas and Peter Wilkin (editors)
GLOBALIZATION AND THE SOUTH
Geoffrey R. D. Underhill (editor)
THE NEW WORLD ORDER IN INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
Amy Verdun
EUROPEAN RESPONSES TO GLOBALIZATION AND FINANCIAL MARKET
INTEGRATION
Perceptions of Economic and Monetary Union in Britain, France and Germany
International Political Economy Series

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Political Globalization
Morten Ougaard
Copenhagen Business School
Q Morten Ougaard 2004
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ougaard, Morten.
Political globalization : state, power and social forces / Morten Ougaard.
p. cm. – (International political economy series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Globalization–Political aspects. 2. Globalization–Social aspects.
3. Power (Social sciences) 4. Political sociology. 5. State, The. I. Title.
II. International political economy series (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))
JZ1318.O84 2003
306.2–dc21
2003051970
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04
Contents
List of Tables viii

Preface ix
Abbreviations and Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 The global polity perspective 3
1.3 A historically and socially contextualized
state-theoretical perspective 10
1.4 Overview of the argument 13
2 General Theoretical Issues 15

2.1 Bohrian complementarity 15
2.2 Structure and agency 19
2.3 Ideas and material forces 22
2.4 An idiographic macro-sociological approach 27
3 The Structuration of World Society 33

3.1 Systemic periodization and homogenization 34
3.2 Shared norms 37
3.3 Market democracy 40
3.4 The global spread of capitalism 43
3.5 The modern capitalist state 45
3.6 The expansion of democracy 48
3.7 Concluding on homogeneity 53
3.8 A more peaceful world? 55
4 Concepts of State: Aspects of Statehood 61

4.1 Aspects of statehood 61
4.2 Aspects of Statehood in Poulantzas 62
4.3 The uneven globalization of statehood 66
v
vi Contents
5 The Institutional Infrastructure of

Global Governance 69
5.1 Overview of the global governance system 70
5.2 The Group of Seven 75
5.3 The G-7 OECD link 78
5.4 Activities at the OECD 80
5.5 Strategy development at the OECD 89
5.6 Conclusion 94
6 The Function of Persistence 95

6.1 Introduction 95
6.2 Duality and complementarity in the
analysis of capitalism 96
6.3 State functions and the power/persistence duality 99
6.4 Arguments on state functions 107
6.5 The political logic of state functions 110
6.6 Modalities of the persistence function 114
7 The Persistence Function in Contemporary

World Society 119
7.1 The maintenance of order 121
7.2 Preconditions for a capitalist market economy 127
7.3 Stabilizing the business cycle 132
7.4 Expansion to less developed areas 135
7.5 Reproduction and qualification of the
labour force and population 137
7.6 Environmental protection 140
7.7 Conclusion 143
8 Power Relations in the Global Polity 145

8.1 The problem: the power of states – the power
of social forces 145
8.2 Institutions and state strength 150
8.3 The analysis of social forces 153
8.4 Towards transnational class formation? 157
8.5 Patterns of power in the global polity 165
Contents vii
9 The Trajectory of Hegemonic Leadership 170

9.1 Hegemony and foreign policy 171
9.2 American political culture 176
9.3 Political culture and the American mission 179
9.4 Main themes in America’s international involvement 185
9.5 Conclusion 192
10 Conclusion 194
10.1 Theoretical overview 194
10.2 Empirical overview 198
10.3 Concluding comments 201
Bibliography 206
Index 224
List of Tables
5.1 G-7– OECD policy links, 1975–99 79

5.2 G-7– OECD policy links by issue, 1975–99 81
5.3 Structural topics surveyed by the OECD, 1990–9 85
viii
Preface
This book has been several years in gestation and many debts of grati-
tude have been accumulated along the way. The book grew out of a
study I did for the Danish Institute of International Affairs on ‘The
United Nations and Global Organization’ and I am grateful to the
institute, in particular Svend Aage Christensen, for asking me to take
up this task. This was what started me grappling with the problem of
theorizing global governance and exploring it empirically. Georg
Sørensen invited me to join the research project Globalization, Statehood,
and World Order which he led. This prompted me to develop a more
focused project and in this context I benefited from financial support
from the Danish Social Science Research Council and from stimulating
discussions in the group, which included Hans Henrik Holm, Knud Erik
Jørgensen, Tonny Brems Knudsen, Jens Ladefoged Mortensen, Mehdi
Mozaffari, Jørgen Dige Pedersen, Georg Sørensen and my colleagues at
the CBS: Sven Bislev, Hans Krause Hansen and Dorte Salskov-Iversen.
A special debt that I am unable to pay back is owed to the late Susan
Strange for suggesting that I visit the Centre for the Study of Globalisa-
tion and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick. I am grateful to
the Centre’s Director, Richard Higgott, for welcoming me as visiting
scholar in 1999. At the Centre I benefited from discussions with several
members of that stimulating environment, in particular Richard Higgott
and Peter Burnham. The discussions with Richard in connection with
our jointly edited volume Towards a Global Polity were a valuable and
memorable experience.
I have benefited from discussions with many people in workshops,
seminars and elsewhere, and special thanks go to Bas Arts, Morten
Kelstrup, Brad Jackson, Craig N. Murphy, Henrik Kaare Nielsen, Dora
Piroska, and Michael Zürn. At early stages Kevin McGovern and Rasmus
Herring were valuable research assistants and Michael Elgaard Nielsen
helped me prepare parts of the manuscript. Jørgen Dige Pedersen read an
earlier draft and Sven Bislev parts of it; their comments and suggestions
helped me sharpen and clarify my arguments, for which I of course bear
sole responsibility.
I am grateful to the Copenhagen Business School for supporting my
research, not least for granting repeated visits to Klitgaarden, a gem of
a research retreat. Bente Jørgensen, Annika Dilling and the entire
ix
x Preface
administrative staff at the Programme on Intercultural Management at

the Copenhagen Business School did much more than could be
expected to ease my administrative burdens in the final stages of the
project. I am grateful to Tim Shaw, the series editor, Palgrave Macmillan,
for encouragement, suggestions and patience, to Amanda Watkins, at
for support and flexibility, and to Keith Povey for efficient copy-editing.
The greatest debt I owe to Helle, my wife, who admirably managed to
turn her eagerness to see the project finished into patient support.
When writing about global governance, relations of power and
American hegemony, the unfolding of world history outside the study
unavoidably has an impact on interpretations. The actual writing was
begun before September 11th 2001 and largely concluded before the war
against Saddam Hussein. The reader will notice the impact of these
dramatic events in parts of the text, but I have abstained from updating
those sections and I have resisted the temptation to speculate about the
possible consequences for the future of political globalization. But I can
say that these events have not led me to doubt the relevance of the
issues I discuss.
MO R T E N OU G A A RD
Abbreviations and
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
AIDS acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome

ANZUS Australia, New Zealand and the United States
ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nations
BIS Bank for International Settlements
CBS Copenhagen Business School
CCNM (OECD) Centre for Cooperation with Non-Members
DNMEs Dynamic Non-Member Economies
DUPI Dansk Udenrigspolitisk Institut / Danish Institute of
International Affairs
ECOSOC United Nations’ Economic and Social Council
ECOWAS Economic Organization of West African States
EICTA European Information & Communications Technology
Industry Association
EMEF (OECD) Emerging Market Economy Forum
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (UN)
FATF Financial Action Task Force
FDI foreign direct investment
G-7 Group of Seven
G-8 Group of Eight
G-10 Group of Ten
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP gross domestic product
IBM International Business Machines
ICC International Chambers of Commerce
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development
IHT International Herald Tribune
ILO International Labour Organization
IMF International Monetary Fund
Interpol International Criminal Police Organization
IR international relations
ISO International Organisation for Standardization
xi
xii Abbreviations and Acknowledgements
ITB IT Brancheforeningen
MAI Multilateral Agreement on Investment
Mercosur Mercado del Sur / Market of the South
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGOs non-governmental organizations
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OXFAM Oxford Committee for Famine Relief
SDRs Special Drawing Rights
TNC transnational ruling class
TRIPS Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights
UN United Nations
UNCITRAL UN Commission on International Trade Law
UN DESA United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
UNAIDs United Nations AIDS Program
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIDROIT International Institute for the Unification of Private Law
USA United States of America
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WCO World Customs Organization (Customs Cooperation
Council)
WFP World Food Programme
WHO World Health Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
Acknowledgements
Parts of the material and arguments presented in this volume have

previously appeared elsewhere, in conference papers, journal articles,
and books. The author and publishers are grateful to Routledge for
granting permission to use material from the author’s contribution to
the volume Towards a Global Polity (2002) that was co-edited with Richard
Higgott, to Copenhagen Business School Press for allowing use of mater-
ial from ‘Culture and Society in the Analysis of U.S. Foreign Policy’ in To
Capture the Bird’s Flight: On the Interface Between Culture and Society (1995)
edited by Salskov-Iversen og Ejdesgaard-Jeppesen, and to the Danish
journals Politica and Grus for translations of material published there.
1
Introduction
1 Introduction: globalization and politics
The title of this book ‘Political Globalization’ was chosen to signal that
there are important political aspects to the process of globalization. In
very general terms these aspects involve transformations in the relations
between political processes and territorial states. There is a double pro-
cess in which nation-states and the conditions under which national
policies are formed and conducted are changed, while at the same time
multiple international and transnational political relations develop and
intensify, so that nation states increasingly must be seen as components
in a larger and more complex international political configuration.
Globalization is not only a matter of nation-states facing challenges
and opportunities from an increasingly integrated world economy, but
also and significantly a question of the political institutions of territori-
ally defined national societies becoming integral parts of an increasingly
interconnected international and global political system.
The purpose of the book is to contribute to the theoretical and empir-
ical analysis of this phenomenon. The intention is not to cover all
aspects of this broadly defined agenda which in principle could include
practically all issues and problems being studied in the fields of inter-
national politics and international relations. The intention is to focus
on selected aspects that are particularly relevant from the theoretical
perspective applied. At the centre of attention is what provisionally can
be identified as global governance, defined empirically and broadly as
the institutions and processes that are involved in transborder regula-
tion of societal activity and in the provision of global public goods,
whether through intergovernmental organizations, patterns of cooper-
ation between nation-states, for instance in coalitions of the willing, or
1
2 Political Globalization: State, Power and Social Forces
international public-private partnerships. This area is to be approached

from a state theoretical perspective that emphasizes that political phe-
nomena are considered in historical and societal context and that
further identifies specific aspects for closer scrutiny. As a preliminary
indication these aspects concern the tasks or social purposes or func-
tions that are pursued through the governance system, the relations of
power between social forces involved, and the nature of leadership
implied. These aspects all can be brought together under the heading
of ‘the uneven globalization of aspects of statehood’.
This argument has certain similarities to Luard’s analysis of The Glob-
alization of Politics (1990) and to recent contributions such as Martin
Shaw’s Theory of the Global State (2000) and Michael Zürn’s discussion of
multilevel governance in the post-national constellation (Zürn 1998,
2001). But these authors employed theoretical understandings of state
and society that are different from the ones preferred here, and in
consequence the resulting analyses are different. This illustrates one
of the important theoretical points informing this study, namely
that the globalization of politics calls for increased attention to such
very basic questions where important differences of conceptualization
and theoretical perspectives prevail in the social sciences, as a precondi-
tion for further advancement in the theoretical understanding and
empirical analysis of the political aspects of globalization. The justifica-
tions for this proposition and the further theoretical specification of the
various concepts involved will follow in later chapters and are, indeed,
one of the purposes of the book. But in order to explain and clarify this
approach and the reasoning behind it this chapter elaborates on the
theoretical and societal context in which the argument is located.
As already indicated this book takes the position that globalization is
real. In the vast and ever-expanding literature on this concept there is no
agreement about this, and not even about what is meant by the concept.
I will refrain from engaging with this debate at this point and merely
express a basic agreement with what has been called a transformationalist
position along the lines suggested by for instance Held et al. (1999) and
Scholte (2000a). The central point is that whereas some of the claims
about globalization have been clearly exaggerated, as argued for instance
by Hirst and Thompson (1999), there is convincing and indeed compel-
ling evidence that globalization understood as a set of more or less
interrelated changes is a very real phenomenon that adds up to a funda-
mental societal transformation. Among these changes are a deepening of
international economic integration (itself a multifaceted phenomenon),
developments in communication technologies and infrastructure, the
Introduction 3
rise of multiculturalism, global environmental problems, proliferation

of international institutions, agreements and regimes, the rise of trans-
national non-state actors, the end of the Cold War, and others. The
cumulative effects of these developments have transformed the world
to the extent that it is justified to say, in the words of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), that we are
entering a global age (OECD 1997b). In Chapter 3 I will discuss in some
detail in what sense globalization marks a significant change in the
theoretical perspective of this book.
In this global age politics is also changing. Private actors operate in an
increasingly internationalized regulatory framework that is shaped
through a combination of national, transnational, and international
processes that include governments, non-governmental actors and
international organizations in novel ways. We have seen the rise of a
highly visible transnational movement of activists against globalization
or against the current pattern of internationalization, not exactly uni-
fied in their goals, but nevertheless representing a kind of transnational
social movement targeting institutions in the global governance system
in a way that has no clear historical precedent. Indeed, the policies of the
current global governance system has become much more politicized
than before, and concurrently there has been a growing scholarly and
political interest in alternatives, spanning from modest reformist sugges-
tions for improving accountability and transparency to wide-ranging
proposals for cosmopolitan democracy (McGrew 2002; Held and
McGrew 2002a pp. 98–136). And in domestic politics in many countries
new political cleavages have emerged between globalization winners
and losers and between those who react against multiculturalism and
those who accept or support it, those who defend national autonomy
and fear international involvement, and those who take the opposite
position. In short, in the early twenty-first century the global order is
politicised in new ways and the ways in which the world organizes and
governs its common affairs has become a key topic for political debate.
There are good reasons to examine political aspects of globalization and
the globalization of politics.
2 The global polity perspective
This is not a new challenge for social science. On the contrary, research
themes and agendas concerned with international institutions and
regimes (e.g. Krasner 1983; Keohane 1984; Keohane 1989; Hasenclever,
Mayer and Rittberger 1997; Simmons and Martin 2002), transnational
relations (e.g. Risse-Kappen 1995; Keck and Sikkink 1998), global gov-
ernance (e.g. Reinicke 1998; Keohane and Nye 2000, McGrew 1997;
McGrew 2002), and the consequences of globalization for nation-states
(e.g. Strange 1996; Milner and Keohane 1996; Weiss 1998; Hirst and
Thompson 1999; Sørensen 2001) and others have contributed signifi-
cantly to the analysis and theory building in this area. To talk about the
globalization of politics and political aspects of globalization is another
way of identifying that large section of the entire field of international
politics and international relations that is concerned with the way in
which world politics is changing in the era of globalization.
But in this broad area a noteworthy theoretical development is that a
seemingly growing number of researchers have begun to focus on global
politics as a much more interconnected and institutionalised whole
than is recognized by more traditional perspectives centred on the
nation-state represented most clearly and strongly by neo-realist
notions of the international anarchical political system (Waltz 1983).
In contrast to this it has been recognized that decisions are made and
policies carried out with consequences for all or many countries through
international and transnational structures and processes, and increas-
ingly so, and this has led researchers to develop perspectives, concepts
and theories that transcend the traditional distinction between domes-
tic and international politics and to direct attention to international
and transnational political structures and processes in new ways.
Importantly researchers have begun to apply to the global polity
approaches and concepts that have been developed and are used in
the analysis of domestic political systems and political analysis in general.
Where Waltz argued that domestic and international politics are funda-
mentally different, this usage implies that there are important similar-
ities, and that in some ways international politics have some of the same
properties as domestic political systems.
An example is Susan Strange’s application to the global political
economy of the definition of politics as the ‘processes and structures
through which the mix of values in the system as a whole, and their
distribution among social groups and individuals [is] determined’ (1996
p34), a definition that was inspired by David Easton’s systemic approach
to the analysis of national political systems (David Easton 1953). Other
examples are not difficult to come by. Clive Archer (1992) discussed the
functions of international organizations in terms derived from Almond
and Powell’s 1966 contribution to comparative politics; Martin Shaw
posed the question of the theory of the global state (Shaw 2000);
Braithwaite and Drahos (2000) directly addressed global business regula-
Introduction 5
tion; while other scholars have focussed on global policy analysis (Soroos
1991), global public policies (Reinicke 1998), global public goods (Kaul,
Grunberg and Stern 1999), global social policy (Deacon 1997), or have
applied Marxian or Gramscian concepts of class, power and hegemony
(e.g. Cox 1987; Gill 1995; Pijl 1984, 1998; Murphy 1994; Sklair 2001),
or the Habermasian concept of communicative action (Risse 2000) to
international politics and international political economy. Zürn, who
prefers the term denationalization to globalization, discussed govern-
ance in the ‘postnational constellation’ in terms of the functions of
national political systems (Zürn 2001), and from a different theoretical
perspective Robinson (2002) discussed, under the heading of the trans-
nationalization of the state, global governance in terms of functions
usually associated with nation-states.
These examples represent a wide variety of theoretical perspectives
and traditions. But they share a holistic perspective on world politics as
an integrated phenomenon, or at least much more integrated that
recognized by the anarchy model, and they share the use of concepts
and perspectives developed in the context of national political systems
to the analysis of global politics. Therefore they can be grouped together
under the heading of global polity research (Ougaard 2002).
Generally these scholars agree that even an embryonic world govern-
ment or global state is still only a distant and uncertain, if not impos-
sible and undesirable, prospect, including those who introduce
terminology to that effect (e.g. Luard 1990; Albrow 1996; Shaw 2000).
Still, for them it is inadequate to conceive of the global polity as a system
of territorial states. It is also a system of states, but it is more than that,
because it includes non-state actors and a variety of international and
transnational processes, and because the institutionalized interactions
between states have reached a new level of density. This invites the
development of holistic perspectives on global politics. And while
the global polity is not a unified political system or an emerging global
state, global polity research has recognized, at least implicitly, that it has
state-like qualities. It has, in other words, some of the features of national
political systems: interests are articulated and aggregated, decisions are
made, values allocated and policies conducted through international or
transnational political processes.
It must be emphasized that this is not a claim that states have lost
relevance along the lines suggested by some (but actually rather few) in
the early stages of the globalization debate (Ohmae 1990 is still the best
example). In Michael Zürn’s apt phrase, most global governance is
governance with many governments, not without (Zürn 2001 pp. 63ff).
Rather it is an argument that state-centred perspectives are insufficient

to understand the global polity, and indeed that states themselves must
be seen in a global context if their roles are to be adequately theorized.
What is involved, in other words, is one way to effect the break with
state-centred perspectives and attempt to transcend the traditional in-
tellectual division of labour between comparative and international
politics that has been called for by several scholars (e.g. Strange 1996;
Milner and Keohane 1996, p. 257; Cutler, Haufler and Porter 1999). The
question is how to achieve such a break with ‘methodological national-
ism’, to use a provocative formulation (Scholte 1999), and the applica-
tion of concepts derived from the analysis of national systems represents
a common denominator across paradigmatic differences of the way in
which global polity research tries to achieve this.
This is a seemingly straightforward answer to the question of how to
transcend state-centred perspectives. It contrasts with attempts to the-
orize the new pattern of world politics through the invention of entirely
new concepts, neologisms, and creative metaphors (for example ‘the
governance of fragmegration’), (Rosenau 2000). Of course new concepts
should be added when justified, but obviously many researchers have
found it more productive to turn to long established concepts and
theoretical perspectives from comparative politics, general political an-
alysis and political economy, and apply them to the global context. This
in turn also contrasts with attempts by state-centred theorists to face the
theoretical challenge by restating and adding on to the state-based
model of the international political system. Indeed, what it implies is
in a reversal of strategy for theory building as one way to effect the break
with ‘methodological nationalism.’ The point is not that states have
become irrelevant or insignificant, but that the intellectual starting
point for analysing the international political system, including the
roles played in it by states, is the system as a whole, seen as a political
decision-making system and not as an anarchy. This reversal of strategy
does not of necessity imply that reality is fundamentally different from
what is suggested by a modified state-centred perspective. It is instead a
different way of looking at the same reality, a perspective that is chosen
because it enables a sharper focus on important new features of contem-
porary world politics.
At this point a warning bell is likely to toll in the minds of several
readers. Isn’t this the domestic analogy against which several theorists have
issued warnings (Suganami 1989; Keohane and Nye 2000, pp. 13f)?
Isn’t this exactly committing the error of arguing from the false assump-
tion that international politics somehow can be treated as similar to
Introduction 7
domestic politics, to politics within the territorial sovereign state? The

answer to this is that the dilemma is formulated in far too simplistic
terms: either one applies the domestic analogy or one doesn’t, as if there
is only one possible analogy between politics at the domestic and inter-
national levels. My contention is that there are numerous possible
domestic analogies, not only one, and whereas some are misguided
others are legitimate and indeed indispensable. At a very basic level,
the use of the concept ‘politics’ in both these realms suggests that some
analogies are possible. Even the popular expression ‘governance without
government’ that is often used explicitly to avoid the alleged dangers of
the domestic analogy in itself builds upon a concept – ‘governance’ –
that is derived from a domestic context. In fact the expression ‘govern-
ance without government’ is one way of saying that some domestic
analogies are relevant while others are not. Thus the question is not
whether one applies the domestic analogy, the question is which domes-
tic analogies are applied and how. To rule out any domestic analogy a
priori seems to rest on an equally unfounded assumption that politics in
the international realm is fundamentally different from domestic polit-
ics in all aspects. It should be noted in this connection that Suganami’s
critique of the domestic analogy was a critique of a certain class of
proposals for a revised world order that argued normatively for the
emulation of domestic arrangements at the international level such as,
for instance, proposals for world federalism (Suganami 1989). One can
agree or disagree with Suganami politically; this has little bearing on the
question of which concepts and modes of analysis are most fruitful for
the analysis of politics in contemporary world society. And in this regard
the fact is that a growing number of scholars, over the last decade and a
half, have found it fruitful to apply domestic analogies in the analysis of
international relations.
The conditional acceptance of domestic analogies, however, brings
new complications to the forefront. When the strategy for theory-
building is reversed and concepts from general political analysis and
political economy are brought to bear on world politics, basic theoretical
and methodological issues and disagreements about notions of politics,
of the state, the political system and society become central. As argued
by Jan Aart Scholte ‘globalization is a new subject of study around which
long-running debates about methodology can be played out’ (2000a,
p.197). Liberal, statist, historical-materialist, Coxian critical, discourse-
based and other theoretical approaches to political phenomena are
all possible starting points for the analysis of the global polity (see
Moravcsik 1997). In other words choices have to be made concerning
key concepts and theoretical approaches. This, of course, is not new

neither in the study of international relations (IR) or in any other social
science discipline. But the reversal of research strategy means that the
problem has to be posed in a new way in the field of IR.
Much theory-building in international relations has seemingly pur-
sued an exclusive strategy of developing its own theories of politics and
society, its own concepts of the state and relevant actors as if, for
instance, the state in international politics is entirely different from
the state in its domestic context. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but it
is remarkable for a research tradition in which ‘the state’ figures so
prominently that there has been relatively little attention to the theories
of the state, political system, and politics, and the debates they have
engendered in comparative politics and general political analysis. Barry
Buzan’s discussion of the state in the international system is just one
case in point (1991). Alexander Wendt’s ‘Social theory of international
politics’ (1999) is a welcome departure from this, although it remains
firmly within a state-centred perspective. By addressing some key de-
bates in state theory, Wendt opens the state system to society, but only
to domestic society, so to speak, and not to international society, a point
where other concepts of state and society would have led, as we shall see.
Wendt thus remains confined by methodological nationalism. These
issues will be addressed at length later, what is important at this point
is that a global polity research strategy calls for heightened attention to
such basic conceptual and paradigmatic questions.
In short, the field of global polity studies is simply a subset of general
societal analysis, and not an area distinct from it, and within it we find
the same basic theoretical debates and paradigmatic differences. For
research and theory-building to progress, clear and explicit choices
have to be made (similar arguments are made by Strange 1996, and, in
a different context, Moravcsik 1997). Only in a very general sense can
the theoretical agenda for studies of the globalization of politics be
outlined in a way that cuts across such differences, for instance as
systematic description, explanation, interpretation and evaluation of
global political structures and processes. Further specification requires
a specification of the concepts employed (state, society, actor, politics,
social forces etc.), and this will have important consequences for which
research questions are asked and how they are addressed.
This strategy, however, is not as straightforward as it may seem. Some
domestic analogies are relevant and others are not, and even when such
analogies are relevant there is reason to be cautious because a simple
conceptual transferral can be insufficient or even misleading (Ougaard
Introduction 9
2002). Robert W. Cox provided a good illustration of the situation with

which research is faced, when he wrote about global governance:
There is no clearly definable institutional structure in place that

governs the global economy. [There is] a nébuleuse, a loose elite
network of influentials and agencies, sharing a common set of
ideas, that collectively perform the governance function.’ – ‘there is
no formal decision-making process; but there is a complex set of
interrelated networks that evolve a common economic ideology
and inject this consensual outcome into national processes of deci-
sion-making.
(Cox 1997, pp. 59–61)
In the present context the signal word is the term nébuleuse which
means nebulous, vague, woolly. It is also a noun, used in astronomy,
where English speakers use the Latin ‘nebula.’ According to a French
dictionary the term refers to ‘tout corps céleste dont les contours ne sont pas
nets’; the Encyclopaedia Britannica states that it was ‘formerly applied to
any object outside the solar system that had a diffuse appearance and could
not be resolved telescopically into a pointlike image’. In other words, Cox’s
remarks indicate that in the political realm a new combined national/
international pattern is emerging, something that is real and visible, but
whose precise contours and properties cannot be mapped by conven-
tional methods of enquiry. Standard analytical and conceptual tools
may have to be sharpened and developed further in order to get a
more precise picture of the nebula, and this in turn calls for closer
critical scrutiny of some of the concepts in question. To illustrate: sev-
eral attempts have been made to apply class analysis to the global realm
leading scholars to posit the existence of a global or Atlantic ‘ruling
class’ (Pijl 1984; Sklair 2001; Cox 1987). A closer analysis of the concept
of class, however, will lead to the conclusion that such claims are
premature, but that it nevertheless is a valid and highly relevant endeav-
our to ask questions about transnational class formation – a problem to
be taken up later in the present work. The point, then, is that whereas
the application of such concepts is a necessary and integral part of a
global polity research strategy, the first step should be to consider their
application only at the most abstract level and after critical scrutiny. (A
debt is owed to Craig N. Murphy for emphasizing this point.) The
challenge arising from political globalization is one of taking a new
look at some of the fundamental concepts in social theory, and to
analyse them closely with a view to their applicability at the global
level. To call for ‘global polity studies’ is only a first step, it is a theoret-
ical opening. The next step is to be explicit and specific on key concep-
tual issues. This in turn requires a consideration of several layers of
theory at different levels of abstraction and generality, and that is
what the ensuing chapters are devoted to, along with empirical examin-
ation of aspects of global governance as identified and defined through
these conceptual discussions. In this opening chapter, however, a few
comments are in order on the state-theoretical perspective applied and
its relation to one important source of inspiration, namely that of
historical materialism.
3 A historically and socially contextualized state-theoretical

perspective
The basic idea informing this study of political globalization is the

application of concepts from state theory to what so far descriptively
has been called the globalization of politics and global governance. State
theory can be many things, and one of the important principles in the
version pursued here is that states and indeed all political phenomena
should be conceptualized and analysed in societal and historical con-
text. Such a perspective is found in the broad and rather heterogeneous
tradition of historical materialism and in some respects this tradition
has been an important source of inspiration. There are, however, also
notions and propositions that are often associated with this label that
I at best find debatable, and at the same time there is a great variety of
interpretations of what a historical materialist perspective on society
actually implies, and much debate on theoretical as well as political
questions among scholars who identify themselves with the tradition.
Therefore, while acknowledging the inspiration from this broad school
of thought, to label this work historical materialist would either be of
little informative value or risk being misleading. Still, it is useful to
consider the topic and theoretical perspective of the present book in
the context of Marx’s perspective on society as he presented it in the
following passage, first published in 1859:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into

definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely rela-
tions of production appropriate to a given stage in the development
of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations
of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and
Introduction 11
to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The

mode of production of material life conditions the general process
of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development,
the material productive forces of society come into conflict with
the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the
same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within
the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of
development of the productive forces these relations turn into their
fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the
economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of
the whole immense superstructure.
(Marx 1970 (1859), pp. 20–1)
Two of the problems posed by this text require a brief comment.

The first is that it easily can be read – as it often has been – as a statement
of a rather simplistic mechanical economic determinism, according
to which the political and legal ‘superstructure’ as well as the ‘social
consciousness’ are mere epiphenomena to economic developments.
This is, however, neither the only possible nor the most widespread
interpretation of the approach, as has been argued by numerous scholars
(e.g. several of the recent contributions in Rupert and Smith 2002),
usually under the heading of the relative autonomy of the political
and ideational realms. I will return to this issue in the following chapter.
The second comment is that Marx’s formulation only seems to allow for
changes in the ‘superstructure’ that are fairly sudden and takes the form
of social revolution. Piecemeal and peaceful change that happen grad-
ually over longer stretches of time seems to be ruled out. This may be
understandable when seen in the historical context in which Marx
developed his thinking – the great American and French revolutions
were not yet old history, not much further away from him than World
War II and the beginning of the Cold War is today, and several failed
European revolutions were much closer. But the broader understanding,
summarized in the last sentence: ‘the changes in the economic founda-
tion lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense
superstructure’ does not logically require that such changes always take
a sudden and revolutionary form, and it is precisely this proposition,
when understood in a non-mechanistic way, that is relevant to the
discussion of the globalization of politics.
Leaving aside the revolutionary expectation and the problem of

mechanistic economic determinism, an obvious way to transfer this
notion to the era of globalization is to ask questions about the conse-
quences of economic internationalization for the ‘political superstruc-
ture’. And quite obviously a very large part of globalization theory and
research, whether self-described historical materialist or not, can
be interpreted as being engaged with precisely this question, in that
one of the most important research themes in recent years has been
the extent to which the dominant feature of the political superstructure,
the territorial nation-states, have been transformed by economic
globalization.
But there is also a second possible interpretation of the historical
materialist perspective contained in the quote when applied to the
contemporary world, namely the possible rise of a global political super-
structure. A logical extension of Marx’s quote would be that the global-
ization of economy and society sooner or later will lead to the creation
of a global political superstructure. Such a perspective is arguably what is
implied by the rise of global polity research, but perhaps surprisingly,
rather few scholars analysing contemporary world affairs from a histor-
ical materialist perspective have posed the problem in these terms. Fred
Halliday, for instance, did not pose this question in his extensive discus-
sion of historical materialism and international relations (in Halliday
1994), and in his more recent discussion of ‘The World at 2000’ the
discussion of ‘governance beyond borders’ was mainly concerned with
different internationalist political projects (Halliday 2001, pp. 125ff).
Similarly, the contributors to the volume on Historical Materialism and
Globalization (Rupert and Smith 2002) paid little attention to the rise
of a global political superstructure with the exception of William
I. Robinson, who posed it as a central question (Robinson 2002, pp.
215ff), and Ellen Meiksins Wood who argued against the notion of an
emerging ‘global state’ (Wood 2002, p. 32). In this sense many historical
materialists seem to be practising a kind of methodological nationalism,
their political internationalism notwithstanding.
The notion of the rise of a global political superstructure is very broad
and unspecified because the concept of ‘political superstructure’ itself is
more general and less specified that the concept of state. In particular it
should be emphasized that the concepts of state and superstructure are
not identical, and that the modern state in capitalist society is only one
historically specific type of superstructure. Therefore, the notion of a
global superstructure is little more than a convenient language with
which to identify the problem and a very broad hypothesis, posed at a
Introduction 13
high level of aggregation as a proposition about long-term societal

development. As such it is useful and sets the context for the discussion
that follows by locating questions pertaining to the analysis of global
political phenomena in a historical and societal context. But further
specification is required. In this regard important contributions are
also to be found in historical materialism broadly defined, but as already
stated they require critical scrutiny. There are ideas and guidelines in
historical materialism for how to approach global governance theoretic-
ally, but not an already established paradigm for doing so, and inspir-
ation and contributions can be sought within, as well as outside, this
tradition. In what follows I have tried not to be bound by orthodoxy in
relation to this or any other school of thought.
4 Overview of the argument
The theoretical and conceptual issues that require critical scrutiny and
specification concern, as already mentioned, several layers of theory at
different levels of abstraction and generality. Some concern fundamen-
tal questions that are general to all social sciences, some concern the
overarching theoretical approach to the question at hand, and some
concern more specific concepts, in the present case mainly relating to
politics, the state, and power as they are to be applied at the global level.
The latter, however, also contain questions at different levels of abstrac-
tion and generality – some concern the abstract concept of the state,
while others relate to specific aspects and problems in the analysis
of states.
The following text addresses all these levels, but rather than organiz-
ing the book in one theoretical section followed by an empirical one,
I have chosen to alternate between theoretical and conceptual issues
and empirical exploration and analysis. The next chapter discusses
four general theoretical questions: the Bohrian principle of complemen-
tarity which, I argue, although little known in the social sciences is
highly relevant and useful for clarification of several central disputed
questions in social theory; then the familiar questions of structure and
agency, introducing Bohrian complementarity to this debate, and the
role of material and ideational factors; and finally I argue that in global
polity studies a holistic and idiographic macro-sociological research
strategy is called for. This strategy implies that political phenomena
should be studied in a societal context, and consequently chapter 3
goes into an empirical analysis of main features of the structuration of
world society.
After this attention is turned to political phenomena and this

requires, in accordance with the principles outlined above, a closer
scrutiny of concepts of state, before these concepts can be applied to
the global level. This is done in the short Chapter 4, concluding in the
identification of several aspects of statehood that are unevenly global-
ized. Three such aspects are then selected for further analysis: the state as
an ensemble of institutions, the state’s overall function of persistence,
and the state’s role in the reproduction of relations of power. The first of
these aspects are pursued empirically at the global level in Chapter 5,
focussing on the development of an increasingly integrated institu-
tional infrastructure of national states and international institutions.
The second aspect, the persistence function, merits first a theoretical
discussion in Chapter 6, where again Bohrian complementarity plays an
important role, and then in Chapter 7 an empirical exploration of the
extent to which this aspect of statehood has become globalized. Chapter
8 focuses on the third aspect of statehood to be considered here, rela-
tions of power, presenting both theoretical and empirical discussions
with a focus on relations between social forces, power, states and global
governance. The role of the United States is the topic of Chapter 9 which
represents a move from the systemic level of analysis employed so far
and to a focus on the policies of a single state. This shift is warranted by
the unique role played by the US in shaping the world order which must
be related to the picture that emerges from the preceding analyses. The
final chapter present an overview of the theoretical and empirical results
of the analysis along with some concluding comments.
2
General Theoretical Issues
This chapter discusses four theoretical questions of a general nature. The

first is epistemological and concerns the notion of Bohrian complemen-
tarity, which, I argue, is a principle that is highly relevant for several
important problems in societal theory and will be used to clarify two
questions later in the text. The next two concern basic ontological
issues, namely the structure-agency problem, where the principle of
complementarity is applied for the first time (the second is in chapter
6) and the question of ideas versus material forces. Finally, the fourth
section addresses a problem of a different kind, namely the reasons for
applying a macro-sociological and idiographic approach to global soci-
ety, politics and governance.
1 Bohrian complementarity
In the social sciences the term complementarity is often used about

different theoretical accounts that may support or supplement each
other in some rather unspecified way. The physicist Niels Bohr, in
contrast, who introduced the concept to the science of atomic physics,
strove to disentangle and give precise philosophical – i.e. ontological
and epistemological – meaning to the concept. He found it not only
useful but, indeed, indispensable for a satisfactory theoretical solution
to key intriguing problems his field of science had encountered in the
early twentieth century (Bohr 1927, 1929a, 1929b, 1949, 1958a; Folse
1985; Rasmussen 1987). This effort, however, has received scant atten-
tion in the social sciences where the possible applicability of his under-
standing of complementarity is an almost non-debated problem, Erik
Rasmussen’s book Complementarity and Political Science (Rasmussen
1987) being a noteworthy exception.
15
It should be made clear at the outset that such an application is not

about transferring concepts from physics into the social sciences, for
instance, by seeing society as an organism or a mechanical system, or
for that matter a quantum phenomenon. Rather than imposing analo-
gies from physics on social science’s subject matter (which requires its
own proper concepts and models) the introduction of the notion of
complementarity is concerned with extracting and using epistemo-
logical lessons, i.e. lessons about the conditions for acquiring knowledge
about the external world, and lessons about the nature of theoretical
models, what Bohr called ‘descriptions’ of reality. As Bohr said: ‘We are
not dealing here with more or less vague analogies, but with an investi-
gation of the conditions for the proper use of our conceptual means of
expression’ (Bohr 1958b, p. 2).
Bohr developed his notion of complementarity in response to prob-
lems that atomic physics had encountered. One of them concerned the
nature of light: is it a wave or a stream of particles? Some experimental
observations confirmed the particle theory and contradicted the wave
theory flatly, whereas other equally irrefutable observations did the
reverse (for a recent introduction see Hawking 1989). Another problem
related to the analysis of subatomic particles, and in particular the
electron. This problem was famously solved in Heisenberg’s uncertainty
principle which stated that ‘the more accurately you try to measure the
position of the particle, the less accurately you can measure its speed,
and vice versa’ (Hawking 1989, p. 59). One of the things Bohr realized
when pondering these issues was that the interaction between the ob-
served object and the observer’s means of observation – the complicated
experimental equipment developed by the physicists of the day – im-
posed some insurmountable limits on the insight into the nature of the
objects that could be achieved and on the character of the theoretical
models that could be developed. His notion of complementarity was an
attempt to develop a satisfactory philosophical understanding of such
problems and to formulate precisely the epistemological consequences
that, in his mind, had to be drawn.
Bohr’s texts are not easy to read and there has been some controversy
about their proper interpretation (Folse 1985; Rasmussen 1987). Essen-
tially, however, Folse and Rasmussen have, independently of each other,
reached identical conclusions as to the contents of Bohr’s notions of
complementarity (although with some differences of emphasis and
choice of words). Particular weight must be given to Folse’s painstaking
reconstruction of Bohr’s line of argument, based on a thorough reading
not only of Bohr’s works but also of the views and contributions of the
General Theoretical Issues 17
persons with whom Bohr debated, as well as the broader scientific and
philosophical discussions that reasonably can be assumed to have influ-
enced Bohr. A consultation of Bohr’s main philosophical essays (e.g.
Bohr 1927b, 1929a, 1929b, 1949, 1958, 1958a) will confirm that Folse
is highly successful in making sense of Bohr, being true in word and
spirit to Bohr’s texts, and presenting it as a consistent line of thought
that was developed, rephrased and amplified over the years, but essen-
tially remained true to the original insights gathered in the 1920s.
Bohr consistently used the word complementarity to refer to the
epistemological lessons that he argued that the recent discoveries in
physics (the quantum postulate, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,
the nature of light) had pressed upon science. But, as made clear by
Folse and Rasmussen, there was actually more than one lesson, and the
word ‘complementarity’ only seems to be entirely appropriate for one of
them. The most profound lesson has to do with the implications of the
fact that, in the investigation of the subatomic world, the distinction
between the observer, i.e. the physicist and the experimental equip-
ment, and the observed object breaks down. This led to a profound
rethinking of the meaning of terms like ‘observation’ and ‘description’,
and to a new understanding of limits and conditions for human under-
standing – without, it should be added, compromising Bohr’s basic
realist and naturalist outlook that the natural world exists independent
of our knowledge, and that science is an effort to produce objective
knowledge about this object. What changed was rather his understand-
ing of what is meant by ‘objective knowledge’ and the conditions for
unambiguous communication about it, the latter being a sine qua non for
all efforts that aspire to be scientific.
The implications of this lesson for the social sciences is pursued at
some length in Rasmussen’s discussion of the conditions for ‘objective’
descriptions in political science, but it is not to be pursued further here.
It is the most profound lesson, but in the present context it is not the
most productive one. That lesson, for which the word complementarity
is highly appropriate, is best approached through the now widely
accepted solution to the questions of the nature of light. Put briefly
the lesson was simply that light is both a particle phenomenon and a
wave phenomenon – it has a dual nature. We can examine light as a wave
phenomenon and gain absolutely valid insights, but when doing so we
are unable to examine it as a stream of particles. The reverse also holds
true. The two ‘descriptions’ – as Bohr called the theoretical models
developed by physicists – are mutually exclusive, but only together do
they exhaust our knowledge about the object.
This, then, is the key lesson in Bohr’s notion of complementarity for

our present purposes. Some phenomena in the real world have a dual
nature that requires science to use mutually exclusive models, and to
accept both of them as equally necessary. This principle is now widely
accepted among physicists (although Einstein never accepted it as
is evident from Bohr’s debate with Einstein, see Bohr 1949 and
Folse 1985) even when not using the term complementarity. Stephen
W. Hawking puts it succinctly: ‘There is thus a duality between waves
and particles in quantum mechanics: for some purposes it is helpful to
think of particles as waves and for other purposes it is better to think of
waves as particles’ (Hawking 1989, p. 61).
When discussing the relevance of this concept in the social sciences,
Rasmussen calls this the principle of ‘strict complementarity’ which he
defines thus: ‘Exhaustive description of the behaviour of certain objects
is obtainable only by means of descriptions which are incompatible
because describing mutually exclusive observations’ (1987, p. 10).
Rasmussen expands the discussion in several directions, for instance
by considering what he calls ‘loose complementary’ where descriptions
do not logically exclude or contradict each other, and by discussing a
notion of supplementarity where more than two ‘descriptions’ are re-
quired to exhaust the knowledge of the object. These expansions need
not concern us here, where it is the application of the basic principle to
political and social science that interests us.
Rasmussen argues the relevance of notions of complementarity in
relation to several well-known problems in the social sciences. One of
them concerns the relationship between micro- and macro-analysis,
where he describes the situation in the following way:
They presuppose each other. Yet they are, in the last analysis, mutu-
ally exclusive. It is not possible to effect macro-analysis right down to
the level of individuals otherwise than statistically, nor is it feasible
to construct any macrotheory on exclusively individual observations.
Like their colleagues in atomic physics, political scientists have to
acknowledge that their data, macro as well as micro, are Bohrian
phenomena, not allowing the same degree of analytical precision at
the same time.
(1987, p. 119)
Another case of complementarity in the social sciences, according to

Rasmussen, involves what he, following Bohr’s discussion of the same
problem (Bohr 1954), calls ‘determinism and voluntarism, causality and
the freedom of the will’ (Rasmussen 1987, pp. 106ff.; see also Folse 1985,
pp. 175ff.). Rasmussen does not use the now-current terms of structure
and agency, but clearly what he discusses here is very close to if not
identical with this theme, and there seems to be no reason not to let
his conclusion cover also the concepts of structure and agency:
‘These conceptions are mutually exclusive in their extremities, yet
each of them is indispensable for political science as a discipline
and for most political research. Their interrelationship forms another
parallel to the concept of strict complementarity’ (Rasmussen 1987,
p. 119).
According to Rasmussen, there are other examples of strict comple-
mentarity in the social sciences aside from the relationship between
micro- and macro-analysis and the free will/determinism question,
and nothing should lead us to believe that we presently are aware of
all such cases. Rather, the more general lesson is that scientists in all
fields should be aware of the possibility and be ready to face it when
they encounter it. Such other examples are not to be pursued further at
this point. As already indicated, the first case in which the Bohrian
notion of complementarity is considered useful concerns the standing
debate on structure and agency. To this I now turn.
2 Structure and agency
The question of structure and agency is one of the most fundamental

theoretical problems in the social sciences and one that has been de-
bated extensively by numerous scholars. Their exact formulations differ
considerably, and some of them make much of their disagreements with
each other, but still they seem to revolve around the same basic theme:
that structures – or institutions – constrain and enable behaviour
and that structures and institutions in turn are reproduced or changed
by human agency. Giddens’ notion of structuration (Giddens 1984,
pp. 25ff.), the Norbert Elias-inspired notion of ‘figuration’ (Elias 1991),
or Roy Bhaskar’s ‘transformational model of social activity’ (Bhaskar
1998, p. 215) – or for that matter, the notion of path-dependency in
neo-institutionalism – can all be seen as efforts to improve upon Marx’s
original formulation that men create their own history, but they do not
create the conditions under which they do so (Marx 1960, p. 115; see
also Giddens’ discussion in Giddens 1984, p. xxi).
In international relations, the debates engendered by constructivism
and discourse analyses have particularly focused on how to make
such very abstract understandings compatible with the role of ideas,
perceptions and discourses in shaping social action. Also here a large

number of answers revolve around a dialectic between structure and
agency but with heightened attention to the subjective interpretation
and construction of reality as an unavoidable element in the dialectic. In
the subfield of regime theory, the synthesis of a range of contributions
developed by Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger (1997) fits
this description. So does Alexander Wendt’s contribution (Wendt
1999, in particular pp. 366ff.), although his answer to the question is
of a special nature because it so closely is tied to the question of the state
as a rational unitary actor. Not everybody in IR will accept such a
dialectic; proponents of what Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger termed
a radical constructivist position would be especially likely to disagree.
But aside from this it seems fair to say that there is wide acceptance, also
in the field of IR, of a structure–agency dialectic understood in this
vague sense.
The debate, then, is a quest for a convincing theoretical formulation of
this dialectic that recognizes actors’ perceptions, ideas, construction
of identities and discourses as a relatively independent link in the
chain between structure and agency, and that avoids the two pitfalls
of voluntarism – no societal determination or shaping of human behav-
iour – and mechanical determinism – no room for creativity, free will,
human action that can change society. If this is true, i.e. that actually
there is a widespread agreement among a substantial number of con-
tributors to this debate on the nature of the question and the require-
ments of a satisfactory solution, one may reasonably ask why it has been
so difficult to move forward towards theoretical agreement in this
quest?
A likely reason is that it has proven difficult to find a theoretical
formula that is unequivocally immune to charges of either determinism
or voluntarism and at the same time convincingly avoids both pitfalls in
empirical analysis. Empirical investigations tend to focus either on soci-
etal structures and their reproduction, or on acts of change. What seems
clear, then, is that the Bohrian notion of complementarity captures the
nature of this situation precisely. The point is that society has a dual
nature – it is structure and agency – and this presents social science with
a difficulty because the theoretical concepts ‘in their extremities’ as
Rasmussen put it, are mutually exclusive. Any ‘description’ of societal
structures tends to downplay human agency, whereas a ‘description’ of
human action that effects change tends to downplay the constraining
and shaping roles of structures. Thus, carried to their logical extremes,
such descriptions are incompatible and mutually exclusive. Yet both are
indispensable in social enquiry. The conclusion, then, is that it is exactly

the dual nature of the societal object and the resulting necessary com-
plementarity between theoretical perspectives that so many scholars
have grappled with in the quest for an adequate theoretical understand-
ing of the structure–agency dialectic that can also guide empirical re-
search and less abstract theory building. Bohr’s philosophical lesson that
can be transferred to social science is that rather than try to surmount
the contradiction between competing ‘descriptions’, research should
accept duality and complementarity as facts of life, the recognition of
which is a precondition for further progress in the development
of adequate ‘descriptions’ of the object under analysis.
Where, then, does Bohrian complementarity take the structure–
agency debate? First and foremost this understanding allows a
separation between the abstract discussion and elaboration of the struc-
ture–agency question, and the application of concepts of structure and
agency in empirically oriented research, thereby opening the way for a
more pragmatic approach in the latter.
Concerning the first of these questions, I already have indicated some
different abstract formulations of the structure–agency dialectic. I also
argued that they resemble each other in basic regards – they all posit
such dialectic, but they phrase it in different ways. This is not to imply
that there are no real differences between such conceptual refinements
or that the differences are completely immaterial. There are reasons to
prefer one to the alternatives, and for my part I would choose Bhaskar’s
formulation, among other reasons because it best captures the comple-
mentarity at the core of the issue and relates it to the nature of the object
for analysis. At the same time, however, I find that Giddens’ chosen
word – structuration – is very convenient and will use it frequently as the
briefest available label. In one succinct formulation, Bhaskar presents his
understanding of structuration in this way:
people do not create society. For it always pre-exists them and is a

necessary condition for their activity. Rather, society must be
regarded as an ensemble of structures, practices and conventions
which individuals reproduce or transform, but which would not
exist unless they did so. Society does not exist independently of
human activity (the error of reification). But it is not the product
of it (the error of voluntarism).
(Bhaskar 1998, p. 216)
I abstain from confronting this understanding with other proposals for

several reasons. One is that it is doubtful how far one can develop the
concept at the level of abstract theory. Is there any reason to expect that
the principle of structuration should work in identical ways in, say,
economic, political and ideational matters, and that it is invariant across
time and space? Are the constraining and enabling effects of, say, medi-
eval Christendom and contemporary financial markets of the same
nature, aside from the basic fact that they are, precisely, constraining
and enabling effects? The answers are, I suspect, negative and while not
denying the possibility of developing deeper and better insights at this
level, I find it doubtful whether abstract theory can proceed far beyond
the recognition that there is a structure–agency interaction, and that as
consequence there is an unavoidable complementarity between ana-
lyses that emphasize each of the two sides of the coin, both of which
are needed.
Another reason is that in the quest for adequate abstract formulations
of the principle of structuration there seems to be at times a tendency to
overemphasize the differences and downplay the similarities.
Finally, in abstaining from a serious engagement with the issue in the
abstract, I opt for a pragmatic approach that allows both investigations
that focus on structure and analyses of agency, and a variety of combin-
ations of the two, while respecting the inherent duality of society and
the concomitant complementarity of such analyses. One further reason
for this is that at the present stage of research into the globalization of
politics, it seems to be more productive to analyse which structures and
institutions it is that constrain and enable behaviour and how they
change, and to develop historically specified concepts that are adequate
to this task. In short, a pragmatic solution to the issue of structuration is
adequate to the purposes of the present book.
Having clarified the position taken on this fundamental issue in social
science, I now move on to the next basic conceptual and theoretical
issue that needs elaboration. The pragmatic approach to the structure–
agency problem is only one step; the next is to consider the question of
ideas and material forces.
3 Ideas and material forces
The relative weight of ideational forces versus economic and political

ones – the latter two often grouped together under the heading of
material forces in international relations theory, where economic and
political structures (i.e. technology, trade and investment patterns, etc.
and the international distribution of military capabilities) make up the

hard, material realities, as opposed to actor’s perceptions, constructions
of identity, values, etc., which are of an ideational nature (Wendt 1999;
Katzenstein, Keohane and Krasner 1998) – is among the most debated
issues in international relations research. The position of the present
writer should be made clear.
First, implicit in this discussion is the sound notion of an analytical
distinction between these levels or realms – the economic, the idea-
tional and the political, a distinction that I find indispensable. Second,
implicit in many but not all contributions to this debate is a notion of
the relative autonomy of these levels of society. But since this notion has
been subject to much controversy it deserves a little explication. In my
understanding it has very little empirical content; there are no specific
hypotheses to be derived from it. What it does contain, however, is a
double demarcation: on one side from notions of strict determination in
which one of the levels is privileged to be the only deciding one –
typically the economy, but some discourse analysts would offer a similar
status to language, and some IR theories would to the power structure of
the international system – and on the other hand a demarcation from
notions of absolute autonomy, in which the various aspects or subsys-
tems in society are completely unrelated and independent from each
other (Ougaard 1990 p. 59). Relative autonomy describes an open pos-
ition, a field of variation, in which the relative weight and efficacy of
‘levels’ and aspects can differ in time and space, in ways that can only be
discovered through empirically based analyses. It simply denotes, in my
understanding, a sensible middle ground between two untenable ex-
tremes. This understanding of relative autonomy is, I believe, actually
shared by a wide range of scholars, whether the term itself is used or not.
This notion, however, is only a logical precondition for posing the
question of the relative weight of the levels, and more can be said of a
general nature about this. As a first step, however, it is necessary to be
quite clear about the relation of this issue to the issue of structure–
agency. Far too often the two are conflated so that, for instance, the
economy is thought of as structure while politics and ideas relate to
agency, so that agency is political action, based on or informed by ideas,
that may or may not change economic structure. Alternatively, structure
covers the hard material realities of economy and politics, and ideas
enters the equation when considering agency, the debate being about
how large a role to ascribe to ideas as something separate from rational
responses to material reality (Parsons 2002). My position is that the two
issues – structure/agency versus economy/politics/ideas – should be
completely separated; they pertain to two qualitatively different dimen-

sions in the conceptual model of society.
To appreciate this point, consider first that economic behaviour is
governed or constrained by economic structures and institutions, and
that to some extent economic structures and institutions can be
changed by economic behaviour alone. Companies operate according
to the logic of the market, but the market-driven activities of businesses
can and do change market structure. In short, the structure–agency
dialectic operates at the economic level alone. In the same way political
behaviour can be said to be governed or constrained by political insti-
tutions, which in turn can be changed by action. To claim a similar
interaction between ideational structures or institutions and behaviour
may seem awkward, yet it is not too controversial to claim that any
society is marked by dominant patterns of thinking and understanding
that show a certain tenacity – in some cases even a remarkable persist-
ence. This has actually been the point in many arguments about ideas
and identities over the last decade. Ideas, patterns of thought, modes of
understanding and interpretation are historically constructed and re-
constructed, and sometimes they change dramatically, but there is also
much continuity in this realm. This is not to claim that the ‘structure–
agency interaction’ is identical in all aspects of society, but only to say
that such an interaction operates at all levels. If this is accepted, then the
question of the relative weight of economic, political and ideational
factors in shaping behaviour becomes a different one from the abstract
question of structure and agency.
This way of presenting the problem is oversimplifying matters, but the
oversimplification is justified to the extent that it helps clarify
the difference between the two sets of problems. It would be more
accurate to say that both structure and agency can be separated analyt-
ically into the three levels, and that agency at all levels are affected by
structure at all levels. In other words: economic behaviour is shaped
by economic, political and ideational structures, just like political
behaviour is conditioned by all three, and indeed ideational behaviour
– the construction and reconstruction of identities, values, understand-
ings of society, etc. – is conditioned by economic and political struc-
tures, as well as by pre-existing modes of understanding, etc.
In one sense, it should be pointed out, any notion of structuration
involves a certain ‘materialism’ because any recognition of the struc-
ture–agency interaction presupposes that social relations, structures,
figurations – whichever term one prefers – are real, that they have
objective or material existence. The principle of structuration presup-
poses a realist ontology – but in such an ontology ideas are no less real
than politics or economy. They may be invisible and intangible and not
subject to direct observation, but still they have real existence outside
the minds of the subjects whose actions are situated in them. This
ontological principle can be called a realist or materialist or objectivist
one, and it is shared by many schools of thought in the social sciences,
but not by all, particularly not radical constructivist understandings of
society. It is integral to the perspective purported here, but it does not
say anything about the relative weight of economy, politics and ideas in
societal development.
What can be said, then, about this question? First that any specific
event or set of events limited in time and space can and should
be explained as the result of a combination of factors, some of which
are economic and some not. Sometimes economic causes are decisive,
sometimes ideational ones are, and often explanations have to identify
the unique constellation of economic, political and ideational factors
that only taken together make up the necessary and sufficient condi-
tions for the event to happen. To ask for a generally applicable ranking
of these levels in relation to singular events or episodes is futile.
Second, however, the situation is different concerning longer-term
and aggregate perspectives. Here it makes more sense to pose questions
about the relative weight and significance of the various factors, but
again, at first sight there are no easy solutions here either. If we identify
important ideational factors as causes behind major societal changes, we
can always go one step further back and look for the economic condi-
tions that made those ideas possible. But then it is also possible to retract
yet another step in search of the ideas and advances in human know-
ledge that made the economic changes in question possible. And so on,
in what appears to be an infinite regress where the only possible way to
arrive at a definite answer is to make a deliberate choice.
In this understanding, then, the famous materialist notion of ‘deter-
mination by the economy in the last instance’ – a central tenet of the
historical materialist tradition – cannot be seen as an explanatory
principle whose power has been demonstrated in macro-sociological
analysis of human history, but rather a freely chosen ontological first
principle, no better and no worse than any other first principle. The
question may be subject to philosophical debate, but it is of a pre-
theoretical nature and cannot be resolved through empirical enquiries.
At second sight, however, the question leads somewhere else. It leads
into the realm of the long-term evolution of humankind, that is, into
the borderland between human history and evolutionary biology. It
takes us back to the very origin of the species, this very particular kind of
living being endowed with complex social organizations, language, dif-
ferentiated emotions, a sense of morals, etc. This changes the terms of
the discussion, but it does not in itself settle the issue. Some would
claim, along with, for instance, Norbert Elias (1991) and modern biolo-
gists like Robin Dunbar (1995, 1996) that what sets humankind apart are
language and the ability to use highly sophisticated symbols as means of
communication and storage of information. Without these facilities,
complex social organizations would not be possible. Others would
claim, along with Benjamin Franklin, Friedrich Engels and others, that
the differentia specifica of humans is the ability to use manufactured tools
– means of production – in the struggle for survival. Yet others would
prefer a combination of language and communication, social organiza-
tion and the development of human work, in interaction with each
other as the fundamental principle, and let it depend on scientific
enquiry into the origins and history of humankind to further develop
and specify this insight (Beaken 1996).
My perspective is along the last-mentioned lines. It maintains a ma-
terialist perspective in the sense that it sees all aspects of human life as
increasingly differentiated moments in an entire cycle of reproduction;
a cycle that is, and always has been, based on ‘the metabolism with
nature’, as Marx called it. The basic view, in other words, is that human-
kind fundamentally is part of nature and not a divine creature or the
result of divine intervention. Human history represents a highly suc-
cessful adaptation to the environment, and a basic requirement of this
success has been the ability to produce the means of existence. This
elementary biological fact is what makes it appropriate to label
this perspective on society a materialist one. Production of the means
of subsistence is fundamental to human history, but clearly the enor-
mous expansion of the productive capacity of humankind could not
have taken place without the evolution of language, ideas, knowledge
including scientific knowledge, social organization, etc. To ask which
factor is most important easily becomes a chicken and egg question, and
the answer lies not in a forced choice between the two opposite
solutions, but in turning attention to the cycle of reproduction.
Within this broad and long-term historical perspective, however, it is
also possible and reasonable to pose questions about the relative efficacy
of economic factors in a more limited sense. Famous in this regard
is Marx’s general hypothesis, recounted in Chapter 1, that when the
economic basis changes, the political and ideological superstructures
are bound to change too (Marx 1970, preface). Today we would qualify
the statement by adding that economic factors are seldom the only
sources of change, and not always the most important ones. But still it
is not irrelevant to apply the general hypothesis to some of the most
significant questions of our age, in particular to the proposition posed at
a high level of aggregation, that when the economy becomes increas-
ingly internationalized, the same thing will happen to the political and
ideational superstructures. It is, however, only a very broad and general
hypothesis – and, incidentally, one that is widely accepted by a variety
of traditions in IR. But the lines of causation are more complex and if
this hypothesis is to be taken seriously it must be combined with a
proper recognition of the effects and internal dynamics of other in-
stances. One cannot, for instance, explain the development of the global
political superstructure without taking account of the dynamics of the
interstate system, the end of the Cold War, the evolution in human
rights, the specific nature of the ideas dominant in the USA, and several
other factors. In short, the exact efficacy of economic factors in relation
to more specified time- and space-bound societal developments is a
question that is open and can only be answered through empirical
analysis. Still, at the level of general theory, there is no reason to discard
the notion that economic factors are likely to have significant explana-
tory power in more delineated investigations, although not always.
One final issue needs to be addressed in the introductory chapter,
namely the scope of the structures and agencies that are to be included
in the analysis. In this question, as indicated in the previous chapter,
I opt for a socially and historically contextualized state-theoretical
perspective which also can be characterized as an idiographic, macro-
historical or historical-sociological one.
4 An idiographic macro-sociological approach
There is a reason why historical, macro-sociological approaches are

particularly warranted when analysing the global polity. Quite simply
the reason is that the global polity or the global governance system is a
singular phenomenon – there is only one. Diachronic comparisons with
earlier ‘world polities’ are possible, of course, can be illuminating, and
will be referred to in the next chapter. But such historical ‘global pol-
ities’ must also be seen as earlier stages in the evolution of a single global
political entity, and from a methodological point of view the salient fact
is that there can be only one contemporary global polity. Thus the
nomothetic research strategy that has dominated much research on
international institutions and regimes, while providing indispensable
insights, has limits when analysing the global polity. It is necessary to

supplement such efforts with historical, idiographic strategies that
take a holistic perspective (Ougaard 2002). This point requires some
elaboration.
The distinction between idiographic and nomothetic research was
introduced by the German philosopher Wilhelm Windelband (1848–
1915) (Reidel 1973). The word idiographic is not to be confused with
ideographic. The latter stems from the Greek ideo and refers to human
concepts and, to be precise, ideas. Ideography thus normally means the
representation of ideas by signs, hence Chinese characters are called
ideograms. Idiographic derives from the Greek prefix idio, referring to
that which belongs in particular to, or is a unique property of some-
thing, as in idiosyncratic. Nomothetic research seeks common properties
and general laws covering a class of phenomena; it is a generalizing
research strategy. Idiographic studies in contrast seek to develop con-
cepts and theories that capture the uniqueness of a single phenomenon
and the particular configuration of cause–effect relationships that have
shaped it.
Studies of the global polity call for an idiographic research strategy for
the simple reason that it is a unique phenomenon. It is incidentally not
the only phenomenon of a singular nature that is of great interest to
international relations research. As noted by Barry Eichengreen, ‘It is
hard to imagine a field of international relations in which unique
situations . . . were excluded because of the lack of an adequate, compar-
able group of situations’ (Eichengreen 1998, p. 1012). Examples such as
the Cold War spring easily to mind.
Idiographic research purposes have often been associated with her-
meneutic methodologies and epistemologies, but this link is not
axiomatic. Idiographic research is not bound to focus on ‘ideational
factors’ as the only or primary source of explanation; nor does it exclude
assumptions about rational behaviour. For instance, idiographic analy-
sis could explain a unique agricultural system as the result of rational
adaptation to a particular physical environment. The core of the distinc-
tion between idiographic and nomothetic research is one of research
purposes, not necessarily one of epistemology or ontology (Ougaard
1995). It should be noted that the antinomy between idiographic and
nomothetic employed here differs from the one between ideographic
and nomothetic introduced by Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner
(1998, p. 682).
The two types of research are complementary. Often the identification
of what is unique requires as a matter of logic an understanding of what
is common, and vice versa. Furthermore, idiographic analysis of a

unique phenomenon will often require generalizations about its con-
stituent parts. Thus, analysing the global polity is an idiographic
venture, but it can draw heavily on input from nomothetic studies
into its constituent parts – types of states, groups of institutions, classes
of actors, etc. It can also use general insights into human behaviour and
societal development generated by nomothetic research efforts and
theories. However, when fitting the pieces together, overarching con-
cepts that capture central features of the ‘whole’ are needed. For this
reason the impressive body of institutionalist theory on international
institutionalization is at the same time both indispensable and insuffi-
cient for the exploration of the global polity.
A note on nomothetic institutionalist theory

The impressive research effort that has been devoted to the analysis of
international regimes and institutions has played a major role in the
fields of international relations and international political economy
(Keohane 1989; Krasner 1983; Efinger, Mayer and Schwarzer 1993;
Haas, Keohane and Levy 1993; Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger
1997; Martin and Simmons 1998). The theoretical debates and empirical
studies generated by such research have clarified important issues, and
in a sense an emerging consensus is identifiable. Institutionalist theory
has made a convincing case that institutions do matter, and it has
identified a set of key explanatory factors: shared interests, the power
of states, knowledge and ideas, domestic politics and learning (see
Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger 1997 for a synthesis of regime theory,
and Simmons and Martin 2002 for a recent overview). Thanks to this
effort we now know much about the conditions under which institu-
tions are created and become effective.
This impressive body of research, however, also has limitations. One is
that a wider perspective has been downplayed. After all, in Keohane and
Nye’s seminal book from 1977 the analysis of regimes was only one
component – albeit a major one – in a larger enquiry. The ‘first major
question’ on their agenda was ‘what are the characteristics of world
politics under conditions of extensive interdependence?’ (Keohane
and Nye 1977, p. 19). The central focus was regimes, but the purpose
was a wider one: to understand the nature of the changes in world
politics resulting from increased interdependence, a research agenda
that has clear parallels to the one addressed here. In ensuing years,
however, the main body of regime theory has not systematically
addressed questions about patterns in regime formation and the nature
of the resulting overall ‘regime architecture’. One reason, probably, is

the strong focus on proving that institutions matter, necessitated by the
neo-realist challenge (Martin and Simmons 1998, p. 757, make a similar
point). However, another and equally important reason seems to be that
the goal has been to produce nomothetic theory, that is general statements
about regimes, not about the resulting totality of international
institutions. The result is a body of ‘micro-theory’ of international insti-
tutions, whereas ‘macro-theory’ of global institutionalization is under-
developed. This is, by the way, not only a problem from the perspective
of the global polity. It also calls into question the very possibility of a
strong nomothetic general theory of regimes because, as argued by
Vinod Aggarwal, regimes are often ‘nested’ in ‘meta-regimes’ (Aggarwal
1998). In other words, the formation and roles of regimes can only be
understood if their situation in the wider institutional set-up is con-
sidered, and it will probably be very difficult to develop a strong
explanatory theory of regime formation without taking this into
account. When approaching the global polity, the insights from nomo-
thetic institutionalist theory are indispensable, but they are not suffi-
cient because the cumulative results of regime formation are little
explored.
The conclusion then is that the further analysis of the globalization of
politics, due to the nature of the topic, calls for historical macro-
analysis. Nomothetic research into its constituent parts – regimes,
types of actors, etc. – is highly useful, indeed indispensable, but it is
not enough. Holistic historical perspectives are also called for. But what
does this mean?
It implies that society is seen as an interconnected ‘ensemble of
structures’, a feature that calls for theory to adopt a holistic or totality
perspective, i.e. to relate the phenomena under analysis to the societal
totality of which they are parts. It also implies a processual understand-
ing, i.e. that society is in a constant process of reproduction and trans-
formation so that at any particular point in time the specific
configuration of society is seen as the result of a historical process, and
with a view to the twin aspects of reproduction and transformation of
the current social order. There is, however, a range of macro-sociological
approaches that share these two principles (see Skocpol 1984; Hobden
1999, 2001; Nexon 2001), so a number of further specifications are in
order.
The first of these is the simple but important consequence of the
totality perspective that the state and political phenomena in general,
including international politics and global governance, are to be theor-
ized and analysed in a societal context. This implies that, among other
things, the impact of citizens and social forces on the state must be
included in the analysis, as generally accepted in macro-sociology and
increasingly recognized within IR, although not entirely by statist the-
ories. It also calls for a clear and explicit focus on the role the state plays
in societal reproduction and transformation, a principle that perhaps is
more controversial and one that I will return to at some length in
Chapters 6 and 7.
Another point concerns the specification of the societal totality that
provides the context to which political phenomena should be related.
Much historical sociology has tended to identify the territorial nation-
state – the territorially delimited ensemble of people and centralized
political institutions – as the relevant societal totality, to which political
phenomena or other institutions and processes should be related. Social
relations are, in this perspective, reproduced and transformed within the
boundaries of a nation-state. There may be external influences, and by
some theorists they are considered to be constitutive (Poulantzas 1978;
Skocpol 1979; Giddens 1985), but still the fundamental societal unit is
the territorial state. This feature also marks, by the way, much (but not
all) thinking in the tradition of historical materialism, in spite of its
strong internationalist orientation. It has been quite typical, for in-
stance, to let Marx’s notion of ‘social formation’ – his term for the
societal totality – equate the territorial nation-state. Noteworthy excep-
tions from this, such as Robert W. Cox (1987), Christopher Chase-Dunn
(1989) and Immanuel Wallerstein (1974a, b), should be mentioned
however.
The argument is, in other words, that if theory is to be serious about
the totality perspective in the age of globalization, the totality in ques-
tion must be the global one. This is what is implied by much of what
I called global polity research, and it has found expression in, for
instance, Seyom Brown’s definition of the global polity as the totality
of enforceable social relationships in the world (Brown 1996, p. 7), and
in conceptualizations of the global social formation by writers in the
historical materialist tradition (Chase-Dunn 1989) including the present
one (Ougaard 1990). No society or country can adequately be analysed
today if its location in the global context is not considered and, more
importantly, global political phenomena must be analysed in the con-
text of world society.
A final point in the characterization of the historical totality
perspective employed here is the principle of historical specification.
Societies are different and change over time and to capture this, a
number of differentiating concepts have been developed over the years.

Economically societies are marked by different modes of production
that never exist in theoretically identified pure forms, but always in
specific combinations and variants shaped by history. In the same way
there is a variety of political institutions and types and forms of state
and a variety of ideational patterns that can be identified theoretically.
This is not to claim that there is, so to speak, a ready-made conceptual
tool-box that adequately can be applied to every social form encoun-
tered in the real world. Clearly this is not the case, although there is
much to build on. Rather the claim is that what is needed is a research
strategy that focuses on the distinctive structurating economic, political
and ideational features of any society. The basic principle is that any
social formation consists of a complex configuration of distinct social
relations and institutions – economic, political and ideational – that are
interconnected and interrelated and that have been produced, repro-
duced and changed in the course of history. The task is to identify
theoretically these distinct time-and space-bound social relations.
When taken to the global level this strategy requires, first, recognition
of the composite nature of the world as a system; second, it requires
efforts to conceptualize this multitude of social forms; and finally, as a
consequence of the historical perspective, it calls for clear periodization
at the global level, i.e. efforts to ascertain theoretically the distinctive
features of each successive stage in the development of global society on
the basis of the key structurating principles.
What I have outlined above, in short, are some key principles in
general social theory to be applied at the global level: the complemen-
tarity of structure and agency, a global historical totality perspective, the
principle of historical specification, a realist ontology, recognition of the
relative autonomy of economy, politics and ideational factors, and a
specified materialist perspective on society that privileges not the econ-
omy but the entire cycle of reproduction. Consequently the topic for the
next chapter is the structuration of contemporary world society in
historical perspective.
3
The Structuration of World Society
Political phenomena should be considered in their societal and histor-

ical context. That is one of the key theoretical principles informing the
present study and any macro-sociological analysis of political phenom-
ena as argued in the preceding chapter. In the context of analysing
global political phenomena and the globalization of politics this
principle requires a consideration of the global societal context in the-
oretical terms and in a historical perspective. What is involved, in other
words, is a question of theoretical periodization of world society, i.e. the
identification of stages in world history that in theoretically defined
terms differ substantially from each other. The emphasis, of course,
should be on what makes the current stage different, which leads on
to the transformationalist position that was taken as a starting point in
the introduction. The systemic periodization is, in other words, not only
a way of identifying the central characteristics of contemporary world
society; it is also a way of validating that assumption.
The question of systemic periodization can, accordingly, be rephrased
as a question of globalization, i.e. what is new about the current config-
uration of world society? In the vast globalization literature much
emphasis has been put on internationalization, i.e. the heightened
intensity and density of cross-border interactions, economic, political,
cultural and social. Many have pointed out that this is a centuries-old
process and that globalization in this sense is not new. But at the same
time there is widespread recognition that the pace of internationaliza-
tion processes of all kinds in the last part of the twentieth century picked
up considerably leading to a qualitatively different situation, i.e. to what
amounts to a genuine transformation towards ‘a global age’ in the words
of the OECD (OECD 1997b). Much empirical evidence has been pro-
duced to support this conclusion, and there is no reason to repeat it
33
here, the point can safely be taken for granted, whereas the conse-
quences of this in many respects still is open to debate. But this em-
phasis on increased cross-border interactions, important as they are,
is only part of the story. Another and equally significant change is the
increased homogeneity of world society, as also argued by Halliday
(1994, 2001) and Sørensen (2001). A process of homogenization has
long been in evidence, indeed for centuries, but the key argument
forwarded here is that the combined effects of several societal develop-
ments, towards the end of the twentieth century, have led to a signifi-
cant qualitative step forwards in homogeneity. This argument follows
from the approach to systemic periodization taken here. This point will
be brought clearly out with the approach to systemic periodization
taken here.
1 Systemic periodization and homogenization
Theoretical discussion of systemic periodization is not a dominant

theme in IR research, but neither is it entirely neglected. Recent contri-
butions are Barry Buzan and Richard Little’s International Systems in
World History. Remaking the Study of International Relations from 2000
and Torbjørn Knutsen, The Rise and Fall of World Orders from 1999, and
older works that also deserve mention are Richard Rosecrance’s Action
and Reaction in World Politics: International Systems in Perspective from
1963, Ekkehart Krippendorff, Internationales System als Geschichte from
1975, and Robert Cox 1987, and in addition a quite large literature can
be listed that contains discussions that are highly relevant for the sub-
ject, such as Craig Murphy (1994) and Paul Kennedy (1987). Common
to most of these efforts is that the periodization is based on a combin-
ation of the characteristics of the ‘units’ that make up the system, and
the characteristics of their interrelations.
Buzan and Little’s work is probably the most elaborate recent attempt
to develop a theoretically explicit approach to the task, wherefore it
deserves to be mentioned as an alternative to the approach chosen in
the present work. They first develop a series of concepts for the analysis
of society, centred on the distinction between four sectors (military/
political, economic, social and environmental), five levels (system, sub-
system, unit, subunit and individual) and three dimensions (interaction
capacity in the system, processes of the system and the structures of the
interstate system, such as anarchy, market, international society, etc.).
This quite complex battery of concepts and distinctions do not, how-
ever, serve to identify the nature of the units nor the types of systems.
The Structuration of World Society 35
The latter fall in three system types: pre-international systems, eco-

nomic international systems and full international systems (Buzan and
Little 2000, p. 96) (later rephrased as pre-international systems, inter-
linked international systems and global international systems, figure
18.2, p. 394), while the units are categorized according to a five-fold
typology consisting of hunter-gatherer bands, tribes, city-states, empires
and modern states (p. 103). This typology is said – the analytical con-
cepts of four sectors, five levels and three dimensions notwithstanding –
to be the result of what can be identified from a ‘practical, empirical
approach’ (p. 102).
I find this approach problematic in several respects, most importantly
that in spite of a plethora of concepts and distinctions it fails to subdiv-
ide the 500 years of modern history into stages, thus failing to focus
on the uniqueness of the current period. Theoretically, of course, con-
cepts can be constructed so that the most important features of world
society are those that have remained constant over the last half-
millennium, but this seems to fly in the face of much prima facie
evidence and to be not quite in line with the authors’ ambition to
historicize the analysis of international relations.
What I suggest instead, along the lines followed by Rosecrance,
Krippendorff, Murphy et al., is to apply a more differentiated approach,
based on a higher degree of historical specification to the analysis of the
‘units’, i.e. to the basic characteristics of the societies that make up the
international system. The basic concepts on which to build this ap-
proach concern the economic structures of societies, the types of state
in the system (but theorized in a fashion that differs from Buzan and
Little’s approach), the forms of regime present in the states (more on
these concepts below) and the dominant ideas. My contention is that
the notion of increasing homogeneity as a basic and significant charac-
teristic of contemporary world society will be brought clearly out in
this way.
It is important to stress that the homogenization notion employed
here concerns a set of specified societal characteristics. In much global-
ization discourse homogenization mainly connotes consumption
patterns, lifestyle and culture, e.g. the development of a global con-
sumer culture as the dominant ideology as suggested by Sklair (2001).
It is obvious that, to a far greater extent than ever before, people con-
sume the same products and brands, drive the same cars, watch the same
movies and TV serials, listen to the same music, eat the same fast food,
and travel in like manners on charter holidays to distant corners of the
world, whether from Denmark to Bali or from Japan to Copenhagen – at
least if they belong to the better off and more educated part of the
world’s population. This is not, however, what I have in mind.
It also should be noted that an unspecified homogenization propos-
ition could be justifiably criticized. First, because of the glaringly grave
economic inequalities and disparities in living conditions that even,
according to some analyses, are growing rather than diminishing with
time. In a world where 2.8 billion people have to survive on less than 2
US dollars per day, almost a billion do not have access to a proper water
supply and 2.4 billion are without basic sanitary conditions (UNDP
2001, table 1.1), there can be no doubt that differences are enormous
and are unlikely to disappear any time soon. While absolute poverty
may have been reduced somewhat, much indicates that the global
differences in living conditions have deepened over the past decades
(UNDP 2001, table 1.6; for a different view see Bhalla 2002). Second,
even between the most highly developed industrialized countries there
are significant differences that do not seem to be disappearing. The
European, Japanese and American versions of capitalism are quite dis-
tinct, and the differences are seen to give rise to recurrent conflicts, for
instance over trade policy matters as evidenced by the rich literature on
varieties of capitalism, different business systems, national diversity, etc.
(Whitley 1992; Berger and Dore 1996; Crouch and Streeck 1997; Hall
and Soskice 2001b; Gilpin 2001, pp. 148ff.). And last but not least,
religious and cultural differences are particularly conspicuous; many
observers see the struggle between religions or civilizations to be central
to the contemporary global development, as illustrated by the claim of
Samuel P. Huntington in his controversial 1996 book on ‘the clash of
civilizations’. The terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 might
lend new support to this perspective, whether interpreted as a struggle
between Islamic fundamentalism and the modern Western civilization
or as a battle between Islam and Christendom.
The point is, however, that in spite of such differences and without
neglecting their importance, when focusing on central economic, polit-
ical and ideational features, homogenization is clearly in evidence and
highly important. This has to do both with the fact that a particular type
of society has become globally dominant and with certain central norms
becoming almost universally accepted by states. As for the type of
society, the point is quite simply that the familiar model of ‘market
democracy’, to use an American expression, is now clearly dominant
in the world, while concurrently its basic features are continuing to be
spread through a variety of mechanisms to regions where other types
prevail. The international norms in question are found in the UN
Charter and the international conventions on human rights. While

there is a clear connection between these elements – type of society
and international norms – the link is not quite straightforward, and the
elements must therefore be treated separately, albeit their interconnec-
tion will also be commented on along the way. We begin by looking at
the international norms.
2 Shared norms
One of the major controversies in international relations theory revolves

around the significance of norms for the interrelations between states,
particularly the extent to which international law – i.e. the legal rules
that states unanimously have committed to in international treaties and
subsequently ratified into national legislation – governs state conduct.
Thus, according to some, international law is only complied with if
compatible with other national – economic and political – interests,
and/or if forced through by powerful states. In contrast to this, other
theoretical perspectives in various ways argue that norms have inde-
pendent effects, and many further claim that the overall development
is towards a strengthening of norms (see Hurrell 2002). It is the latter
view that forms the point of departure here.
The starting point is, in other words, that international norms, and
especially norms contained in ratified, international treaties – whether
referred to as treaties, conventions, or otherwise – in practice play a part
in shaping and governing state behaviour. This is not a matter of strong
regulation in that the international society does not contain a powerful
institution securing compliance through means of actual force. For this
reason compliance with international law can be selective and highly
influenced by additional – economic, security and other – concerns.
Nevertheless, for a number of reasons states do seek to live up to inter-
national law. One of the reasons is that they have an overall interest in
other states’ compliance, and the best way to further a general respect for
international law is to live up to it yourself. Another reason is that
violations may produce problems of legitimacy, among other things
because international rules can constitute a strong foundation for cri-
tique and political demands, nationally and internationally. Non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and other political movements
very much take advantage of this option, which may have real political
effects in any society where public opinion plays a role. That is, first and
foremost in democratic societies, but it may also be significant in coun-
tries with authoritarian regimes, depending on the degree of repression.
Clearly, a great number of international norms are quite imprecise in

the sense that they establish basic principles only, which are subse-
quently to be elaborated on and set down in more specific agreements.
This takes place in a conjecture of international legal and political
discussions and domestic decision-making processes, in practice leaving
space for differences in national applications and for considerable polit-
ical disagreements and conflicts. Thus, while international norms and
rules in many cases do not amount to a decidedly firm regulation, the
rules are nonetheless significant because they constitute the generally
accepted standards on the basis of which arguments are frequently made
(Eide and Alfredsson 1999). Therefore, the development of international
law, and especially the fundamental international rules on which uni-
versal or near-universal agreement exists, is an important element in the
societal context of globalization processes.
In the present connection, the central instruments are the UN Charter
of 1945, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948, the
two 1966 Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights, respectively, and finally the Vienna Declaration
and Programme of Action from the World Conference on Human
Rights in 1993 (DUPI 1999a, pp. 211ff.). One might also add the
principle of sustainable development which, with the 1992 Rio Declar-
ation and several subsequent documents, has become established as a
shared point of departure for international discussions on environmen-
tal policy. As this chapter is more focused on economic and political
matters, however, the latter is not included in the discussion.
Among other things, the UN Charter established some of the funda-
mental rules of the game concerning the relations between states. In this
context, some of the most important ones relate to the restrictions on
the use of force and the threats to use force in Article 2 (DUPI 1999a,
pp. 384ff.). As the principle of national sovereignty and thereby the
right to self-defence were reconfirmed at the same time, the restrictions
on the use of force are to be understood as a prohibition of military
aggression and offensive warfare and as a general obligation to resolve
conflicts peacefully. There are numerous examples, of course, that these
principles have not been followed in practice, but this does not change
the fact that all UN members – that is, practically all states in the world –
have formally accepted these principles as the constituting norms of
international society. Whether this has turned the world into a more
peaceful place will be discussed later in this chapter.
Equally important, though, is that the international conventions on
human rights contain a comprehensive catalogue of rights of individuals,
which has likewise been accepted by states. During the first decades
following World War II, the development in this field was markedly
influenced by high political confrontations between, on the one
side, the West, emphasizing in particular civil and democratic rights,
and, on the other, the Eastern bloc and developing countries, stressing
the importance of economic and social rights, including the right
to development (Samnøy 1999; Eide and Alfredsson 1999). In this
light it is significant that the UN World Conference on Human
Rights in Vienna in 1993 – shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall –
reconfirmed the previously adopted rights and at the same time made
it clear that ‘human rights are universal, indivisible, interrelated
and interdependent’ (DUPI 1999, p. 213). In doing so, the participants
cut through the discussions of earlier decades on how to prioritize
different rights, and whether some – and if so, which – rights were
to be considered more fundamental than others. Now both political
freedoms and economic, social and cultural rights have been establi-
shed as elements of an ‘indivisible’ package, and thereby a series
of individual rights and societal priorities have been accepted as
the basis of society, rights and priorities to which states have committed
themselves and on which critique and political demands can be
based.
The catalogue of rights is comprehensive. In addition to civil and
political rights we find, for example, the right to health, housing, edu-
cation, privacy, work, workers’ rights, the right to social security, rest
and leisure, the right to marry and form a family, the right to seek
asylum, etc. Although it is widely recognized that many of these are
not fulfilled nor are likely to be fulfilled in the shorter term in many
countries, and although it is safe to say that many governments’ accept-
ance of these is half-hearted at best (Eide and Alfredsson 1999), we have
a bindingly formulated ambition for societal development, which
enjoys a formally universal legitimacy that is challengeable only with
difficulty. As regards the formal acceptance of these fundamental
norms, the world has become considerably more homogeneous than
ever before. I shall return to aspects of the development in international
law in a subsequent chapter.
In short, the strengthening of international norms is one important
element in the homogenization of the world society. The other element
is that a specific type of society, namely the market democratic one, has
now become globally dominant. At first sight this might seem a self-
evident and rather commonplace observation, but this too is an asser-
tion that needs to be dealt with in some detail.
3 Market democracy
This type of society can be described in terms of three main characteris-

tics or basic features, one economic and two political. Economically, this
type is a capitalist market economy, as distinct from feudalism and other
pre-capitalist or traditional economic structures, and as opposed to
models of planned economy found in the former Soviet Union and
still to be found, in a state of greater or lesser disintegration, in China,
North Korea and Cuba.
As for the political features characteristic of the market democratic
type of society, a central distinction must be drawn between type of state
and form of regime (Poulantzas 1973). The first concept concerns some of
the fundamental aspects of the relation between state, society and
market, while the second concerns equally fundamental aspects of the
organization of political life, i.e. the question of democratic or authori-
tarian forms of regime.
Fundamental aspects of the modern capitalist type of state are that it
ensures the basic political, legal and material conditions for the indus-
trial market economy, i.e. conditions such as private property rights,
business and company legislation ensuring that contracts can be agreed
and enforced, a modern financial and monetary system, an adminis-
trative apparatus based on the rule of law, legal systems and courts
ensuring basic citizens’ rights, and a material infrastructure with roads,
means of communication and energy supply (these questions will be
discussed in greater detail in Chapters 4 and 6). This differs, on the one
hand, from those types of state which are based on pre-modern, trad-
itional forms of authority, and which typically lack a clear and formal
separation between state and market, economic and political power, and
in which power is exercised and legitimized on the basis of traditional,
typically more personal forms of authority, and where modern company
legislation is either non-existent or not respected in practice. On the
other hand it differs from the planned economies where there was a
similar fusion of political and economic power and where constitutional
principles and the rule of law to varying degrees took the shape of empty
formalities. In the real world, things are rarely clear-cut, and aspects of
the capitalist type of state can coexist with pre-capitalist political
regimes for longer periods of time; likewise, the transition from a trad-
ition type of state to a modern capitalist one can be a lengthy and
gradual process.
One might argue that basic economic structure and type of state are
nothing but two sides of the same matter, the type of state to a great
extent being defined precisely by the economic order it supports. When

I find it central to distinguish between these two sides of the matter, it is,
first, because they are exactly two different sides, an economic and a
political, and second, because there may be discrepancies between the
two. A capitalist market economy can penetrate a society that continues
to be dominated by non-capitalist types of state. Conversely, capitalist
states can act as agents of change in societies where economic structures
continue to display considerable non-capitalist elements, a phenom-
enon found for instance in India and other post-colonial societies.
Thus, a characterization of the fundamental aspects of a society requires
that both sides be dealt with.
If we turn to the form of regime, the main divide is between democratic
forms on the one side and various forms of authoritarian regimes on the
other: military dictatorships, police states, religious dictatorships, etc.
Evidently, democracy as such is a debated and contested concept, and
great efforts have gone into discussing what is to be understood by a true
or real democratic regime (Held 1995). However, arguably it is uncontro-
versial to state that democracy as a minimum requires real freedom of
association and speech, free and fair elections with universal suffrage,
and a constitution that enables the replacement of government by
voters through such elections. If all these ingredients are present, one
can speak of democracy; if they are all absent, dictatorship. In cases
where some but not all are present, or present in some limited form
such as restricted freedom of speech, one can speak of an authoritarian
regime with democratic features or, depending on the balance, of a
democratic regime with authoritarian features.
Before we proceed to look at how the market democratic type of society
has evolved globally, it is useful to consider further the relation between
this type of society and the international norms discussed earlier.
A number of these norms obviously form part of the description of this
type of society, as for instance the basic civil and political rights, and it
is therefore natural to ask whether this is not also a case of two sides of the
same matter, whether the development in international norms is not
simply a reflection of the core principles of the market democratic model
coming to constitute the juridico-normative foundation of the world
society. While such an assertion is not entirely misleading, nor is it
entirely accurate, and there is good reason to explore why.
A closer look reveals that while some of the international norms are
part of the definition of the capitalist market economy and the demo-
cratic form of regime, this is not the case with all norms. In particular,
one can mention economic and social rights such as the right to social
security, the right to health and education, and cultural rights, etc.
Second, a number of those institutions that are part of this type of
state are not part of the fundamental international norms. Examples
include modern monetary systems, securities and exchange commis-
sions, land registering systems, public regulation of stock markets and
publicly established standards on weights and measures. Additionally,
while the rights in their principled form may have democracy as a
consequence, they are subject to considerable space for interpretation;
conversely, while democratic regimes may provide the best foundation
for the fulfilment of human rights, democracy in itself is no guarantee
that all rights will be respected. The latter is clear from the fact that even
long-standing democratic societies may have – and have – problems in
complying with universally recognized human rights.
This does not alter the fact that there is also a positive correlation
between the norms – some of them at least – and the type of society.
Historically, basic freedoms and the struggle for these have been an
important precondition for the development of the market democratic
type, and this connection continues to exist. Likewise it can be claimed
that these rights now support this type of society more than others.
Conversely, this type of society more than the others has provided the
conditions for the development and respect of human rights, regardless
of the flaws that continue to exist.
There is, then, between the international norms discussed and the
market democratic type of society a relation where, to a certain extent,
they pre-condition each other, without this – to use a mathematical
expression – being a one-to-one relation. The development in inter-
national norms is therefore irreducible to the spread of the market
democratic type of society. Quite the contrary, these norms have a
relatively autonomous history, which may be traced back to the
European Enlightenment and farther, and which in more recent times
have been decisively marked by the experiences of two world wars, the
crimes against humanity of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes, the Cold War,
and by the struggle for social justice and welfare within and beyond the
confines of the market democracies. Similarly, the development of
international norms has its own effects on the continuous development
of world society, as argued above. Likewise, the development of inter-
national norms does not automatically imply the expansion of the
market democratic type of society. Let us therefore return to the asser-
tion that this type has now become globally dominant.
To recapitulate, we are interested in three basic features of societies:
basic economic structure, type of state and form of regime. On these
three, the dominant type of society is characterized by a capitalist

market economy, a modern capitalist type of state and a democratic
form of regime. The claim that the world society has become far more
homogeneous should not be understood to imply that all or most
countries in the world now share these three characteristics. Obviously,
such a claim would be incorrect. Rather, the argument is that these three
characteristics are much more prevalent than they have been in the
past, and that especially the former two – market economy and capitalist
state – are now so pervasive that for the first time in history they can be
characterized as globally dominant. There are several reasons for this.
The first reason requires no explanation. In the developed, industrial-
ized societies of Western and Central Europe, North America, Japan and
South Korea the combination of capitalist market economy, capitalist
type of state and democratic regimes are hegemonic. (Some may find
the inclusion of South Korea controversial, but see Choi 1997.) It should
be recalled that in a wider historical perspective this is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Germany, Japan and Italy did not become stable democ-
racies until after World War II, and in Southern Europe the transition to
democracy in Greece, Spain and Portugal only took place in the 1970s.
In terms of population, the core group represents a quite substantial
share of humanity and, more importantly, it represents the economic-
ally and politically dominant part. Practically regardless of the measure
applied – be it GDP, share of world trade or FDI, military capabilities,
political clout in international institutions, position in the global
media and flows of culture, etc. – there can be no doubt as to the crucial
role of these countries. In addition, the former rivals Russia and several
ex-communist countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and others),
following the end of the Cold War and the ensuing massive transitions,
now also belong to this group. Mexico and Turkey are also on the
doorstep of this club, as expressed in their membership of the OECD,
and they, by and large, share the three basic characteristics (although in
both cases the democracy criteria are not wholly fulfilled).
Beyond this dominant group of countries that make up a market
democratic heartland, matters are more complicated, and it is therefore
useful to consider each of the three features separately. We begin with
economic structures.
4 The global spread of capitalism
Throughout most of the twentieth century, capitalism coexisted with

considerable elements of modes of production such as feudalism and a
variety of other traditional forms of agrarian societies, communities of

hunters-gatherers and nomads, predominantly in the Third World but
also in Southern Europe. During the course of the latter half of the
century, these have retreated considerably in the face of modern,
market-based economic systems linked to, and profoundly shaped by,
the capitalist world economy and thereby industrial capitalism. In his
excellent overview of the twentieth century, The Age of Extremes (1994,
p. 289), the historian Eric Hobsbawm writes that the latter half of
the twentieth century witnessed the end of the peasant society, the
mode of production and form of life that had formed the basis for
most of humanity for 8,000 years. That may be pushing it to extremes,
as agrarian regions where pre-capitalist economic structures continue to
prevail still exist, not least in South and Southeast Asia and parts of Latin
America and Africa. It should be noted that reliable data on these
matters are difficult to come by; there are no global statistics on basic
economic structural conditions in agriculture (among other things pre-
cisely because the remaining pre-modern communities/societies are
outside the formal economy). (On the limitations of existing statistical
data with respect to shedding light on these matters in agricultural
regions, see for instance International Fund for Agricultural Develop-
ment 2001, chapter 2.) Irrespective of the lack of precise data, however,
there can be no doubt that traditional economic forms have been
pushed back and circumscribed by the capitalist world economy, by
which they do not remain unaffected, and the market mechanisms
of which are increasingly penetrating them.
The retreat of the plan-economic models was an even more dramatic
and rapid transformation – following the end of the Cold War and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, basic economic structures changed radic-
ally in the USSR and in Eastern Europe. The process has been a painful
one, and considerable elements of planned economy still remain in
some of the former Soviet republics, particularly in Central Asia (see,
for instance, Freedom House 2001). In China, state organs, not least
on a regional level, continue to control a significant share of economic
activity. At the same time, private property rights and market mechan-
isms have been introduced to a considerable extent, and the continued
economic reforms in China suggest that the state-controlled planned
economy may not remain dominant. Only North Korea seems to be
clinging on to a centralized state-controlled economic model. In sum
there is no question that the private capitalist market economy, al-
though found in quite distinct versions, has become the globally dom-
inant form of economic organization. Furthermore, there is little doubt
that, with very few exceptions, economic development in these years is

tending towards a continued expansion of the capitalist market econ-
omy and its increasing penetration of the regions of the world still
dominated by non-capitalist modes of production. This is due to the
economic model’s immanent tendency to expand and to its techno-
logical superiority, as well as to the fact that governments and inter-
national institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF are actively
pursuing policies contributing to its diffusion.
5 The modern capitalist state
Likewise, the basic features of the capitalist type of state continue to

spread, albeit in a more uneven and complicated process, which in some
cases is fraught with setbacks. Some fundamental elements, such as legal
systems that ensure private property rights and contracts and a modern
monetary system, now exist in most societies. In their comprehensive
analysis of global business regulation, Australian researchers Braithwaite
and Drahos conclude that the globalization of the law of property and
contract is now complete (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, p. 54). That
may be saying too much, given that there are still societies such as North
Korea, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, where the preconditions for pri-
vate enterprise are not yet established, not even in urban professions.
The exceptions are few and of relatively little importance in the inter-
national economy, however, and it is therefore safe to claim that these
central aspects of the capitalist type of state are now near-universal.
Additional nuances should be added, though. The fundamental
aspects are one thing; the totality of comprehensive sets of regulations
and institutions found in highly developed capitalist states is a different
matter. In many Third World countries as well as in the former Eastern
bloc, business regulation is embryonic and/or of limited importance in
practice. Many countries do not have, for example, a modern land
registration system, which is a precondition for the trading and mortga-
ging of land. Likewise modern company law, credit institutions, stock
exchanges, authorities supervising the financial sector, etc. are weakly
developed in many places.
In addition, in many countries the separation between economic and
political power that is characteristic of capitalist states is either absent or
effected to a minor degree only. Thus, personal relations and connec-
tions rooted in the traditional structure of power are frequently seen to
determine economic transactions, as apposed to considerations of long-
term return on investment. This can mean, for instance, that bank
lending is governed by personal connections rather than the pursuit of

long-term profit. Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and
Malaysia offer countless such illustrations, and examples from many
other countries are all too familiar. In the extreme case of the former
Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in formality a modern
legal system existed, with the institutions and regulations that form the
basis of a market economy, while in practice the national economy
functioned as the personal property of the dictator, Sese Seko Mobuto,
and for the sole purpose of personal enrichment.
While the literature on developing countries contains numerous illus-
trations of such phenomena (Degnbol-Martinussen 1997, Robison
1996), more systematic assessments of their prevalence are rare. This is
hardly surprising as these are typically phenomena for which statistics
are not produced, and where exactly those institutions that might be
capable of producing solid and reliable data are either non-existent or
weakly developed. The attention, however, devoted in international
development cooperation to the development of institutions supportive
of a strengthening of the market economy indirectly demonstrates that
the problem of these institutions’ underdevelopment or non-existence
is a real problem. Thus the telling title – Building Institutions for Markets –
of a recent development report from the World Bank (2002) illustrates
precisely how highly prioritized the building of necessary institutions
has become. Similarly, many of the good governance conditionalities
presented to recipient countries by the World Bank, the IMF and
national donor organizations specifically relate to the construction of
a modern capitalist type of state (Pender 2001). Indirectly, this points to
the weakly or insufficiently developed character of these capitalist
states. They are, in Robert Jackson’s terminology, quasi-states (Jackson
1990).
While an important facet indeed, it should not overshadow the extent
to which this type of state has actually evolved on a global scale. In a
great number of Third World countries, including a number of major
ones in terms of economy and population, a string of institutions
belonging to the modern capitalist state have actually been established
and do function more or less in concordance with constitutional prin-
ciples and the rule of law. What is more, they have been established
to such a degree that they have become dominant in those societies,
even though these to varying degrees continue to be characterized by
pre-modern political forms and structures of authority. While the
importance of pre-modern political conditions varies across countries,
undoubtedly countries such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, South Afrcia and several
other African countries and Latin American countries such as Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela, etc., would fall into this category.
Adding the population of these countries to those of the OECD coun-
tries and Russia, we arrive at the observation that far more than half of
the world’s population is living in societies with capitalist states. Con-
sidering that China, as in many other respects, is an important special
case, the proper conclusion would be that this characteristic now applies
to most of humanity outside China.
Before concluding, however, we should consider one final aspect,
namely that recent decades show several examples of states disintegrat-
ing, not least in Africa. Both causes and specific chains of events
have differed, but names such as Rwanda-Burundi, Somalia, Zaire and
Ethiopia are reminders that weak states fraught with ethnic, religious
and social strife can collapse into civil war and internal anarchy, where
any kind of legal social order is absent. These all too familiar stories hold
the important lesson that the building of modern political institution is
not a simply progressing and inevitable process; quite the contrary,
developments may take the opposite direction. This point, however,
should not be stretched too far in that is has to be recalled that these
are cases of collapse, not of the establishment of an alternative political
order. The only apparent and viable future perspective for such societies
is the reconstitution of the rule of law and the construction of modern
capitalist states.
In sum, it cannot justifiably be claimed that the capitalist type of state
has become universal. Rather, at the dawn of the twenty-first century,
the situation is that some of its fundamental features have achieved a
nearly global spread, but continue to be weakly developed and com-
bined with non-capitalist types in many countries – whether more or
less pronounced elements of planned economy as in China, North Korea
and some former Soviet republics, or different forms of pre-modern
political authority structures in parts of the Third World. Looking at
this more composite picture, however, it is a reasonable claim that this
type of state has become globally dominant. First, there are very few, if
any, societies where the fundamental aspects have not set in. Second, it
is now clearly the prevailing one in most of the world outside China.
Third, this type of state is dominant in the sense that generally it has
been gaining ground in recent decades, even if we include the afore-
mentioned collapses, whereas the pre-modern as well as the plan-eco-
nomic political structures have been on the retreat. Finally, we see a
sustained pressure, backed up by various kinds of assistance, towards the
long-term and gradual introduction, consolidation and construction of

this type of state emanating from the dominant states of the inter-
national system as well as from international institutions such as the
World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Having considered the first two of the basic features of the market
democratic type of society, let us turn to the third – democratic forms of
regime.
6 The expansion of democracy
In the year 2000 58 per cent of the world’s population lived in countries
with democratic rule, according to the US think tank Freedom
House (1999). In 1900 the figure was zero. The latter may seem surpris-
ing but is explained by Freedom House’s requirement of universal suf-
frage for a country to be categorized as democratic – a criteria no country
could fulfil at that time. Alternatively, one might take a somewhat
broader perspective and include what Freedom House refers to as
‘Restricted Democratic Practices’, i.e. countries where democracy is
restricted in different ways. In that case, 12 per cent of the world’s
population were living in democratic or partially democratic societies
in 1900; in 1950 the number had gone up to 43 per cent, and in 2000 to
63, again according to Freedom House.
Counting states rather than citizens leads to a similar result, but
the balance towards democracy is even clearer. In 2000 Freedom
House counted 119 – or 62 per cent – of the world’s 192 states as
democratic, while an additional 16 – or 8.3 per cent – were partially
democratic. Finally, as in the previous section, the expansion of democ-
racy could be measured by taking into account the special case of
populous China. This does not alter much in terms of the share of
democratic countries in the world, but with respect to population the
difference is marked: of the world’s 6 billion people, 1.3 billion live in
China, and of the 4.7 billion living outside China 3.4 billion – or 72 per
cent, i.e. three out of four – citizens reside in countries with democratic
rule (population figures for the entire world and China from World Bank
2001; for population in democracies see Freedom House 1999).
This observation should not be read uncritically. The figures from
Freedom House can be seen as problematic in that several countries
proclaimed to be democratic do not live up to a number of human
rights and law and order standards, which Freedom House explicitly
notes. It might also be argued that this is too rosy a picture. The concept
of democracy in itself is among the most disputed within political
science, and the comprehensive literature on the subject contains many

more or less far-reaching suggestions as to what is required for a country
to be considered truly democratic. If, however, a distinction between
democratic and non-democratic is sought, the criterion Freedom House
uses is definitely not the worst you can do: there have to be free elec-
tions that offer the opposition a real possibility of coming into office.
Furthermore, one might criticize Freedom House for being too restrict-
ive: in the 2000 figures Mexico is categorized as a restricted democracy
and is therefore not included among the 119 democracies. Many might
object that Mexico, following the 2000 election where the opposition
for the first time since the revolution (1910–20) gained power, is now a
democracy. Altogether, the conclusion is that democracies, both in
terms of population and in terms of numbers of states, now constitute
a clear majority, even more clearly so in the world outside China.
There is another reason to take this with a grain of salt. Democra-
tization is not an even progression, and history shows many examples of
backlashes, where military regimes and other forms of authoritarian rule
have replaced a democratic form. Samuel P. Huntington has thus dem-
onstrated how democratization historically has occurred in consecutive
waves interrupted by backlashes (Huntington 1991). The first long wave
of democratization took place between 1828 and 1923 and touched
mostly upon Europe and North America, while the second occurred
between 1943 and 1962 and included a number of former colonies
that had recently gained their independence. A reversal set in from
1962 in many Third World countries, but in 1973 the third global
wave of democratization began with the transition to democracy
of the dictatorships in Portugal, Spain and Greece (1991, pp. 13ff.).
Huntington points out that in the period from 1974 to 1990 a change
from authoritarian to democratic forms of regime occurred in approxi-
mately 30 countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America, according to his
calculation resulting in 59 democracies with more than 1 million inhab-
itants in 1990, compared to 30 in 1973 (1991, p. 21). In 1990 democra-
cies made up 45 per cent of the countries with more than 1 million
inhabitants, while in 1970 they had made up only 25 per cent (1991,
table 1.1). Since Huntington finished his analysis in 1990, the number of
democracies has grown further, and we find that democracies now
constitute a clear majority, as described above.
Thus, this majority of democracies is a result of the third wave, and it
may be replaced by another backlash. It should therefore not be taken
for granted that the world will continue to see an expansion of democ-
racy, or that the present situation will remain unaltered. To go further
into this discussion would take a more detailed treatment of the com-
plex matters explaining both democratization and backlash, which
would be going too far in this context. I would suggest, however, that
there are reasons for cautious optimism with respect to expanding
democratization.
First, it is crucial that democratization in no way is limited to the
group of rich countries or to the Western, European culture. In terms of
population, India is the world’s largest democracy, and it belongs to one
of the older (founded in 1950, one year after West Germany) and more
stable ones. Freedom House’s list of democracies now includes Nigeria,
South Africa and several other African countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile
and others in South America, and among other Asian countries besides
India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines
and Taiwan. If we disregard the about 50 countries with less than 1 mil-
lion inhabitants, and if we divide the world outside China into two
groups – with the OECD countries and the European parts of the former
Eastern bloc including the Balkans as one, and the developing countries
of Asia, Africa and Latin America as the other – we find that of developing
countries, democracies constitute a minority in terms of states – 50
versus 58 – whereas in population terms they have a clear overweight:
approximately 2.2 versus approximately 1.1 billion (own calculations).
Naturally, the 1 billion people in India weigh heavily in this, but even if
we exclude India more people live in democratic than non-democratic
societies in the Third World outside China. It is also worth noting that of
the 3.4 billion people living in democracy, a mere third resides in the
reigns of the old European civilization (Europe, the US, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand), while more than 2 billion live in non-Western
societies. Quite simply, the days are gone when democracy could be
characterized as a predominantly Western phenomenon.
A second reason for optimism is that the remaining non-democratic
regimes exist in an international context that is much more profoundly
shaped by basic democratic principles than it was 30 years ago, when the
third wave set in. In addition to the described majority of democracies, it
must be taken into account that following the collapse of the Soviet
Union there is no non-democratic superpower nor are there any power-
ful states that aggressively challenge the foundational principles of
democracy. At the same time, the basic democratic principles now
have a clear priority in terms of international legitimacy through the
central international norms, as expressed in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights that most states in the world support in words if not
always in deeds.
An additional reason is that the dominant states and international

organizations are actively promoting democratization processes in those
societies that are not yet democratic. This is done through various types
of pressure and incentives to strengthen human rights and carry
through democratic reforms, not least through conditionalities on lend-
ing and development assistance. Of course, the enthusiasm and consist-
ency involved vary, as this political ambition is often overruled by
economic or security concerns, witness Western political support for
the Saudi Arabian royal family. Nevertheless, the main tendency is
that the powerful actors in world society to varying degrees urge dem-
ocratization, and that they are less willing than they used to be to accept
and openly support non-democratic regimes.
The role of future economic development should also be taken
into consideration. There is no automatic or simple correlation bet-
ween capitalist growth and democratization, but there is broad agree-
ment within research that economic development contributes to
producing the preconditions for democracy. How this insight is framed
depends on the theoretical perspective of the respective researchers.
Some emphasize the creation of new and educated middle classes,
resulting from the development of the market economy – classes that,
over time, will organize politically and demand democratization. Others
emphasize that development leads to the formation of a modern and
active civil society that constitutes a better foundation for democratic
regimes, while others still consider the emergence of national bour-
geoisies or capitalist classes to be an important factor (Huntington
1991; Martinussen 1980). Since democratization is a complex phenom-
enon where a number of other factors of an economic, political and
cultural kind – as well as international conditions – interfere, no one
is likely to claim that these factors are sufficient in themselves. In
general, however, it is widely accepted that economic development
enhances preconditions for democracy. As argued above, in spite of all
imbalances, inequalities and backlashes, it is likely that the capitalist
economy will continue to expand, entailing profound societal trans-
formations in the world’s least developed regions.
The media and communications revolution of recent decades should
also be mentioned briefly, as its significance for a continued democra-
tization is obvious. The exchange of ideas between countries and
cultures is far more intense than ever before, and it is practically
impossible for those in power to prevent their subjects from acquiring
knowledge about notions of human rights, democracy, the liberation of
women, etc. This too is not a simple and automatic link, and the
renaissance of Islam, in particular, suggests that counter-reactions may

be triggered, a phenomenon recognized in other cultures as well
(Robertson 1992). However, both experiences from the third wave and
the existence of movements for democracy in several contemporary
non-democratic societies demonstrate that the free movement of
ideas across national boundaries is an additional factor contributing
to further democratization.
Finally, it should be emphasized that there are very few political
movements in the world today that actively strive for non-democratic
political conditions in the way the twentieth century’s totalitarian
ideologies did. Naturally, various authoritarian regimes have developed
ideologies and legitimizing principles justifying the state of things, as
for instance in the case of ‘Asian values’ used for such purposes in
Singapore, among others. These are mainly of a defensive nature, how-
ever, in the sense of legitimizing the absence of democracy in the
respective societies. They do not offer an alternative political vision of
development and do not include any thoughts of exporting the think-
ing to the rest of the world (Bruun and Jacobsen 2000).
The only such movement that seems important in the world at the
dawn of twenty-first century is political Islam, a point that is the rational
kernel in Huntington’s justifiably criticized theory of ‘the clash of civil-
izations’. It is essential to tread with care in this context: it is not the
religion of Islam as such, or necessarily any of the different fundamen-
talist flows within it, that is at question here. Rather, it is those forces
within Islam seeking the establishment of Muslim states where religion
and state are not separate, where religious law forms the basis of societal
life, and where the political establishment belongs to the clergy. The
most extreme cases – as is all too well known after the 11 September
2001 – are the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda
terror network, while a less radical example is the Islamic republic of
Iran, but movements working towards this ambition are found in most
Muslim societies – from Algeria in the West to Indonesia in the east –
and there are offshoots in many Western countries.
At the same time, however, with few exceptions these movements
have been held in check by authoritarian regimes oriented towards
modernization, as in e.g. Algeria, Egypt and Malaysia, or in regimes
such as Saudi Arabia, where political power resides with a more trad-
itional monarchy rather than the Muslim clergy, even though the
kingdom uses Islamic principles for legitimization. Additionally, in
Iran – the first Islamic republic in our age – there are strong forces for
reform, and a gradual softening of Islamic rule is not to be ruled out.
However, at the time of writing, after 11 September 2001, the military

defeat of the Taliban regime, the intense hunt for Osama Bin Laden and
al-Qaeda, and a possible ‘pre-emptive war’ against Iraq make the situ-
ation more uncertain. Still, the probability that the totalitarian Islamic
movement will continue to grow to an unlimited degree outside its core
areas seems small, and a more general conclusion is that there are good
reasons to follow the assessment of Samuel P. Huntington that there is a
basis for cautious optimism with respect to democracy (1991). Consider-
ing which is more probable in the longer term – further democratization
or its reverse, backlash – the only reasonable answer is further democra-
tization.
Thus, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, political power in
the world is based, to an unprecedented degree, on democratic prin-
ciples, and this appears a fairly robust phenomenon. This is another way
in which the world is becoming more homogeneous.
7 Concluding on homogeneity
The resulting position is that the world today has become far more
homogeneous than before with regard to the basic societal features, i.e.
basic economic structures, type of state and forms of regime. The market
democratic form of society has expanded considerably; while not the
only type of social order in world society it has become clearly predom-
inant and is today the only plausible candidate on the offer as a univer-
sally accepted type of society. Particularly important is the fact that this
type of society also enjoys a widespread acceptance beyond the bound-
aries of traditional European civilization, and its three basic features
have been established in a number of important Third World countries
such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and many more. These are
not strictly market democracies in all respects, but they have come
considerably closer. The economic and political conditions obviously
differ in character from the traditional, rich democracies, as we are
looking at developing countries with considerable developmental and
poverty-related challenges, and with entirely different and underprivil-
eged positions in the global economic and political structures. They are,
nevertheless, capitalist societies with democratic regimes, and as such
contribute to the overall picture of the global dominance of the market
democratic type of society. This dominance is further underlined by the
fact that international institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and
the WTO, as well as the dominant Western powers are continuously
working to spread and strengthen the market democratic type of society

in countries where its establishment is not yet fully under way.
This homogenization of the world society is crucial, a point that
might be overlooked if one were to focus on the North–South
divide, the ‘clash of civilizations’, or on the conflicts between developed
capitalist societies. The point has not gone unnoticed. Craig N. Murphy,
for instance, has argued that the more composite world order made
up of OECD countries, dependent developing countries, and the
planned economies of the Eastern bloc (and before that, a world order
where European colonial powers were the dominant component) has
now been replaced by a global market-based order (Murphy 2002). Fred
Halliday points to the fact that the capitalist world order is now ‘on
its own’ (Halliday 2001, p. 63), in addition to previously emphasizing
precisely this tendency of homogenization as a key element in
global development. Francis Fukuyama, in the article ‘The End of His-
tory?’ (Fukuyama 1989) phrased it as the global victory of liberalism;
albeit formulated in a terminology of a somewhat different political
science perspective, the point is basically the same. Fukuyama, however,
has mostly been known because of the further conclusion he drew,
i.e. that this implies ‘the end of history’. As pointed out by many critics,
this is an exaggerated conclusion, as the market democratic type
of society continues to develop and contains numerous problems
and conflicts, internally in societies as well as in the interrelations
between these, the outcomes to which are far from given. In spite of
stretching it too far, Fukuyama should be credited with being among
the first to point to the importance of the homogenization of the world
society.
But why is this so important? Homogenization should be taken into
consideration in any discussion of globalization because it relates to
crucial societal conditions and contexts in which different processes of
globalization play out; at the same time, homogenization may also be
seen to result from this globalization. Many of those processes to
be considered below are furthered by their taking place in a more
homogeneous world, but there are particularly good reasons for paying
special attention to one effect that is of central importance as a political
determinant of further internationalization: the effect that homogeniza-
tion by all means appears to be resulting in a markedly more
peaceful world. Rather than to imply that the world will be free of
conflicts, the point is that it provides considerably enhanced prospects
for the peaceful handling and mediation of conflicts and opposing
interests. This connection will be discussed in further detail on the

following pages.
8 A more peaceful world?
The central view is that a world order dominated by market democratic

societies is considerably more peaceful than the previous, more compos-
ite world orders. In international relations theory this has been debated
under the label of ‘the democratic peace’ or within the liberal peace
perspective, encompassing the theoretically and empirically well-
substantiated thesis that democracies do not wage war on each other
(a succinct overview of the debate is found in Sørensen 1997; see also
Halliday 2001, p. 59). The intellectual roots of this view go back to the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant who in his book on eternal peace,
written in 1795 (1995), argued that the combination of constitutional
states and international trade would result in an order where all parties
shared an interest in peaceful international cooperation, and where no
party would see it in their interest to engage in war. Modern versions of
this view forward both economic and political arguments: if strong
interest groups are connected through international trade, they are by
nature opposed to the interruption of this trade by war; and in democ-
racies, war is only waged if based on broad public support and legitimacy
(at least when it comes to lengthier and costlier wars) and therefore it
will be very difficult for political leaders of democratic societies to
initiate and wage wars on other democracies. To this should be added
that the democratic ethos in itself and the democratic political culture
are at odds with the nature of war precisely because they rest on peaceful
resolution of conflicts and mediation of opposing interests through
negotiated compromises. Finally, it is argued that citizens of societies
based on constitutional principles and the rule of law will want the
international society to rest on corresponding principles. Each of these
theoretical arguments carries some weight, and in conjunction they are
considered within the liberal peace perspective as decisive. It should
be added that they are, as mentioned, supported by the empirical fact
that there are virtually no examples of one democracy going to war with
another.
According to this perspective, then, the combination of a constitu-
tional state, democracy and market economy – in other words, a market
democratic type of society – results in more peaceful international rela-
tions. In the extreme, simplified version this can be formulated as a
claim that in the long run capitalism leads to peace. From critical
perspectives inspired by Marxist thinking and by Lenin’s theory of

imperialism from 1917, this is a highly controversial claim. Here, the
line of reasoning is practically the opposite – that wars between capital-
ist great powers are unavoidable in ‘the highest stage of capitalism’, and
wars are therefore inextricably bound up with a capitalist world order
(Lenin 1981). The claim is also problematic from the point of view of the
so-called realist school of international relations that has been promin-
ent, if not dominant, for a long time, not least in the US. Here, the
core view is that the international system is anarchic and shaped by
the struggle of all against all, where individual states exclusively pursue
their national interest defined first and foremost in terms of security and
power. This implies that the possibility of war is embedded in the
structure of the international system as a basic condition held in check
only by the balance of military power.
There are, in other words, arguments for not accepting the liberal
peace hypothesis right away. On the other hand, the thesis can be
supported further, even by drawing on some of the basic insights of
the critical tradition and of historical materialism in particular, though
not in its more dogmatic versions. Here, the central premise is that
phenomena such as war and peace should be analysed within their
societal context: the causes of war and peace are not found exclusively
in the international power relations between states, but also in the wider
economic, social and other conflicts of interests. This enables us to turn
the question of the interrelation between the homogenization of the
world society and war versus peace upside down, enquiring instead into
the societal preconditions for war rather than the preconditions for
peace and cooperation.
Naturally, this is both a comprehensive and widely debated issue to
which the present text cannot do full justice. It is possible, however,
to outline a perspective that differs both from the core assumption of
realism – that war is structurally embedded in the international system
as a basic condition – and from that of Leninist theories of imperialism.
This alternative perspective rests on the observation that the great wars
and conflicts – the two world wars, the Cold War, the wars of national
liberation in the Third World (Algeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Angola,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe) – of the century of extremes, as Eric
Hobsbawm (1994) has strikingly labelled it, all either occurred in a
societal context predominantly shaped by non-democratic and pre-
capitalist characteristics or can be explained by tensions between capit-
alist and non-capitalist types of society.
This requires some elaboration. To begin with, consider European

colonialism. This constituted a substantial part of the background
to World War I with the rivalry between European great powers over
colonial domains and access to markets and tropical raw materials
being an important factor in the complex historical processes leading
to the war (Hobsbawm 1987; Kiernan 1974; Brown 1963). The point is
that colonialism as a political form is older than industrial capitalism
and is rooted exactly in the pre-capitalist forms of society and power
structures. The phenomenon as such – the conquest and population of
territories as a means to gaining power and wealth – can be traced back
at least to the Roman Empire, and the roots of modern colonialism are
found either in the eleventh century’s crusades or in the overseas expan-
sion originating around the year 1500 BC (Gilpin 1981; Kennedy 1987;
Encyclopedia Britannica 1995). This is further supported by the fact
that at least some of the warring nations of World War I – Russia and
Austria-Hungary and, to some extent, Germany – were still shaped by
pre-capitalist relations of authority, where feudal aristocracies had con-
siderable power, just as the degree to which all the then-dominant
colonial powers can be characterized as ‘pure’ capitalist societies is
debatable. In this perspective, the decisive element was a combination
of the economic expansion of capitalism, as argued by Lenin, and the
existence of considerable pre-capitalist forms of political authority,
overlooked by him.
Concerning the period following World War I, European colonialism
continued to be a central precondition for many wars and conflicts;
obviously, it was a direct precondition for the movements and wars of
national liberation in Asia and Africa. However, the fundamental soci-
etal factors involved in the two great conflicts – World War II and the
Cold War – were, of course, on the one hand the Russian revolution and
the subsequent development of the Stalinist system, and on the other
the emergence of Nazism and Fascism in Germany and Italy. Neither of
these extreme societal changes can be explained without taking into
account the intense transformations and social tensions caused by the
rapid capitalist development in societies that still carried strong admix-
tures of pre-capitalist economic structures and political forms of author-
ity. The fact of the matter is, in other words, that both World War II and
the Cold War originated and evolved on the basis of such strongly
heterogeneous societal preconditions in rapid development and trans-
formation. Naturally, this is not an exhaustive explanation for these
phenomena which would require a number of other factors to be
taken into account, including the unique role of individuals such as
Hitler and Stalin. The particular societal preconditions are not alone
sufficient to explain events, but they made it possible for Nazism and
Stalinism to emerge and evolve.
In sum, many of the most dramatic events of the century of extremes
can be understood as social and interstate conflicts borne by, or at least
made possible by, the expansion of capitalism into, and its clash with,
pre-capitalist and early capitalist types of society. In the light of this, in a
historical perspective the massive armed conflicts of the century of
extremes are to be interpreted as the intense birth pangs of global
capitalism and not, as Lenin and his successors would have it, as its era
of decay and death throes.
One final argument can be added. The collective experiences from two
destructive world wars and the Cold War, all originating in Europe, have
deeply marked public opinion on war as an acceptable tool for states. As
demonstrated by John Mueller, whereas war before World War I was
widely seen as a noble endeavour, and even a healthy and manly moral-
strengthening effort, after World War II general opinion has decidedly
turned towards a view of war as something if not to be avoided at all
costs, then at least as an instrument only to be used as a very last resort
(Mueller 1990).
In conclusion, there are persuasive arguments in support of the thesis
that a more homogeneous world order dominated by the market demo-
cratic type of society is significantly more peaceful than the previous,
more composite world orders. Wars between capitalist great powers are a
thing of the past, as are interstate wars between other market democra-
cies; national liberation wars are relevant only in a few corners of the
world. This does not imply, though, that armed conflicts are now his-
tory. We will continue to see civil war in societies where the political
order has collapsed, or where ethnic, religious or other differences are so
steep that a peaceful resolution of conflicts is impossible. It is also to be
expected that military means will still be used against terrorists, drug
traffickers and other elements within and outside of the market demo-
cratic type of society, which do no recognize its core principles and
cannot be countered by other means. Nor are interstate wars impossible,
as evidenced by Saddam Hussein’s attempt at military conquest of
Kuwait and current preparations for war against Iraq, although these
must be a considerable deterrent to other states with ambitions like
Iraq’s. More intense or comprehensive military encounters between
India and Pakistan over the contested Kashmir region cannot be ruled
out either, and there are other places in the world where threats to peace
can also be identified.
Altogether, however, a great portion of the world is now included in

what in the US debate has referred to as a global peace zone, encompass-
ing both the market democratic societies of the North and the South,
and a broader group of countries that do not exhibit all the basic
characteristics of market democracy but still are marked by some of
them. These latter states, furthermore, share the respect for a peaceful
coexistence of states, whether due to an expression of the true belief of
those countries’ elites or to their respect for the likely reactions of the
great powers if they break this principle. Extensive international wars of
the sort experienced in the twentieth century are no longer plausible.
As mentioned, this view is supported both in historical, empirical
arguments as well as in theoretical reasoning, the latter being found
both within the liberal perspective on international relations and in
non-dogmatic historical materialism. The reason for this is that in this
connection the two perspectives analyse international politics, includ-
ing the matter of war and peace, within their broader societal context, as
opposed to the so-called realist tradition which focuses on the narrow
game of power between states and precisely therefore ignores the soci-
etal background of states’ foreign policy.
In other words, there are arguments suggesting that more peaceful
international relations are an important effect of the homogenization of
world society. For this reason alone, homogenization must be seen as
among the most important, fundamental tendencies in recent history.
This is a crucial societal precondition for processes of globalization
because the possibilities of further development of international polit-
ical cooperation, i.e. the development of global governance, are signifi-
cantly enhanced in a peaceful international setting as compared to a
world marked by military confrontations and wars. The fact that the
social space in which processes of globalization play out is considerably
more homogeneous than at any earlier point in history is an important
and profound change. Many of these processes of globalization are
considerably older than the end of the Cold War, the latest wave of
democratization, and the expansion of the basic features of the capitalist
type of state in recent decades, but the preconditions for the continu-
ation of processes of globalization in recent years, and their possible
deepening in the near future, is markedly influenced by this change.
This chapter set out to investigate the structuration of contemporary

world society motivated by the theoretical principle that political
phenomena should be analysed in their theoretical context. Briefly
summarized the main structurating features can be described as the
prevalence and dominance of the market democratic type of society –

capitalist market economy, modern capitalist states and democracy – in
an increasingly integrated and homogeneous world in which the likeli-
hood of large-scale interstate violence is drastically reduced.
Enormous differences in economic development, income levels and
living conditions prevail within this world order, and are perpetuated by
the patterns of unequal development that marks capitalist economies.
Still, as a cumulative result of the expansion of capitalism, the spread of
central features of the modern capitalist state and democratic regimes,
and the end of the cold war, in terms of basic structurating societal
principles, towards the end of the twentieth century the world was
qualitatively more homogenous and integrated than in any previous
period. On the basis of this conclusion we now can turn to the analysis
of the political aspects of world society, but this requires first a further
theoretical discussion of concepts of state and aspects on statehood as a
prerequisite for the analysis of the uneven globalization of aspects of
statehood.
4
Concepts of State: Aspects
of Statehood
1 Aspects of statehood
In this short chapter I turn to concepts of the state and what I will call
aspects of statehood, which will allow a consideration of the uneven
globalization of statehood. This course of action follows directly from
Chapter 1, where I argued that concepts from general political and
societal analysis can and should be applied to the global level and that
this requires a close critical scrutiny of such concepts.
The state is one of the most fundamental concepts in general societal
and political analysis and in international relations. If, as argued, the
global polity and the global governance system have state-like properties,
without being a unified state or a unified system of government, the
concept of the state must be analysed closely. Equally clearly there is a
range of different understandings and conceptualizations of the state in
current IR theorizing. We find liberal notions, Weberian statist conceptu-
alizations, notions that focus on formal sovereignty and definitions that
focus on the monopoly of legitimate violence, along with Coxian and
Gramscian understandings that to some extent take their inspiration
from the tradition of historical materialism (Cox 1987; Buzan 1991;
Cerny 1995; Strange 1988, 1996; Weiss 1998; Wendt 1999; Shaw 2000;
Hobson 2001; Jackson 1990, 2000; Sørensen 2001; Biersteker 2002).
One writer, however, is conspicuously absent from much of this
debate, namely the late Nicos Poulantzas, who, after all, was recognized
as a leading theorist of the state some decades ago. My contention is that
this absence, while understandable for some reasons, is for other reasons
deplorable because important insights can be gained from a critical
reading of some of his contributions. In spite of the criticisms that have
been directed towards his work, in several cases with justification, many
61
of his central contributions are still worth considering and his work
remains, in the judgement of Bob Jessop, ‘the most important starting
point for any critical account of the modern capitalist state’ (Jessop 1990,
p. x; see also Jessop 1985). And Jessop is not alone; the assessment is
shared by David Easton, a major figure in liberal political theory, whose
book The Analysis of Political Structure (1990) was to a large extent devoted
to a serious engagement with and critical discussion of the works of
Poulantzas. But some caution is called for when drawing on this work.
In particular it seems worth recognizing the extent to which Poulantzas
was affected by the political radicalism that was so characteristic of the
Western intellectual left in the 1960s and 1970s. The mood was one in
which socialism was expected to be right around the corner, if only
intellectuals got the theory right; and this mood, possibly, was respon-
sible for the characteristic sense of urgency in much of his writing, and
for some of his propositions that would seem untenable today.
In addition to this, and again according to Jessop, Poulantzas’ work is
among the least accessible in modern social science, being ‘often infuriat-
ingly difficult and obscure’ (Jessop 1990, p. x). One of the reasons for this
difficulty – aside from the often overly abstract language and the (more
than) occasional lack of consistency and clarity – is that he covers a
multitude of themes related to politics and the state while continuously
exploring the interrelations between the themes in penetrating analyses.
It is not possible to summarize, let alone discuss, the whole body of
theoretical contributions from his pen. Leaving aside that large propor-
tion of his work that deals with classes and class theory, as well as the
historical analyses of fascism and dictatorship and several other issues,
I focus on his theoretical analysis of the state, and on selected themes
within this. In this area his contributions are wide ranging. Indeed,
Poulantzas covers most of the core issues that appear in IR discussions
of the state, i.e. what in various approaches are treated as defining features
or constitutive properties of statehood, as we may call it, borrowing a term
from Robert Jackson (Jackson 1990). He has arguably gone more deeply
into some of the most central and basic questions involved in the abstract
conceptualization of the state than any of the writers that have brought a
historical materialist perspective to international relations, and than
most writers on the state in international relations.
2 Aspects of statehood in Poulantzas
The purpose of what follows is not to give a summary of Poulantzas’ theory

of the state in order to develop a ‘Poulantzasian’ approach to the analysis
Concepts of State: Aspects of Statehood 63
of global governance. That would be a daunting task given the complex-

ity of his thinking and the ambiguity of some of his formulations. The
purpose is the more limited one of identifying the aspects of statehood
present in his work with a view to discussing their applicability to the
global level. But first a few comments of a more general nature. The
first is that in Poulantzas there is a clear distinction between state
and society, or what he called the ‘social formation’. In much theory-
building in international relations the two are not separated, meaning
that the concept of state refers to what also can be called the nation or
the territorially defined nation state, i.e. the totality of population,
economy, and political institutions that constitute a modern geograph-
ically delimited society with a sovereign state. In Poulantzas, in contrast,
the concept of state refers to the political institutions within such an
entity, or in more general terms to the political superstructure of a social
formation.
The second point is that Poulantzas maintains an equally clear separ-
ation between the general theory of the state, pertaining to all types of
states, including pre-modern and ancient ones, and the modern capital-
ist state (Poulantzas 1973). The bulk of his theoretical efforts were
directed towards the latter, but his deliberations on the former are
highly relevant in the present context. This is a consequence of argu-
ments presented in previous chapters. In discussing the strategy of
global polity research in Chapter 1 I argued that as a first step concepts
should only be transferred from the domestic to the international realm
in their most abstract formulations, and accordingly attention is
directed towards Poulantzas’ discussion of the general theory of
the state. This is amplified by the analysis in the preceding chapter
that argued that in world society the capitalist market-democratic
order is dominant but not exclusively so, and that it not only is
the logic of the capitalist mode of production – a feature that loomed
large in Poulantzas’ analysis of the capitalist state – that has shaped
the contemporary global system, including its ‘political superstructure’.
Therefore, it would be problematic to delimit the search for aspects
of statehood that are relevant to the analysis of global politics to
Poulantzas’ theory of the capitalist state, just as it would be premature
to apply the entire set of propositions developed by him concerning the
latter to that task. Thus I draw on both sources in what follows.
In Poulantzas’ work a central notion is the state as state power, as
the embodiment, materialization or expression of relations of power
between social forces. But we also find the Weberian theme of the state
as the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence and a decision-making
machinery backed up by this monopoly (Poulantzas 1973, pp. 226ff.), a

property of the state that, for Poulantzas, is related to but not reducible
to the power aspect. Furthermore we find a notion of the state as a set
of institutionalized political arenas, or political scenes (Poulantzas 1973,
pp. 242ff.; 2000, p. 128), the strategic terrain (Jessop 1985, pp. 126ff.)
where social forces struggle, compete, negotiate, bargain for influence,
in other words the structured places where political action takes place.
These arenas are not only confined to the ‘open political scene’ of public
and parliamentary debates, but rather a broader strategic terrain, in
Jessop’s terminology. This aspect of statehood is at the core of liberal
conceptions of the state, as argued by Moravcsik, where the state is a
neutral place where different interest groups compete for influence and
control over political outcomes (Moravcsik 1997). Clearly the state is
not neutral in Poulantzas, but he recognizes the arena aspect of state-
hood as a significant property that a theoretical account has to include.
He also considers the state as a legal order (Poulantzas 2000, p. 68) and
discusses extensively questions of legitimacy and ideology (Poulantzas
1973, pp. 195ff.). For Poulantzas, the state is also a set of concrete insti-
tutions (state apparatuses), whose real, material existence have effects of
their own, and which are staffed with real existing people (civil servants,
military, teachers, judges, etc.) that are actors in political processes along
with social classes. Yet another theme is the functions or societal inter-
ventions of the state; an aspect that also could be called the historically
specific content of state policies (Poulantzas 1973, pp. 44ff.; 2000, pp.
163ff.). By way of illustration, in concrete terms they include tasks like
maintaining order, creating infrastructure, securing the reproduction
and qualification of the labour force and more. This aspect of statehood,
to be discussed at greater length below, is not absent from other
state theories, but it plays a greater role in Poulantzas than in most
other contributions. The problems of the relationship between state
and people/nation – the ‘imagined community’ that is at the core of
some understandings of statehood – is also discussed extensively by
Poulantzas (1973, p. 124; 1978, pp. 63ff.; 2000, pp. 85ff.) as is the fate
of the ‘nation-state’ in an era marked by deep economic international-
ization, an issue that he considered at considerable analytical depth in
the article ‘The internationalization of the capitalist relations of produc-
tion and the nation state’ (in Poulantzas 1978) that was published in
French as early as 1974.
It must be noted that aside from the latter work there is little system-
atic theoretical attention in Poulantzas’ work to the external aspects of
the state. Questions of foreign policy, security, military power vis-à-vis
other states that are central to IR theory plays little role in his thinking.
But, as I have argued at length elsewhere (Ougaard 1988), this is not an
inherent limitation of his theory; on the contrary, there are no compel-
ling theoretical reasons not to extend his theory to cover external
aspects as well. Indeed, in his more empirical writings – e.g. ‘The inter-
nationalization of the capitalist relations of production and the nation
state’; and on the fall of the dictatorships in Southern Europe, or on
Fascism and Nazism – one sees how he effortlessly includes an inter-
national dimension to his work, and actually explicitly argues that this
is necessary.
In short we find in Poulantzas a concern with practically all those
aspects of ‘statehood’ that has interested IR theory. What is unique is his
effort to construct a unified theory that, on one hand respects each of
these aspects or properties of the state as being real and irreducible
properties, and on the other hand tries to move on to identify how
they are related to each other, and to connect this insight to a histor-
icized analysis of the societal totality. Hence the quest for one central
concept of the state that defines its essential features at the highest level
of abstraction. The state is a very complex phenomenon when you begin
to consider it seriously, and Poulantzas is, it seems, striving to identify or
construct a privileged point of view that brings coherence to its multiple
aspects and properties in a way that locates the understanding of the
state in the societal totality and in history, while at the same time
maintaining the radical political perspective. This ambition, which to
my knowledge is without parallel, arguably goes a long way to explain
why his texts are so complex and often difficult to read.
I will not engage in a discussion of the criticisms that have been
directed against Poulantzas’ works, but only take up a few themes that
pertain directly to the concerns of the present discussion (examples of
excessive and overly rigid structuralism and undue impact of radical-
ism). Otherwise the reader is referred to Jessop’s thorough engagement
with Poulantzas’ critics (Jessop 1990, pp. 278ff.) and to Easton’s above
mentioned work (1990).
Two main points emerged from the discussion above. One is that
Poulantzas has important contributions to offer concerning some of
the aspects of statehood that are downplayed in other conceptualiza-
tions of the state. The other, that is not explicit in Poulantzas, is the
notion of aspects of statehood itself. The terminology as such was
introduced by Robert Jackson, who distinguished between formal and
substantial statehood, and using this terminology what we found
in Poulantzas was a consideration of several substantial aspects of
statehood. My argument now is that this has important consequences

for the analysis of political globalization.
3 The uneven globalization of statehood
To recapitulate, the state is a complex phenomenon with several essen-

tial properties that cannot be reduced to one single core. My suggestion
is that this feature is captured conceptually through the notion of
aspects of statehood, the key aspects being the monopoly on the legit-
imate use of violence, the state as structured political arena(s), the state
as a materialization of relations of power, the state institutions, the
state as a legal order, relations to a people/nation community, and
the state functions. Poulantzas’ attempt to create a unified theory
of the state, covering all substantial aspects of statehood, was closely
related to the territorial nation-state, and indeed so are most contribu-
tions to state theory. It seems that the territorial nation-state has exerted
a powerful influence on the theoretical understanding of politics and
power, to the extent that it has been taken for granted, as an unproblem-
atic and unquestioned matter of course, that everything that is con-
nected to statehood is unified in the developed Western nation-state.
A state is the unity of all aspects of statehood within one delimited
geographical space.
But on closer examination globalization leads to the dissolution of
this understanding. States are becoming internationalized, but the vari-
ous aspects of statehood are doing so in different ways, with uneven
speed and in varying degrees. This brings the uneven globalization of
statehood to the forefront of the agenda. But it also should lead to a
reconsideration of the understanding of the territorial nation-state
because in reality it never corresponded to the theoretical notion of a
unity of all aspects of statehood in complete sovereignty and freedom
from external pressures. This unification of all aspects of statehood in
complete sovereignty was, perhaps, at the core of nationalist ideology,
the political programme of nationalism, but the concept of the state
developed along those lines should be seen as an ideal type in the
Weberian double sense, i.e. as a theoretical construct that idealizes and
stylizes significant features of the real world, and as an ideal in the
normative sense, i.e. an ideal state of affairs that should be strived at
but that was considered impossible to achieve fully and completely in
reality.
Globalization requires a reconsideration of this powerful mental pic-
ture of statehood. The several aspects should be considered separately,
and it should be recognized that their unification at the national level

never was complete, or at least that this is an open question. Globaliza-
tion has not rendered the territorial nation-state powerless or irrelevant,
but it forces us to reconsider our mental pictures of statehood, i.e. to
distinguish between the different aspects of statehood and to consider
nationalization, denationalization, internationalization and globaliza-
tion of each of them separately.
Recall the point made in Chapter 1 that the analysis of the global
polity invites the application of concepts that are developed in analyses
of politics at the level of the territorial state. This implies that in the
analysis of political globalization, questions can – and should – be asked
about each of these aspects of statehood at the global level. Concerning
all of these aspects, questions can be asked about the globalization of
statehood, the point being that all of them are globalized to some extent
but unevenly so. To anyone familiar with recent debates in international
relations, it should not be difficult to see the relevance of investigations
of the global polity from the perspective of a global legal order and
principles of legitimacy. Nation-states have always been set in a wider
normative international order and, as reflected in many theoretical
contributions over the last decade or so and argued in the preceding
chapter, internationally accepted norms and principles have become
deeper, thicker and stronger, to the extent that some basic normative
principles concerning the organization of social life are becoming uni-
versal. National political arenas are being affected by internationaliza-
tion, and at the same time various formal and informal international
and global political arenas have evolved in international organizations,
in United Nations summits, elite gatherings such as the World Eco-
nomic Forum in Davos and its counterpart the World Social Forum in
Porto Alegre on which more is to be said in later chapters. In addition to
the government institutions of nation-states – the state apparatuses –
there is now a large infrastructure of international institutions and bur-
eaucracies in the ensemble of international organizations that make up
an institutional infrastructure or backbone for the global governance
system, representing yet another globalization of an aspect of statehood.
A widely discussed question is the extent to which national senses of
identity and community are being supplanted or supplemented by global
or cosmopolitan understandings of humankind as one global commu-
nity with a sense of shared fate. As I will argue extensively in later
chapters, there is much sense in asking questions about the globaliza-
tion of state functions, as there is in questions about international rela-
tions of power, a key concern for IR research, and their relations to the
institutions and functions of global governance. This question will also

be discussed later. Finally, the state as the monopoly of legitimate violence
can be addressed from the perspective of globalization of statehood,
although, as we shall see, this probably represents the least globalized
aspect.
These brief indications should suffice to show that it makes sense to
investigate political globalization theoretically from the perspective pre-
sented by these aspects of statehood. By examining how far and in
which way each of these aspects of statehood has been internationalized
and globalized (and globalization is highly uneven across these aspects),
it is possible to arrive at a more nuanced picture of the current state of
political globalization that sees global political life as more intercon-
nected and integrated than traditional nation-state-centred perspectives
allow, while at the same time avoids the trap of positing ‘a global state’
or an embryonic world government. This is, by the way, not too differ-
ent from the approach taken by Martin Shaw in Theory of the Global State
(2000) – in spite of the title – but his specification of aspects of statehood
is quite different from that presented here.
Thus the uneven globalization of statehood provides a way to struc-
ture and order an investigation of the globalization of politics. In what
follows, three aspects of statehood are selected for closer scrutiny. First,
the state as an ensemble of institutions with a particular focus on the
‘administrative state apparatuses’, the bureaucratic infrastructure of gov-
ernment agencies that not only implement policies, but also generate
policy proposals and provide analytical input and thus contribute sig-
nificantly to political leadership. Next, attention turns to the concept of
state functions in general, leading on to an examination of the global-
ization of one central aspect of state functions, namely the function of
persistence. After that I discuss the globalization of politics from the
perspective of the reproduction of relations of power, and finally, I take
up the question of the role and policies of the United States.
5
The Institutional Infrastructure
of Global Governance
The political institutions of the global polity are an overwhelmingly

large and complex issue to address. In Robert O. Keohane’s terminology
it contains a multitude of organizations, regimes, i.e. explicit rules, and
conventions in the sociological sense of the word (Keohane 1989,
pp. 3–4). In the aspects of statehood terminology introduced in Chapter
4 the institutions of global governance include an ensemble of struc-
tured arenas and decision-making fora, institutional actors, operational
organizations that perform policy functions, and the more or less for-
malized and legalized procedures for their interactions.
The sheer numbers are impressive. In 1998 the Yearbook of Inter-
national Organizations recorded 6,250 intergovernmental organizations
and no fewer than 42,100 international non-governmental organiza-
tions (Union of International Organizations 1999, appendix 3, table
2). Naturally, a comprehensive mapping is not possible here, and even
a summary description of major institutions that included their tasks,
modes of operation, formal decision-making structures, and the political
processes involved would require a book-length presentation, and a
large book at that (for a recent summary mapping, see Koenig-Archibugi
2002; for an older but not outdated analytical overview, see Archer
1992). Still, as a background to the ensuing discussions of functions
and of relations of power, it is necessary to discuss some characteristic
features of the governance system’s decision-making machinery and the
bureaucratic infrastructure that supports it.
This chapter provides first an overview of the governance system. The
next section focuses on what Stephen Gill called the ‘G-7 nexus’ (Gill
1995) but includes the Group of Seven’s (G-7’s) relations to the OECD,
an organization that is examined in even greater detail in the following
sections. The reasons for this is that much research in international
69
politics focuses on the high politics of intergovernmental bargaining on

critical and contentious issues, and the involvement of domestic politics
and non-state actors in such processes, thereby neglecting the amount
of low politics interaction that goes on routinely between states, to the
effect of providing a significant bureaucratic infrastructure for decision-
making in the global polity. The OECD is not the only venue for this
kind of interaction, but it is highly developed and thus well suited to
demonstrate how extensive and dense it has grown over the years.
1 Overview of the global governance system
Formally the United Nations system is at the centre of global govern-

ance. The UN is the universal international organization, the member-
ship of which is a defining feature of sovereign statehood. According to
the Charter, it is to be a central organ for coordinating members’ efforts
in the areas of peace and security, and international questions of
an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian nature (UN Charter, Art-
icle 1). Later environmental issues have been added, meaning that the
organization is formally charged with practically the entire range of
policy issues on which governments cooperate. Aside from the General
Assembly and Security Council, both of which are important arenas for
interstate diplomacy but with limited actor roles, the system includes a
range of funds and programmes of an operational nature, such as the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR),
the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Pro-
gramme (WFP), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and several others.
Special organizations, for instance the International Labour Organiza-
tion (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and a handful of
others are also part of the system along with autonomous organizations
with a more limited formal connection to the UN, such as the Inter-
national Atomic Energy Agency. These organizations, however, have
separate constitutional foundations and their own governing bodies;
they are, in other words, not subordinated the central UN system.
Other important parts of the system are stand-alone treaties and proto-
cols, such as the Kyoto system, formally the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change and its Secretariat, and, of a different
nature, global arenas of a novel kind, namely the occasional conferences
and global summits on issues such as environment and development
(Stockholm 1972; Rio de Janeiro 1992; Johannesburg 2000), children
(New York 1990), social development (Copenhagen 1995), women
The Institutional Infrastructure of Global Governance 71
(Beijing 1995), food security (Rome 1996) and on an international court

of justice (Rome 1996) (for an overview see Koenig-Archibugi 2002; a
comprehensive discussion is found in DUPI 1999a).
Technically the Bretton Woods institutions – the World Bank Group
and the IMF – are specialized agencies of the United Nations system. But
they have their own statuary foundations and decision-making proced-
ures that in practice make them independent and governed solely by
member governments, according to principles of weighted voting and
requirements for qualified majorities in key decisions. In consequence,
both in formal and real terms, influence in these organizations is closely
related to economic strength, with the leading industrial powers as the
dominant players. Both of these command considerable financial
resources and have strong professional staffs with major analytical cap-
acities, and in several key economic issue areas they are the central
organizations in the governance system. The World Bank group is
mainly involved in economic development in less developed countries,
whereas the IMF deals with the international monetary system, ex-
change rate issues and the stability of the international financial system.
The last-mentioned task has brought it deeply into assistance to coun-
tries in financial crisis and consequently into the development of struc-
tural adjustment and crisis strategies, where, especially in the wake of
the 1997–8 financial crises, it has suffered severe criticism. Another
economic institution of some significance is the Bank for International
Settlements (BIS) in Basel, where regulation and oversight of the finan-
cial sector is discussed among central bankers and national regulatory
authorities, which has led to a degree of international standardization in
this area.
The World Trade Organization, created in 1994 as a successor to the
GATT agreements, is also a highly significant institution. The member-
ship has expanded considerably and is now close to universal, if countries
that have applied for membership but not yet joined are included in the
count. The WTO is more than one thing. It is a set of trade agreements –
building on the previous GATT agreements resulting from several rounds
of negotiations since the 1950s, but greatly expanded during the
Uruguay Round (1988–94) – covering services, intellectual property
rights, some investment issues and more. It is also a dispute settlement
mechanism, much stronger now than before, that serves to adjudicate
conflicts between countries on the basis of these agreements; it is a major
arena for ongoing global negotiations on a broad and widening set of
trade and trade-related issues, conducted according to procedural rules
based on the formal principles of unanimity and one state one vote; and
finally, it is an international organization, based in Geneva, that is

charged with the task of giving secretarial and analytical support to
these other roles. Given the centrality of trade and trade-related issues
in the world economy, there is no doubt that the WTO is one of the most
important institutions of governance in the global political economy.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) is an institutionalization of cooperation between the industrial-
ized market democracies in Europe, North America, Asia and the Pacific.
The original members from Western Europe, the US and Canada have
later been joined by Japan, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, the
Republic of Korea, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and, most
recently, the Slovak Republic, bringing the number of members up to
30. In addition, the European Union participates in the organization’s
activities. In spite of this limited membership, the organization is not
only concerned with matters relating to the core of market democracies
as shown by its official aims, which are:
(a) to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employ-

ment and a rising standard of living in Member countries, while
maintaining financial stability, and thus to contribute to the devel-
opment of the world economy;
(b) to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as

non-member countries in the process of economic development; and
(c) to contribute to the expansion of world trade on a multilateral,

non-discriminatory basis in accordance with international obliga-
tions.
(Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development 1960 (hereafter the OECD Convention), Article 1)
Thus it belongs in an overview of major institutions in the global

governance system, and much will be said about this organization
later in the chapter.
Finally, in military and security affairs, the UN Security Council for-
mally has a role to play, but is of little consequence, although there has
been some movement during the 1990s towards a stronger UN role. To
the extent that there is international cooperation at the global or quasi-
global level in this area, where the globalization of statehood is less
developed, this is largely a matter of coordination within the system of
US-led alliances and coalitions, primarily NATO, but also the ANZUS
treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the US, and the security
arrangements with Japan and South Korea.
So far the focus has been on intergovernmental organizations. It is,
however, insufficient to base a mapping of the governance system on a
purely formal, institutional delineation of international organizations
and regimes. Working from a theoretical understanding of global gov-
ernance as an uneven process of globalization of aspects of statehood,
functional considerations are also required to direct attention to all
political processes that are involved in shaping policies with a global
or quasi-global scope. To illustrate the point, it is theoretically conceiv-
able that one powerful state acting alone could fulfil certain political
functions at the global level, for instance being the world’s policeman or
securing basic institutional preconditions for a global market economy.
In such a case, this state would be the most central component in the
global governance system. The example is hypothetical, but it illustrates
that when identifying the institutional infrastructure of the global
governance system, nation-states must be included, in particular the
strongest and most influential ones. For the same reason, regional
cooperation ventures, in particular the EU, but also the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mercosur, the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) and so on, are also components in the system
(Ougaard 1999).
States, in other words, are central components of the global govern-
ance system, and indeed they are the single most important category of
institutions, arenas and political actors. Thus a simplified debate on the
declining role of the state is beside the point (which is not intended as a
critique of serious discussions of the state’s changing roles and capabil-
ities, e.g. Weiss 1998). But the point is that the international processes
in which states participate are being qualitatively transformed by the
internationalization of politics, and that this – as pointed out by Robert
Cox (1994) – has led to transformations of the state’s domestic role,
expressed for instance in the notion of the rise of the competition state
(Hirsch 1995).
In addition to national governments and intergovernmental organiza-
tions, the governance system also features a multitude of institutional
forms that transcend state-centred perspectives, which much recent lit-
erature has been engaged in mapping and analyzing (e.g. Keck and Sik-
kink 1998; Scholte 2000b, 2002). They include the various ways in which
non-state actors play a role, be it NGOs such as Amnesty International,
business and labour associations, professional associations, or other civic
groups; and the role played by think tanks and other organizations
in knowledge networks that inform policy-making (Stone 2002; Hansen,

Salskov-Iversen and Bislev 2002). In some cases non-state actors have a
formalized role to play in decision-making e.g. in the ILO, in some cases
they are formally recognized as dialogue partners (e.g. the World Bank),
whereas in others they have no such formal position, but are confined to
traditional lobbying tactics applied at the level of national governments
as well as at the international level, whether inside the corridors or
outside in the streets. Finally, elite gatherings like the World Economic
Forums in Davos and the Bilderberg conferences, and their more recent
counterpart, the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, have the stature of
established global arenas for opinion exchanges and consensus-forming
efforts that may impact the governance system. In sum, there is a variety
of transnational public-private networks, some of which are stable and
integrated in decision-making systems, while others are more fluid and
less consequential.
The unwieldy global governance system described above is not a
centralized decision-making system, but neither is it a system in which
no decisions are made. It features multiple centres or nodal points where
decisions are made or facilitated, some of them formalized some of them
less so, depending on circumstances and issues. And it is not only the
formal rules that determine where and through which mechanisms
decisions are made. As emphasized by Braithwaite and Drahos, an im-
portant feature of the system is the capability of influential actors to
shop between fora and shift issues to the forum that is found most
conducive to their interests (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000). Thus invest-
ment issues have moved back and forth between the UN, the WTO and
the OECD, and, generally, economic and social issues have permanently
been shifted out of the UN system, and into the IMF and World Bank,
the WTO and the OECD.
The system, in other words, is one of unclear and overlapping author-
ities and no formal mechanisms for ensuring coherence across issues
and between the various institutional components. As already men-
tioned, formally the UN is empowered by the Charter to be the central
organ that brings coherence to interstate cooperation and, according to
articles 57 and 63 of the Charter, the United Nations’ Economic and
Social Council (ECOSOC) can coordinate the activities of the ‘special
institutions’ that are created by intergovernmental agreement to solve
problems in economic, social and cultural matters. Among these special
institutions are the Bretton Woods organizations and the WTO, along
with a host of other intergovernmental agencies. In reality, however, no
institution or body is charged with the task of ensuring coherence across
policy areas and institutions (Tietje 2002). Provisions are made for
mutual consultation between many international organizations (the
WTO and IMF, the UN and Bretton Woods, the OECD, WTO and Bretton
Woods etc), but none of these are binding, and the role of the ECOSOC
in ensuring such coherence, envisioned in the UN Charter, means little
if anything in practice. The fragmented and decentralized nature of the
entire governance system is one of its most outstanding features in
formal, organizational terms, and the ensuing problem of coherence
has, for instance, been criticized by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-Gen-
eral (UN Secretary-General 1997, 2000).
This does not mean, however, that there are no mechanisms for
coordination, policy guidance and strategy development across issues.
It means that, to the extent they exist, they are to be found among the
intergovernmental networks of the Western great powers who, in G-7
combined with the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, NATO and other
military alliances and dense diplomatic networks that involve far more
than ministries of foreign affairs, have developed significant venues for
such efforts. Stephen Gill called attention to what he called the ‘G-7
nexus’ as the partly formal, partly informal set of institutionalized or at
least rutinized practices that lead to a measure of coordination and
cooperation among institutions and across issues, although in accord-
ance with the interests and preferences represented by these actors (Gill
1995). This phenomenon deserves a closer look.
2 The Group of Seven
The Group of Seven (G-7) should more precisely be named the G-7/8,
and even that would not be quite precise. The reason is that the original
seven members (the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy and Canada)
have been joined first by the European Union and then by Russia,
although the latter is only involved in some of the deliberations. Thus
some summit declarations continue to be issued by G-7, whereas others
are signed by G-8. The roots of this forum can be found in various
cooperative constellations between the leading Western industrial
nations in, for instance, the Group of Ten (G-10) meetings in the IMF,
dating back to 1962, in the OECD and in the BIS in Basel. A closer look
will reveal roots back to the international economic conferences in the
1920s and 1930s (Dobson 1991, p. 9; Pauly 1997). In the 1970s,
the collapse of the old Bretton Woods international monetary system,
the liberalization of capital movements and the general climate of
high inflation and monetary instability created a demand for policy
coordination and more generally for a forum in which to discuss inter-

national economic matters. In 1975, on a French and German initiative,
the pattern of yearly economic summits among the governments of the
leading industrialized nations were initiated (Dobson 1991; Funabashi
1988; Webb 1995; Pauly 1997; Bayne 2000).
In institutional terms G-7 is not a formal organization with a written
constitution and independently established secretariat. But over the
years cooperation has taken a more fixed form with a rotating presi-
dency, regular contacts between government agencies, in particular
ministries of finance, frequent consultation and regularized exchanges
of information. The yearly summits are a firmly established practice, but
they have been supplemented by ad hoc meetings on particularly press-
ing issues (e.g. assistance to Russia in 1993, employment in 1994 and
1996, terrorism in 1996, the information society in 1995) (University of
Toronto 68 Information Centre, 1997; Hajnal 1999; Bayne 2000).
Traditionally, the core of cooperation in G-7 is known as ‘macro-
economic coordination’ and is basically concerned with currency ex-
change rates and the monetary and fiscal policies of the participants.
These tasks are also covered by the IMF, but in the major policy issues
the IMF only plays a secondary role (Pauly 1997, pp. 129–30). In these
areas there is a regular exchange of information on current develop-
ments and expectations, on the basis of which members’ economic
policies are discussed on and between summits. Exchange rate policies
have often been central, and this is where summits have resulted in the
most specific commitments for members, taking the form of mutually
agreed targets for exchange rate developments, on some occasions
followed by coordinated interventions in currency markets. But even
in the absence of coordinated intervention, summit declarations can
play a role as a signal to markets about developments in exchange rates
that monetary authorities will find acceptable, thus influencing market
developments. In a broader sense international economic coordination
also concerns fiscal and monetary policies at the domestic level, thus
going to the core of national macro-economic strategy. Therefore it is
hardly surprising that commitments in this area have usually been less
specific and that agreements have normally only been reached in situ-
ations where the economic situation in each of the member countries
led to a convergence of policy goals. Accordingly several summits have
been able to do little more than register disagreements about which
country should adjust its policies. But there are cases where G-7 negoti-
ations have led members to change course more quickly or markedly
than would otherwise have been expected. For instance, after the 1987
summit Japan shifted to a more expansionary policy and the US adopted

a deficit reduction plan (Dobson 1991, table 5.1). In such cases, fre-
quently what matters is that international pressure strengthens the
hand of domestic forces whose preferences point in the same direction.
Even if specific changes of members’ macro-economic policies as a
result of summit decisions are rare, however, G-7 summitry and cooper-
ation in general should not be underestimated, having contributed to
formulating and maintaining an international consensus on the broad
lines of macro-economic strategy. Furthermore, if nothing else the G-7
process has an impact on members’ policies because it provides national
decision-makers with a better knowledge foundation on the inter-
national economic environment, in particular the expected evolution
of policy in other countries.
Macro-economic coordination is the traditional core of the G-7 pro-
cess, but over the years it has grown markedly broader and has included
information exchange and coordination efforts in a host of other policy
areas (Bayne 2000; Hajnal 1999). One example is the question of ageing,
i.e. the predictable change in demographic composition of member
countries’ populations. The recognition that this would represent a
shared economic challenge to all led the 1997 Denver summit to discuss
the issue, advocate joint research efforts, exchange information and
continue discussion on how to deal with the challenge (Communiqué,
the Denver Summit of Eight, 22 June 1997, from G-8 Centre 1999).
A more binding set of commitments were agreed upon at the Lyon
summit in 1996, where members agreed to comply with a set of recom-
mendations on the fight against transnational organized crime and,
when necessary, to cooperate with each other in this area (mentioned
in the 1997 Communiqué quoted above). This pattern has also been
used in other policy areas and is of some interest. Characteristic of this
form of international cooperation is that the international agreement is
little more than a mutual declaration on intent, and does not lead to a
formal treaty or the creation of an international organization. Still, the
agreement is implemented at the national level through the regulatory
efforts of domestic agencies. Other examples of this form of inter-
national coordination of policies can be found in the way in which
the regulation of financial markets have been coordinated through the
BIS, or in initiatives against ‘computer crime’.
It could be argued that such cases of policy harmonization and
broadly coordinated policy development only concern the seven
member countries themselves. But due to the economic and political
weight of the leading countries in world society, it must be expected
that they have an impact on other countries, and that the G-7 members
in many cases set the tone and direction of regulatory developments in a
broader range of countries. And furthermore, in several ways G-7 is
related to other fora, by developing and formulating consensus between
the leading countries on issues that are dealt with elsewhere. Thus
summit declarations often express agreement on the importance of
finding solutions to specific problems – WTO negotiations, stabilization
of financial markets, environmental issues, terrorism and so on. The
summit declarations per se may be little more than symbolic or discur-
sive tips of an iceberg, but they emanate from a regularized and ruti-
nized ongoing negotiation process between the dominant states in the
global political economy on a wide range of central economic and
political issues. Any member of G-7 may opt out of any decision or
consensus reached, on specific issues coalitions of smaller numbers of
willing members can emerge, and there is no formal or functional
requirement to reach agreement, since the forum has no formal remit
or competence. Its significance lies in the fact that it is there, it exists as a
well-established mechanism for reaching consensus, so that to the
extent that policies are coordinated and common strategies developed
across the multitude of institutions in the global governance system,
this is one of the pre-eminent – probably the single most important –
body in the area of economic and social issues.
3 The G-7 OECD link
According to Andrea de Guttry, ‘The G-7 has an almost hierarchical

relationship with . . . the OECD, which the G-7 often rather peremptorily
ask to carry out certain activities’ (Guttry 1994; see also Bayne 2000).
Such requests are made public in G-7 summit declarations and provide
an explicit form of guidance and agenda setting, thus evidencing an
important transmission mechanism in the governance system. Hence it
is worth considering how extensive the phenomenon is. Since G-7
members are also the most influential members of the OECD, this
mechanism does not need to rely on formal expressions in summit
declarations alone, but such explicit links can serve as an admittedly
crude indicator, and some data on this are presented in tables 5.1
and 5.2.
Table 5.1 shows that such links have been in evidence since G-7
summits began in 1975. It also show that the pattern is highly erratic,
the number can go from two in one year (1989), up to seven in the next,
then down to five and then nought (in 1992). But in a longer perspective
Table 5.1 G-7−OECD policy links, 1975−99
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
Total
Type of link
G-7 endorse or welcome action by OECD 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 4 2 1 2 3 2 2 4 34
G-7 endorse and ask for increased efforts 1 1 1 1 1 1 6
G-7 ask or urge the OECD to act 1 2 4 1 1 1 3 13
G-7 pledge to begin cooperation in OECD forum 1 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 11
Total by year 1 2 1 4 2 1 0 2 0 3 2 1 1 1 2 7 5 0 3 2 2 5 5 4 8 64
Note : A 'link' in this context means an explicit reference to the OECD in a G-7 summit declaration.
Sources : G-8 Centre 1999.
79
there has been a clear and strong trend upwards. The first ten years of
G-7 summit declarations (1975–84) saw 16 explicit references to work in
the OECD, while there have been 41 in the latest ten years (1990–9).
Table 5.1 also shows that a greater part of these links (40) occur as G-7
endorsements of activities already under way in the OECD, while there
were fewer cases (24) in which the initiative appeared to emerge from
the G-7 summit.
Table 5.2 shows that there has been a qualitative expansion. In the
first ten years the links could be grouped in four categories, whereas in
the last five they span nine. The expansion of OECD activities across
issues is thus paralleled by the expansion of explicit G-7–OECD policy
links.
Even without explicit links in the summit declarations one would
expect the G-7 nations to play a leading role in the OECD. This view,
however, needs some qualification. Table 5.1 showed that G-7 summits
often endorse activities already under way in the OECD, which indicates
that the policy traffic between the two is not necessarily a one-way
street. The G-7 members also meet each other regularly in the OECD,
although together with 22 other countries, and the activity is much
denser in the latter than in the former. In other words, the OECD may
be as important as G-7 in terms of initiating coordinated international
policies, the latter rather having the role of legitimizing and supporting
the initiatives of the former. Indeed, many permutations are possible
in the interplay between the two fora. It is, for instance, thinkable that in
the OECD some of the G-7 states ally with non-G-7 members to over-
come resistance from other G-7 nations. In addition, the OECD, in
theory at least, can serve as a channel for non-G-7 countries to the
leading powers across a wide range of issues. It is, after all, a major
institutionalized arena where they regularly meet with the G-7 govern-
ments to discuss all manner of issues relating to the international econ-
omy. These observations justify a closer look at the OECD, and since so
little is written on this organization, the discussion will go into some
empirical detail.
4 Activities at the OECD
‘A great advantage of the OECD is that it has no power but great influ-
ence,’ wrote Sylvia Ostry on the occasion of the organization’s 30th
anniversary in 1991 (in OECD Observer, No. 179, 1992). Although the
organization is widely known for its statistical and analytical output –
officials claim it to be a larger publisher than the World Bank (interview
Table 5.2 G-7−OECD policy links by issue, 1975−99
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
Total
Issue group
Trade and investment 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 14

Domestic strategy 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 15
Energy 1 2 1 4
IT and communication 1 1 1 3
Environment 1 1 1 3
Development 1 1 2 2 1 7
Transition economics 3 1 1 5
Demography 1 1 2 4
Corporate governance 1 1 2 4
Tax 1 2 3
Others 1 1 2
Total 1 2 1 4 2 1 0 2 0 3 2 1 1 1 2 7 5 0 3 2 2 5 5 4 8 64
Note : Explanation and sources as Table 5.1. Issue categories by author.

81
at OECD, Paris, July 1999) – the kind of influence the organization exerts,
and the ways it does so are little discussed and there is little scholarly
literature about it (Marcussen 2002; Henderson 1996). The following is
based, therefore, primarily on documentary material from the organiza-
tion itself and the organization’s official history (Sullivan 1997).
The OECD is a busy place. Its governing Council and numerous
committees are fora for discussion of a wide range of issues concerning
the member states and the entire international political economy.
According to OECD’s website ‘there are about 200 committees, working
groups and expert groups. Some 40,000 senior officials from national
administrations come to OECD committee meetings each year’ (OECD
1999). The organization makes formal decisions and adopts recommen-
dations to members, and it is the site for an ongoing process of multilat-
eral surveillance and peer review in which governments subject domestic
policies to the scrutiny of outsiders. Occasionally the OECD is the
chosen framework for the pursuit of major international initiatives,
such as the creation of the International Energy Agency in 1974 and
the negotiation of a Multilateral Agreement on Investment launched in
1995 and aborted in 2000 (Henderson 1999).
The broad scope and level of activity of the organization is evidenced
by its output of formal instruments. They are of mainly five types.
Decisions are made by consensus and are binding on all members that
do not abstain from voting on them. Recommendations are also adopted
by consensus – with the possibility for abstaining – but compliance is
voluntary. Agreements are ‘traditional international agreements . . . that
are concluded within the framework of the Organisation’ (OECD Legal
Directorate 1996, preface). They can involve members as well as non-
members. The organization also issues declarations, which are ‘solemn
texts . . . which set out relatively precise policy commitments . . . they are
not intended to be legally binding, but they are noted by the Council of
the OECD and their application is generally monitored by the Commit-
tees’ (OECD Legal Directorate 1996, preface). Finally, arrangements that
only involve some members are made in the framework of the OECD.
They are ‘not Acts of the Organisation, but they are generally noted by
the Council and their implementation is monitored’ (OECD Legal Dir-
ectorate 1996, preface).
The instruments differ markedly in terms of content and scope. Some
are genuine international treaties negotiated in the OECD forum as
already indicated; others are major policy statements that stipulate
joint commitment to shared goals or strategies; and some are very limited
in scope and of a highly technical nature, such as the decision on ‘Stand-
ard Codes for the Official Testing of Agricultural Tractors’ from 1987
(OECD Legal Directorate 1996). Quite a few address problems arising
from economic interdependence, for instance efforts to standardize tax
legislation in order to avoid double taxation on and tax evasion by
international businesses. A substantial number of instruments deal
with environmental issues, ranging from broad principles such as ‘the
polluter pays’ principle included in the ‘Recommendation of the Council
on Guiding Principles concerning International Economic Aspects of
Environmental Policies’ from 1972 (OECD Legal Directorate 1996,
C[72]28) to specific issues such as ‘Good Laboratory Practices’ (‘Deci-
sion-Recommendation of the Council on Compliance Principles of
Good Laboratory Practice’, OECD Legal Directorate 1996, C[89]87).
From modest beginnings in the early 1970s there has been a fairly
steady growth in the number of OECD formal instruments, and in 1999
there were more than ten times as many (180) as in 1970 (17) (OECD
Legal Directorate 1996, additional information from the Legal Director-
ate). There has also been a significant broadening of the scope of cooper-
ation across issue areas, and instruments now concern a fair number of
what traditionally are considered ‘beyond the border issues’, i.e. issues
that traditionally were seen as entirely in the realm of domestic politics.
Thus the OECD has adopted instruments that deal with agricultural
standards, tourism, the environment, competition policy, public man-
agement, taxation, education, gender, social issues and more (for more
detail see Ougaard 1999), and, indeed, in Henderson’s words the organ-
ization is ‘concerned with practically the whole range of economic and
social issues that are dealt with by its member governments’ (Henderson
1996, p. 13).
Multilateral surveillance
The trend towards deeper involvement in the internal affairs of member
countries is even more visible in another field of activity, namely
the processes of multilateral surveillance and peer review, where member
states subject themselves to scrutiny, criticism and suggestions from
other members and from the OECD staff. The activities occur in many
policy areas and are, according to Sullivan (1997) what much of the
work in the numerous committees is about. But they have been
developed particularly in the context of the economic surveys of member
countries. These economic surveys are produced at regular intervals for
each country and they have been a staple output from the OECD since
its birth. In early years the normal format of the surveys was a summary
of macro-economic indicators, analysis of major trends and some
comments on policy choices, but at some point they began to include

special sections on selected topics that went deeper into structural issues
in members’ economies.
In the 1990s this work was further stepped up, at least partly
prompted by G-7, which declared at the Houston summit in 1990: ‘We
encourage the OECD to strengthen its surveillance and review proced-
ures, and to find ways to make its work more operationally effective’
(Houston Economic Declaration July 11 1990, G-8 Centre 1999). Following
the Houston declaration, at the OECD Council’s meeting at ministerial
level in 1991 ‘ministers stress[ed] the important role played by the
OECD’s structural surveillance programme’ and ‘welcome[d] the pro-
posals of the Economic Policy Committee for making structural surveil-
lance more effective’(OECD Annual Report 1991, p. 146).
To ascertain the range of policies covered by this process, consider
Table 5.3, from which the most recently added members (Mexico, Korea,
the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic) have
been omitted since the interest is on the normal pattern of cooperation
between developed market democracies. Again there is no doubt about
the picture. OECD discussions engage issues that traditionally are
considered purely domestic, among them labour markets, health care
systems, education, social security and regulatory reform. The table also
confirms that the variety of topics covered by the process has increased
during the 1990s. In 1990 the topics could be grouped under seven
headings, whereas towards the end of the decade 17 categories were
required without making the residual category ‘other’ obsolete.
The writer of OECD’s official history has this to say about the process:
it is an ‘innocent sounding device, but the fact is that OECD committees
do serve as a crucible for members’ future actions’ (Sullivan 1997, p. 98).
And he explains:
A complex process called ‘peer pressure’ occurs. Subtly but power-

fully, ideas and standards advocated by a majority of committee
members gain the agreement of all or nearly all and are shaped to
account for the views of the dissenters. No country likes to feel itself
on an entirely different wave-length from all its partners.
(Sullivan 1997, p. 99; see also Henderson 1996)
These claims may be exaggerated but a more limited conclusion is

warranted, namely that OECD countries increasingly subject their
domestic policies over a growing range of issues to multilateral surveil-
lance and peer pressure. The process is one of discussion and dialogue
Table 5.3 Structural topics surveyed by the OECD, 1990–9
Number of topics by year and policy area. Total for the 24 old members*
Policy area 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Total
Competition policy, privatization 1 3 4 3 1 2 1 1 16

Labour markets 1 2 3 3 2 2 1 2 16
Tax reform 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 10
Budget and other fiscal 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 9
Environment/sustainable development 1 3 1 1 1 2 9
Public sector issues (general, other) 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 9
Ageing populations 1 1 1 1 1 5
Health 1 2 2 1 1 1 3 3 14
Industrial adjustment, competitiveness, trade policy 1 2 3 1 1 8
Financial markets, financial sector reform 1 1 2 2 6
Education and training, human capital 2 1 4 2 5 14
Public enterprise sector 1 2 3
Social security, pension reform 1 1 2 4 1 9
Social protection issues (other) 1 2 3
Corporate governance 1 1 3 1 1 7
Business sector policies and selected topics 1 1 1 1 4
Regulatory reform 1 1 1 3
Entrepreneurship 4 1 1 6
Innovation and technology 1 1
Other 6 5 4 2 4 2 2 1 2 28
Total 18 18 23 19 16 22 16 23 18 7 180
Source: Information provided by the Office of the Structural Issues Coordinator, Country Surveys Branch, Economic Department, OECD. The
information covers the period January 1990 to June 1999.
Note: Policy categories are those used by the office. Surveys are recorded in the year the OECD team visited the country, not when the survey was
published.
*
85
Surveys of Belgium and Luxembourg are done jointly. Hence there are only 23 sets of country surveys.
that also enables countries to learn from the experiences of others. At

minimum it can be expected to have the effect that the concerns of
partners become a continuous factor in domestic policy-making, and in
this sense it does represent an internationalization of domestic policy-
making. In the words of OECD’s official history: ‘officials return to their
capitals with an enhanced understanding of their colleagues’ thinking
and with ideas that will find their way into national legislation or
regulations’ (Sullivan 1997, p. 98).
Thus the case is not that the organization as such – neither the
permanent bureaucracy located in Paris, nor the Council or its commit-
tees – develops policies independently and imposes them on members.
Decisions are made by consensus, requiring at minimum acquiescence
from home capitals, and strategies, recommendations and proposals are
developed in a process of dialogue that involves theoretical, analytical
and political inputs from the OECD departments, from independent
specialists commissioned by the OECD, and from experts and officials
from member states’ ministries and departments, as well as from non-
governmental organizations. In Martin Marcussen’s terms, it has acted
as an idea creator, an idea broker, an arena for ideas, an idea promoter
and, as his analysis of the impact in one small member country,
Denmark, shows, as an idea authority (Marcussen 2002). It is an ongoing
process of organized cooperation between national bureaucracies rather
than an international organization in the traditional sense.
There is no reason to expect that countries participate in, and are
affected by, the process in the same manner and to the same degree.
On the contrary, it is more likely that small countries generally are more
affected and have less influence than their greater partners. This does
not mean, however, that the OECD – and similar processes of multilat-
eral surveillance – should be seen as insignificant for its strongest
members. To the extent that the multilateral process is conducted in
accordance with their chosen policy stances, it can be an important
vehicle for disseminating their policies to other countries. On the
other hand again, it would be too simplistic to conclude that the process
is just a one-way street in which a few dominant states – or one – impose
their views on smaller partners. The OECD can also serve as a channel
through which small countries, and indeed larger countries that are not
part of G-7, can make their interests and concerns known to the latter.
Involvement of non-members
Although an organization of the developed core of market democracies,
the OECD’s work is also concerned with wider global community, as
reflected in the aim of promoting global economic growth. One long-

standing element in this is the Development Assistance Committee,
which, without having any operational tasks, has conducted multilateral
surveillance, peer review and other activities relating to members’ devel-
opment assistance for decades. In addition to this, and quite significantly,
during the 1990s the OECD intensified its activities in relation to non-
members and began to change its mode of engagement with developing
countries. This happened in response to the transformations going on
in the formerly planned economies, and to the deepened economic
interdependence between developed and less developed countries, in
particular the so-called ‘emerging economies’ among the latter.
The OECD Centre for Cooperation with European Economies in Tran-
sition was formally established in October 1990 (OECD Annual Report
1990, p. 7) with explicit G-7 backing (Houston Economic Declaration July
11 1990, G-8 Centre 1999). By 2002 four of these had become full
members of the OECD – Poland, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Repub-
lic and Hungary – but short of full membership discussions, the less
ambitious ‘Transition Economy Programme’ drew participation from
virtually all countries in the formerly Soviet-dominated bloc. The main
thrust of these activities is – unsurprisingly – to help in the transition to
market economy, and in addition, to help develop better environmental
policies (OECD CCNM 1999a).
The history of the new engagement with ‘Dynamic Non-Member
Economies’ from the developing world began in 1989 with the Dynamic
Asian Economies. In 1993 four Latin American countries were added
(OECD 1997a) and in October 1994 a
high level meeting between participants from the DNMEs and OECD
member countries concluded that the policy dialogue should become
an important forum for major actors in the world economy, and that
China and India and Indonesia should be invited to some of its
activities.
(OECD Annual Report 1994, p. 8)
In 1995 the OECD Council meeting at Ministerial level requested the

OECD to ‘work to establish a wider variety of relationships by means
of a forum for dialogue with emerging market economies’, which led
to the launch of the Emerging Market Economy Forum (EMEF) in 1996
(OECD CCNM 1999b). At this time some 50 countries already worked
through various programmes of dialogue with OECD countries on
particular facets of economic development. In 1998 the EMEF was
merged with OECD’s ‘Liaison and Coordination Unit’ to form the

Centre for Cooperation with Non-Members (CCNM). This Centre man-
ages the Emerging Market Economy Forum and the Transition Economy
Programme (OECD CCNM 1999c). There has, it seems, been some
groping for the proper institutional form, but the establishment of the
CCNM is evidence of a heightened and more institutionalized attention
to relations with emerging economies.
Altogether the CCNM in 1999 listed 43 countries as participants.
Aside from the transition economies they included the following
developing countries, mainly from Latin America and Asia: Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia,
Morocco, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan),
Thailand and Venezuela. Clearly this list contains most of the significant
players from the developing world, although there are conspicuous
absences such as Algeria, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan
(OECD CCNM 1999a).
The activities are grouped into 15 themes that have been chosen
because they reflect ‘areas in which constructive policy dialogue
can be carried out with Non-Members and in which the OECD can
have a real impact’ (OECD CNNM 1999d). The themes are: macro-
economic policy, statistics, financial markets policy (including insur-
ance and accounting), trade and investment issues, competition
and regulatory reform, private sector development (including entrepre-
neurship, corporate governance, small- and medium-sized enterprises),
public governance and management, taxation, labour market, social
and education policy, industrial policy, science and technology, agricul-
ture, regional and urban policies, and environmental issues and nuclear
energy. The OECD thus has become engaged in policy dialogues with a
significant group of developing countries across a wide-ranging set of
policy areas, in many ways similar to the areas covered by their internal
dialogue.
It should be mentioned that, whereas all of the themes have engaged
some non-members, each non-member is only involved in a few of
them. The process is on a highly variable geometry basis, and so far
the level of engagement varies significantly between non-members.
Brazil is an example of a country that has actively sought a broad
involvement, whereas India seems to be sceptical and reluctant to go
beyond participation in more than a few of the discussions (OECD
CCNM 1999e; interview at CCNM, July 1999). In spite of such reluc-
tance and scepticism, it is clear that the CCNM activities represent a new
departure in the OECD’s relations with developing countries. It is also
clear that the organization expects this activity to continue and expand
in the future. According to Scott Sullivan:
With countries like China, Brazil and India emerging as major players
on the world economic stage, the OECD predicts that they will
gradually be integrated into the surveillance process. At the same
time, the process will extend to more and more substantive areas.
(Sullivan 1997, p. 91)
This long-term prediction, presumably, covers not only the big three
mentioned here, but indeed all of the emerging economies. The OECD,
in other words, has embarked on a strategy for the gradual co-optation
and eventual integration of emerging economies into the institutional
frameworks of the developed world, and to ensure that the appropriate
domestic reforms are made along the way. The ‘consolidation of their
integration into the world economy’ is thus a coin with two faces:
domestic reform and capacity building on one side, integration into
the institutions of the developed market democracies on the other.
The portrayal given above has shown the intensity of regular institu-
tionalized policy interaction between the core of market democracies
and the efforts to include the rest of the world in them. It has not
exhausted the activities that go on at the OECD, and one further area
deserves a discussion, namely the organization’s contributions to the
development of common economic strategies.
5 Strategy development at the OECD
The purpose of this section is to trace the documentary history of the

OECDs involvement in the development of economic strategies in
member countries. In the organization’s early years it was mainly con-
cerned with short-term macro-economic issues, but from the late 1960s,
when the international economy entered a period of high inflation and
instability in currency markets, it began to produce more comprehen-
sive analyses and policy recommendations.
In 1970 the OECD produced a policy document entitled Inflation: The
Present Problem (Korpi 2002, p. 392) in response to rising inflation in the
world economy. The document analyzed the negative consequences of
high inflation and identified the key difficulty governments faced: if
price stability were given higher priority as a policy goal, other goals
would have to have lower priority, and these would have to be short-
term growth and employment. This would create political problems
because governments would be held responsible for growing unemploy-

ment. Still, the document recommended precisely that price stability
should become the most important policy goal. However, according to
Korpi’s analysis (Korpi 2002, p. 393), when economic instability was
further exacerbated by the 1973 oil shock, this allowed governments
largely to blame the OPEC oil-producing countries for the rise in un-
employment. The story may be more complex, but nevertheless the
episode marks the beginning of a long series of statements on economic
policy that shows how OECD countries over the years have developed
and adapted a common strategy to economic development, a strategy
that has as its pervasive themes monetary stability, open trade and non-
inflationary growth, and the treatment of employment and other social
issues as secondary issues compared to these.
Economic problems intensified, however, and in general terms the
hitherto unseen combination of high inflation and high unemploy-
ment – stagflation – marked the deepest crisis in the industrialized
world since World War II. In 1975, the organization commissioned an
independent group of economists, led by Paul McCracken, to examine
‘the policy issues involved in the pursuit of non-inflationary economic
growth and high employment levels in the light of the structural
changes which have taken place in the recent past’ (OECD Annual Report
1975, p. 9; McCracken et al. 1977, pp. 2–3). The group began its work in
November 1975 (McCracken 1977, p. 4), but while waiting for its report,
and anticipating some of its conclusions, the OECD in 1976 adopted a
so-called ‘medium-term economic strategy’. This was designed to ‘attain
moderate but sustained economic growth, and to wind down inflation’
while it also reflected ‘a growing awareness of the progressive interde-
pendence of the economies of member countries’ (OECD Annual report
1976). In June 1977 the McCracken report was published, a thorough
250-page study by eight economists from different countries, which
went deeply into the economic, political and social causes of the crisis
and offered carefully considered remedies. It would require too much
space to do justice to the nuanced weighing of policy alternatives that
marks the report, so to cut the story short, the main drift of the recom-
mendations was to pursue non-inflationary growth through tight mon-
etary policy, prudent fiscal policy, reforms to make markets function
better (especially labour markets), and further trade liberalization.
Informed by the McCracken report, but also in continuation of the
1976 ‘medium-term strategy’, the Ministers in 1978 approved a ‘con-
certed action programme’ in which the shift from defensive strategies to
‘positive adjustment policies’ was emphasized (OECD Annual Report
1978). The following year this emphasis was further strengthened and
the headline ‘structural adjustment’ was introduced to summarize the
various domestic reforms that were crystallizing as part of the shared
strategy (OECD Annual Report 1979). Let the OECD’s official history
summarize what then happened:
Inflation came to be seen as the primary villain in economic life . . .

The second oil shock in 1979 shifted the OECD’s Economics Depart-
ment further to the supply-side approaches associated with the
University of Chicago. So moved the world. President Ronald Reagan
and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched programmes
of structural adjustment that precisely reflected the new school of
OECD thinking.
(Sullivan 1997, p. 41)
The stress on structural adjustment was reiterated in the 1982 statement

on ‘positive adjustment policies’ (OECD Annual Report 1982).
Meanwhile the organization also turned its attention to trade policy.
In 1974 the OECD adopted the ‘trade pledge’ in which members prom-
ised to ‘avoid recourse to new restrictions on trade . . . for a period of a
year’ (The Activities of the OECD 1974, p. 7). The pledge was renewed in
each of the next three years. This should be seen in the light of the
general instability, uncertainty and drift towards ‘beggar thy neighbours
policies’ that came to mark the larger part of the 1970s, and the ensuing
difficulties in maintaining movement towards opening of world trade
(Gilpin 1987, pp. 191ff.). The Tokyo Round of negotiations was officially
launched in 1973, but real talks did not begin until 1977 (Kenwood and
Lougheed 1999, p. 293). When the talks were concluded in 1979 the
results were modest and many of the fundamental problems had been
side-stepped (Kenwood and Lougheed 1999, pp. 293–4). Against this
background, the OECD’s Declaration on Trade Policy from July 1980
represents yet another initiative to maintain the commitment to resist
a drift towards protectionism. The declaration ‘provided for continued
consultation among Member countries to ensure that they avoid mutu-
ally damaging measures’ (OECD Annual Report 1980).
In the late 1980 there was renewed attention to structural issues.
A report on a ‘New Framework for Labour Market Policies’ was submitted
to the Council by the Manpower and Social Affairs Committee in 1990
(OECD Annual Report 1990), and as a follow up the Jobs Study was
commissioned in 1992 (OECD Annual Report 1992), resulting in major
publications in 1994 (OECD 1994a,b). In 1995 it was decided to follow
up systematically on the recommendations of the Jobs Study (OECD

Annual Report 1995, p. 7) and the organization issued the policy state-
ment The OECD Jobs Study – Implementing the Strategy (OECD 1995).
Henceforth the respective country economic surveys were to include
analyses of how the Jobs Study recommendations had been followed by
members, forming the basis for discussions in OECD committees.
The recommendations were summarised in nine points. Summarizing
the summary they were: 1) pursue macro-economic policies that both
encourage growth and are sustainable, i.e. non-inflationary; 2) enhance
creation and diffusion of technological know-how; 3) increase flexibility
of working time; 4) nurture an entrepreneurial climate; 5) make wage
and labour costs more flexible; 6) reform employment security provi-
sions; 7) emphasize active labour market policies; 8) improve labour
force skills; and 9) reform unemployment and related benefit systems
(OECD 1995). For each country the general recommendations were
further specified in detailed policy proposals, and later economic
surveys were systematically to report on the progress of implementation
of each specific recommendation. Thus the members’ progress in
following the recommendations of the jobs strategy became subject to
the process of multilateral surveillance and peer review.
This development of strategy is not only a move towards greater
specification and enhancement of procedures for monitoring imple-
mentation; it also involves adjustments and adaptations to changing
circumstances. Thus a concern with the need to adapt to growing
economic internationalization began to appear already in the early
1980s. The 1982 statement on ‘positive adjustment policies’ noted that
‘the dividing line between domestic and international policies has
become increasingly blurred’ and that in consequence it is ‘essential
that the direct and indirect implications of interventions in national
markets should always be taken into account’ (OECD Annual Report
1982).
The concern with growing interdependence became more acute in
the 1990s, and the word ‘globalization’ entered into OECD parlance.
The themes were prevalent at the 1991 ministerial meeting (OECD
Annual Report 1991, pp. 8–9) and in 1991 the organization’s crystal ball
unit, the ‘International Futures Programme’ organized a so-called Forum
for the Future Conference on ‘Long Term Prospects for the World Econ-
omy’. Among other topics the forum debated ‘the possible tensions
resulting from the parallel processes of globalisation of economic activ-
ities and regionalisation’ and this discussion ‘provided impetus for fur-
ther intensive work on the policy implications of globalisation’ (OECD
International Futures Programme 1999). In 1995 the Ministers requested

the forward-looking study ‘Globalisation and Linkages to 2020: Chal-
lenges and opportunities for OECD countries’, the results of which were
published in 1997 in the shape of an extensive analytical report and a
summary entitled Towards a New Global Age. Challenges and Opportun-
ities. Policy Report (OECD 1997). Although based on solid analyses of past
and recent trends, this was a rather sweeping think-piece – and jubilant
in tone – that tried to look more than two decades into the future. It did
not have the status of a Council-approved policy statement, but still it
shows that the concern with increased interdependence, in evidence
since the early 1980s, had now evolved into an explicit focus on global-
ization, and it is a good illustration of strategic thinking at the high tide
of globalization optimism.
The first observation to be made from this document is that the policy
proposals are unsurprising:
[A] high performance scenario . . . is a realistic possibility for the world

economy, if governments undertake a wide range of necessary policy
reforms. These include moving towards global free trade and capital
movements, fiscal consolidation, structural reform and in the case of
a large number on non-OECD economies developing the necessary
capacity for development.
(OECD 1997, p. 7)
The usual remedies, in other words, but applied even more extensively.
A second observation is that in the case of structural reforms the docu-
ment repeatedly stresses the usefulness of surveillance, policy dialogue
and peer pressure in the OECD framework. It thus points to the inter-
connectedness of the process of globalization and the intensification of
this mode of international cooperation. Third, there is much emphasis
on non-member countries. The third ‘major challenge’ for the optimis-
tic scenario is ‘Consolidating the integration of non-OECD countries
into the global economy’, which is mentioned after ‘strengthening the
free and open multilateral system’ and ‘pushing ahead with domestic
policy reform’ (OECD 1997, p. 8).
In conclusion, over more than three decades the OECD has been
strongly involved in analytical work and strategy formulation on central
economic issues, mainly of concern to the core of developed market
democracies, but with increased efforts to integrate non-members in the
process. To repeat, it has, in Marcussen’s terms, served as an idea creator,
an idea broker, an arena for ideas and idea promoter (Marcussen 2002).
The extent to which it is, in itself, an idea authority, as Marcussen

showed to be the case in Denmark, must remain an open question.
6 Conclusion
This chapter has discussed the globalization of the institutional aspect

of statehood. It has shown a bifurcated system of global governance
centred on the UN family of organizations and the G-7–OECD nexus
respectively. The main points conveyed were that the system is decen-
tralized and marked by unclear and overlapping competences between
institutions, that nation states are important pillars in the system, and
that a central role is played by the G-7–OECD nexus, which brings
together the core of developed market democracies in an increasingly
integrated institutional infrastructure of national governments and
international institutions. This core is characterized by dense and con-
stant contacts between the various institutions, routinized exchanges of
information on international and domestic policies, mutual surveil-
lance and peer pressure, strong analytical and statistical resources and
a capacity for development of joint policies and strategies. What has
happened, in other words, is a process of gradual or creeping inter-
nationalization of administrative state apparatuses. To the extent that
there is leadership, guidance and coordination across issues in the gov-
ernance system, it is mainly provided by this core of market democratic
states through the institutional infrastructure they have developed, and
into which they attempt to integrate the rest of the world and in
particular the dynamic ‘emerging markets’ of the developing world
and countries in transition. On the basis of this portrayal of the insti-
tutional infrastructure of global governance, we now turn to the discus-
sion of the extent to which the policies conducted by this ensemble
amount to a globalization of state functions.
6
The Function of Persistence
1 Introduction
The examination of the globalization of the function of persistence re-

quires as a first step a closer theoretical investigation of this function and
its components or modalities, the reason being that this aspect of state-
hood seems to be under-theorized in contemporary international rela-
tions research. As in the discussion of the abstract concept of state and
statehood, a critical reading of Poulantzas’ contribution will serve as a
starting point. There are several reasons for this choice. One is that the
state’s functions play an important role in Poulantzas’ most abstract
conceptualizations of the state. More importantly, however, are two
other reasons that can be stated briefly. First, in a contextualized theory
of the state, i.e. a theory that relates the state to the societal totality of
which it is part, the question of what the state ‘does’ to society, the state’s
role in societal development and change, is central. There is in other
words a valid reason why this aspect of statehood is important in
Poulantzas. Second, as I will argue below, an important theoretical insight
can be gained from a closer look at the globalization of state functions.
One of these has to do with a duality at the core of the state’s functions, a
duality that calls for complementary concepts and ‘descriptions’ in the
Bohrian sense. This is a key point, and one that may best be appreciated if
seen in the light of a similar duality/complementarity involved in
the economic analysis of capitalist society, as recognized by writers as
diverse as Robert Gilpin (2001) and Karl Marx. Therefore, before engaging
with Poulantzas’ thinking on the functions of the state, we make a detour
to the Janus-headed character of capitalism. At the same time this detour
allows me to present a perspective on the international economy that also
informs the present study in other respects.
95
2 Duality and complementarity in the analysis

of capitalism
The double perspective at the core of Marx’s analysis of capitalism is

evident right from the first pages of Das Kapital (Marx 1973). The very
first step in the analysis is the introduction of the distinction between
use-value and exchange value, a distinction that, incidentally, goes back to
Aristotle whom Marx quotes repeatedly. Use-value is defined as the
intrinsic ability of any good or commodity to satisfy human needs.
Whether the need emanates from the stomach or the fantasy is irrele-
vant in this regard, and it is immaterial whether a commodity satisfies
needs directly in consumption or indirectly as means of production.
Exchange value is what makes a commodity sellable on the market,
and is, in Marx’s analysis, ultimately dependent on the amount of
human effort that has been put into the production of the commodity.
From this basic duality of use- and exchange value arises a dual
perspective on the entire economic system of capitalism. On one hand
it is the most efficient system ever seen for the production of use-values,
and hence for the satisfaction of human needs. Marx also used the term
‘productive force’ to denote a society’s capacity to produce use-values,
and the point is that capitalism represents a revolutionary economic
system that develops the productive forces of humankind on a scale and
at a speed that is without precedence in human history. On the other
hand, in this system the production of use-value is governed by the
accumulation of exchange value by the owners of the means of produc-
tion, by capital. This point, elaborated at great length and in detailed
discussion with competing ‘political economies’ of his day throughout
the three volumes of Das Kapital, is central to his notion of exploitation
in capitalism. The core of this concept is that it is the owners of the
means of production and not the producers that control the surplus
from the production process, and that the system forces them to use
the surplus in the pursuit of further accumulation of exchange value.
This is a systemic feature of the capitalist economy and the motives of
the individual capitalists or shareholders are considered irrelevant in the
analysis. Greed, for instance, does not enter the picture, and there is no
moral condemnation of the capitalists who merely play the role
assigned to them by the system they are part of. But in addition to
developing the productive forces of society, this mode of economic
governance has major inherent negative consequences. Left to its own
logic it will create gross inequalities, fluctuations in employment and
periodic mass unemployment, a constant pressure on the work-force to
The Function of Persistence 97
work more hours and produce more per hour, and so on. The extent to
which these negative consequences can be, and have been, counteracted
by political intervention in the market is a separate issue, what matters
here is the dual perspective as such.
The duality, then, is that capitalism is theorized as a process of devel-
opment and as a system of exploitation with serious negative conse-
quences. The double perspective perhaps found its most forceful
expression in The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels 1998) that on
the one hand is an almost euphoric celebration of the revolutionary
developmental capacity of capitalism, and on the other hand a scathing
condemnation of the injustices and destruction it also entails. The
duality is also explicit and central in his famous essay from 1853 on
‘The Future Results of the British Rule in India’ (Marx 1853). And it is a
theme that permeates his major theoretical contribution, the analysis in
Das Kapital. It is also true, however, that in most of his writings this
double perspective is closely associated with the revolutionary expect-
ation, that is that on the one hand capitalism will develop the product-
ive forces, and hence lay the foundations for a better and more just
society, but that on the other hand it will create such gross inequalities
that a social revolution will result that completely overthrows the cap-
italist social order and instigates a new social order free of injustice,
exploitation and oppression. At this point Eric Hobsbawm’s observation
is relevant and to the point: Marx’s analysis of the dual nature of
capitalism is based on close empirical observation and thorough theor-
etical reasoning, whereas the revolutionary expectation and vision of
the future society is without any such foundation, it is an entirely
speculative element that draws more on German idealistic philosophy
than anything else (Hobsbawm 1998, p. 25). There is no necessary link
between this element and the analysis of the dual nature of capitalism;
they have entirely different theoretical status: one is the result of serious
social enquiry, the other the result of speculation and, perhaps, wishful
thinking. It is a dream or a hope. This has two consequences. It means
that we can accept the duality without accepting the revolutionary
expectation but it is also true that the fact that the revolutionary ex-
pectation so far has been refuted by history does not in itself refute
Marx’s results concerning the dual nature of capitalism.
Whether this analysis still holds today, in the age of global capitalism,
is an empirical question. It is not the topic of the present book, but let
me just say that there seems to be overwhelming evidence that it does.
What is open to debate seems not to be the dual nature of capitalism
itself, but rather the relative balance between the two sides. Recent
reports on the world economy from the IMF (2000) the World Bank
(2002) and the UNDP (2001), for instance, give ample support for the
view that capitalism’s capacity for developing the productive forces is far
from being exhausted, and at the same time that this pattern of growth
is marked by gross inequalities, instability and insecurity. It also needs
saying, however, that there is no reason to expect that these two sides
will be evenly or symmetrically distributed over the global economy.
Rather, as argued by Degnbol-Martinussen, it should be expected that
there is variation across time and space. In some periods and in some
geographical spaces, the developmental and constructive effects will
be predominant, whereas in other periods and geographical spaces, the
exploitative and blocking effects will prevail (Degnbol-Martinussen
2001).
This double perspective is not only to be found in Marx’s writings. On
the contrary it is fairly well known and finds wide resonance in much
contemporary writing on globalization and the world economy. Robert
Gilpin, for instance, recognizes this duality when he writes, ‘Marxism
survives as an analytic tool and a critique of capitalism, and it will
continue to survive as long as those flaws of the capitalist system em-
phasized by Marx and his followers remain’ (Gilpin 2001, p. 13). It is also
an observation that has been made earlier by Marxists, historical materi-
alists and other progressive or left-leaning writers who have
acknowledged the dual nature of capitalism, Bill Warren and Latin-
American writers on ‘dependent development’ being prominent
among them (Warren 1980; Cardoso and Faletto 1979). Still, there has
been in this side of the political spectrum a clear tendency to focus on
the negative side and downplay the positive, a point recently argued
strongly by Martin Shaw (2001).
One important conclusion, then, is of a substantial nature and con-
cerns the dual nature of the capitalist economy. But there is another
important conclusion of a different kind, namely the theoretical or
epistemological lesson involved. The dual nature of the analysis of
capitalism is not a case of inconsistency or indeterminacy, as if Marx
could not make up his mind. His position was that capitalism historic-
ally has constructive, developmental effects as well as negative conse-
quences, and that theory must capture this dual property of the real
world. There is a need, in other words, for two complementary theoret-
ical perspectives on the object for analysis in order to theorize it satis-
factorily and this constitutes another situation of complementarity in
Rasmussen’s sense, where two ‘descriptions’ are mutually exclusive
in their extremes, but at a specific level of analysis are exhaustive to-
gether. Both perspectives are required in the analysis of capitalism. We

need, in other words, two complementary theoretical perspectives on
the object for analysis in order to theorize it satisfactorily. There is, in
this case, another situation of strict complementarity in Rasmussen’s
sense, where two ‘descriptions’ are mutually exclusive in their extremes,
but at a specific level of analysis are exhaustive together. We need both
perspectives in the analysis of capitalism. Histories such as Angus
Maddison’s (2001) of the world economy narrated as a story of eco-
nomic growth, technological advances, the spread of industry across
the globe and the immensely increased capacity to satisfy human
needs are as significant as are the critical accounts of the unevenness
of this process, its inherent inequalities and the social and environmen-
tal problems created by it.
After this detour into the economic analysis of capitalism we now
return to the question of state functions, where as already stated, a
similar duality is to be found.
3 State functions and the power/persistence duality
A preliminary remark is required before taking up the discussion of state

functions in Poulantzas. It concerns the long-standing debate about
the validity of functional arguments and explanations in social science
(see Giddens 1981; Wright 1983; Levine, Sober and Wright 1987).
While accepting that functionalist arguments can lead to unacceptable
teleological reasoning – phenomena are said to be caused by their effects
– my position is, in line for instance with Eric Olin Wright and others,
that this is not a necessary consequence. First, because functionalist
arguments are not necessarily identical with functionalist explanations.
Second, the identification of any institution’s functions, i.e. its effects
on other aspects of society and in particular its contribution to the
reproduction of those aspects, may have heuristical value in developing
explanations. While the functionality of a given institution or practice
can never be a complete explanation of that institution, there is no
reason why it cannot be a part of the explanation (Wright 1983).
Institutions are created through purposeful action by powerful actors,
i.e. to serve a purpose, to fulfil a function. If social actors continuously
reproduce certain social institutions, part of the explanation is that
they perceive these institutions to serve a purpose, to be useful, to
be functional. Under this assumption, part of the explanation for the
continued reproduction of any institution must be found in the nature
of the functions this institution fulfils. The matter is more complicated
than this since it involves issues of structure and agency, unintended

consequences, the role of ideational factors and actors’ knowledge and
understanding of society, and the relative power of the actors involved.
But this complex range of issues need not detain us here where the point
simply is to state that arguments about functions have a legitimate and
useful role to play in social and political enquiry – as is indeed reflected
in the fact that they do occur quite frequently, as we shall see later.
Let us now turn to Poulantzas’ deliberation on the functions of the
state. This discussion is complicated somewhat by the fact that he, on
this question like on several others, developed his thinking in important
ways over the years as discussed thoroughly in Jessop (1985) and briefly
in Hall (1980). Note, however, that at this point we are concerned with
the general theory of the state and not the more specific theory of
the capitalist type of state, and that the issue of state functions in the
general theory is one that was discussed only to a limited extent by
Jessop in his study of Poulantzas (1985, p. 61) and his earlier work on the
capitalist state (Jessop 1982, pp. 16ff). I will deal with the complications
created by the development in Poulantzas’ thinking by focusing first on
his early work, only after that considering how later developments affect
the conclusions arrived at.
In his first major work, Political Power and Social Classes (1973, first
published in French in 1968), Poulantzas introduced the concepts of the
general function of the state and the modalities of this function. In expli-
cating these concepts and their interrelations he used examples, mainly
from the capitalist type of state and from the so-called ‘Asiatic mode of
production’ as discussed by Marx and Engels. The latter notion has later
been heavily criticized and with justification, although Poulantzas notes
that we should remember that the classics were limited by the available
historical knowledge at their time of writing. That point is immaterial
here; that the examples what matters are the principles illustrate.
Poulantzas defines the state’s general function as that of being the
factor of cohesion for a society, or the ‘regulating factor of its general
equilibrium as a system’ (1973, p. 45). The modalities are different for
different types of state. They may be ideological – or, as I rather would
call it today, ideational – concerning for instance education and social-
ization, and they may be economic and technical, for instance the
construction of irrigation systems in ancient ‘Asiatic modes of produc-
tion’, or the provision of material infrastructure or regulation of the
business cycle in modern capitalist states. The political modality in
the strict sense (1973, p. 53) is the maintenance of social order and
class rule. These various economic, ideational and political functions
are all to be understood as modalities of the general or overall function,

which is the cohesion of society. Each of the modalities, it should be
noted, corresponds to one of the analytically defined ‘regions’ of the
social formation, hence the justification of Jessop’s labelling this a
‘regional’ theory of the state.
Poulantzas then proceeds to argue that this general function is inher-
ently political, and that all modalities of this function are ‘overdeter-
mined’ by the political function. This point has generally been accepted
as one of the core elements in his early theory of the state, but there are
reasons to pause and take a closer look. One reason has to do with his
later development, the ‘relational approach’ articulated in later books,
in particular State, Power, Socialism (2000), first published in 1978, being
one of the themes that Jessop has offered most attention. Another is that
the original formulations deserve critical attention that may shed a
somewhat different light on what came later. Let’s take a closer look at
those 12 pages in Political Power and Social Classes.
The general function is discussed in close relation to the modalities of
the state. All of these modalities are modalities of the general function,
which is the cohesion of a class-divided society. This overall function is
also political, or rather, it ‘adopts a political character’ (1973, p. 54),
exactly because ‘it maintains the unity of a formation’ marked by ‘class
domination’. In this sense, according to Poulantzas, the strictly political
function overdetermines the other modalities. Note the separate steps in
this logic: first the general role – being the factor of cohesion – is identi-
fied; then the modalities – economic, ideational and strictly political –
are acknowledged and described precisely as modalities of the general
function, i.e. the modalities are subordinate to the general function.
Then it is claimed that the political modality overdetermines the rest,
and hence that the general function is inherently political. And in con-
sequence, all modalities in the final analysis are aspects of class domin-
ation. There is a tension here: first a separation between a political
modality and other modalities, then a claim that all modalities
are aspects of a political general function, but a function that is political
in another way than the strictly political function – expressed through
the word ‘overdetermination’. Everything about the state’s functions is
political and related to class domination, but still there is a difference
between the strictly political function and, for instance, the technical
and economic functions. They are, apparently, political in different ways.
It is illuminating to follow Poulantzas’ reasoning even closer and look
at the way in which he engages with the Marxist tradition in arriving to
this point. He points out that Marx, Engels, Lenin and other classics
have grappled with the relation between the state’s ‘technico-economic’

functions and its political role – or its ‘social function’ versus ‘political
supremacy’, as he quotes Engels as having put it (1973, p. 51). Even
Lenin, who more than anybody else argued that the state is always an
instrument of class rule, acknowledged according to Poulantzas that the
state also had ‘technico-economic’ functions. This has led some theor-
ists to separate the two aspects, so that the relation of the state to society
is independent of the struggle between classes, a very old thesis that is
‘dear to social democrats’ as he continues in a discernibly sarcastic tone.
Clearly it is important for Poulantzas to counter the view that aspects of
the state’s functions are apolitical and neutral in the class struggle. On
the other hand it is necessary to maintain the differences between the
modalities, and in particular the difference between the ‘strictly polit-
ical’ function and the economic and ideational functions. His solution
to this problem, then, is to introduce the claim that the ‘strictly polit-
ical’ function ‘overdetermines’ the general function, which in turn
determines the modalities – they are but modalities of the general
function – so that the general function ‘adopts a political character’
(1973, p. 54). The difficulty with this proposition is fairly obvious: how
can the ‘strictly political’ function at the same time be determined by
the general function of which it is merely a modality, and be the
modality that overdetermines the general function? There may be a
satisfactory answer to this, but Poulantzas never produced it as far as
I can see, maybe because the exact meaning of the notion of ‘overdeter-
mination’ was never made clear.
Be that as it may, Poulantzas’ discussion raises interesting arguments
that point to a different solution that I would argue is more satisfactory.
Remember that what he wanted to counter was the view that the ‘social
function’ could be separated from the political one. In this regard he
quotes with approval Freidrich Engels’ comment on the Asiatic mode of
production that ‘the exercise of a social function was everywhere the
basis of political supremacy; and further that political supremacy has
existed for any length of time only when it discharged its social func-
tion’ (1973, p. 51). In other words: the societal and political functions
are interlinked, the one presupposes the other. They are different, yet
one cannot separate them. To reproduce society is to reproduce a spe-
cific social order with specific relations of power, hence one cannot say
that any part of the function of cohesion is apolitical. On the other
hand, one cannot reproduce social order and relations of power without
reproducing society, hence the societal function cannot be reduced to
the political function of domination.
At this point Poulantzas draws an analogy that is highly relevant

in the current context: ‘this role of the state corresponds to the
twin roles of the capitalist: those of exploitation and of organization-
cum-supervision of the labour process’ (1973, p. 53). Instead of complex
notions of determination and overdetermination between ‘modalities’
that correspond to the ‘regions’ of the social formation, there is here a
much more straightforward understanding of a duality in the functions
of the state, and this duality is rather directly related to the economic
duality discussed above, leading to a corresponding complementarity
between analytical perspectives and ‘descriptions’. If capitalism is only
exploitation, and if the state’s function is to reproduce the capitalist
mode of production, then the function is only to maintain dominance,
it is only political. But if capitalism is also production of use-value, and
the reproduction and development of the capacity to produce use-value,
then the capitalist state’s general function as the factor of cohesion is
both dominance and societal persistence and development. The conclu-
sion seems clear: the notion of complementarity between these two
aspects is more fruitful than the attempt to subsume the one under
the other. The opposite holds true as well, of course: the two aspects
cannot be isolated from each other. The two sides presuppose each
other; none of them can be reduced to or subsumed under the other,
both of them are required in the theoretical analysis of the state.
In other words: the classics that served as Poulantzas’ starting point
actually point to a theoretical solution based on an inherent duality in
the functions of the state and a corresponding complementarity in the
conceptualization of the state. But Poulantzas took a different tack, by
introducing the concept of overdetermination to allow the claim that
the state’s general function has different modalities, some of which
are more political than others, but at the same time that the general
function ‘adopts a political character’. In this way, all aspects of the
state’s function becomes political and related to class domination.
In my reading, this understanding was later developed further in the
move from what Jessop called a regional to a relational state theory
(Jessop 1985). This development was not only an extension of themes
already present in the early work; important new directions and under-
standings were effected, some of them good and some problematic. To
these later developments I know turn, albeit in a summary fashion.
First, the state now becomes situated much more explicitly in a his-
torical processual perspective. The ‘regional’ theory was not void of a
certain mechanical determinism, in which each ‘region’ was structurally
combined with the others by necessity so that the theoretical task was to
construct a mechanic of the structural logic of each level and their

necessary interaction. A complicated almost Newtonian mechanic of
the social formation gave the key to the understanding of the specific
mechanic of the structures in the political region. Now Poulantzas
engages in a more organic and developmental understanding of the
state, in which it is always a historical product that has been shaped in
a complex political, economic and ideational process, and remains
in continuous change.
Second, in extension of this argument, the state is now seen explicitly
as a social relation – one among several in a society – that is shaped
by relations between social forces according to shifting relations of
strength – hence Jessop’s label ‘relational theory’. Here Poulantzas
moves away from a simple understanding of these relations as un-
changeable relations of dominance. He was never so simplistic as to
assume only two classes; indeed one of his lasting early contributions
was to point out the necessity to recognize more composite patterns of
alliances, support, hegemony, divisions within classes, etc. But now he
opens the field even more, by noting that all social forces may impact on
the state, according to shifting strengths, and in this sense the state
becomes more of a ‘strategic terrain’ on which political battles between
a multitude of social forces take place. There is, in other words, a much
more open and changeable understanding of the social relations of
which the state is an expression or materialization. The state, ultimately,
is the embodiment of relations of power, but these relations are more
complex and subject to change than in the previous formulations.
These two developments represent, in my understanding, clear advan-
tages over the early work. They are, by the way, the point of departure
for Jessop’s development of a strategic-relational theory of the state that
theorizes how ‘hegemonic projects’ shape societal development within
the distinct stages of the evolution of capitalist societies; this concors
with the understanding of the state developed by Joachim Hirsch and
others (1974, 1995; Martinussen 1980; Degnbol-Martinussen 2001).
The third development, however, is problematic. It represents an
extension of the notion of overdetermination in the sense that the
element of persistence tends to disappear below the theoretical horizon.
All aspects and modalities of the state’s functions are now seen as
inherently political. Rightfully so in the sense that they result from
political decisions emanating from the struggle between social forces,
but wrongfully if this means that the dialectic between cohesion/per-
sistence and maintenance of relations of power that were central to the
classics disappear. And this is what seems to happen in Poulantzas’ final
work (2000), where he argues that in the current stage of capitalism the
entire range of state interventions are refocused towards its economic
role, and that this role is actually political because it corresponds to the
interests of the dominant social forces. Put in contemporary language:
all public policies become subordinate to the goal of securing economic
growth, but this goal is inherently political since it corresponds to the
dominant interests in society.
In sum: the relational approach is valid in the sense that it points to a
more open and historicized notion of the state, but not tenable to
the extent that it tendentially reduces the state to being only a material-
ization of relations of dominance. The problem that Poulantzas
encountered was a real problem, that of developing a theoretical con-
ceptualization of the state that respected the various properties or
aspects of statehood, including the state’s functions, and in particular
the problem of conceptualizing the relation between its social and
political functions. But his solutions, first in the notion of overdeter-
mination, then in the relational perspective, were not satisfactory. In-
stead I suggest a notion of an inherent duality between the two
functions and a corresponding necessity of a complementarity between
the state as a factor of cohesion – its political role – and as a factor of
societal persistence – its societal role – in the theoretical account
of the state.
The notion of complementarity is helpful here because the two ac-
counts contradict each other, they are both indispensable, in one sense
they are inseparable, in another they lead to different and opposing
analyses of the state. They contradict each other because the notion of
persistence evokes societal maintenance and reproduction, i.e. the sur-
vival of all members of society and the ongoing reproduction of the
societal conditions for their survival, whereas cohesion refers to con-
flicts of interests, injustices and the forced stability (i.e. backed up by the
monopoly on violence) of a conflict-ridden society that continually
risks falling apart, i.e. the reproduction of relations of power. Both
‘descriptions’ in Bohrian terminology are indispensable to the extent
that relations of power exist in society. The two functions presuppose
each other. If society is reproduced, so are the relations of power within
society, whereas relations of power cannot be reproduced if no society
persists. It is not possible to sort out the activities and performance of
any state to fulfil, on the one hand, a neutral persistence function that
equally benefits all and, on the other hand, the task of dominance, of
securing a social order that privileges dominant classes. Persistence is
always shaped by relations of power, dominance is impossible without
persistence. But it is possible to apply complementary perspectives that

illuminate the state’s activities as the persistence of society and the
maintenance of relations of power respectively.
If this inherent duality in the functions of the state is accepted, one
may ask whether one of the aspects should be ascribed primacy.
The answer probably has to distinguish between long-and short-term
considerations. In the very long run there are strong reasons to ascribe
primacy to the function of persistence. Logically because one can im-
agine persistence without dominance, but not vice versa. Empirically
because this seems to fit better with what is known today about the
origins of the state, as rendered for instance by Service (1975). The state
existed before classes, as argued by Service and others, and not the other
way around, as argued by Poulantzas. But concerning shorter time
spans, the answer must be that no clear answer can be given. There is
no reason to presuppose that there would be a uniform relation between
the two aspects, on the contrary it is to be expected that the balance and
interactions between them vary across time and space and between
issues.
Theorizing the state, then, requires recognition of all the aspects of
statehood, including the functions of the state; the latter requires recog-
nition of the inherent duality between persistence and cohesion, and as
consequence the acceptance of complementary descriptions of state
functions. Let us turn now to the implications of this for the analysis
of the globalization of statehood.
I set out with the observation that the rise of political interconnected-
ness has called for analyses of the global polity that apply concepts from
general political analysis to the international and, indeed, global realm.
Next, I argued that the concept of the state is central in this regard, and
that while Martin Shaw overstates the point in the title (but not the
content) of his book, Theory of the Global State (2000), it is highly
pertinent to ask questions about the globalization of statehood. That
led to a closer scrutiny of what statehood is, and further to a consider-
ation of aspects of statehood that can be globalized in varying degrees.
Now we are at the point where we can pose the question of the global-
ization of state functions. The conclusion to the deliberations in
this chapter so far is that this has to be done through the application
of two complementary perspectives, one that focuses on the globaliza-
tion of the function of persistence, another that focuses on the state’s
role in maintaining relations of power. Each of these perspectives
requires further theoretical specification before they can be turned
into empirical analysis. In the remainder of this chapter I discuss the
first of these issues, i.e. the theoretical specification of the function of

persistence. The ensuing chapter, then, discusses the globalization
of functions thus specified.
4 Arguments on state functions
Arguments about the functions performed by the global governance

system are not uncommon to international relations research. Take,
for instance, James Rosenau’s deliberations on the topic in his discus-
sion of the global system of ‘governance without government’:
To presume the presence of governance without government is to

conceive of functions that have to be performed in any viable human
system . . . Among the many necessary functions, for example, are the
needs wherein any system has to cope with external challenges, to
prevent conflicts among its members or factions from tearing it irre-
trievably apart, to procure resources necessary to it for its preserva-
tion and well-being, and to frame goals and policies designed to
achieve them. Whether the systems are local or global in scope,
these functional needs are ever present if a system is to persist intact
through time.
(Rosenau 1992, p. 3)
And Rosenau goes on to present the challenge this poses to what here
has been called global polity research: ‘a prime task of inquiry is that of
probing the extent to which the functions normally associated with
governance are performed in world politics without the institutions of
government’ (Rosenau 1992, p. 7).
Susan Strange, in The Retreat of the State (1996), engaged with similar
problems, although in a different way. She started out from what she
called ‘the international political economy as a whole’ (1996, p.34);
then turned the attention to ‘the various functions of authority in a
political economy’, and proceeded to ask ‘who or what is exercising
those functions or responsibilities, and with what effect on outcomes?’
(1996, p. 42). This led her to consider the ‘ten more important powers or
responsibilities attributed to the state, and still claimed for it by many
political leaders’ (1996, p. 73). Her first point was that these functions
were weakened at the national level by structural changes in the world
political economy, but later in the book she went on to consider the way
in which they were discharged at the international and global levels,
asking the central political question:
is the totality of authority over market and society, over the long
term, good enough, in the sense of promising a sufficiency of polit-
ical, economic and social order for the market-based economic
system to survive and prosper, and in assuring citizens what they
consider a sufficiency of rights and liberties from the arbitrary intru-
sion of authority?
(Strange 1996, pp. 184–5)
In this way she, too, transferred a notion of state functions from the
national level to the global realm, and consequently her list of state
functions or ‘responsibilities’ is of interest. She included the following in
her list:
1. defending national territory (p. 73),

2. maintaining the value of the currency (p. 73),
3. ‘choosing the appropriate form of capitalist development’ (p. 74),
4. ‘correcting the tendency of market economies to cyclical booms and
slumps’ (p. 75),
5. ‘providing a safety-net’ to ‘the old and the young, the sick
and disabled, and the unemployed’, ‘a shield against economic
insecurity’ (p. 76),
6. the ‘responsibility for taxation’ (p. 77),
7. the ‘responsibility for the control over foreign trade’ (pp. 77–8),
8. ‘building of the economic infrastructure’ (p. 79),
9. maintaining ‘a competitive environment in the national market’
(p. 80), and
10. holding the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence (pp. 81–2).
(Strange 1996)
In their analysis of international regimes for economic infrastructure,

Zacher and Sutton developed another line of argument, based on neo-
classical reasoning about market failures. They argued:
Neoclassical economic theory specifies ‘conditions that must be

satisfied if socially optimal amounts of resources are to be produced.’
Neoclassical theory then posits that when these conditions do not
exist, governmental regulation will enhance total welfare gains . . . The
circumstances or conditions in which the ideal neoclassical model
does not hold are commonly referred to as ‘market failures’.
A central assertion of this book is that where these eight market

failures exist to a significant degree, regimes directed at their ‘correc-
tion’ will probably increase total welfare gains and hence the likeli-
hood that all or a large majority of states will realize benefits.
Consequently regimes will be accepted.
(Zacher and Sutton 1996, pp. 3, 16–26)
Yet another example, developed in the context of a different theoretical

framework, is found in Craig N. Murphy’s historical analysis of the rise
of international organizations. Overall he summarizes the tasks of inter-
national organizations as ‘the tasks associated with allowing capitalist
industrialism to expand across existing political boundaries, especially
the task of creating and securing wider international markets to pro-
mote new industries’ (Murphy 1994, p. 43). Under this heading he
identifies the following groups and subgroups of tasks as have been
developed during the evolution of international organizations from
1850 to 1985:
Fostering industry: provide infrastructure, industrial standards and

intellectual property, deal with trade, promote management skills
Managing potential social conflicts: involving labour, agriculture, other
older sectors, less developed countries
Strengthening states and the state system: public order and administra-
tion, public finance, conflict management, managing interstate con-
flicts, refugees
Strengthening society: human rights, health, education and research,
relief and welfare
Environmental issues.
(Summarized from Murphy 1994, tables 3, 6 and 8)
What these examples of functionalist thinking about global governance

demonstrate is that two sets of theoretical questions are involved. The
first concerns the nature of the theoretical reasoning involved: what the
arguments are that can underpin the claim that certain activities belong
to the category of state functions and in what sense can one claim that
such activities are necessary or functional. The second set of questions
concern the way in which such functions are divided into groups, or
what Poulantzas called modalities of the state’s overall function, i.e. the
typology of state functions. Let us consider each of these in turn.
5 The political logic of state functions
First, we consider the basic logic underpinning functionalist reasoning.

In this discussion there is no need to distinguish between those contri-
butions – like the examples just quoted – that apply functionalist argu-
ments to the global level, and arguments developed with the context
of the analysis of national societies and territorial states. At the level of
basic functional logic, the reasoning is the same.
There are some striking differences, but also important similarities
among the several contributions. Susan Strange – not uncharacteristic-
ally for her – based her reasoning on a mixture of political judgement (‘is
it good enough?’) and sound common-sense impressionistic generaliza-
tion (‘the ten more important powers or responsibilities attributed to
the state, and still claimed for it by many political leaders’). This clearly
helped focus attention on key issues, but did not contribute much to the
development of a more precise theoretical understanding of the matter.
Let us therefore turn to examples of more rigorous reasoning. In such
efforts, while the common trait is to argue that some tasks or functions
are necessary, there is a difference in emphasis concerning what they are
necessary for. Some take a wider societal perspective and focus on func-
tions that are necessary for the entire society to persist, while others
argue mainly in relation to the economy, and in particular to the
modern capitalist market economy. It is in the latter category that we
find the most elaborate arguments, but let us briefly consider the first
line of reasoning.
The essence of this is neatly summarized in Rosenau’s category of
‘functions that have to be performed in any viable human system’.
This obviously bears a strong similarity to the notion of the ‘social
function’ discussed by classical Marxists, as we saw in a preceding
section, and it also has a clear parallel in some efforts to expand the
concept of security across a broad section of issue areas – military
security, economic, environment, identity and so on (Buzan 1991).
Here – to summarize – the state strives to maintain security in the
sense of guarding against any threat that might endanger the state’s
remaining what it is. Thus the concept ‘security’ is expanded in a way
that makes it strikingly similar to Rosenau’s notion of ‘functions that
have to be performed in any viable human system’. As argued forcefully
by Robert Jackson, it is highly doubtful that the introduction of the
word ‘security’ to cover all these societal areas adds anything to
the understanding of the issues, and rather more plausible that it only
serves to confuse matters (Jackson 2000, pp. 194–6). Nevertheless, what
is worth noting is the similarity between such efforts – the debatable use
of the term security aside – and arguments about state functions across a
number of issue areas. Common to them is the underlying understand-
ing that the state strives to do what is necessary to remain a state across
all issue areas.
More elaborate arguments, however, are found in those contributions
that base their reasoning in functions in relation to the economy. Here
we find the neo-classical theory of market failure, public goods and
government action, represented by Zacher and Sutton as shown in the
quotes above. These authors move on to summarize types of market
failures in eight groups, but it should be noted that although the general
concepts of market failures and public goods are widely, if not univer-
sally, accepted by economists, the typology and specification of them is
not standardized, as will be evident from consulting any sample of
economics textbooks. Zacher and Sutton do also, however, emphasize
that the existence of market failure in itself is insufficient to bring about
regime formation. Market failures mean that there are strong incentives
for all actors to create or accept regimes – i.e. institutions that perform
market correcting functions or provide public goods to ‘increase total
welfare gains’ – but political processes and a variety of other interests
and concerns are also important and will always shape and occasionally
block regime formation. There are, thus, several steps involved in the
argument: first, that governments will tendentially do what is required
to increase welfare; next, an element of structural economic reasoning,
namely that leaving this to the market is not always enough because of
market failures, hence the need for government intervention; and
finally, that the provision of public goods to correct market failures is
not automatic, but results from political processes in which other inter-
ests can play an important role.
A parallel line of argument has been developed in the Marxist trad-
ition, especially among the so-called ‘logic of capital’ variety of state
theory (Altvater 1972; Hirsch 1974). One main difference, however, is
that whereas Zacher and Sutton base their argument on the state’s effort
to ‘increase total welfare’, this group argues that the state’s role is to
provide the preconditions required for continued accumulation of cap-
ital. Typically on the list of such preconditions one finds ‘legal and
material preconditions’ (protection of private property, physical infra-
structure) and ‘the reproduction and qualification of the labour force’.
The parallel to market failure/public goods theory is fairly straightfor-
ward. In some cases, attempts have been made to develop the argument
deductively from Marx’s analysis of capitalism, which means that it is
turned into an almost pure economic determinism – a position that has

been criticized often enough, and rightly so. There have also, however,
in this strand of state theory been more open and historicized under-
standings, Joachim Hirsch being an important example. Briefly put, his
argument is that economic growth is imperative for capitalist reproduc-
tion, and if growth depends on preconditions that cannot be established
through the market alone, the capitalist state will provide them to the
extent possible (1974, pp. 27–9). Thus the provision of such precondi-
tions is only a tendency, and consequently the specification of these
functions is historically contingent; it ‘requires an investigation of the
concrete historical development of the process of capitalist reproduc-
tion and of the consequent transformations of the conditions for capit-
alist growth and of class relations’ (translated from Hirsch 1974,
pp. 27–8). The preconditions are not ahistoric; they change over time
due to economic and technological developments in the broadest sense,
and they also depend on political processes and power relations (‘class
relations’).
Common to the liberal and some Marxist thinking on this issue, then,
is the combination of economic structural reasoning and due regard to
political processes in a historicized perspective, whereas the disagree-
ment is about the nature of the state (enhance welfare or underpin
capitalism). In other words, neither of these two subgroups develops a
purely deterministic theory of state functions or public goods. Both,
however, do develop a structural theory about situations in which
incentives to perform functions or provide public goods are very strong
because of requirements emanating from the economy, whether
conceived of as ‘market failures’ in relation to welfare gains or ‘precon-
ditions for economic growth’.
Such combinations of structural reasoning and politics are not with-
out problems and these should not be side-stepped. One can argue at
one extreme that any definition of public goods is inherently political.
It is, for instance, rather clear in Charles P. Kindleberger’s 1986 discus-
sion of ‘international public goods’ that there are no clear theoretical
criteria for deciding what qualifies as an international public good
(Kindleberger 1986). Similarly, in Kaul, Grunberg and Stern (1999),
although they establish some criteria for identifying global public
goods, their effort is more about defining ‘global’ in this context (bene-
fiting all people and future generations) than it is about a clear theoret-
ically grounded definition of public goods. Indeed, the whole ‘market
failure/public goods’ approach presupposes some performance criteria
that allow a clear identification of what the market should deliver in
sufficient amounts but fails to provide, and the specification of such

criteria is inherently political and cannot be established by theory. Not
in every case, that is. Because, in fact, theory can specify and has speci-
fied a set of core state functions or public goods or institutional require-
ments that must be present for any market economy to work. It is, after
all, widely accepted today that a market economy requires secure prop-
erty rights, a working monetary system, a certain amount of standard-
ized weights and measures, a communications infrastructure and several
other public goods. Some of these cannot, in principle, be supplied by
the market alone, while others, for reasons specified by the theory of
market failure and the capital-logic alternatives alike, will be tenden-
tially undersupplied.
What this points to, then, is that it is hardly possible to develop a
simple dichotomy between what belongs to a category of essential and
necessary state functions and what does not. What is possible, however,
is a strategy of graduation from a core of functions, whose essentiality
can be demonstrated theoretically in a convincing way (in a capitalist
market economy: property rights, a monetary system, certain standard-
ized weights and measures, basic infrastructure), towards more conten-
tious issues such as education or the ‘qualification of the labour force’ –
yes, but how much and at whose expense? – or health and welfare, or
‘the reproduction of the labour force’ – yes, but at which level of welfare
and health? – and so on. It deserves emphasis also that the ‘core’ of
structurally identifiable state tasks must be understood historically: the
necessary conditions and institutional underpinnings for a market
economy develops over time, along with changes in economic structure,
technological developments, changes in company size and internal
organization, patterns of international competition, etc. This conclu-
sion, actually, may be seen as just another way of expressing the need for
a historicized combination of economic structural and political
reasoning when identifying state functions, and since politics also
brings relations of power into the picture, this incidentally also points
back to the basic power/persistence duality in the state.
Having considered these economic justifications for state functions,
let us briefly go back to the arguments that posit functions in a broader
sense, namely in requirements for societal survival and persistence. A few
comments are in order. First, what is involved here is not a different
logic, but rather a broader frame of reference for identifying such re-
quirements, which will allow a wider set of issues to be included, for
example the maintenance of peace and social order, and environmental
sustainability. The two ways of identifying state functions are, in other
words, not separate from each other, rather one is contained within the
other. Productive work, i.e. the production of the means of existence, is
a basic requirement in any society, and when the economy is organized
according to capitalist market principles, the preconditions for capitalist
production and growth become necessary for societal persistence. The
economic functions thus become a modality of the overall persistence
function.
Second, when identifying the broader set of functions, the reasoning is
along the same line as in the economic theories of public goods and state
functions: the theoretical link between societal persistence and the ful-
filment of the tasks in question have to be established. So have
the reasons why these tasks accrue to the state, i.e. why they are
underprovided or not provided at all through the market mechanism
or other actions by non-state actors. And here, too, the combination of
structural and political reasoning is called for, along with the strategy
of positing a core of key functions and broader belt of more politically
contingent tasks is warranted. The societal persistence perspective,
then, is a broader statement of the same argument as developed in the
theories of market failures and preconditions for capitalist growth. Degn-
bol-Martinussen has argued along similar although not identical lines.
He suggested a synthesis of the state’s political functions, pace Poulant-
zas, with a persistence function defined economically along the lines of
the logic of capital state theory. The broader societal persistence perspec-
tive is, in other words, absent or at least downplayed in his analysis
(Degnbol-Martinussen 2001, pp. 42ff.; see, also by the same author,
Martinussen 1980, pp. 26ff.). This leads on to the second theoretical
issue at hand, namely the content of the state’s function of persistence.
Let us consider some of the suggestions found in the literature.
6 Modalities of the persistence function
In section 4, I recounted as examples the lists of state tasks suggested by

Susan Strange and Craig N. Murphy, respectively. Similar lists can
be found in other writers’ work. Degnbol-Martinussen, for instance,
provides the following five groups of ‘state interventions’:
– procurement of general judicial and institutional preconditions for

production and exchange of commodities and services, including a
legal framework for enforcing property rights, contracts, etc.;
– macro economic policies such as fiscal, income and exchange rate
policies;
– procurement of physical infrastructure including roads and rail-

ways, and provision of public services in areas like education and
health;
– operational control over private-sector companies; and
– the state’s direct participation in the production of goods and
services.
(Degnbol-Martinussen 2001, p. 43)
This typology of state functions is developed in the context of

the analysis of a developing country, India, a fact that is not without
consequences for the content. The fourth category, for instance, is of
less relevance in developed capitalist countries, but of sufficient
weight in the case of India to merit a separate category. Philip Cerny
has produced a different typology, in the context of discussing the
consequences of globalization for the state’s capacity to perform
its traditional tasks, and taking his cue mainly from the situation
in developed countries. ‘Borrowing freely from Theodore Lowi’s
three categories of public policy: distributive, regulatory, and redistribu-
tive’ (Cerny 1995, p. 608, note quoting Lowi 1979), in summary he
suggested the following typology of ‘the traditionally conceived public
goods’:
1. Regulatory public goods: ‘the establishment of a workable market

framework for the operation of the system as a whole’ (p. 608). This
includes: establishment and protection of property rights, a stable
currency, the abolition of internal barriers to production and
exchange, standardization of weights and measures, a legal system
to sanction and enforce contracts and adjudicate disputes, a regula-
tory system to stabilize and coordinate economic activities and a
system of trade protection.
2. Productive/distributive public goods: ‘public ownership of certain
industries’, ‘provision of infrastructure and public services’, ‘direct
and indirect involvement in finance capital, and myriad public sub-
sidies’ (1995, p. 609).
3. ‘Redistributive public goods’, including health and welfare services,
employment policies, corporative bargaining processes and environ-
mental protection, in response to demands of emerging social classes,
economic interests and political parties and the responses of state
actors to those demands.
(Summarized from Cerny 1995)
To these lists one could also add the remuneration by the Commission
on Global Governance:
in the global neighbourhood, citizens have to co-operate for many

purposes: to maintain peace and order, expand economic activity,
tackle pollution, halt or minimize climate change, combat pandemic
diseases, curb the spread of weapons, prevent desertification, preserve
genetic and species diversity, deter terrorists, ward off famine, defeat
economic recession, share scarce resources, arrest drug traffickers, and
so on.
(The Commission on Global Governance 1995, p. 42)
Clearly, while there is substantial overlap between the lists, they are not
identical. They differ in terms of the specific policies included, and in
terms of the main categories and typologies into which they are ordered.
This variety indicates that there is ample room for discussion on the
inclusion or exclusion of several of the specific activities mentioned
and whether they belong in the core of essential state functions or rather
belong in the broader belt of more contingent state functions. There is
also room for discussion of the most appropriate typology into which the
various types of state activity can be conveniently ordered. Ultimately, in
the current stage of research, the conclusion seems to be a matter of
choice, attempting, of course, to achieve precision while striking a
balance between comprehensiveness (i.e. all significant aspects should
be included), differentiation (i.e. the possibility to consider different
policy areas separately) and simplicity (i.e. the concern that the typology
should be manageable). In the present context it also is important that
we are aiming at a typology that is to be applied at the global level. Hence
the focus is not only on state functions in a purely capitalist society, but
functions in relation to a far more composite world society in which the
capitalist mode of production and type of state are dominant but not
exclusively so as argued in Chapter 3. This global social formation and its
emerging political superstructure is shaped by a much more complex
history and variety of social forces than those inherent in a pure, ‘ideal-
typic’ model of the logic of capitalism, but which also and increasingly so
is shaped by this logic. Hence the need to formulate a more open
typology. Based on these considerations, I propose to use a typology
consisting of the six categories listed below:
1. The maintenance of social order. This obviously is a core function

of any state since it is tautological that social order must be
maintained if society is to persist and not break down into anarchy.

Clearly this function takes on a different coloration in an inter-
national context, where the prospect of interstate war is inherent,
an issue not developed in theories that focus on territorial states. The
complications arising from this will be addressed later.
2. Providing the basic preconditions for a capitalist market economy.

These include, as argued in the preceding chapter, property rights, a
working monetary system, material infrastructure, and some stand-
ards of weights and measures, required to allow comparisons of prices
and quantities in a competitive market. Most of these belong in the
category of essential state functions, but of course there is a contin-
gent variation in, for instance, the quality of the infrastructure.
3. Stabilizing the business cycle. It is debatable whether this should

be considered an essential function, but in a historical perspective it
is clear that an important historical lesson has been learned, namely
that the failure to secure this can have grave consequences. Hence it
should be considered a state function that is essential for economic
growth, and given the growth imperative inherent in capitalism, also
for societal persistence. Based on the same reasoning, the securement
of a measure of financial stability should be included.
4. Securing the conditions for the expansion of capitalism to less

developed areas – fostering industry, in Craig N. Murphy’s termin-
ology. Again referral must be made to the inherently expansive
nature of capitalism, which implies that the spread of market econ-
omy and modern industry is required for the viability of this eco-
nomic system. Hence the need to create preconditions for the
capitalist market economy in areas where they do not exist. In add-
ition, there is a theoretical argument that, also for reasons of social
order, this is part of the function of persistence. There are other
reasons to promote economic development, but what matters here
is that on theoretical grounds this must be seen as an essential state
function.
5. Reproduction and qualification of the labour force and population

in general. This includes the provision of basic education and health
and is, clearly, an area where it is important to recognize the distinc-
tion between the essential core and the belt of contingent variation.
Without the survival and elementary training of the labour force, no
system of production, the capitalist one included, is viable, and

technological developments mean that the level of such minimum
requirements is rising.
6. Finally the function of securing environmental sustainability. This

is perhaps a controversial entry on the list, but it should be accepted
on theoretical grounds to the extent that environmental problems
pose a threat to societal persistence or economic viability. Indeed, the
notion of ‘sustainable development’, now much in evidence, is
exactly another way of stating that economic development must be
compatible with long-term societal persistence.
These then, are the six categories of state functions or modalities of the
persistence function that are to be examined in the global context in the
following chapter.
7
The Persistence Function in
Contemporary World Society
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the extent to which a global

state function of persistence has developed, following the modalities
presented in Chapter 6, and in doing so to validate the applicability of
the dual perspective on the state also outlined in Chapter 6 in relation to
the global context specified in Chapter 3.
First, however, two methodological comments are required. The
last decades have witnessed an enormous growth in the number of
international institutions as discussed in Chapter 5, and it would
be impossible to go through all of them to identify those that match
the categories of state functions outlined here. It is doubtful whether
anybody can claim to have a complete overview of all aspects of
the current system global governance, and there are no authoritative
sources – akin to official lists of government agencies in nation-states –
that can be consulted, the Handbook of International Organizations
(Union of International Organizations 1999) notwithstanding. Fortu-
nately we now have some comprehensive works that have cast the
net wide and produced extensive descriptions and analyses of
the topic. I am referring in particular to Craig N. Murphy’s study
of international organizations (Murphy 1994), the works by Kaul,
Grunberg and Stern (1999) and Deacon (1997), to the recent study
from the Carnegie Endowment (Simmons and Jonge Oudraat 2001),
and to the magisterial work by John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos
(2000). The last-mentioned work is particularly important in the present
context, in spite of focusing on a subset of global governance, namely
that of business regulation, because of the unique inductive approach
the authors employed: asking a broad selection of government
officials about the domains of business regulations covered by national
regulation in Australia, and then taking this list to the global level
119
(Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, p. 11). The result of this effort is a wide-
ranging and impressively comprehensive discussion of global business
regulation. In addition to these works I have relied on the literature
on international regimes, and on general works in international polit-
ical economy where issues of global governance are analysed and
debated.
Second, a comment on historical background. One recurrent question
in debates about globalization is the newness of the phenomenon,
the point often being made that this or that aspect has deep historical
roots, which in most cases undoubtedly is true. From the perspective
of a political persistence function there also is a long pre-history, and
I will make some references to that in the following. But a systematic
treatment is not possible in this work because the history is sufficiently
complex to defy a simple periodization. For centuries the function of
order has been maintained beyond the present-day borders between
nation-states, presenting a complex history of competing social orders
of quasi-global scale. At the height of colonialism one could say that
the function of social order was almost entirely globalized: the colonial
powers maintained order throughout their empires – or tried to at
least, and only the non-colonized areas were outside of the scope of
this global function of order. Few countries, if any, escaped the domin-
ance and intrusion of the colonial powers but some were never fully
colonized in the formal sense (China, Thailand/Siam, Iran, Ethiopia,
Afghanistan and Morocco). Furthermore, the effective colonization of
Central Africa, the last frontier of the European empires, took place in
the late nineteenth century, more than 100 years after the first nation
(USA) broke out of the colonial order, and half a century after the
independence of most of South America. Similarly, what marks
the present age is the globalization of state functions from the basis
of a complete division of the globe into formally sovereign nation-
states, but this mode of globalization began before the division of the
world into nation-states was completed. The first intergovernmental
organization created to perform parts of a global persistence function –
the International Telegraph Union – was created in 1865, the last Euro-
pean colonial empire of some significance, the Portuguese possessions
in Africa, broke up in 1975. A simple unilinear historic account is
not possible because of the lack of synchronicity that always marks
historical developments, but did so more profoundly in earlier more
heterogeneous stages of world history.
The Persistence Function in Contemporary World Society 121
1 The maintenance of order
Maintenance of the social order denotes the aspect of the persistence

function that is concerned with the actual or potential use of force to
secure compliance with social norms and maintain social peace, i.e.
to avoid, fight and suppress crime and violent disruptions of the order.
Domestically this points to the law enforcement work of police forces,
whereas in the international realm the question of the social order is of a
different nature, involving military forces and the possibility and reality
of armed conflict, including large-scale war. In the context of the global
persistence function both components must be included, but the latter
requires a clarifying conceptual remark.
Since the creation of the European colonial empires great power
rivalries, the balance of power and occasional wars, combined with the
strong’s disciplining of the weak, have constituted a global mechanism
that cynically can be interpreted as a component in a global persistence
function. It does represent, after all, the use of coercive force to maintain
social order, defined as the order of a world divided between colonial
powers. In this cynical view, ultimately the breakdown into major war
and large-scale destruction is merely an element in the ongoing securing
of order in the international system. In contrast to this cynical view, it is
unsatisfactory to conceive of a persistence function that is not somehow
related to basic questions of human survival. Therefore, in the inter-
national realm I prefer to reserve the category of maintaining social
order for denoting activities that are directed towards the limitation
and prevention of armed conflicts, in other words, efforts to secure
peace.
Historically, movement in the direction of internationalization and
globalization of this aspect of statehood can be found in the stories of
the European concert of the nineteenth century, in the ill-fated League
of Nations attempt to create a global collective security system, and in
the stronger formal expression in the United Nations covenant after
World War II. When the latter foundered on the antagonisms of the
Cold War, the balance of power and deterrence became the dominant
mechanism, i.e. a variety of anarchy, although over the years supple-
mented with arms control and arms limitations mechanisms between
the great powers, the non-proliferation treaty, and other arrangements
of a similar nature. After the end of this fundamental cleavage in world
politics the world has seen some renewed movement towards a global
function of order.
The Gulf War (1990–1) to repel Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was the first
major departure in this regard. Under a mandate from the United
Nations’ Security Council an American-led ‘coalition of the willing’
swiftly defeated Saddam Hussein’s army, leading to an armistice that
also was sanctioned by the Security Council. This was in marked con-
trast to the situation during the Cold War: it was the first time the UN
acted in accordance with the collective security provisions of the Char-
ter. The terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 also prompted a decisive
and forceful intervention from an American-led coalition, again with
UN approval.
The 1990s saw several cases of humanitarian intervention in intrastate
wars. Some of these were mandated by the United Nation’s Security
Council: NATO’s intervention in Bosnia in 1993, the aborted American
intervention in Somalia in 1992, the French-led intervention in Rwanda
in 1994 and the Australian intervention in East Timor in 1999. In Haiti,
the Security Council in 1994 sanctioned an armed intervention to be
conducted by American forces to effect a restoration of democracy, but
in this case the threat was enough to achieve the desired outcome. Other
cases were not formally sanctioned by the Security Council according to
legal opinion but participants claimed to be covered by Security Council
resolutions. This was the situation in the American–British enforcement
of ‘no-fly zones’ in Iraq to stop the oppression of the Kurds in northern
Iraq, and in NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in Yugoslavia in 1998. The
ECOWAS (Economic Organization of West African States) intervention
in the civil war in Liberia in 1990 had no UN mandate, but was approved
afterwards by the Security Council (DUPI 1999b; see also Kaldor 2001;
Sisk 2001).
In addition to these events, there have also been changes in the global
organization of military power. NATO has expanded its membership
and its remit, discussing new ‘out of area responsibilities’, meaning
that an alliance that was born with a regional defensive task, may now
assume wider international responsibilities, while the US-led network of
military alliances elsewhere that include Australia, New Zealand, Japan,
Taiwan and South Korea is still in existence. More significantly, in the
NATO–Russia relationship cooperation has been growing, with a formal-
ized agreement reached in the summer of 2002. This could turn out to
be just a temporary affair, an opportunistically motivated temporary
easing of great-power rivalry that, according to the realist world view,
is the basic, enduring and defining feature of world politics. It might,
however, turn out to be what the International Herald Tribune called ‘the
foundation for a genuine partnership of old enemies on a profound
range of issues’ (IHT 2002, p. 5), such a partnership being made possible
by the fact that Russia now has accepted the fundamental principles of
the Western world order, namely market economy and democracy.
These developments are steps in the direction of what Mary Kaldor
called a new ‘cosmopolitan approach’ to international security
(Kaldor 2001), i.e. towards a broader consensus about fundamental
principles of legitimacy on which the international order is (to be)
built. Importantly, there are two centres of gravity in this process: the
Security Council and the US-led system of military alliances, as evi-
denced by the shifting relations between armed intervention and UN
mandates. The system of alliances resembles in Barry Buzan’s termin-
ology (Buzan 1991) a growing security community centred on NATO
and the US, and this security community, corresponding more or less to
what Shaw called the ‘global layer of state’ (Shaw 2000, pp. 213ff) has
shown a capacity for and willingness to defend the international order
against aggression, intrastate war and terrorism, and is engaged in main-
taining order around the world. Undoubtedly this community – the
only real contender for the function as global policeman in the military
sense of the expression – is US led, dominated by great powers and not
always capable of reaching agreement and acting in concert. It also
stands in an uneasy and asymmetrical relation to the UN system: the
latter cannot function without the former’s approval and – in most cases
– participation, while the former can function – and has done – without
the formal acceptance of the latter. There is thus a serious tension
between contending principles of legitimacy concerning the use of
military power to maintain order in the present world order, showing
the limitations of globalization of this aspect of statehood. Still, the
efforts taken by the US and other great powers to obtain UN backing
in these cases is demonstrating the power of the norms of universality
associated with the UN.
This mixed, but basically positive picture must be counter-balanced
with a few observations that point in different directions. Regional arms
races continue several places, including the nuclear competition be-
tween India and Pakistan, and the situation in Kashmir is not suscep-
tible to outside intervention. Classical deterrence plays a role towards
China and North Korea, and the old pattern of great powers unilaterally
‘policing’ their colonial empires and informal spheres of influence is still
in evidence, for instance, in Chechnya; it would be wrong to expect that
the world has seen the end of it.
In conclusion, however, although the picture is mixed, what
Barry Buzan called ‘the maturing of anarchy’ (Buzan 1991) has taken
significant steps forward since the end of the Cold War. The resulting
system is not global, and it is not effective, but it is more effective and
more global than in any earlier period. The use of military force by great
powers and indeed most states is more circumscribed (but not con-
trolled) by international norms than before. There is now a global
system that is concerned with armed conflicts all over the world, that
has grown more able to reach decisions because of growing consensus
among key players and institutional unification (formal institutional-
ization, coordination mechanisms), and that has an enhanced capacity
for intervention.
I turn now to the second traditional aspect of state coercion, this one
traditionally domestic in essence, namely law enforcement. In this area
there also have been noticeable developments, which, as in so many
other cases, can be traced back in history but still show a demonstrable
intensification in the last decades. Based on Phil Williams’ survey
(Williams 2001), here is a brief summery of important developments.
Formal international police cooperation can be dated back at least to
the creation of Interpol in 1923. This ‘policemen’s club’ serves several
purposes and has developed considerably over the years. It is concerned
with exchange of information, requests for arrests with a view to extra-
dition, circulation of information about criminals, corpses, missing per-
sons, stolen property; in recent years it has enhanced its infrastructure –
using computerized exchange of information, etc., which can be of great
help in international investigations – and has grown into a permanent
forum for exchange of information and mutual learning on the tech-
niques of police work. It still, according to Williams, has a somewhat
informal ‘clubby’ atmosphere, which makes it rather weak as an organ-
ized force – in no way does it resemble a genuine international police
force – but which is also an advantage since the Interpol benefits from
and contributes to the professional trust policemen have in one another.
This club nature probably makes it an important facilitator of cooper-
ation between national police forces.
Along with Interpol the little-known World Customs Organization
(WCO) deserves mentioning. WCO is the informal working name for
the Customs Cooperation Council, created in 1952, which aside from its
main task of cooperation in matters relating to customs procedures also
has developed a role in cooperation in combating smuggling, which has
made it a significant player in the battle against the drug trade, traffick-
ing in humans and trade in endangered species.
The strengthening of Interpol and the WCO is, however, only one
part of the picture. Another is the cooperative response by a significant
number of states to the rise of transnational organized crime. This

phenomenon also has a long history, but there have been ‘very real
increases in the phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s’ (Williams 2001,
p. 109). The drug trade, trafficking in women and children, trade in
illicit or stolen goods (arms, endangered species, luxury cars, stolen
works of art, smuggling of liqueur and cigarettes from low-tax to high-
tax jurisdictions, counterfeited trade mark or copyright-protected goods
and so on) and, associated with all of these, money laundering on an
international scale are familiar to any news consumer. It is worth
quoting the major causes outlined by Williams:
1. Globalization of trade, technology, communications, transportation,

information and financial systems provides new opportunities for
criminal enterprises to operate across national borders.
2. Large population movements have created international ethnic
networks that have been exploited by criminal elements from
various nationalities, so that in addition to the traditional Italian
mafias, we now have Colombian, Turkish, Russian, Nigerian and
Gambian mafias, gangs, networks and cartels operating across
borders.
3. The ease and speed of moving money electronically around the world
have facilitated transnational crime.
4. Markets have grown, especially drug markets but also the markets for
women, child pornography, luxury cars, etc.
5. Price differentials between jurisdictions encourage smuggling.
(Summarized from Williams 2001)
Clearly most of these factors are directly related to globalization. The

rise of transnational crime has prompted a series of international initia-
tives to coordinate and strengthen law enforcement efforts. These have
been centred on the UN system, on G-7 initiatives and on the stand-
alone World Ministerial Conference on Organized Transnational Crime
in 1994 and the ensuing work on an international convention on the
subject.
UN efforts on this regard began already in 1975 with the Fifth UN
Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders.
In 1988 the organization adopted the UN Convention Against Illicit
Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, also known as
the Vienna Convention on Drugs and Money Laundering. In 1990 the
General Assembly adopted Model Treaties on Extradition and on Mutual
Assistance in Criminal Matters to facilitate cooperation between
national law enforcement agencies, followed the next year by the cre-
ation of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
under ECOSOC auspices.
In 1989, the G-7 initiated the Financial Action Task Force (FATF),
focusing on cooperation to combat money laundering and tracing the
financial activities of criminal organizations. Membership was not con-
fined to the G-7 countries; the task force had 26 original members and
has subsequently expanded its membership. In 1990 the FATF issued 40
recommendations to national authorities, which were further
strengthened in 1996. These recommendations do not have the strength
of a formal convention, but in Williams’ assessment they have
provided a benchmark for the member states . . . and have provided

the basis on which FATF subsequently developed a threefold role . . . to
monitor the progress of member states . . . to review money laundering
trends, techniques, and countermeasures . . . to extend the adoption
and implementation of the FATF recommendations in an attempt to
build a global anti-money laundering network.
(2001, pp. 123–4)
In 1999–2000 the FATF formulated criteria for identifying ‘non-coopera-

tive jurisdictions’, named 15 jurisdictions as having serious systemic
problems (several small Caribbean and Pacific states, and Israel, Leba-
non, Liechtenstein, Philippines, Russia), and began to take action to
compel these jurisdictions to change and strengthen their regulatory
regimes (Williams 2001, p. 124).
In July 1994 the G-7 summit addressed the issue again in support of
the World Ministerial Conference on Organized Transnational Crime in
November of the same year, a conference that drew 2,000 participants
from 142 national delegations and resulted in a declaration and action
plan. In 1995, the G-7 heads of state summit created a Senior Experts
Group on Transnational Organized Crime (the Lyon Group) that issued
40 recommendations that were endorsed at the G-7 Lyon summit in
June 1996. In the wake of these activities more serious efforts began,
initiated by Poland towards developing an international convention on
organized crime.
These brief empirical indicators suffice to substantiate that the fight
against crime, and especially against transnational crime, is becoming
internationalized through a process of intensified formal and informal
cooperation between national law enforcement agencies, strengthening
of the formal international organizations in the field (Interpol and the
World Customs Organization), the creation of new formal conventions

and at least one new institution, the FATF.
The fight against crime is still predominantly a national effort and
significant differences between the criminal codes of the separate juris-
dictions of the world persist. There has been no infringement on
national sovereignty in this area that is so close to the core of formal
statehood, the monopoly on legitimate use of violence. In the theoret-
ical perspective of uneven globalization of statehood, the maintenance
of social order remains a weakly developed global state function, but
enough steps have been taken towards international and global coordin-
ation in the area to merit the claim that it is not an empty category or a
negligible one. This should, furthermore, be related to the fact that there
is little reason to internationalize purely domestic police work, in other
words that in those areas of law enforcement where denationalization
has occurred, i.e. where the internationalization of crime has weakened
purely domestic efforts considerably, there has been a fairly rapid and –
judged at face value – fairly strong development of international and
quasi-global efforts.
A final comment on the campaign against the al-Qaeda network
after 11 September 2001. Although this campaign has relied heavily on
the transborder use of military forces – the US-led intervention in
Afghanistan – and has included the toppling of a national government,
it had at its core a fight against a non-state actor that is defined as a
criminal organization and against the Taliban government that was not
generally recognized as legitimate. The campaign was conducted with a
mixture of military, traditional law enforcement, diplomatic and other
means, and thus displayed a convergence of military and police tasks. It
is, in other words, a case of the military’s role turning into international
crime-fighting, while at the same time the police role is international-
ized. Similar patterns are much in evidence in American-led campaigns
against drug production and trafficking in Latin America and the
Caribbean, and this pattern may be paradigmatic for a world in which
interstate wars are becoming remote possibilities and replaced by a global
policing function in an increasingly homogeneous world social order.
2 Preconditions for a capitalist market economy
This aspect of the persistence function contains several subfunctions,

each of which can be further divided into distinct tasks and policies. As
should be expected they are among the most developed at the global
level, covered by strong regimes and other kinds of arrangements. They
also are among the most researched and well described in the literature,
hence I will just recount them briefly, focusing on the most salient
features. The four subfunctions I will include are property rights, mon-
etary system, material infrastructure for transport and communication,
and standards of weights and measures.
Property rights
As pointed out by Braithwaite and Drahos, all legal systems around the
world accept some basic rules and regulations pertaining to the defin-
ition and protection of property rights without which a global market
economy could not work. There is ‘a total globalization of the notion
that property ought to be secure from theft or fraud at the hands of
other private citizens’ (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, p. 54), as also
argued in a preceding chapter. In addition to this there has been a strong
development of the legal preconditions for contract and exchange
across borders, concerning the ‘intangible instruments of trade’ in a
process that has featured governments, private associations and inter-
national organizations, in particular the International Chamber of
Commerce, the International Law Association, the International Insti-
tute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), created in 1924, the
League of Nations and the UN, in particular the UN Commission
on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), created in 1966. As a result,
several conventions have been developed over the twentieth century,
such as the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of
Goods from 1980, which replaced earlier Hague conventions, and the
Vienna Sales Convention from 1980.
Although significant differences between national commercial codes
and regulatory frameworks remain, these developments have gone a
long way towards a unification of the basic elements of the world’s
commercial codes, at minimum they have provided a secure, globally
recognized and accepted legal framework for international trade and
contracts. Concerning foreign direct investment, i.e. the protection of
property rights to production facilities in other jurisdictions, the situ-
ation is more complicated. Governments’ rights to nationalize foreign-
owned assets is still recognized, but the protection against arbitrary
confiscation and the right to adequate and swift compensation is also
generally secured through a dense network of bilateral investment treat-
ies, although not with total coverage. However, attempts to replace this
system with a strong and uniform global regime has turned out to be
much more controversial, as shown by the failed attempt to create a
Multilateral Agreement on Investment (Henderson 1999). It is, however,
doubtful whether this type of property right should be considered part of

a global persistence function, at least it does not hold the same central-
ity as basic protection of property rights. But the more internationalized
the world economy becomes, the more it gains in centrality. Finally, the
protection of intellectual property rights was strengthened considerably
– and there are good arguments behind the claim that it was
strengthened too much – through the 1994 agreement on Trade Related
Intellectual Property Rights (Sell 1999; Braithwaite and Drahos 2000;
Borras and Ougaard 2001).
In sum, although some aspects of property rights are insufficiently
protected according to some sections of the global business community,
there is no doubt that the legal preconditions for a capitalist market
economy in terms of property rights are firmly in place and protected by
strong national and international regimes. This aspect of the global
persistence function is firmly established.
The monetary system

A similar conclusion pertains to the international monetary system.
This result should be seen against the backdrop of a long history of
learning and experimentation, nationally as well as internationally,
marked by recurrent financial crises and occasional breakdowns of sta-
bility. At the core of this story is a movement from the mystification of
gold (or other precious metals) as universal representation of value
based on its intrinsic worth, to the understanding that money is a
socially constructed symbol that entitles the holder to a specific tiny
fraction of the social product, which in turn requires that money is
controlled by reliable and trusted institutions. Major stages in this evo-
lution were the creation of paper money based on the merchants’ bills of
exchange, and the financial revolution of the nineteenth century where
modern banking and the ability to expand credit arbitrarily was created,
leading to the establishment of institutions to stabilize and regulate this
at the national levels: central banks with a monopoly on the issuance of
paper money and control of the money supply, and systems of regula-
tion and oversight of private banks’ creation of credit. Internationally
the often told story (Keohane and Nye 1977; Strange 1976; Pauly 1997)
is about the long learning journey from a gold-based international
monetary system, centred on the Bank of England, which broke down
in the 1930s and was replaced by the first Bretton Woods system
that combined paper systems at the national level with gold backing
internationally, to the present completely paper-based global system
dating from the mid-1970s. It is also the story of the decline of British
hegemony, the inter-war interregnum, and two stages of American

monetary hegemony, marked by cooperation, disagreements, occa-
sional sharp conflicts and quite a few monetary and currency crises. In
the present perspective, however, what concern us are the functions of
the system as it has developed.
The system has two institutional anchors: the International Monetary
Fund and the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. The IMF serves
as lender of last resort, and is the only international institution that can
actually ‘print money’ in the form of the issuance of Special Drawing
Rights (SDRs). Furthermore, through its highly developed system of
information gathering, exchange and publication and the surveillance
of member countries’ economies, it also has the capacity to discipline
the monetary policies of members through peer pressure and more
directly through conditioning credits on specified policy changes.
Recent examples in the wake of the financial crises in Asia, Russia and
Latin America have been highly publicized, but previous examples also
include England and Italy (Strange 1976).
The BIS is a bank, based in Switzerland and owned mainly by 41
central banks that own shares; it has 120 national monetary institutions
– i.e. central banks – as customers and an expanding membership
(BIS 1997; McGovern 1995). It also has some of the privileges of an
international organization, such as diplomatic immunity. In the present
context, its key function is to connect the world’s central banks to
each other, allowing for day-to-day clearing and swift exchange from
one currency to another. As such it maintains a vital infrastructure
in the world economy, the smooth routine operation of which is more
or less taken for granted. In addition to this it is an important venue for
contact and information exchange between central bankers.
Finally the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, established in
1974 and formally separate but located at the BIS in Basel, deserves
mentioning. This is the institutional core of international cooperation
in the area of supervision and regulation of the financial sector, and it
was created in response to spectacular bank failures, attributed to insuf-
ficient supervision of transnational banks. The institution has produced,
among other things, the Basel Concordat from 1983 which established
the ‘principle of consolidated supervision’, ‘The Basel Accord on Credit
Risk’ from 1988 and the ‘Minimum Standards for Supervision of Inter-
national Banking Groups and their Cross-Border Establishments’ from
1992. In the wake of the financial crises of the late 1990s, the Basel
Committee, in cooperation with other international institutions, took
steps to further strengthen the supervision of private financial institu-

tions around the world.
Material infrastructure
The building of roads, bridges, canals, harbours, marking of waterways
and the establishment of postal services and other means of communi-
cation has been among the most important tasks undertaken by states
for centuries. To the extent that they are still carried out by public
authorities they are overwhelmingly the responsibility of national gov-
ernments in today’s world. But a vast system of international agree-
ments, treaties and organizations has been developed to facilitate the
secure movement of persons, goods and information across the world.
They cover land (road and rail), sea and air transport, postal services and
telecommunications (Zacher and Sutton 1996; Drake 2001; Braithwaite
and Drahos 2000). The actual physical infrastructure is rarely produced
and maintained through international efforts – the operation of com-
munications satellites by the Intelsat corporation perhaps being the
only case (Drake 2001, Zacher and Sutton 1996). But international
agreements and organizations, beginning with the International Tele-
graph Union, have solved a number of essential problems concerning
interconnectivity, resolution of conflicts concerning scarce resources
such as the radio frequency spectrum and the geostationary orbit for
satellites, reconciling the right to passage with national sovereignty, and
ensuring safety, for instance through international standards for air
traffic, safety at sea and so on.
Standards
International standards of weights and measures are so much a part of
everyday life that they are often taken completely for granted. Every-
body knows that one mile equals 1.6 kilometres (1.6093 to be exact) and
if they forget, they know how to find the information from a trusted
source. But consider the system behind it. Until more sophisticated
methods became available, the ‘normal metre’ was a platinum rod,
kept in a secure vault in Paris at a fixed temperature. The distance
between two precise marks on this rod defined the metre, and national
authorities elsewhere would calibrate their metres by comparing them
physically to the one in Paris. Next, a set of definitions fixed measures of
volume and weight, for instance that one litre equals a cube of
0.10.10.1 metres, and that one kilogram is the weight of one litre of
water at a specified temperature. For countries outside the ‘metric
world’, a set of internationally recognized equivalents stipulated, for

instance, that one UK inch equals 0.0254 metres, that in the petroleum
industry one barrel of oil contains 42 US gallons equal to 159.1 litres and
so on. Only on the basis of such a system is it possible to make exact
specifications and comparisons of quantities of products and goods,
which, along with the accurate comparison of prices allowed by stable
monetary systems and known exchange ranges, is a necessity for the
functioning of competitive markets.
The global standardization of basic weights and measures, in this
sense, was an early achievement of global governance; it is easy to
underestimate its importance today. But international standardization
has expanded enormously since these basic measurements and equiva-
lents were fixed and it now covers an increasing number and variety of
product and process specifications. Standardizing work is done by a
number of organizations involving public as well as private entities.
Probably the most important one at the global level is ISO, the Inter-
national Organisation for Standardization (the name is not an acronym,
it is derived from the Greek word ‘iso’, meaning ‘same’), which has
national standards institutions as its members, who, in turn, represent
a mixture of private, public and mixed organizations. To give an impres-
sion of how extensive this work is, ISO has produced more than 9,000
international standards covering more than 170,000 written pages, and
its work is organized by about 2,700 ‘technical committees’, whose
members represent business, governments and international organiza-
tions (ISO 1997). Furthermore, ISO is not alone: according to ISO there
are at least 50 other international standardizing bodies, such as the joint
WHO–FAO Codex Alimentarius commission that focuses on standards
for food products (ISO/IEC 1991).
3 Stabilizing the business cycle
Macro-economic policies, in particular fiscal and monetary policy,

appear on most of the lists of state functions presented in the previous
chapter. Evidently it is among the key tasks facing any government of
a modern capitalist state to use these policy tools to smoothe cyclical
swings, soften downturns and avoid inflationary overheating. But
it is also evidently a contentious policy area, politically and theoretic-
ally. Politically there are conflicts about priorities: should employment,
price stability, or long-term economic growth be the overriding
goal; and theoretically there has been much disagreement among
economists about the efficacy of various policy instruments and the
consequences of different policy mixes for growth, welfare, inflation

and employment.
This situation calls for a certain cautiousness when macro-economic
policy is treated theoretically as part of the state function of persistence.
The realities of modern economies – developed financial sectors with
central banks, large state budgets and the possibility for deficit financing
– make macro-economic policies unavoidable; they are a structural
feature of a developed political economy and cannot be escaped by
any state. But the specific goals to be pursued are inherently contended,
making it impossible to define them theoretically with any precision in
an ahistoric manner. From the perspective of the reproduction of a
capitalist economy that has an in-built growth imperative, theoretical
reasoning leads to the identification of the pursuit of long-term stable
growth as the central task for this modality of the persistence function.
This is the capital-logic, rational essence. But, first, there is much uncer-
tainty among policy-makers in governments, ministries of finance and
central banks about the best ways to achieve this, the advances of
economic theory, analysis, modelling and forecasting notwithstanding.
Second, in pursuing this goal other concerns such as price stability and
employment can be factored in to varying degrees depending on polit-
ical choices that ultimately reflect the strength of various social forces.
The history of macro-economic policy-making at the national level,
therefore, is on one hand a history of learning and experimenting,
finding out what works and what doesn’t, and on the other hand a
history of sometimes severe political conflict and of shifting balances
of social forces.
When seen in an international perspective, the key levers of macro-
economic policy are still firmly in the hands of national governments
and central banks. The IMF has a limited ability to influence the world
economy’s money supply through the issuance of credit lines and SDRs,
but, aside from this, fiscal deficits and surpluses, money supply and
interest rates are controlled by national authorities. What has evolved,
however, is an international system for macro-economic coordination
centred on the IMF and the G-7 leading industrial economies. The
system can be traced back to the World Economic conferences in the
1920s and 1930s and developed further during the first Bretton Woods
system, where the system of fixed exchange rate linked to the dollar
and the dollar-gold standard required nations to seek coordination to
make the system work and provided a formal mechanism for the process
in the IMF meetings. This system broke down, however, giving way
to the system of floating, market-determined exchange rates. In this
situation, policy-making authorities have been faced with the problem

that the only policy instruments that can influence exchange rates
(fiscal and, in particular, monetary policies) are the same as those re-
quired to control domestic growth, employment and inflation. There
are, therefore, too many policy goals in relation to the available number
of instruments, hence the incentive to strive for international coordin-
ation. Shortly after the shift to floating exchange rates, on a French
initiative, the informal G-7 coordination mechanism was created. This
has evolved into a firmly institutionalized system with regular, annual
summits between heads of states, ministers of finance and others, and it
has expanded its scope of activities considerably over the years, as
described in Chapter 5.
Given the powerful influence of these seven economies on the entire
world economy, in principle this system could work as the global macro-
economic leadership, negotiating agreements on member governments’
fiscal stances and interest rate policies, coordinated with a view of the
stable expansion of the world economy in mind. In reality the results
are much more modest and present at best a halfway house. There
have been examples of successful policy coordination, but there have
also been situations where it proved impossible to reach agreement,
even in spite of shared recognition that coordinated efforts would be
highly beneficial (Webb 1995). Such cases, by the way, are vivid illustra-
tions of the continued strength of relative gains considerations in a
world economy in which competition between territorially delimited
national economic systems is one of the important structurally defined
processes.
Formally – to the extent it is formalized – the system works on the
basis of negotiation and consensus, meaning that coordination is only
possible when all the major players see it as their interest to coordinate.
In practice, this seems to mean that the US has a veto, and that any
coalition involving at least two of the other major players also has the
power to block. There have been recurrent calls to develop it into a
firmer system with some compliance measures, especially from the
academic community (e.g. Bergsten and Henning 1996), but so far,
such calls have gone unheeded and the chances that they become reality
seem rather small, bordering on the negligible. This aspect of the per-
sistence function, then, is only weakly globalized, but an institutional
infrastructure is in place that would allow stronger globalization.
There is, however, another side of the story. Since the mid-1970s a
fairly strong broad consensus on macro-economic strategy has been
developed in the industrialized world, and efforts have been made to
export it to the rest of the world. This strategy was much helped by the
political rise of the new right – Reagan and Thatcher – and the long
historical march towards monetary unification of Europe. But it also
depended on analytical work and policy discussions in such inter-
national fora as the IMF and the OECD as recounted in Chapter 5,
section 5. Beginning with the McCracken paper, a broad strategy of
‘sustainable fiscal deficits’, low inflation, acceptance of ‘natural un-
employment’, and structural reform, all with a view to promote long-
term economic growth was developed, became widely accepted and
regularly reaffirmed by the G-7 and OECD members. There are no
formal compliance mechanisms, but in reality it seems that the combin-
ation of peer review and peer pressure in international fora, along with
the strong position of the intellectual underpinnings for this strategy in
the epistemic community of economic experts and advisors have
proven sufficient to secure widespread compliance. In other words,
whereas strong mechanisms for fine-tuning interest rates, deficits and
money supply in internationally coordinated fashions have not been
created, a seemingly robust broad macro-economic strategy has success-
fully been developed and implemented among a large number of coun-
tries, including all major economies.
In conclusion, the capacity for developing and implementing a broad
macro-economic strategy of global scope has been demonstrated over
the last decades, although it remains to be seen how robust this system is
if faced with strong political challenges or severe economic downturns.
The coordination of short-term anti-cyclical policies, on the other hand,
is weakly developed and works only when the major powers’ interests
and policy stances converge. It would be far from the truth to say that
global macro-economic policy-making is non-existent, but the system is
fractured and strongly marked by the dispersion of authority among
nation-states.
4 Expansion to less developed areas
What is now generally known as development assistance and develop-

ment cooperation has its roots in the efforts of colonial powers to
develop their economies economically, and in the ‘good neighbour
policy’ towards South America initiated by the US. After World War II
and decolonization, the efforts of colonial powers reappeared in the
guise of international development assistance, the US stepped up its
efforts considerably, other, smaller northern countries like Scandinavia
entered the donor’s club, and international institutions like the UN
system and, in particular, the World Bank and regional development

banks became important players in the field (this summary description
is based on Degnbol-Martinussen and Engberg-Pedersen 1999).
Over the years this developed into a highly sophisticated policy field,
covering a wide range of instruments – loans, grants, technical assist-
ance, educational assistance, etc., across a broad range of sectors: indus-
try, agriculture, infrastructure, health, public administration and so on.
There have been significant shifts in the development philosophies and
strategies pursued, from an early heavy emphasis on infrastructure pro-
jects, over a period where a basic needs strategy was at the forefront
of policy debates, to the period of market emphasis and structural
reform, often called the Washington Consensus, to the most recent
stage where there is much focus on poverty alleviation and a more
sober assessment of the role of governmental institutions. These devel-
opments have partly been the result of experimentation and learning,
for instance mediated through the work of the Development Assistance
Committee of the OECD, and through the research work at the
World Bank. Partly, it has been a consequence of changing political
orientations in donor countries, where the market fundamentalism of
the 1980s and early 1990s, in particular, seem to have been associated
with neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. Partly, they have been a
response to changing circumstances in the developing world, the
world of the 1990s is, after all, drastically different from the world of
the 1950s. Some developing countries have advanced considerably in
ways that change their need for assistance completely, while others have
been further marginalized in spite of sustained assistance efforts, leading
to fundamental questions being asked about proper ways to promote
development.
There are several reasons for these developments. One main reason
is the basic inherent expansionary drive of capitalism, sending com-
panies abroad in the pursuit of raw materials, markets and investment
opportunities, thus creating an incentive for the development of ‘under-
developed’ countries, i.e. those geographical areas of the world where
industrial capitalism has not yet gained a solid foothold. Another main
factor is geopolitical, in particular the strategic competition between
East and West during the Cold War, but also strategic interests involving
oil and the conflict in the Middle East and rivalry between the capitalist
powers. A genuine philanthropic mindset in the former colonials
powers may also have played a role in the political equations in those
countries, as has the fact that powerful lobbies have consolidated them-
selves in the polities of donor countries. For the present purposes,

however, we focus on the first two groups of reasons.
Those two reasons, economic and geostrategic, amount to another way
of saying that the promotion and facilitation of economic growth in
the undeveloped periphery were an important strategic requirement for
the persistence and continued viability of the international economic
order, and in this sense, parts of a function of persistence. The policy
debates surrounding these efforts have been as sharp as any, and much
criticism has been directed against official development policies and
programmes. Much has been said, and much of it justified, about the
way in which the developmental policies of rich donor countries and
international institutions such as the World Bank and various UN agen-
cies operate in accordance with security concerns or dominant economic
interests, whether those of the leading international banks, the trans-
national corporations, or domestic industry or agriculture in the North.
But in spite of this and throughout all such changes in policy
orientation, development assistance has been a permanent fixture
of the global polity and, cumulated, a substantial amount of resources
have been transferred from North to South under this heading. There
may be better ways of promoting economic development, and the
social costs associated with dominant development strategies may
often be unnecessary high. Still, for almost half a century the govern-
ments of the developed capitalist countries have engaged in activities
to promote economic growth in much of the world in situations where
market forces alone could not effectuate this. Through the conceptual
lens of state theory, this amounts to discharging the social function
of creating conditions for expanded reproduction of capitalist relations
of production, thus being a modality of the function of persistence. ‘The
imperial state’ (Petras and Morley 1981) is not only concerned with
domination and the ‘development of underdevelopment’ as the more
radical dependency theorists would have it (Amin 1973), it is also con-
cerned with societal reproduction, growth and development.
5 Reproduction and qualification of the

labour force and population
There is more to Northern policies towards the South than merely

promotion of economic growth narrowly conceived. Humanitarian as-
sistance, poverty alleviation, the fight against diseases, promotion of
basic health and education and other aspects of basic human needs are
also parts of the picture.
Relating such efforts to the theoretical framework of state functions is

not quite straightforward. It is also possible to argue that, for instance,
the heightened attention to poverty in contemporary official discourses
and development strategies merely reflects a recognition that widespread
poverty and endemic diseases now represent significant barriers to trade,
or at least to the continued expansion of trade and economic growth. If
economic growth is to pick up in Africa – ‘one of the world’s largest
basically untapped markets’, according to former President Bill Clinton
(US President 1999, p. 46) – then something must be done to reduce
poverty, improve health and expand education in that continent.
But the activities also fit the category of securing reproduction of the
(actual and potential) labour force, and the category of societal persist-
ence, when the latter is taken to include the basic survival of the popu-
lation. Thus they represent a deepening of a global societal function of
persistence, in which the survival and basic human needs of all of
humankind is gaining prevalence as a political goal that cannot be
ignored. The rise of new theoretical and political discourses on ‘global
public goods’ (Kaul, Grunberg and Stern 1999; Reinicke 1998) and
‘global social policy’ (Deacon 1997) corresponds to this understanding.
They presuppose exactly that there is a ‘global public’ – humanity in
toto, including future generations according to Kaul, Grunberg and
Stern – that has a legitimate claim on survival and well-being that
should be addressed politically.
This is, in other words, a case where it is hard to separate politics from
theory. To accept an understanding of the persistence function that does
not take the preciousness of every single human life on earth as its
fundamental starting point is difficult, but the discomforting reality is
that societies have been and still are able to function quite effectively in
disregard of this principle. Only as a result of a protracted political and
ideational struggle, combined with structural changes in world econ-
omy and politics, is a world order based on this principle beginning to
appear to be within reach.
Consequently, if this is accepted as part of an essential function of
persistence, it must be one in which the distinction between an essential
core and a politically contingent band of variation around it is required.
This is almost graphically illustrated by the case of international health
policy, as analysed by Octavio Gómez-Dantés (2001).
Like so many others, this policy area has a long history, dating back at
least a century to international agreements on the fight against infec-
tious diseases (Cooper 1989), prompted by the recognition that there
quite simply is no other way to prevent the spread of such diseases
except international cooperation. Of course, the international exchange

of scientific and practical information and experiences concerning the
treatment of every kind of illness is as old as the medical profession.
In the contemporary global health regime, the World Health Organ-
ization is central, but the World Bank has also become an important
player, providing policy leadership backed by significant funding
since the early 1990s, and in some observers’ eyes relegating the WHO
to a secondary position (Gómez-Dantés 2001, p. 400). Furthermore,
the ‘health care arena is crowded with a number of other specialized
UN agencies and programs’ (Gómez-Dantés 2001, p. 409), including
UNAIDS, UNICEF, FAO, UNESCO and some significant NGOs. Among
the major tasks pursued by the regime are malaria eradication, the fight
against smallpox, the expanded programme on immunization, the
Action Programme on Essential Drugs and Vaccines and, more recently,
the enormously demanding fight against the AIDS epidemic that has
assumed almost catastrophic dimensions in parts of the developing
world (Gómez-Dantés 2001, pp. 401ff.).
Gómez-Dantés describes the current situation in the health regime in
the following terms:
[There] is little consensus about what the essential functions of inter-

national health organizations should be. In fact there seems to be a
broad spectrum of views . . . At one end of the spectrum we find what
may be called the ‘essentialist’ point of view, which identifies func-
tions in which international organizations have a comparative ad-
vantage over national entities, because it is more cost-effective for
these organizations to carry them out and because these functions
fall outside the sovereignty of any one nation.
(Gómez-Dantés 2001, p. 409)
These functions include the production of international public goods,

such as research and development, compiling information and data-
bases, setting norms and standards, and building consensus on health
policy issues. They also include the management of international
health threats (2001, p. 409).
Gómez-Dantés then continues to describe the other end of the spec-
trum as ‘those who desire a broader, more activist role for international
health organizations’ (2001, p. 409). This role includes transferring
resources from the rich to poor countries, advocating certain national
health policies, regulating transnational corporations and more. And in
the middle are those who want international organizations to provide
the core functions – those identified by the essentialists – and some

additional tasks, called ‘supportive functions’. The latter are ‘seen as
temporary obligations of the international community’ and they in-
clude ‘the protection of the dispossessed – especially in countries
where state structures are weak – and the mobilization of resources
such as knowledge and money to support countries with special devel-
opmental needs’ (2001, p. 410).
This provides a succinct illustration of the notion of a set of core
functions that must be solved in order to secure societal persistence
and cannot be solved at the national level, and a wider contested band
of activities that reflect different political perspectives of what should
be the acceptable pattern of societal persistence. We do have, in other
words, in the global health regime an instance of that modality of
the global persistence function that pertains to the reproduction of
the labour force and the population in general, but we also clearly
see the politically contested nature of this – the degree to which the
provision of basic health to the poor in developing countries is a global
responsibility is an open and contested question. As the world becomes
increasingly integrated, one may hope that it becomes increasingly
difficult to reject the argument that the elementary survival of all of
mankind is an inescapable global responsibility.
This discussion of health covers only one aspect of what may be
included in the category of securing the reproduction and qualification
of labour and population. Education, sanitation, various social policies
could also be included, and are treated in for instance Deacon (1997)
and Kaul, Grunberg and Stern (1999). The conclusions for these areas
may well be different, judged from the analyses in these two works
health is among the more developed aspects of this function. But
the health case is sufficient to support the claim that globalization
of the core of this function is a reality, and that there is a significant
international political debate about the extent to which this function
should be developed. In this sense the situation in global health resem-
bles what goes on in national polities: an uncontested set of core func-
tions and a wider band of contestation.
6 Environmental protection
In economic theory environmental protection is generally accepted as a

prime case of government intervention, necessitated by market failures
of the negative externalities variety. In Marxist and Marxist-inspired
critical theories of the state, however, treatments of this type of state
activity are rather rare, as evidenced by the examples given earlier in this
chapter. This is probably partly due to the fact that environmental
policies were a relatively new phenomenon in the heyday of Western
Marxism in the 1970s, when Poulantzas and others wrote their major
contributions. And partly it may be because many critical theorists
found it (and still find it) politically difficult to accept that capitalist
states can be environmentally responsible. Logically, however, there is
little theoretical support for this scepticism, and empirically it has been
refuted by facts, at least to some extent. Let us briefly consider the
theoretical arguments.
The case for the existence of negative environmental externalities is
made strongly enough and often enough to make further discussion
unnecessary. The question is whether the negative externalities are
sufficiently grave to warrant the inclusion of offsetting policies in the
category of the persistence function. The answer to this must be affirma-
tive to the extent that environmental problems pose threats to human
health and life and to economic resources and viability. This argument,
however, leads directly to one of the important characteristic features of
the issue area, namely that there often are uncertainties involved in
assessing the nature and extent of threats, and that the cause-effect
relations in question are rarely directly observable but require scientific
analysis, particularly concerning transborder and global problems.
As a consequence, the results of environmental science, along with
the uncertainties that go with it, are critical elements in political pro-
cesses and in the theoretical reasoning concerning state functions. This
is inescapable, but it entails the danger of circular reasoning: when an
environmental problem is recognized as such by governments, it is
taken as proof that the scientific evidence is compelling, which in turn
is taken as an explanation of the government policy in question. To
break this dilemma, it is necessary to consider the conclusions reached
by environmental science on their own merits – a task that would be far
beyond the scope of this book, and the abilities of its writer. Suffice it to
say that I follow what seems to be the mainstream evaluation by out-
siders, namely that quite a number of environmental problems are real,
solidly documented by research, and pose real threats to health, popu-
lation and economic viability.
Environmental protection, then, after the sentimental and aesthetic
stage where it mainly was concerned with the preservation of beautiful
landscapes and fascinating animals, is very much a rational, science-
dependent and science-driven activity (Meyer et al. 1997) which lends it
some of its characteristic features. But when this is factored in, the
logical reasons for including it in the category of essential persistence

functions are compelling. In fact the notion of sustainability – as in
sustainable development – corresponds rather precisely to the notion of
persistence in a global and long-term, multigenerational perspective.
The rise of environmental politics and of discourses on sustainable
development is an expression of the growing consciousness that the
survival and well being of human kind in the longer term depend on
critical ecological balances that are vulnerable to society’s economic
activities (Meyer et al. 1997; Haas 2001). In the words of Peter M. Haas:
Substantively, environmental governance arrangements have be-

come increasingly ecological in form, heeding the ecological laws
espoused by environmental scientists and focusing on the sustain-
able management of ecosystems rather than containing threats to
environmental quality. The laws of man are increasingly based on
understandings of the laws of nature.
(Haas 2001, pp. 317–18)
The area is also one that has attracted much attention from regime
theorists and others (Haas, Keohane and Levy 1993; Paterson 1999).
Consequently there is much literature to draw on when considering the
extent of globalization in the area. For present purposes it suffices to
present some central observations and conclusions from Peter Haas, a
long-time observer and analyst of global environmental politics. He
writes
binding rules have been developed for most human activities

affecting environmental quality. Almost all areas of human eco-
nomic activity are now subject to at least one international environ-
mental accord, and most countries are bound by a number of
international environmental commitments.
(Haas 2001, p. 310)
Major milestones in this development were: the 1972 Conference on the

Human Environment that, among other things, led to the creation of the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP); the UN Conference
on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, adopting
the Rio Declaration (Agenda 21); and the creation of the UN Commis-
sion on Sustainable Development. What comes out of the Rioþ10 Con-
ference in Johannesburg in the summer of 2002 remains to be seen at
the time of writing. Haas further observes that ‘more than half of the
140-plus multilateral environmental treaties signed since 1920 have

been adopted since 1973’ (2001, p. 316), indicating a rather sharp in-
crease in international environmental activity in the last quarter of the
twentieth century.
On the character of this ensemble of environmental regimes, Haas
writes that ‘some regimes have been highly effective in protecting the
quality of the environment’, and that a number of achievements can be
attributed to international ‘regime influences over state actions’ (2001,
p. 319). Some improvements, however, must be explained by other
factors than international regimes, for instance by the fact that the inten-
sity of materials usage in modern industrial economies has declined, as
has the energy intensity (2001, p. 319). More importantly, not every
environmental problem has been addressed effectively by international
institutions and ‘gaps remain in the institutional structure for environ-
mental governance’ (2001, p. 319). The unsettledness and contended
nature of some major environmental problems are, at the time of writing,
very much in evidence in the Bush administration’s reluctance to engage
seriously with international efforts to address climate change. However,
when comparing with the time it took to reach the current stage of global
trade liberalization – four consecutive rounds of multilateral trade talks
spanning almost four decades and involving a net of around 20 years of
negotiations (Gilpin 1987; Croome 1995) – and considering the scientific
uncertainties involved, the unusually long time perspective, the com-
plexities of the issues and the strong element of relative gains consider-
ations involved, the record of the climate talks leading to the draft Kyoto
agreement does not look that bad. As complex international negotiations
go, the global climate talks have not fared badly.
In conclusion, limitations and setbacks notwithstanding we have
witnessed over the past century, and in particular its last quarter, the
rise of a global politics and global policies directed towards the environ-
mental sustainability of human society in its relation to nature. The
environmental aspect of the global function of persistence is among the
more developed.
7 Conclusion
This chapter examined the uneven globalization of the functional

aspects of statehood. The first aim was to demonstrate that the global
political superstructure has developed elements of a function of
persistence in relation to world society. Secondly, the purpose was to
give a more precise portrayal of this function and its asymmetrical
development across its modalities. The chapter demonstrated that there

has been significant globalization of several modalities of the function
of persistence, but unevenly so. It has been rather limited but not
entirely absent in the area of maintenance of social order, backed by
the nation-states’ monopoly on the legitimate use of violence; far more
developed concerning the securement of the basic preconditions for the
market economy; to some extent there are institutions and policies that
cater to the stabilization of the business cycle, but contingent on agree-
ment between the dominant states organized in G-7, and hence only
occasionally effective; and a range of activities underpin the expansion
of industrial capitalism to less developed areas. In the area of reproduc-
tion and qualification of the labour force and population, a distinction
was made between a core of uncontested activities that are strongly
globalized, and a broader contested band that testified to the political
nature of this and other state functions. And finally it was argued that
environmental sustainability has become one of the more developed
aspects of a global persistence function that cater to the shared interests
of humanity.
Two observations stand out. One is that the persistence function is
evidently more developed and stronger in areas that relate to the basic
preconditions for the continued reproduction and expansion of the
international economy; and more limited or embryonic in areas that
has to do with employment, health, and other aspects of human welfare.
The second and equally important observation, however, is that the
purposes served through globalized policies are not limited to the re-
quirements of the world’s economic system, the institutional underpin-
nings of the international capitalist economy. There are also significant
aspects of a function of persistence in relation to world society as a whole,
in relation to humankind. Thus the global political superstructure is not
only a globalization of the central features of the capitalist type of state; it
also represents in the words of The Commission of Global Governance
(1995) an increased capacity of humankind to organize life on the planet,
and this includes a broader range of social purposes.
The focus on the persistence function in this chapter was a conse-
quence of the epistemological principles of duality and complementar-
ity outlined in Chapters 2 and 6. The unevenness of the persistence
function across modalities shown in this chapter points to the fact
that it is far from neutral; it is inherently political and reflects prevailing
relations of power. Thus, a complementary description, in Bohr’s sense,
of global governance in terms of power is called for next.
8
Power Relations in the Global Polity
1 The problem: the power of states – the power of

social forces
Chapter 5 presented a picture of the institutions of the global govern-

ance system, emphasizing mechanisms for coordination and policy
guidance. Chapter 7 discussed the global governance system from the
perspective of persistence, seeing the growing capacity of mankind to
organize life on the planet as an incomplete function of persistence that
is globalized unevenly across its modalities. The concern now is
the second aspect of the central duality in statehood, namely the state
as a materialization of relations of power and the state’s function to
reproduce those relations. A succinct statement in general terms of
the core of this aspect, as applied to the international context, can be
found in Robert Gilpin’s analysis of War and Change in World Politics
from 1981:
an international system is established for the same reason as any

other social or political system is created; actors enter social relations
and create social structures in order to advance particular sets of
political, economic, or other types of interests. Because the interests
of some of the actors may conflict with those of other actors, the
particular interests that are most favored by these social arrange-
ments tend to reflect the relative power of the actors involved. That
is, although social systems impose restraints on the behavior of all
actors, the behaviors rewarded and punished by the system will
coincide, at least initially, with the interests of the most powerful
members of the social system.
(Gilpin 1981, p. 9)
145
The application of this general principle to the set of social arrange-

ments that make up the contemporary global governance system is not
as straightforward as it may seem. Power, as frequently noted, is an
essentially contested concept that is subject to ongoing definitional
discussions about power as capabilities, as relations, structural power,
ideational and discursive power, and so on (see Baldwin 2002 for an
overview). These controversies, however, are not central to the present
discussion where it suffices to say that power here is defined as the
capacity to influence social outcomes in accordance with interests and
preferences, indicating that the concept points to capabilities as well as
relations, and that it is open to a variety of power-resources. The central
problem in the present context is another one, namely the referent object
of power – i.e. the question of to whom or to what power is ascribed.
In the international relations literature this question is addressed in at
least three different ways. One answer is that states are the referent
objects of power. This is a staple of international relations theory, in
particular, of course, state-centred approaches like realism and neo-
realism. Although there is debate about what constitutes power – mili-
tary capabilities, structural economic power and various sorts of ‘soft
power’ (Baldwin 2002; Nye 1990) – discussions of power in world society
focus on the power of states and nations.
Another possibility is to consider social forces or classes as the referent
objects of power. For instance Robert Cox has suggested the existence of
a powerful ‘transnational managerial class’ (Cox 1987, pp. 358–9), Kess
van der Pijl argued along similar lines for the existence of an ‘Atlantic
ruling class’ (Pijl 1984), whereas in a more recent and more complex
argument he pointed to an ‘international of capital’ as the dominant
social force (Pijl 1998, p. 133). More recently Leslie Sklair analysed what
he called ‘the transnational capitalist class’ (Sklair 2001). Common to
these arguments is that global relations of power are analysed in terms of
social forces or classes.
The third possible answer is to apply a more open, less specified, and
actor oriented perspective, in which power can be held by state and non-
state actors alike, as well as by anonymous market forces. Here a descrip-
tion of global power relations depends on observations of which
actors have played the most significant role in the creation of specific
institutions and the processes leading to specific outcomes. Based on an
enormous empirical material, for instance, Braithwaite and Drahos
(2000) found that the most important actors in shaping the system of
global regulation of business had been states among which the US
clearly had had a pre-eminent role, thus being the single most influential
Power Relations in the Global Polity 147
actor. But other states had also been influential, including in some cases
smaller and weaker ones, as had business associations, NGOs like
Amnesty International and Greenpeace, international organizations
and international networks of experts and think tanks. Answers along
the same lines, assessing the relative impact of states and a variety of
non-state actors and other factors can be found in much of the regime
literature, Zacher and Sutton’s analysis of infrastructure regimes being
a case in point (1996), and, in a different fashion, in Stopford and
Strange’s analysis of rival states and rival firms (1991). Strange’s States
and Markets (1988) would point in the same direction. As a subset of this
group one could also mention the many contributions to the debate
about the fate of the nation-state under conditions of globalization, i.e.
to what extent the nation-state has lost power to global market forces
(Strange 1996; Weiss 1998; Hirst and Thompson 1999), although the
analysis of global relations of power is not always the central concern of
this literature.
None of these stylized answers are without inherent theoretical prob-
lems. Concerning the first, state-centred answer, the problem is best
brought out through a comparison of the way in which the question
of power is answered in the domestic and international realms. In the
analysis of domestic politics power usually has various social forces or
interest groups as its referent object. The state is representing or em-
bodying or organizing the power of certain forces or coalitions or what-
ever the dominant groups may be called, or it is seen as a neutral arena
on which such groups bargain and struggle for control over outcomes.
Rarely is the state seen as the referent object of power. The state may
be strong, but this strength is used to further to the goals, ambitions,
or preferences of interest groups, coalitions of groups, or ruling classes,
depending on the society in question and the conceptual lenses
through which they are analysed. Indeed, the question whether the
political system is neutral or whether there are systemic biases so
that the system itself can be claimed to contribute to the reproduction
of power relations is one of the central questions – if not the central
question – separating liberal and critical theories. It is, for instance, at
the core of Easton’s discussion with Poulantzas (Easton 1990). Either
way, the concepts of power and relations of power refer to social forces
or interest groups and not to the state.
But in state-centred approaches to international relations, this leads to
a bifurcation of the perspective on state, power and social forces. In its
relations to the external world the state represents the entire society or
citizenry, whereas at the same time internally (depending on theoretical
perspective) it represents or embodies relations of power within the

society. Internally the state reflects, represents or mediates the power
of social forces, while externally it is the entity to which power accrues,
and these two faces of the state are completely separated from each
other. Obviously this bifurcation is a direct reflection of what previously
was called methodological nationalism, i.e. the a priori assumption that
in relations to the outside world the nation is always united and has
only one interest, namely the national interest. To make this an a priori
assumption and make it the analytical starting point has always been
problematic (no country’s foreign policy have ever been uncontested
domestically), and in today’s world it seems to have been made wholly
untenable by the fact that a host of international governance issues
create divisions and cleavages in domestic polities and that social forces
and interest groups increasingly operate transnationally. Thus, it is
necessary to make these two faces of state and power compatible with
each other, meaning that a purely state-based analysis of global relations
of power is insufficient on theoretical grounds.
The problems afflicting the second group of answers – those that let
the concept of power relate to social forces or classes – are different and
not as fundamental. Basically, answers along these lines can be made
more satisfactorily than along state-centred lines because they can apply
an understanding of state and other political institutions that are con-
sistent across their domestic and international faces. In a liberal perspec-
tive, thus, the power of the US state would just be shorthand for the
power of the American citizenry or the dominant coalitions within
the US, thus representing a social forces answer to the question of
power. In critical perspectives, in a similar manner, global relations
of power as organized and represented by the multitude of institutions
in the governance system can be systematically and consistently treated
as relations between social forces. Still, at least two problems remain.
The first derives from the complexity of the issues, i.e. how to identify
and delimit social forces and assess the manner in which they relate to
each other, i.e. the patterns of overlapping and conflicting interests and
relations of alliance, support, dominance and hegemony. Of particular
import in the global realm is the problem of addressing the question
whether social forces are constituted at the national level or internation-
ally. More about these problems later.
The second problem has to do with the role of political institutions, be
it the institutions of national governments or of international organiza-
tions. While it can be argued on conceptual grounds that power by
definition ultimately should refer to social forces and not to states,
this is not identical to claiming that political institutions are without

separate roles and efficacy of their own. To uphold such a claim would
fly in the face of a large body of empirical evidence from case studies
that have demonstrated the important and often decisive roles played
by national and international political institutions in the workings
of the global governance system – the works by Braithwaite and
Drahos, Jonge Oudraat et al. and the regime literature being cases in
point. One way to solve this problem is by definition, i.e. by including
the political institutions, or rather the persons staffing them in the
definition of the dominant class. This tack was taken in Robert
Cox’s definition of the transnational managerial class quoted above,
and Leslie Sklair followed a similar path when outlining the ‘fractions’
of the transnational capitalist class, although he cast the net a bit wider
and added ‘globalizing professionals’ and ‘merchants and media’ (2001
p. 17). The danger in this strategy is that of a certain reductionism
in which the government machineries of nation-states and inter-
national organizations are reduced to mere instruments of the domin-
ant class, without any separate efficacy of their own. The notion of the
relative autonomy of politics and state tends to become discarded, and
this is important because a reduction of political institutions to mere
instruments looses sight of the power/persistence duality at the core
of statehood by reducing one aspect to the other. In short, including
states in a global dominant class or global elite is not a satisfactory
solution.
The solution advocated here is that states and political institutions are
separate entities: they help organize and maintain relations of power
and they cater to the function of persistence, and when focus is on the
role of states in global society, the solution has to be even more com-
plex. In a holistic perspective that includes the domestic and inter-
national realms – and increasingly, the lines between these two are
becoming blurred – states are involved in a fourfold set of functions: a
domestic persistence function, reproduction of domestic relations of
power, a global persistence function and reproduction of global rela-
tions of power. In sum: states and other political institutions can be
strong actors with separate roles and efficacy in these four regards, and
in that sense they can be considered powerful – but for reasons of clarity
perhaps it is better to use words like strength and influence when
considering the efficacy of political institutions, and reserve the word
power to relations between social forces. Of course, it is futile to try to
sanitize language along these lines, discourses of state power are too well
established for that, but the distinctions of principle must be made, and
consequently, in what follows, when the argument requires I will stick to

the notion that, strictly speaking, power has social forces as its referent
object.
The last group of answers, the actor-oriented one, does have the
benefit of being empirically easier to manage, but at the same time it
suffers from a logical flaw, at least in the theoretical perspective outlined
here. An analysis of global power relations that is based on an assess-
ment of the relative capacity to influence outcomes of governments,
international organizations, NGOs, transnational corporations, etc. is
problematical because of the different nature of these actors. Businesses
seek profit, NGOs pursue goals of their own definition and states pursue
policies that result from complex political processes and reflect interests
and relations of power between social forces represented by a variety of
actors, and including concerns associated with the function of persist-
ence. In consequence, an equation that purports to compare the power
of state and non-state actors is basically flawed because the non-state
actors – representing a variety of social forces – appear on both sides
of the sign of equation. For instance, one can legitimately say that
European business associations and European political institutions are
both important actors, but one cannot legitimately compare the power
of the two without first sorting out the relations between business
interests and political institutions.
The question posed in this chapter and outlined in the initial quote
from Robert Gilpin is, in other words, to be addressed as a question of
relations of power between social forces in global society, but at the
same time it must be addressed in a way that recognizes the separate role
and efficacy of political institutions. Therefore, before turning to social
forces I briefly discuss the system of governance in relation to the
question of state strength.
2 Institutions and state strength
Informed common sense, conventional wisdom and a host of analyses

will, in broad terms, agree on some main points concerning governance
and state strength. The arguments are familiar and it is only necessary to
summarize them briefly. The USA is the single superpower with a sig-
nificant preponderance of hard and soft power resources; the large
members of the European Union are also significant, and in situations
where the EU is united, as it often is in economic issues, the Union is the
second most important player in the interstate game. Russia, Japan and
to a lesser extent China are also significant, as are countries like India
and Brazil. Moving down the scale that has the weak and poor states of
the developing world at the bottom, however, the matter becomes more
complicated, because strength becomes more localized and issue spe-
cific. If we also take into account the system of alliances among the
developed states less Russia, a picture of a powerful Northern bloc,
in which the US holds a pre-eminent position, is quite clear. While the
basic contours of this description probably can be widely accepted,
there also will be important differences in emphasis and the specifics
of the interpretations, concerning for instance the strength of the US
compared to EU, the relative weight of conflict and rivalry between
the US and other Northern states compared to their shared interests,
the degree of Japanese decline in recent years, the possibility for smaller
states, for Russia, China and the developing world to influence the
system, the overlap between some Southern states’ interests and those
of the North in some regards and so on. But in spite of such disagree-
ments, when assessing the global power structure in a state-centred
perspective, the main parameters of the summary description offered
here – US hegemony, a bloc of powerful Northern states under this
hegemony, a majority of smaller and/or weaker, dependent or periph-
eral states – would be challenged by few.
However, the issue here is not to develop a detailed map of the
distribution of capabilities and relations of strength among states, but
to discuss how the global governance can be said to be an institutional-
ization of relations of power, as opposed to an institutionalization of a
global persistence function. This question can be addressed in several
ways. It is evident from any account of the history of the system that
Northern states, in particular the USA, have played a decisive and dom-
inant role in creating the system and smaller states, in particular the
states of the developing world, have had much less influence, bordering
on the negligible in the case of the weakest states. This is amply con-
firmed by Braithwaite and Drahos’ comprehensive analysis (2000), but is
also supported by other studies. This genealogy, although it lends sup-
port to the conclusion, does not by itself demonstrate that the insti-
tutions serve to reproduce relations of power in terms of unequal
control over outcomes. But several strong arguments to that effect can
easily be brought forward.
First, relations of power are built into the formal structures of some of
the most important institutions. The veto of the five permanent
members of the Security Council – although somewhat out of step
with realities – is one important case, the rules of weighted voting in
the IMF and the World Bank is another. Second, even in the institutions
that are based on the formal principle of one state one vote, the realities
are working in favour of the powerful states. In the UN system, includ-
ing the general assembly, the fact that the richest members contribute
most of the funding means that they have a larger say, as does the lack of
strong compliance mechanisms, so that decisions made by a voting
majority of states against the preferences of the strong members have
little chance of becoming more than empty declarations. This was
clearly demonstrated in the 1970s during the conflicts over a new
international economic order (Mortimer 1984; Krasner 1985). The
WTO also works according to the one state one vote principle and on
the principle of unanimity. On paper this gives every country an equal
veto-right, but given the nature of the bargaining process in which the
countries with the largest markets have most to offer, and given the fact
that states have very unequal institutional capacities for participating in
highly technical and complex trade negotiations, combined with the
absence of procedures for voting on negotiation procedures as well as
outcomes, the reality is that the capacity to control or influence out-
comes in this important institution is highly unevenly distributed
(Raghavan 1990).
Third, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, the lack of coherence
and clear divisions of responsibility between institutions in the overall
governance system means that the mechanisms of agenda setting,
forum shopping and forum shifting play an important role in shaping
outcomes. Strong states can play this game much more effectively
than weak ones for several reasons. The underlying distribution of re-
sources, economic and military, is in their favour; they have larger and
more resourceful foreign services and other negotiating organizations
with more extensive networks around the globe; and they can com-
mand the assistance of much stronger knowledge-producing institu-
tions – government research, statistical services, think tanks – that
help them frame issues and define possible solutions. All this allows
them to frame issues, select fora and build coalitions in ways that are
most conducive to their policy preferences. Add to this the highly
developed and institutionalized coordination mechanisms that are
found in the G-7–OECD nexus and the analytical capacities that it
commands, and the picture of governance system that gives the core
of industrialized states led by the US a disproportionate capacity to
influence outcomes is quite clear.
After this brief summary of what I claim to be generally accepted
arguments, let us now turn to the somewhat more complicated question
of relations of power between social forces in global society.
3 The analysis of social forces
The basic principle in the analysis of social forces is that the defining
criteria are found in structural positions in the societal division of labour
and process of reproduction (Poulantzas 1973, 1978; Cox 1987; Wright
1985, 1997), but this poses several problems and requires deliberate
choices on a number of issues. I will just indicate the position taken
here on some of them, and go deeper into the problems that are most
salient when a social forces perspective is applied to the global context.
The first problem concerns the relative importance of strictly economic
criteria and other structurating principles such as race, nationality,
ethnicity, religion and gender. All these non-economic sources of differ-
entiation and identity can have a significant and sometimes decisive
impact on the way in which individuals perceive interests, construct
preferences and participate individually and collectively in political
processes. This does not mean, however, that economic interests are
unimportant, but rather that it should be remembered that an analysis
that simply focuses on them is only a partial analysis. Otherwise the
reader is referred back to the general discussion of ideas and material
forces in Chapter 2. The second problem is that a group of individuals
that share the same structural position in the societal division of labour
is not necessarily constituted as a social force; this also requires a per-
ception of collective interests and a capacity for collective action to
pursue those interests. This is never a simple and mechanical matter,
and in the process of constructing collective identities, any number of
ideational factors can intervene, such as nation, race, gender, religion,
and the ideational effects of, for instance, tradition and ongoing debates
in society. Not all structural positions and divisions get constructed as
political identities and articulated interests, and not all such construc-
tions have a material base.
The third problem is that even when only focusing on economic
interests, as is done here, the patterns are never simple. A simplistic
picture of one ruling class (feudal landlords, capital) dominating one
or two dominated classes (the peasantry, labour) never corresponded
very well to reality. Two issues are involved here. The first is that there
are always more than two social forces, due to the complexity of eco-
nomic structures. In a highly differentiated economy with a deep div-
ision of labour, economic interests are not simple. Business
communities are divided on several dimensions, and while the core of
the matter may be ‘buy cheap and sell dear’, companies buy many
different inputs, sell in different markets where effective demand
depends on many factors, and are subject to governmental regulations

whose cost and benefits can be difficult to assess precisely. In addition to
divisions according to size between large transnational corporations,
medium-sized businesses, and family firms that employ little or no
labour, there are divisions and conflicts between industries and sectors.
Industrial and financial companies do not always have identical inter-
ests; producers of, for instance, telecommunications services and
equipment can have important conflicts with their customers, oil and
coal burning companies are in conflict with ‘clean businesses’ on envir-
onmental issues and so on. Labour not only has interests in employ-
ment and pay but also in government services, consumer prices, access
to credit, housing and so on, and is often divided according to skill levels
or the sector in which it is employed. In agriculture there are divisions
between smallholders and family farms on one side and large-scale
commercial farmers on the other. Furthermore, in societies where pre-
capitalist modes of production still play a role, social forces rooted in
such structures add complexity to the constellation of economically
defined classes (Stavenhagen 1975). And finally, groups that are not
involved in production can play significant roles, in particular those
staffing the various government agencies and the military.
The second issue is that the relations between this multitude of social
forces is not one of a simple hierarchy with the poorest at the bottom and
the most affluent at the top. A ranking or stratification based on income
or other indicators of privilege or quality of life is, of course, possible, but
it is only descriptive. Analytically, when focusing on relations of power,
social forces are located in a dynamic pattern of alliances, coalitions,
compromises, mutual support, dominance and subordination. In any
societal entity, the interrelations between the multitude of structurally
defined positions, as they are articulated with non-economic structurat-
ing principles and ideational factors result in composite constellations of
power relations (Poulantzas 1973; Cox 1987).
Thus, the analysis of relations of power between social forces is always
a complex matter. To this must now be added the complexities involved
when addressing this in a global perspective and considering the effects
of globalization. The first of these is that economic internationalization
– the growing weight of trade, direct investment and financial flows in
all economies and the sharpened international competition that goes
with it – has important consequences for economic interests (Poulantzas
1978; Milnev and Keohane 1996). It creates new cleavages between
‘globalization losers’ and ‘globalization winners’ and new potential
coalitions, both of which can cut across the domestic lines of conflict,
and it impacts on national identities in new ways that create ideational

divisions between nationalists and internationalists of varying hues. At
the economic level new divisions can appear between the basic structur-
ally defined groups – corresponding to the factors of production capital,
labour and land – whose respective comparative advantage is affected
asymmetrically. They can also occur between various sectors of industry,
and between businesses in the same industry, depending on the degree
of export orientation and exposure to import competition (Frieden and
Rogowsky 1996). All economic interest groups become increasingly
influenced by economic developments outside the home economy,
creating an internationalized material base for their perceptions and
constructions of interest. These economic transformations, however,
do not automatically translate into new political divisions and realign-
ments of social forces since existing organizations such as business
associations and trade unions, as well as political institutions, can de-
flect, block or delay these effects (Garrett and Lange 1996; Milner and
Keohane 1996).
Second, the enormous rise of foreign direct investment means that
practically all countries, and also the largest and least internationalized,
now have a significant presence of foreign capital in their domestic
economies. The balance between inward and outward FDI varies consid-
erably between countries, as does the amount of foreign investment in
relation to the size of the economy and the competitive strength of
domestic businesses versus foreign-owned companies. Some countries
are highly penetrated by foreign capital, in particular in developing
countries but not only there, to the extent that transnationals com-
pletely dominate the economy, whereas in other countries the foreign
presence is weak compared to domestic interests. But even the American
economy now has a significant amount of ingoing FDI, making foreign
companies a part of the American business community. This aspect of
economic internationalization, in other words, has two faces: it has led
to the external projection of business activity, giving nationally rooted
companies extensive interests in other countries around the globe, and
it has made foreign businesses integral parts of the domestic cycles of
economic production and reproduction.
This has important consequences for the understanding of power
relations between social forces in an international perspective. Labour,
for instance, articulates interests concerning employment, wages and
working conditions in relation to a more composite business commu-
nity with a significant foreign presence and foreign business can partici-
pate in domestic political life in a variety of ways. Some organizations
reflect their specific interests as being foreign business – the Foreign

Chambers of the Philippines, which organizes non-Philippine com-
panies regardless of their home country, being an example. Numerous
foreign companies and business associations have highly developed
lobbying operations in the American capital and conversely, widespread
across the globe are the American Chambers of Commerce that organize
American business and their foreign partners around mutual interests.
Furthermore, and not of least importance, foreign companies can play a
strong role in national business and industry associations. IBM, Hewlett-
Packard and Microsoft, for instance, are important members of their
respective trade associations in individual European countries and at
the European level, e.g. the Danish IT Brancheforeningen (ITB 2003) and
the European Information & Communications Technology Industry Associ-
ation (EICTA 2003). This foreign participation in the politics of
national societies is, however, not the only thing that matters, and
may not even be the most important one. The reason is that the rela-
tions between social forces and states are also being changed in another
way by these processes. To appreciate this, consider the state’s function
of persistence and the inherent duality and complementarity between
this and the function of reproducing relations of power. To the extent
that foreign-owned businesses have become integral parts of a society’s
economic structure, the reproduction of the foreign presence becomes
an integral part of the state’s function of societal reproduction and
persistence. To secure societal persistence implies, by necessity, also to
secure the ongoing activities of foreign capital and hence to secure
the conditions for its capacity to pursue and realize its interests.
Since power is defined as the capacity to influence outcomes in accord-
ance with interests, this further implies the reproduction of the power of
foreign capital. Not, of course, necessarily as a dominant force, although
that also can be the case in strongly penetrated weak countries, but as a
more or less influential permanent component in the domestic constel-
lation of interests and power. This phenomenon is one central aspect
of what Robert Cox called the ‘internationalization of the state’
(Cox 1987).
This amounts, further to a certain dislocation between social forces
and states. In a traditional picture, social forces are constituted at the
national level, and the state’s functions of coherence and persistence are
oriented towards these domestic forces. There is a one to one relation-
ship between social forces and states, defined by the boundaries of
national communities. As a result of internationalization, this no longer
holds. States’ functions are functions towards internationalized social
structures and internationalized constellations of social forces and

power, meaning that states cater to domestic as well as foreign social
forces, and that the domestic function of persistence has acquired
an important international quality, due to the external projection of
national economic interests. At the same time, the interests of social
forces, and in particular those of internationalized business, relate to
many societies and hence to the policies of many states and inter-
national institutions, to which they also turn to pursue their interests
politically. Social forces operate politically in relation to several states,
and states function in relation to social forces rooted in several national
societies. This does not mean that international businesses have lost
their ties to their home countries or home states, as I will argue later,
but it does mean that matters have become more complicated, which is
an added reason why relations of power cannot simply be ascertained
from a state-centred perspective.
In principle, then, the analysis of relations of power in global society is
a highly complex matter and one that cannot be fully addressed in the
present volume. Indeed it would take a large group of researchers several
years to develop a precise and differentiated picture along the lines
presented above. The ambition here is more limited, namely to draw a
preliminary map that identifies some key features of the contemporary
constellation of power among social forces, by focusing first on two
issues that are particularly important, namely the question of a domin-
ant transnational ruling class and the relations between dominant social
forces and the governance system. Finally, I will present a tentative map
of global power relations.
4 Towards transnational class formation?
The notion of transnational class formation has a very plausible logical

underpinning. As societies and economies become internationalized
and integrated, it is reasonable to hypothize that the same will happen
to organized interests and, as mentioned above, some writers have
claimed the existence of a transnational ruling class, which, if substan-
tiated would be an important confirmation of this hypothesis. The
question is, however, the extent to which the hypothesis is substanti-
ated. Let us take a closer look at some of the research that has been thus
developed and some empirical evidence, bearing in mind that class
formation is not only a matter of shared positions in the division of
labour, but also of perceived shared interests and the organizational
capacity to pursue them collectively.
In this regard it is evident that transnational political activity by

non-governmental actors has become a significant feature in inter-
national politics and one that has attracted the attention of researchers
(Risse-Kappen 1995; Gordenker and Weiss 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998;
Scholte 2002). There is no doubt that a process of transnational organiz-
ing has been going on for a long time, and that now a large number of
various organizations participate in international political processes.
An indication of the extent of this phenomenon can be found in
the number of NGOs that has achieved consultative status in the UN
system. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and
Social Affairs (DESA), in 1997 the Economic and Social Council (ECO-
SOC) had 88 non-governmental organizations in ‘general consultative
status’, 602 in ‘special consultative status’ and 666 ‘on the roster’,
i.e. a total of 1,356 organizations. They included international business,
labour and farmers’ associations, consumer organizations, professional
associations of medical doctors, lawyers, judges, architects, etc., organ-
izations based on gender, religion and ethnicity, and a broad and very
mixed range of civil society organizations from Amnesty International
to the European Federation of Motorcyclists (UN DESA 1997). Similar
counts could undoubtedly be produced concerning NGOs that are con-
sulted by or lobby WTO negotiations, the World Bank, the IMF and the
OECD. And, as recorded by the Handbook of International Organizations,
the total number of NGOs in the world is now above the 40,000 mark
(Union of International Organizations 1999, appendix 3, table 2).
But the question as to whether this amounts to the formation of
transnational classes and other social forces requires a closer explor-
ation. Given the multitude of social forces that can be said to have a
structural foundation in contemporary world society – the complexity
of which was discussed in Chapter 3 – the discussion is limited to the
major social forces that from an economic perspective are rooted in
capitalist economies, i.e. labour and capital, with some additional com-
ments on the social forces nature of some of the more salient NGOs.
Furthermore, the discussion is focused on the global and quasi-global
level, leaving aside the situation in Europe where the building of inter-
national economic interest organizations has progressed further than
elsewhere (see Streeck and Schmitter 1991; Holman and Pijl 1996).
Consider first the case of labour.
The notion that workers of the world have shared interests across
borders is as old as the labour movement itself. But after the demise of
the first ‘Internationals’ and the split between communist and social
democratic parties and trade unions in the beginning of the twentieth
century, labour has predominantly been organized at the national level,

concomitant with the development of national welfare states in the
North. There has been some international cooperation among labour
movements, primarily in the International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions (ICFTU), an organization with an international secretariat that
has been active in relation to the tripartite International Labour Organ-
ization, especially in the area of defining international labour standards
(Munck 2002). Undoubtedly, however, this instance of international
organization has been very thin compared to what has been developed
at the national level in most industrialized countries. But national
labour movements have tied their fate closely to the building of national
welfare states – a central feature of the ‘embedded liberalism’ comprom-
ise that combined free trade with a measure of control of capital flows to
allow the pursuit of nationally defined economic policies, on which
labour movements could exert some influence. Economic globalization
has undermined this compromise – although the extent of this is still
debated – and this has posed new challenges to labour (Newland 1999;
Munck 2002; ICFTU 1996a). At the level of declarations, the ICFTU
responded to the challenge at its 16th World Congress in 1996, stating
that it now ‘has increasingly to concentrate its activities on changing
the international economic environment to ensure that the aspirations
of working men and women to live in dignity and social justice can be
achieved’. ICFTU’s task now is ‘to help affiliates create the conditions for
a worldwide organizing drive and thus ensure that our movement is at
the forefront of the change helping working people to determine their
own future’ (ICFTU 1996b). The Congress further outlined a large cata-
logue of issues and actions that should become the focus of future
activity. Thus a will to upgrade and strengthen the international organ-
ization of labour was clearly expressed here. But the reality has so far
been more sobering. As argued by Harvey Ramsey, the incentives for
labour to pursue internationalism have increased during the 1990s,
but the capacities to do so are more problematical (quoted in Munck
2002, p. 193), and there seems so far to be little evidence of an upgraded
international capacity for collective action on behalf of organized
labour. Thus Munck’s assessment is justified: ‘global unionism is a ten-
dency more than a social reality’ (2002, p. 158).
Turning now to business, the situation is somewhat different. Here
researchers have forwarded the strongest claims about transnational
class formation. Robert Cox suggested the existence of a ‘transnational
managerial class’, consisting mainly of ‘those who control the big cor-
porations working on a world scale’ plus public officials in national and
international agencies and a whole range of experts. Although this

group does not identify itself as a class, it has ‘attained a clearly distinct-
ive class consciousness’ with ‘an awareness of a common concern to
maintain the system that enables the class to remain dominant’ (Cox
1987, pp. 358–9). Leslie Sklair analysed what he called the ‘transnational
ruling class’ (TNC), consisting of ‘TNC executives and their local affili-
ates’, ‘globalizing bureaucrats and politicians’, ‘globalizing profession-
als’, and ‘merchants and media’ (Sklair 2001, p. 17). In a similar fashion,
in 1984 Kees van der Pijl forwarded the notion of an Atlantic ruling class
(Pijl 1984), but later proposed a less clear-cut and more complex argu-
ment on transnational class formation (Pijl 1998).
There is some merit in these views. Transnational corporations clearly
are a central feature in the global economy, controlling vast resources
and operating in all significant markets, and companies and business
associations were shown by Braithwaite and Drahos to be one of the
important categories of actors that have influenced global business
regulation (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000). It is, furthermore, reasonable
to argue that these corporations in important respects occupy identical
positions in the global division of labour, and that they, along the lines
suggested by Cox, can be assumed to have an awareness of common
concerns in relation to the international economy. The evidence under-
pinning this argument, however, mainly rests on the observation of
business executives’ participation in elite gatherings, such as the Trilat-
eral Commission or the World Economic Forums at Davos, and the
occasional report on contemporary issues published or commissioned
by such meetings. This seems insufficient to constitute this group as a
social class with a capacity for collective action, and it is necessary to
look for evidence of firmer transnational business organization. But
such evidence is not hard to come by.
The World Directory of Trade and Business Associations lists more than
300 pan-regional and international organizations, beginning with the
African Groundnut Council in Lagos and ending with the World Travel
and Tourism Council in London. A substantial proportion are regionally
based, especially in Europe, but more than 100 have a global or quasi-
global coverage, as indicated by the words ‘international’ or ‘world’ in
their names (Euromonitor 1997). These organizations are, however,
almost exclusively organized along the lines of products, trades, or indus-
tries, and much of their work may be assumed to be directed towards the
specific needs of their respective industries, nonetheless participating in
standard setting in ISO and other bodies – the OECD for instance
(Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, pp. 488–94). They are not peak associ-
ations organized to promote the general and political interests of busi-

ness, but some of them do have the capacity to exert considerable
influence on international regulations concerning their respective in-
dustries (Braitwaithe and Drahos 2000, pp. 488–94), and they do repre-
sent a fairly developed network of international business organization.
Peak associations also exist, however. Prominent among them are the
International Chambers of Commerce, presenting itself as ‘the World
Business Organization’ (ICC 2002) and the International Organization
of Employers, and the capacity for transnational organization is further
evidenced by the more recently created World Business Council for Sus-
tainable Development that has a substantial membership of large trans-
national companies from many countries (WBCSD 2003). Furthermore,
it is also significant that many transnational corporations have the
resources and organizational capacities to act politically on their own,
and not only in their home countries.
There is, thus, clear evidence that a process of transnational class
formation has taken place, resulting in a fairly developed network of
international business associations. But there are also strong counter-
arguments to the conclusion that this amounts to a transnational ruling
class. First, transnational companies are still overwhelmingly anchored
in national societies (Gilpin 2001, pp. 289–300) where the network
of business associations are much denser than at the international
level, and where peak associations – employers associations, associations
of manufacturers, national chambers of commerce and so on – have
strong institutions with multiple access points to political institutions.
Even in the European Union, where the transferral of organized business
activity from the national to, in this case, the regional level must
be assumed to have gone furthest, activities at the national level were
by far the most important a decade ago (Streeck and Schmitter 1991).
Second, societal frameworks vary considerably between national econ-
omies, as evidenced by the growing body of research into varieties
of capitalism and business systems (Whitley 1992; Berger and Dore
1996; Crouch and Streeck 1997; Hall and Soskice 2001b; Gilpin 2001,
pp. 148ff.). Differences pertain to industrial relations, the organization
of labour markets, relations between business and national systems of
education and research, relations between business and government,
systems of corporate governance, and regulatory systems in general.
Such differences in ‘state-society’ arrangements (Hart 1992) have im-
portant consequences. They have an impact on the ‘competitive advan-
tages’ of individual companies and national business communities;
hence they shape business strategies in important ways (Porter 1990)
and in consequence they lead to a divergence of interests between

business communities of different national backgrounds concerning a
range of regulatory and political issues, as argued by Streeck (1997), Hall
and Soskice (2001a) and – on the European case – by Fioretos (2001).
This structural dissimilarity between national business communities
means that one of the preconditions for the existence of a transnational
class, namely a structurally defined community of interests, at best is
highly problematical concerning many important issues in the global
political economy. There are issues that unite large segments of busi-
ness, especially in the developed countries, for instance the general
promotion of economic growth and movement towards freer trade
and capital transfers. But there are also many dividing issues, as evi-
denced by recurrent economic conflicts between the three regional
pillars of the world economy (USA, Europe and Japan).
Finally, it must be taken into account that there are few if any stories
of successful political actions conducted by truly transnational business
organizations. This may be due to lack of research (and the political
influence of business is not high on the research agenda), or to the
unawareness of the present writer of such research. It is telling that
one of the best and most thoroughly researched examples, the case of
the TRIPS agreement where, according to Susan Sell private companies
wrote international public law, the agency involved was an ad hoc
coalition of national and regional business associations that was mobil-
ized at the behest of an ad hoc coalition of American organizations (Sell
1999; see also Braithwaite and Drahos 2000). A similar ad hoc coalition
was created by the pharmaceutical industry when faced with the chal-
lenge of the South African Government’s violation of the TRIPS agree-
ment in 2000, which led 29 of the largest corporations in the industry to
sue the South African government in March 2001 (triggering a major
international NGO campaign led by Oxfam UK). These examples clearly
demonstrate the capacity of transnational corporations to organize pol-
itically across borders, and as such they testify to the fact of an ongoing
process of transnational class formation, but in themselves they are
insufficient to substantiate the claim of the existence of a transnational
ruling class.
Thus Stephen Gill’s formulation from 1990 still holds. There has
been and still is ‘a process of transnational class formation’ (Gill 1990,
pp. 48–9, 217), but not a fully formed transnational dominant class.
What is warranted, however, is a notion of a transnational coalition or
alliance of nationally rooted classes that share some central and strategic
interests, but also stand in relations of conflict and opposition to each
other. This coalition has not created genuine autonomous class organ-
izations, but has shown the capacity to act jointly on specific issues, but
what brings strategic guidance and coherence into the global govern-
ance system is not the autonomous actions of this coalition, but rather
the process of interaction between national, regional and the few truly
global associations, and the dense network of international governmen-
tal organizations – viz. the WTO, the OECD, the IMF and so on. The
coalition relies on national governments and international institutions
to represent and organize its interests, and to mediate the many con-
flicts that cut through it. Cox’s definition (quoted above) of the ‘global
managerial class’, which includes public officials in national and inter-
national institutions, can be taken as an expression of a similar under-
standing. But as already argued, this definition is unsatisfactory on
conceptual grounds (see section 1 of this chapter) and, furthermore, it
gives a misleading picture because the institutions of global governance
are also open to other organized interests than those of business or
transnational corporations. To these we now turn.
More than anything else it is transnational action by NGOs that have
caught the public eye and received scholarly and media attention
over the last decade. Spectacular actions and persistent campaigns by
Greenpeace and Amnesty International, the successful campaign initi-
ated by Oxfam UK against the pharmaceutical industry in the South
Africa/AIDS/TRIPS case in 2000/2001, consumer boycotts, as well as
demonstrations and protests in the streets (Seattle November/December
1999, Genoa July 2001, Gothenburg 2001) are just some examples, and
the World Social Forums held in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2001, 2002
and 2003 that gathered in the vicinity of 100,000 people from all over the
world to protest the current pattern of globalization is also part of this
picture. Aside from these very visible activities there is no doubt that
much lobbying activity is carried out by transnational civil society or-
ganizations in national capitals and international organizations, and in
cases such as the UN system, the IMF and the World Bank, the NGOs
have been accepted as dialogue partners with institutionalized access
(Gordenker and Weiss 1996; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Scholte 1998,
2002). The impact is more uncertain – but Scholte has shown some
impact on the IMF (1997, 2002).
In the present context, however, the question is how to relate these
developments to the analysis of relations of power between social forces
and classes. The NGOs are a diverse lot, as reflected, for instance, in the
fact that in the official UN roster quoted above there is no discrimin-
ation between business and professional associations and the more
elusive and disputed category of civil society (on definitions see Scholte
2002b). The total population of NGOs clearly do not correspond to any
of the single categories of social forces outlined at the beginning of
the preceding section, but rather cover all of those: social forces based
on ethnicity, race, religion, gender and a variety of political, cultural,
sporting, philanthropic and other concerns. They are, in other words,
reflective of the rich range of activities humanity is engaged in outside
the workplace. It is reasonable, however, in the present context to focus
on a subset of these, namely those concerned with the environment,
development and human rights. Not only because they have been
among the most visible of the new social movements and play a strong
role in the new wave of globalization critique, very much in evidence in
the Porto Alegre World Social Forums, but also because the issues they
address place them in a particular and significant position in relation to
the themes of this book. Although geographically they are based all over
the world, predominantly they are European and Northern American,
but the issues they address are international or global. Obviously they
are not concerned with economic interests in the narrow sense, that is
with the occupationally defined economic interests of members and
activists, and indeed the question of their constituencies and demo-
cratic mandate is debatable (Scholte 2002). They are self-proclaimed
advocates on behalf of concerns that they claim are legitimate, a claim
that they have had considerable success in winning support for. My
contention is that the issues they address are related to the question of
global persistence or modalities thereof, as discussed in Chapter 7, and
that this is part of the explanation for their success. They are, in other
words, self-proclaimed, hence contestable, advocates of shared interests
of humankind, but, actually, under the conditions of the present ar-
rangement of the institutions of global governance, they have to be self-
proclaimed. There are at present no structured arenas in which demo-
cratically mandated organizations that represented these concerns
could develop.
In conclusion, a process of transnational class formation is discern-
ible, in particular involving business and NGOs and, to a lesser extent,
labour. But the phenomenon is not well developed compared to the
globalization that has taken place concerning some aspects of state-
hood. Further underscoring this picture is a case of a dog that didn’t
bark: political parties, a central component in the organization and
aggregation of interests in national societies, have not appeared at
the international level. Except for the formation of coalitions in the
European parliament, there is little evidence of more than rather thin
international cooperation between parties that remain predominantly

national in outlook and activities. Therefore, to discuss relations of
power in the global polity is to discuss relations between nationally
constituted social forces.
5 Patterns of power in the global polity
The following cannot claim to be an empirically substantiated

analysis of contemporary relations of power in the global polity. Rather
it is a tentative outline of some key features, based on the preceding
discussion and some additional considerations, provided to illustrate
the complexity of the issue. This complexity arises not only from the
sheer number of distinct social forces that exist in global society, given
its division into national societies and the composite character of
the way it is structured as discussed in Chapter 3. It is also due to the
principle outlined in section 3 of the present chapter, according to
which relations of power are not simply a matter of a hierarchical
ranking from the top to the bottom, but rather a composite and dy-
namic pattern of alliances, coalitions, compromises, dominance and
subordination.
The preceding section identified a transnational coalition of business
communities, in which the transnational corporations loom large, from
the market democratic heartland. They have important shared interests
but also significant internal conflicts and are in a process of trans-
national class formation, but this has not developed its capacity for
collective action to the point where it should be considered one trans-
national social force. This coalition undoubtedly is the most powerful
social force in contemporary world society. The transnationals them-
selves command immense resources; they are the best organized in
terms of national and international interest organizations; and they
have shown a clear capacity for transnational action. Furthermore,
they have the capacity to act simultaneously at all access points in the
governance system, i.e. at the national, regional and global level. They
also posses considerable structural power due to the fact that they
control a significant part of the planet’s productive and financial re-
sources, meaning that states and international agencies, in pursuing the
function of persistence, have to take their interests into account. And
finally, the dominant ideologies and economic strategies embodied in
the governance system, emphasizing continued economic growth and
open markets as a predominant societal goal, correspond to the long-
term interests of this coalition.
The global governance system is not a simple instrument of this

powerful coalition but, in spite of its relative autonomy, it is structured
in a way that serves to reproduce the dominance of the coalition. Part of
the reason is ideational, as already mentioned and as emphasized in
Gramscian inspired analyses (Cox 1987); part is found in the capacity of
members of the coalition and its organizations to act transnationally
and hence to participate more effectively than other social forces in the
various policy networks in the governance system; and last, but not
least, it is due to the fact that they have strong capacities to influence
their home governments which, as we saw earlier, are the strongest and
most important actors in the governance system. Still, the institutions of
global governance have their own relatively autonomous roles to play,
and in doing so they have to factor in wider concerns of societal coher-
ence as well and therefore also the interest of other social groups. In
addition, other social forces have access at the national as well as the
international levels, and there is clear evidence that they also have been
able to make an impact on policy output so that a much broader array of
interests and social forces can intervene in the policy processes.
To get an idea of the complexity of the relations of power, consider the
case of the Common Agricultural Policy in the European Union. This
system of economic protection and subsidized exports is a central fea-
ture in the current political ordering of the international economy and
has for decades survived attempts to liberalize agricultural trade in GATT
and the WTO (although some inroads have been made). It is difficult to
claim that this situation corresponds to the economic interests of the
dominant coalition, since this is overwhelmingly characterized by in-
dustrial and financial interests and a general concern for free trade. It
may correspond to the interests of some large European agro-businesses,
but they are only a small fraction of the entire Northern business com-
munity. It should rather be seen as a strong and fairly stable compromise
between a variety of social forces. At the core of the matter is the protec-
tion of European, particularly French, small-scale farming against low-
cost competition from the United States and other members of the
‘Cairns group’ and from developing countries. Thus the French peas-
antry – whose political impact intrigued Karl Marx in his day – has been
able to protect its interests in the global political economy for decades.
One reason is that it is a critical component in the set of coalitions and
alliances that keep the European integration project going. French sup-
port has been necessary for the deepening of European integration
and for the expansion of membership eastwards; these have been more
important concerns for dominant European industrial and financial
interest, hence the ability of French and other Southern European

farming communities to secure their interest in agricultural protection-
ism as a price to be paid for supporting the integration project. This is
not a portrayal of horse-trading in a single bargaining session; it is a
sketch of a social compromise that has shown remarkable endurance,
and it is tied to the institutional structuring of the global governance
system because it is exactly the realities of the bargaining processes in
the WTO that make it possible for this compromise to endure, while at
the same time Northern industrial and financial interests, including
those based in Europe, can successfully pursue their interest in other
issues.
In a similar fashion other social forces have positions of power built
into compromises that are fairly stable over stretches of time and are
reflected and institutionalized in the governance system. Sections of
labour, in particular in the industrialized countries, rely on continued
economic expansion for securing employment and improvement of
living conditions, and while clearly subordinate to the dominant coali-
tion, they are far from powerless. The same can be said of farming
communities outside of Europe, for instance in Japan, and generally,
each of the national or regional leading forces, aside from their shared
interests in securing increased access and friendly business environ-
ments around the world, has to maintain the stability of the domestic
coalitions upon which their position in their home countries rest.
Furthermore, it is not only social forces in the North that have power
in the global polity. In the more advanced countries in the developing
world, such as India and Brazil, powerful ruling classes and coalitions are
in dominant positions in their own countries, and are able to influence
global policies. They also have structural power, although far less than
the globally dominant coalition, and there is reason to argue that
in some ways their position has strengthened over the last decade.
Economic internationalization has made their domestic economies
more integrated in the world economy; hence they have gained in
systemic importance, which creates stronger incentives for Northern
states and international agencies to take their interests into account.
In a parallel manner, the fact that some developing countries are signifi-
cant contributors to emissions that cause global warming means that
any viable internationally negotiated long-term solution to this prob-
lem must have their participation, allowing them to bargain for the best
possible concessions. And in the protracted trade negotiations in the
Uruguay Round, and the more recent preparatory talks for the new
‘Doha Round’, although the states from the developing world are clearly
weak compared to Northern states, they have been and still are able, to
some limited extent, to defend the domestic interests they represent.
Even some social forces rooted in pre-capitalist social structures, such
as the Saudi Arabian royal family, have international positions of power
that are maintained in the current pattern of global governance. They
are highly dependent on oil revenues, and their fate is closely tied to
the international economy, which means that their strategic interests
do not diverge much from those of the dominant coalition. But in
cases of conflict, they are not necessarily in a dominated position; they
can often obtain compromises that largely correspond to their special
interests.
The examples above are not meant to imply that the pattern of coali-
tion building in the WTO, and in the governance system in general, is
strictly on North–South lines. The picture is more complex, for instance
there has been a coalition of the US, the Cairns group of major agricul-
tural exporters and some developing countries against the European
Union in the question of trade in agricultural products, whereas there
has been an alliance of Northern states against the advanced developing
countries in issues concerning intellectual property rights and the liber-
alization of services. This may be taken as paradigmatic: in each policy
area and issue, policy outcomes reflect a complex bargaining process
resulting in a set of compromises based on mutual interests, trade-offs,
buy-offs, and negations of some interests to the benefit of others. Such
compromises and the underlying relations of power between social
forces differ from issue area to issue area, and in consequence the
aggregate picture of power relations in the global polity can only be
stated in very general terms.
The central feature of this general picture is the dominance of the
coalition of Northern business communities. But this coalition is in-
volved in a range of alliances and relies on support from a diverse set
of social forces in the North as well as in the South. These coalitions and
patterns of support, opposition and compromise are not created by
autonomous class organizations; they result from the political processes
in the governance system, in which states and international institutions
play a dominant role as actors, exerting their own specific impact on
outcomes. In this sense, the governance system not only reflects and
embodies relations of power; it also organizes and shapes them.
This concludes the discussion of relations of power in the global polity
and of the globalization of that aspect of statehood that involves the
reproduction of relations of power. Perhaps readers wonder why so
relatively little was said about the role of the United States in this
picture. After all, the world’s single superpower looms large in most
discussions of international patterns of power and influence. The reason
for this is not that anything in the preceding analyses led to the conclu-
sion that it is less significant than normally suggested, but rather that
the American role is best understood not as one of dominance but one
of leadership and hegemony within the dominant coalition. And this
topic is sufficiently important to merit a whole chapter.
9
The Trajectory of Hegemonic
Leadership
The preceding chapter presented an analysis of the power relations of

the world society, departing from a specification of the power of social
forces and states, respectively, and the institutionalization of these rela-
tions primarily in the constellation of G-7, the IMF and the OECD.
A picture was drawn of a composite dominant bloc consisting of the
domestically dominant coalitions in the leading countries and emphasis
was placed on underlining the complexity of the power relations. The
analysis did not focus specifically on the US in spite of the fact that
one of the central characteristics of the world order is the unique role
of this country. After the Cold War, and also before in the entire period
following World War II, the US has occupied a historically unique
position as the only superpower, possessing power resources, both
hard and soft, in a league of its own, and its position and significance
has differed from all other nation-states. The limited attention paid
to these realities is not an attempt to downplay their significance; on
the contrary it results from the recognition of the centrality of the US
role but combined with a theoretical perspective that calls for a separate
treatments.
Any theoretical discussion of the system of global governance and
global relations of power must address the question of American hegem-
ony, but the theoretical analysis of the role of the leading state must
be differentiated from the analysis of these relations, although the role
must be understood in the context of these relations. The analysis of US
hegemony implies a shift in theoretical focus, from addressing global
governance and global politics in the aggregate in a perspective that
includes states, international institutions and social forces, to a focus on
a specific actor and its policies. Attention turns to the foreign policies of
a single state and the task is to develop a theoretical characterization
170
The Trajectory of Hegemonic Leadership 171
of these policies in relation to the evolution of world society. Therefore

the present chapter first discusses concepts of hegemony in relation
to foreign policy, then moves on to analyse the domestic sources of
America’s engagement with the world. It then gives a historical outline
of main themes in US foreign policy in relation to the changing inter-
national environment and ends with a concluding characterization of
the American role as seen from the theoretical perspective employed
here.
1 Hegemony and foreign policy
Within the social sciences, various hegemony concepts are found that
have little in common aside from their reference to a powerful or influen-
tial position. As with all theoretical concepts they are defined in relation
to other concepts and thereby to the theoretical context of which they
are part. Thus, Gramsci-inspired notions of hegemony emphasizing the
role of hegemonic ideologies as constitutive of power relations between
social forces differ widely from the understanding of hegemony predom-
inant in liberal IR research. In the latter, hegemony may refer to a state’s
superiority in terms of power capabilities, regardless of the nature of
those power resources, it may refer to a leading role in to the production
of ‘public goods’ or some combination of these, or finally to a dominant
role used either benevolently to secure common interests or coercively in
the pursuit of the hegemon’s particular interests (on concepts of hegem-
ony, see Gilpin 1987, 2001; 2002; Calleo 1982; Cox 1987; Ougaard 1988).
These discussions will not be pursued further here, suffice it to present
the concept of hegemony as used below.
Briefly stated, the concept relates to the original Greek meaning of the
word hegemon, i.e. the partner who, by virtue of his special prerequis-
ites, occupies a leading role in a community or an alliance and who, by
virtue of this leading role, can claim a relatively larger share of the spoils
of war. Thus, the position of the hegemon may rest on different power
resources but must also entail a hegemonic project in the terminology of
Jessop (1990), a strategic orientation concerning the fundamental
aspects of societal development. Thus, hegemony differs from domin-
ance in that it denotes a leading position or role of leadership within a
wider and more composite configuration of dominant forces.
Second, this constitutes a shift of emphasis from social forces to an
individual society and a single state. In Chapter 8 it was argued that the
concept of power concerns social forces and not states, the latter
being approached in terms of (among others) the double determination
of functions, the duality of power and persistence. Strictly speaking

then, the special position in question is the hegemonic position of
American social forces within a more composite transnational domin-
ant bloc. Their leading role in international politics is connected, how-
ever, to the American state, and the weight of this state in world society
rests both on its power capabilities – military, diplomatic and economic
resources at the disposal of the US government – as well as on the
structural power derived from the international strength of US industry,
the significance of the US market to the world economy, and the var-
ieties of ‘soft power’ resources of an ideological and cultural nature, as
stressed in particular by Joseph Nye (1990).
Defining the concepts in this way implies that although the US is
markedly superior in terms of a number of decisive power resources, the
US is not the only powerful state, and the American power bloc does not
have an exclusive on dominance in the world. In other words, the
special role of the US is that of heading the dominant bloc and thereby
– in extension of the previous chapters – of occupying a leading role in
connection both to the reproduction of global relations of power and to
the management of the global persistence function, occupying both in a
manner that reflects simultaneously the specific US interests and the
particulars of American society.
The discussion of US hegemony thus takes place with an analytical
focus different from the discussion of global relations of power in the
previous chapter. Now we are not considering a global system but
analysing the position and functioning of an individual state in relation
to this global system. In other words, we are now focusing on the foreign
policy of a single state. This requires some deliberations concerning the
analysis of foreign policy.
As many other subjects of social science, foreign policy theory and
analysis is a field of ‘grand’ theoretical debates. The relation between
structure and actor, the relative significance of material and ideational
factors and their interrelation, the discursive construction of identities,
causal explanation versus ‘Verstehen’, the question of level of analysis
ranging from global system to individual decision-making – all of these
theoretical issues (and more) are at stake in the analysis of foreign policy.
Therefore, an introductory presentation of the theoretical premises on
which this chapter is based is in place.
The structure-agency question in general was discussed in Chapter 2;
it should be noted that the argument presented there is quite similar to
the approach forwarded by Walter Carlsnaes (1992, 2002) specifically
in relation to foreign policy. The matter becomes more complicated,
however, once we start to consider which structures we are dealing with.

To begin with there is the basic question of the relative significance of
economic, political and ideational aspects, which was also discussed in
Chapter 2, where the main argument was that all three are important,
that neither of them can in principle be disregarded, and that their
relative importance may vary considerably over time and across space
and issues. In general economic and political structures are expected to
play a significant role, but ideational aspects are always involved and in
some situations may be decisive.
The question of which structures, however, also leads us in a direction
different from these basic principles of social science. Cutting across
the structure–actor relation and the distinction between economics,
politics and ideas, the theoretical literature on foreign policy contains
a discussion of the origins and determinants of foreign policy. Thus, a
distinction is commonly made between international or external deter-
minants, societal sources (i.e. matters pertaining to the society itself
but falling outside the political system), institutional variables related
to the political system, role variables connected to the institutional
position of individuals, and finally strictly individual conditions con-
cerning the individual characteristics and mindset of the individual
decision-maker in question. This distinction can be traced back to
Rosenau’s early contributions (1966) and in varying forms it reappears
in, for example, Kegley and Wittkopf’s classic analysis of US foreign
policy (1987 and subsequent editions) as well as other works (e.g.
Webber and Smith 2002; Hollis and Smith 1990, 1994).
Quibbling discussions abound as to the connection between the latter
distinctions and the previous two, but this will not be pursued further
here. Suffice it to say that the various distinctions transverse each other
and neither are reducible to another. At the abstract-theoretical level,
then, there are three sets of distinctions, all of which are continuously in
play: between structure and agency; between economic, political and
ideational aspects; and between the different sources of foreign policy.
As for the latter, the point of departure is that all of the mentioned
variables may be significant, albeit not necessarily in the same way, and
the difficulty therefore lies in integrating them both in empirical ana-
lyses as well as in generalizing propositions. Some of these difficulties
have been aptly discussed by Peter Gourevitch who, under the heading
‘Domestic politics and international relations’ (Gourevitch 2002), pays
particular attention to two problems. One problem is the difficulty of
analysing the interplay between internal and external conditions in a
satisfactory manner, while the other problem concerns the more specific
conceptualization of the internal conditions and their influence on

foreign policy. I consider the latter first.
The central question in Gourevitch’s discussion is how ‘domestic
politics’ is to be understood more specifically, and particularly whether
the state plays an autonomous role or should exclusively be seen as
being shaped by the surrounding society and the variety of interests
and actors in this. This discussion touches on some fundamental theor-
etical questions about the state and political system, thereby re-
introducing the big debates on concepts of state, definitions of politics,
etc. This is not to be pursued in the present context, except from stating
– in extension of the preceding discussion – that in the present theoret-
ical perspective the state is being shaped by society in a double sense: it
is defined by its functions of cohesion and persistence in relation to
society, and it is continuously subjected to pressure from political forces
of society. Thus, there is a dual perspective on state policies, first, as an
expression of its autonomous persistence function and, second, as being
– to varying degrees and in different ways – influenced by societal
interests and political forces. The answer to Gourevitch’s question,
then, is both.
Following this dual perspective, foreign policy can be defined as the
external aspects of the persistence and cohesion function, implying
the securing of the best possible external conditions for the continued
development of society. This understanding, it might be noted, is not far
from James Rosenau’s ‘adaptation approach’ to foreign policy (Rosenau
1981). It must, however, always be understood as historically specific,
i.e. with reference to the specific society’s particular economic, political
and ideational conditions, and it must be borne in mind that this
general function is always specified through political processes where
the entire range of particularistic societal interests have an impact
according to their relative power.
So much for the understanding of ‘domestic politics’. The second
problem mentioned concerned the difficulty of analysing the interplay
between the internal and the external. In Gourevitch’s words, ‘The great
challenge confronting the domestic politics research agenda is to model
the interaction of countries with each other and with the system’
(Gourevitch 2002, p. 321). He further argues that although the import-
ance of the challenge is widely agreed upon and has been captured by
some striking metaphors – as in Putnam’s classic ‘two-level games’
(Putnam 1988), for example – we have not yet succeeded in moving
beyond this in developing theories or merely theoretically specified
paradigms. The following summarizes the situation:
We have developed strong research traditions that hold either system

or country constant. We do not have very good theories to handle
what happens when both are in play, when each influences the other,
when the domestic politics of one country interacts with the domes-
tic politics of another, an interaction which itself helps define a
system that reverberates back on the parts. We have good metaphors,
but not clear research programs.
(Gourevitch 2002, p. 321)
The description is difficult to refute. Yet, at the same time it is worth

noting that multiple analyses exist that deal with this interplay between
the internal and the external, albeit more or less successfully. More
specifically, there are numerous analyses of the US (several to be dis-
cussed below), the foreign policy of which has both influenced the
international community more than that of any other country in recent
times and been significantly shaped by the surrounding world, an argu-
ment which I will pursue later. The striking thing is that these are
precisely analyses of a single country and only to a very limited extent
do they aim at developing generalizations for all or a number of states.
This is hardly a coincidence. The question is how far it is possible to go
in terms of developing a research programme such as that requested by
Gourevitch. Countries and states differ, they change over time, and they
occupy different positions in the global setting, in the international
division of labour, the military power structure, etc. and, furthermore,
the global setting is in continuous development and change. As a con-
sequence, theory formation on foreign policy that intends to develop
substantial claims about the content of policies will need to be specified
temporally and spatially. It is precisely the interplay between different
countries’ more or less divergent or compatible objectives and interests
that contributes to shaping the development of world society. Naturally,
valid generalizations about the foreign policy of states can be made, but
the question is how far one can go beyond elaborations on general
themes such as the statement that states pursue national interests
shaped by the structures and ideologies of society through political
processes in strategic interaction with the surrounding world under
constant uncertainties of information.
These considerations imply that idiographic rather than nomothetic
research perspectives and strategies are also quite justified in the analysis
of foreign policy, idiographic perspectives (as pointed out in Chapter 2)
aiming precisely at theorizing the unique and particular of a given
phenomenon as opposed to seeking the general and common in a
class of phenomena. The world society is a unique phenomenon and in

a similar fashion there is only one global, hegemonic power. An idio-
graphic research strategy aims precisely at theorizing and shedding light
on the patterns and developmental tendencies of unique phenomena.
The difficulty to which Gourevitch points may arise precisely because
he is calling for a nomothetic research programme within the field of
foreign policy.
In conclusion, foreign policy is understood to be the external side of
the state’s general persistence function, entailing that it is seen as being
shaped both by the international societal conditions as well as by the
possibilities, challenges and threats posed by the surrounding world.
Thus, when US foreign policy must be placed in a theoretical context
it is not a matter of general and universal theory of foreign policy, but
rather a historically specified theorization of a particular state and soci-
ety and the interaction of this with a similarly historically specific global
context.
The extensive literature on US foreign policy contains many contri-
butions to such a historically specified idiographic theorization that
consider the roots of policy in the basic economic, political and idea-
tional characteristics of US society in relation to the development of
world society. That economic and security interests are central does not
seem to require further justification, and it is also acknowledged in
many analyses that these are historically concretized by the inter-
national power relations, the development of the international econ-
omy, and by the international strength and position of US industry.
Obviously, the unique economic and political position occupied by the
US in the world society contributes considerably to understanding the
contents of its foreign policy. However, there are also ideational aspects
of considerable significance as emphasized by many theorists. One way
to address these is to focus on American political culture, i.e. the unique
characteristics of political institutions and political thinking that are
often discussed under the heading of ‘American exceptionalism’. These
features merit a consideration in some detail.
2 American political culture
A wide range of authors have contributed to the literature on American

political culture and its significance for foreign policy (Boorstin 1953;
Dallek 1983; Hartz 1955; Hunt 1987; Huntington 1981; Kennan 1951;
Schlesinger 1986; Schissler 1988) but it is striking that although formu-
lations vary and emphases differ they very much focus on identical
themes. It is also significant that when new writers enter the fray, often
with innovative attempts to reconceptualize the subject or to think it
over from new theoretical vantage points or from different sides of
the political spectrum (Augelli and Murphy 1988; Baudrillard 1987;
Campbell 1992; Thorne 1992; Nye 1992, 2002; Nau 2002; Gadzey
1994; Smith 1994; Cameron 2002, Boorstin 1953, Dallek 1983, Hartz
1955, Hunt 1987, Huntington 1981, Kennan 1951, Schlesinger 1986,
Schissler 1988) many of their core insights seem to be basically identical,
as noted, for instance, by Lloyd Gardner (1992). This is a very strong
indication that what can be labelled the political culture theory of US
foreign policy contains a set of propositions that are backed by evidence
and tested by history, representing insights of enduring validity about
the international behaviour of the world’s first modern republic. Since
the core of the argument is the notion of a causal relationship between
political culture and foreign policy, let me first briefly consider the
literature on American political culture.
In the literature the phenomenon is discussed under a variety of
names. It can be encountered under labels like ‘the American Creed’
(Huntington 1981, pp. 13ff.), American identity (Campbell 1992;
Nau 2002; Ruggie 1998), American ideology (Hunt 1987; Lipset 1990),
American ideals (Huntington 1981), American values or values and insti-
tutions, a usage that is found in Nye 1990, world views or ‘lebenswelt’
(Thorne 1992), or, solemnly, ‘the Genius of American politics’ (Boorstin
1953). In spite of the great diversity of the ways in which different
writers analyse the phenomenon, it is fairly easy to identify a number
of themes that appear and reappear with great continuity, from de
Tocqueville and before to Beaudrillard and beyond. But it is important
to note that they are identified at two distinct but interconnected levels.
The first level contains a set of specific political values and ideas, while
the second level has to do with the way these values interact with
national identity.
The political values can be summarized as liberalism or liberal democ-
racy. This can be rephrased into capitalism and democracy, amplified
with qualifications such as Lockean liberalism, legalism and constitu-
tional democracy, and the characteristic role played by religion can be
added (Bellah 1975; Burnham 1981). One can also make a longer list,
such as the one contained in the chapter headings in a study by Michael
Foley: Freedom, Individualism, Capitalism, Democracy, Pluralism,
Liberalism, Conservatism, Equality, Nationalism and Constitutionalism
(Foley 1991). The description can be deepened further by pointing out
how these values are interconnected and how they interact and
re-enforce each other, and how they have grown from the same origins
and the same unique historical experiences (Boorstin 1958, 1973;
Hofstadter 1973; Huntington 1968). These values, and the fact that
they are widely shared by the American people (McCloskey and Zeller
1984), are, of course, a significant aspect of American society. The
significance derives not only from the wide diffusion of the values in
the population, but also from the high degree of homogeneity that
marks public opinion in this regard, and the corresponding absence of
major ideological cleavages, compared to other nations (Hartz 1955;
Huntington 1968, 1981).
This brings us to the other and deeper level where specific and excep-
tional qualities about the US experience serves to charge the values just
mentioned with a particular saliency. I am referring to the fact that US
has the almost unique quality of being a ‘founded republic’, which,
according to many writers, is the base root of American exceptionalism.
This phenomenon also has several names. It is expressed in such notions
as the US as an ‘idea nation’ rather than a ‘people/nation-state’ (Thorne
1992), as a ‘utopia realized’ (Baudrillard 1987), as ‘the imagined commu-
nity par excellence’ (Campbell 1992), or in Schlesinger’s notion of
America as ‘experiment or destiny’ (1986). As Lipset pointed out
(1990), historically it was a political choice to become American. The
central point is that a political ideology is at the heart of national
identity. As argued by Huntington, whereas, for instance, France can
drastically change its constitution and yet remain France, the US does
not have that option. ‘Our fate as a nation is not to have ideologies, but
to be one’ (Hofstadter, quoted in Huntington 1981, p. 25). Therefore
there is a certain teleological element in American politics, as reflected in
book titles such as The Promise of American Life (Croly 1965) and The
Genius of American Politics (Boorstin 1953). The United States were
created in order to realize specific political ideas: it has a national
purpose and is, in other words, built on a political programme.
The central idea, then, is that political values and ideas are the central
unifying component in national culture: they are central for national
identity. This fact, according to the writers on the subject, goes a long
way to account for other conspicuous aspects of American society and
culture. Huntington derives from this fact a characteristic pattern of
oscillations between moralism, cynicism, hypocrisy and complacency,
as well as the periodic occurrence of waves of reformist ‘credal passion’
(Huntington 1981). In a similar fashion the Schlesinger cycles between
periods dominated by public purpose and private interests (Schlesinger
1986) can be related to this fact, as can the habit of denouncing
political ideas that are outside the scope of core American values as ‘un-
American’.
What are the consequences, then, of these features of the American
political culture for foreign policy? This is the next question to be
addressed.
3 Political culture and the American mission
The consequences of American political culture for foreign policy has

received much scholarly attention, but there is a variety of views on their
specific character (this section is, to a large extent, based on Ougaard
1995). In summary form they can be grouped into first the notion of a
specific American foreign policy style, secondly the idea that political
culture leads to a pattern of deviations from a policy basically shaped by
other factors, and thirdly that political culture accounts for a specific
and central content of foreign policy (Hunt 1987 develops a similar but
not identical distinction).
A fine example of the ‘style argument’ is found in Geir Lundestad’s
observation that American foreign policy is marked by an ‘uncanny
ability to make the most inspiring idealism coincide almost perfectly
with rather ordinary national objectives’ (Lundestad 1986, p. 406). This
habit of cloaking foreign policy goals in high moral principles is noted
by many observers, as is the accompanying tendency to perceive the
outside world in Manichaean images of black and white and to conduct
foreign relations with a fair amount of self-righteousness (Campbell
1992; Huntington 1981; Spanier 1980; Thorne 1992). The link to polit-
ical culture is provided by features like the absolutist belief in the
inherent virtue of American ideals, in the need, growing out of individ-
ual anxieties, to believe that the US is Number One, and the need to
have well-defined scapegoats and negative images of ‘the external other’
(Campbell 1992; Thorne 1992) in order to secure a precarious national
identity. Hence, for instance, the tendency to either stay out of war or
seek total victory (Spanier 1980). In this argument political culture
explains the discourses developed on foreign policy and the ideological
themes invoked in official rhetoric, as well as a typical way of defining
problems and a preference for certain kinds of means. It has to do with
the ways in which goals are described and pursued, but not with the
definition of goals (see Gaddis 1986 for a good illustration of this
argument).
The core of the second group of arguments is that political culture
from time to time compels the US to pursue goals that are not in the
nation’s best interest or to use wrong or inadequate means in its foreign

policy. One variety of this is that misperceptions rooted in the tendency
to create simplistic, black-and-white images of the external world lead
policy-makers to see enemies and threats where none are to be found,
and in consequence to lead the nation into unnecessary, costly and even
harmful crusades, the Vietnam War being the obvious case in point
(Dallek 1983; Huntington 1981; Schlesinger 1986; and especially Baritz
1985). In the same vein is the argument that political culture makes
policy-makers try to impose American ideals and institutions on the
external world, also in situations were this is clearly impossible or
uncalled for, i.e. to set unrealistic and unwise goals for foreign policy
that invariably will lead to failure (Baritz 1985). A related claim is that
there is an inherent distrust of social revolution in the political culture,
inducing foreign policy to oppose such revolutions, also in circum-
stances where they represent the only possible solution to social
problems, and, indeed, the only way to realize the very ideals of the
American creed (Packenham 1973; Dallek 1983; Huntington 1981; Hunt
1987; Thorne 1992). The empirical underpinnings for this claim were
mainly found in US responses to events in the Third World, from
the Chinese revolution and onwards, but Wilson’s policy towards the
Russian revolution in 1917 has also been included in the argument
(Hunt 1987). Today, however, after the fundamental transformations
of the former Soviet bloc, it seems clear that this claim goes too far.
What recent experiences suggest is that the US is not opposed to social
revolutions as such, only to revolutions with an anti-capitalist content.
A special variety of the deviation argument is the notion of cyclical or
pendulum swings in US foreign policy. This notion, too, comes in several
varieties. An early statement was Frank Klingberg’s theory of a regular
30-year cycle between phases of introversion and phases of extroversion,
i.e. what is normally known as swings between isolationism and inter-
nationalism, although with the important qualifications that this is a
supplement and not an alternative to other theories of US foreign policy,
and that the movement is of a spiral-shaped nature: there is a long-term
trend towards a growing involvement with the world (Klingberg 1952,
1983). In another formulation the swing is one between the opposing
tendencies of moralism/idealism on one side and realism on the other.
This notion has especially been propagated by adherents to, not to
say creators of, the realist tradition (Kennan 1951; Morgenthau 1951;
Osgood 1953). For them the tendency to remake the world according to
the ideals of the American Creed represented a serious mistake in foreign
policy. It is not going too far to say that the battle against this
mistake was the dominant motif in the establishment of the realist

tradition.
Isolationism/internationalism and idealism/realism are not identical
or symmetrical formulations of the idea of swings in foreign policy, but
they are not conflicting alternatives. Rather they can be combined into
a slightly more complex theory of deviations resulting from the political
culture. According to this, realism calls for a proper amount of inter-
nationalism, whereas moralism/idealism either leads to too much
internationalism – efforts to remake the world in the image of the US –
or to too little – withdrawal from the world in self-satisfied isolation. In
other words, as argued by Hartz: Messianism and isolationism are two
sides of the same coin, and are both results of basic features of the
political culture (Hartz 1955).
The final group of arguments claims that political culture has a much
more essential role in defining the substance of foreign policy, as
best expressed in the notion of an American mission. This notion
is often discounted as merely an ideological expression of American
self-righteousness and there is, to wit, no doubt that it can be used for
ideological purposes. But there is also a serious argument involved,
namely that an enduring goal for foreign policy is to remake the world
in the image of the United States, or to put it in less controversial
language: to contribute to the expansion and consolidation throughout
the world of values that, although part of the American creed, are not
specifically American but rather have the stature of universal human
values originating in the European Enlightenment. In other words, the
expansion of individual freedom, democracy and human rights across
the world, as well as the establishment of a peaceful global system based
on international law is claimed to be a central purpose in the American
conduct of foreign relations. This notion ties in neatly with the US being
a founded republic. Basically the American global mission is the inter-
national side of the teleological element in American political culture.
Domestic politics has a national purpose defined by specific values and
ideals, and in exactly the same way does foreign policy have a purpose
defined by those values.
A simplistic version of this argument would claim that all aspects of
foreign policy, on an ongoing basis, are directly geared towards the
promotion of freedom, human rights and democracy. This version
would find few adherents, if any at all, among serious analysts. But
there is support for a more sophisticated version that suggests that
foreign policy is a constant effort to find a synthesis between the propa-
gation of these values and the pursuit of other interests, the latter being
defined by realistic considerations of the balance of power and by

economic needs. In other words, one enduring, central and defining
component in American foreign policy is the promotion of specific
values, rooted in political culture, but pursued with due regard to inter-
national economic, political and military realities and to the array of
mundane interests that follows from the American position in the
world. This way of reasoning will allow fairly consistent accounts of
events that at first sight seem to contradict the notion of an American
mission on behalf of liberal values. Supporting military dictatorships
during the Cold War, for instance, can be explained as derived from the
more important need to contain the Soviet Union, a policy that in turn
is in accordance with those values.
All three groups of arguments – style, deviations, content – have some
merit, but the last one is the most interesting one in the present context.
It pertains directly to the core of foreign policy, and in the sophisticated
version it enables the construction of complex explanations that can
account for some apparent contradictions, without degenerating into
an empirically empty scheme for ex-post rationalizations of foreign
policy. Furthermore, at a first glance it even seems to be supported by
major facts such as the American role in the creation of the League of
Nations and the UN, the support for democracy in Europe and Japan
after World War II, and also by American policies towards the new
democracies in the former Soviet bloc. More on the historical record
later. First, however, it is important to notice that the content argument
only works if the impact of political culture on foreign policy is com-
bined with the effects of other factors. Therefore it is time to consider
alternative theoretical interpretations of American foreign policy.
The common denominator for a large group of theoretical accounts
of US foreign policy is that its unique features derive from the
country’s special location in the international system, politically and
economically, and from internal factors that have to do with resources,
military and economic capabilities, economic structure and competitive
strength, and with the relative strength of various domestic interest
groups, as well as special features of the policy-making process. In
short, these approaches mainly depend on economic and political struc-
tures and relations of power, domestic and international, for the explan-
ation of US foreign policy.
One major strand of thinking along these lines is the realist tradition,
focusing on considerations of security, balance of power, and inter-
national order. As summarized by Gaddis, for instance, the overriding
goal for American foreign policy has been to ‘keep power balanced’ and
to maintain international stability (Gaddis 1986). Few writers, however,

would claim that these are the only goals pursued by the US. Economic
interests, too, are considered important by many. This leads on to
political economy interpretations of US foreign policy. In simple, not
to say reductionist versions, this approach claims that the fundamental
driving force behind foreign policy is the need of American businesses,
especially large transnational corporations to export to, import from
and invest in foreign markets. William Appleman Williams’ ‘open
door’ interpretation is an example (Williams 1972), as is some of the
Marxist and radical analyses that proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s
(Kolko 1969; Magdoff 1969). In such interpretations foreign policy is
seen merely as an instrument, opening the doors, paving the roads and
subduing the unruly in order to facilitate the expansion of American
capital.
This way of thinking has a certain resemblance to some of the ‘moral
content’ interpretations in the sense that whatever the obvious and
immediate purpose of foreign policy might seem to be, it is claimed
that in reality there is a deeper, and in this case more sinister, purpose
behind. Such simplistic approaches have deservedly been criticized for
being either void of empirical content or for being wrong about or
unable to account for significant facts in a satisfactory manner (e.g.
Schlesinger 1986). On the other hand, several writers have developed
more sophisticated versions of the argument. In such versions the
rationale behind foreign policy is not the immediate needs of American
businesses, but rather the wider and more encompassing interest of
creating the best possible international environment for capitalist
growth ( Joseph 1981; Kiernan 1978; Morley 1981; Petras and Morley
1981). Thus the policies that usually provide strong arguments against
economic interpretations of foreign policy, such as containment, sup-
port for the UN, or American participation in the two world wars, can be
analysed as aspects of an overall policy that only in a wider sense has to
do with interests rooted in the capitalist political economy. Contain-
ment can obviously be explained as a defence of capitalist relations of
production in the international political economy, while participation
in the world wars and other policies that lend great credibility to balance
of power explanations (or political culture ones) can be accepted as
being exactly that, but with the qualification that the pursuit of a
favourable balance of power represents an effort to gain as much influ-
ence as possible on the external environment. And when the analysis is
taken one step further, such influence is not a goal in itself but rather, in
the larger context, a means towards the promotion of an international
order that is propitious to the expansion of American capital and to

the overall growth of the international capitalist economy. Interpret-
ations of this kind can also account for economic policies that are
remote from direct considerations of profitability, such as the provision
of large-scale development assistance, by seeing them as contributions
to the establishment of infrastructural, social and institutional precon-
ditions for economic growth around the world, and they can account
for policies that seek to stabilize the international economy and other
subgoals derived from the same overall interest.
These political economy approaches are not alone in forwarding this
kind of reasoning in which different aspects of foreign policy and dis-
tinct types of causation are combined into an integrated and complex
theory. If the notion of a capitalist political economy in the preceding
paragraphs is replaced by the notion of a liberal democratic society,
much of the argument can be repeated. A good illustration of this
is found in N. Gordon Levin’s analysis of Wilson’s foreign policy
which also shows how close a liberal understanding that thinks of ‘the
American national interest in liberal-internationalist terms’ can be to a
Marxist-inspired analysis because: ‘Liberalism and liberal-capitalism
both refer to a system of socio-political values and institutions charac-
terized by political liberty, social mobility, constitutional government,
and the capitalist mode of production and distribution’ (Levin 1968,
pp. 2, 3). In a similar way, this kind of combined approach can be found,
for instance, in the syntheses of liberal political economy and realism
represented by Calleo (1982) and Gilpin (1987, 2002), and in more
recent contributions from John G. Ruggie (1998) and Henry Nau (2002).
Characteristic for this kind of thinking, albeit not always explicit,
is the use of distinct layers of explanation and levels of abstraction.
The defining features of society are conceptualized at a high level of
abstraction and aggregation, and an equally abstract explaining
principle for foreign policy is located at that level. In this way foreign
policy is theorized as the political system’s or the state’s efforts to secure
the best possible international conditions for the persistence and devel-
opment of the societal totality. Political and political economy ap-
proaches to American foreign policy can, in other words, be developed
into theoretical interpretations that in several respects resemble the
state-theoretical approach that was outlined earlier in this chapter.
What makes them different is the way in which society is conceptual-
ized and its defining features are identified. Furthermore, these various
approaches also tend to merge with understandings based on political
culture. Thus in the quote above Levin mentioned values as well as

institutions, and the contributions from Ruggie and Nau also focus on
ideas and identity while discussing these factors’ place in relation to
material interests. To carry the point even further, after the (re)discovery
of Gramsci by writers inspired by the Marxist tradition, the point that a
political-economic system has an important ideological or value aspect
is not exactly news or something to be denied (Augelli and Murphy
1988; Campbell 1992).
For all of these contributions then, the basic rationale behind
foreign policy is to be found in the nature of American society. The
central points are that the US is a specific social order, defined by
economic, political as well as ideological/cultural aspects and that for-
eign policy, when theorized at the most aggregate level, strives to create
favourable external conditions for this type of social order to expand
and flourish. The upshot for the present discussion is that the political
culture argument must be included in a synthetic theory of US foreign
policy, and that this element points towards a teleological element in
American actions towards the external world. In other words, the notion
of an ‘American mission’ – to transform the world in accordance with
capitalist and democratic values – should be accepted as an important
component in an idiographic theory of US foreign policy, and hence in
the understanding of American hegemony. The following section ex-
plains how this perspective translates into a historical portrayal of main
features and dominant trends in America’s engagement with the world.
4 Main themes in America’s international involvement
The purpose here is to show how a consistent interpretation of the

main trends of US foreign policy throughout the history of the
republic can be developed in accordance with the theoretical under-
standing just presented. In other words, the intention is not to add
further empirical findings to the extensive historiography and theoret-
ical literature on which the following is based. (In addition to the
works mentioned in the previous paragraphs, those by Ambrose
(1980), Becker and Wells (1984) and Louis (1977) deserve mentioning.)
The following is based on studies previously published, primarily in
Danish (1992, 1995 and 1997); being of a summarizing nature and
given that much of the story probably is familiar to most readers,
references are only given in a few places that may seem particularly
controversial.
The US was born in a liberation struggle against a European colonial

power in the first of the eighteenth-century’s two great revolutions.
From the very beginning the international conditions were important
to the possibilities for development of the American society and, in
opposition to the then-dominant European order, an alternative notion
of how to organize international society was developed. Whereas the
European system was characterized by shifting balances of power, con-
tinuous rivalries and recurrent wars as well as colonial expansion, the
‘American system’ would be governed by national independence, peace-
ful economic coexistence, where colonial powers would not be claiming
monopoly over trade on their overseas territories, and rules-based co-
operation between sovereign states. To this came a teleological element
where the domestic order of the US would and should be a role-model
for other countries, and the US would, by example and policies, contrib-
ute to the spread of fundamental American values to the world. Securing
the developmental possibilities of the American society, working for
a new and different world order, and the propagation of liberal-
democratic ideas to the rest of the world, in other words, forms the
leitmotif of more than two centuries of American foreign policy. These
principles have the same continuity as the fundamental values of the
political culture. Just as American society has transformed internally
beyond recognition, however, so has the foreign policy changed more
than once. The contents of US economic interests have changed in line
with technological development, the growth and international expan-
sion and the shifting climates of international competition, and the
international system has been radically transformed more than once
during the course of a little over two centuries. The leitmotif of US
foreign policy has not snapped but in each historical phase it has been
decisively influenced by the international challenges that the American
mission has faced.
In the infancy of the new republic, foreign policy was understandably
concerned with securing the survival of the nation and its economic
lifelines. Even at Independence, considerable interests in international
trade were at stake, and among the first takes of the newly formed navy
was to secure passage through the Mediterranean guarding off Moorish
pirates. First and foremost, however, came the territorial integrity and
continued expansion across the continent.
Having secured its independence, the US had no interest in meddling
with the power games and alliance formations of Europe, an interest
that was furthered with the stabilization of the situation in Europe
following the Napoleonic Wars. By that time, Britain was unquestion-
ably the world’s leading sea power and effectively enforced the principle
of the freedom of the oceans. The British hegemony provided the US
with a shield and the opportunity to concentrate on its own commercial
interests. From an early stage on, however, the dissolution of the
European colonial empires was also on the US agenda. As the Spanish
empire began to crumble, this interest became part of the policy. The
revolutions of independence in South America brought about the 1823
Monroe Doctrine – popularly known as ‘America for Americans’ – the
essence of which was that the ‘European system’ was not to spread to
America. In other words: where the Spanish empire broke down, other
European colonial powers were not to step in. Instead, the ‘American
system’ based on national independence, cooperation based on inter-
national public law and international trade on the basis of the open
door principle – i.e. not the preference systems of colonial powers – was
to emerge. Having carved its own niche from the ‘European system’, the
US now set to expand that niche, to penetrate into the cracks of the
colonial empires, to expand them and make room for US economic
expansion and for the ‘American system’.
By the end of the century this brought the US to the front of great
powers. Spain was losing its hold on the last great colonies of Cuba and
the Philippines, and the US intervened to secure their secession as well
as preventing their subjugation to another European power. The result
was the annexation of Puerto Rico, the Philippines became a US colony
and Cuba came under de facto US tutelage. In a sense, of course, this
constituted a denial of the anti-colonialist element of US foreign policy.
Part of the underlying rationale was the desire to secure US economic
interests, but it must also be considered in extension to the Monroe
Doctrine, i.e. a pre-emptive step to keep old colonial power out of
countries that were not yet able to achieve this by their own. Put in
another way, anti-colonialism was and remained the general principle
for the US. Colonization was a means resorted to when it was the only
possibility of securing the minimum of political stability required to
keep other colonial powers out and/or to secure US economic interests.
Incidentally, much the same basic features are apparent in the policy
towards Asia. Through a steady diplomatic and military pressure, the US
sought to open the Japanese market, and in China the main effort was to
maintain the open door principle, i.e. to secure equal access for all
trading nations.
The growing global involvement led to the first direct interference
with the European balance of power, at this point with considerable
strength. This culminated in taking part in World War I and the
significant efforts of President Wilson in the peace negotiations

leading to the establishment of the League of Nations – the first attempt
to put the principles of the ‘American system’ into force globally. As
we know, this was hardly a success: neither the US nor the rest of
the world were ready for it. Nevertheless, this is a striking expression
of the teleological element of the foreign policy, of the American
mission.
In spite of the US becoming one of the world’s great powers, and
in spite of the war and peace talks efforts, the European order neverthe-
less continued to dominate, albeit in a manner far from stable. The
Russian revolution produced yet another challenge, Japanese imperial-
ism continued its expansion into a region which was already then
seen to hold some of the main markets of the future, and the European
colonial empires still constituted a considerable obstacle for the Ameri-
can project. This obstacle did not become less significant when the
colonial powers, as a result of economic distress, intensified their
discriminatory trade policies making US access to colonial markets
difficult. That this was perceived as a major problem is clear from the
fact that the US military in the 1920s prepared contingency plans for
war against both Japan and Great Britain precisely because these
two nations were obstacles to the open door policy (Leffler 1984, pp.
236ff.).
The Great Depression of the 1930s constituted one of the precondi-
tions for the emergence of Nazism and fascism in Europe and generally
for the developments leading to World War II. The passivity of the US
towards this development, both in connection to the crisis and to the
growth of Nazism, has subsequently been seen as an expression of
American isolationism. In this line of reasoning a significant factor in
the outbreak of the crisis and its grave nature was that the old hegemon
– Britain – was no longer capable of stabilizing the international econ-
omy, while the potentially new hegemon, the US, was not yet ready for
the task – an observation that has been central for the formulation of the
theory of hegemonic stability (see Gilpin 2001 for an updated introduc-
tion). It is beyond question that the US was not ready, but the question
remains whether this can be seen as an expression of isolationism. The
US maintained and furthered a considerable international involvement
during the 1930s, but this was focused on its own commercial interests
as well as on making the ‘American system’ work in America, i.e. in the
Western hemisphere. The lack of will to stabilize the world economy,
then, can be explained by the fact that it was simply not in the interests
of the US to assume responsibility for a world order dominated by
European colonialism. This point, furthermore, serves to illustrate the

duality of the reproduction of power relations and societal persistence.
To stabilize and thereby reproduce the international order in that phase
of world development would have served to reproduce relations of
domination that the US had both economic and ideational interests in
changing.
This pattern also prevailed during World War II. Great Britain went to
war to fight Nazism and save the Empire. The US came to Britain’s
rescue, albeit only partially for the same reasons. The American goals
were to crush Nazism, to save democracies and to secure for the US a
more desirable balance of power and economic organization in Europe.
In addition to this, a US goal was to contribute to the dissolution of the
colonial empires or, at least, to their increased accessibility for US indus-
try on equal terms. This was quite clear during the negotiations over
economic aid to Britain even before the US entered the war. Here, the
Americans sought to pressure the British negotiators into dismantling
the imperial system of customs preferences and accepting the principle
of national self-determination, including in the colonies, and for much
the same reason negotiations were quite tough (Louis 1977; Hathaway
1984). On paper, the results were rather vague British commitments, but
in the aftermath of the war where Britain was in desperate need of
assistance, the US maintained the pressure. The crown of the British
Empire was India, and although the Indian nationalist movement was
the decisive factor, the US policy contributed markedly to India’s
gaining independence only two years after the war ended. For more
than 150 years, European colonialism had been a main challenge for
the American project, and now it had been forced to its knees as a side
effect of the defeat of European fascism and Japanese imperialism.
Thus, the foundation for a new world order under American leader-
ship had been created, and for the first time the principles of the
‘American system’ could be brought into force globally. No longer
was it a specifically American project since all of the allies endorsed
the fundamental principles. Some elements were created already during
the war – not least the UN – whereas others were added in the build-
ing process that did not end until the late 1950s. The main elements of
this order are well known: the UN, the Bretton Woods system including
the GATT, the IMF and the World Bank, the dismantling of colonial
empires, official development assistance to promote the growth of
market economies in what came to be known as the Third World, and
the establishment, under US leadership, of stable democracies in the
occupied territories of former foes Germany, Italy and Japan. In short, a
world order where the classic American liberal-democratic principles –

peaceful cooperation between sovereign states on the basis of public
international law, respect for human rights, democratic forms of rule
and open non-discriminatory market access – were more prevalent than
ever, although the principles were far from being fully implemented.
Two new challenges were to appear, however, that decisively
impacted on foreign policy during the next long phase. One, of course,
was the rivalry with the Soviet Union with the Cold War and all that this
entailed – arms race, balance of terror, the Korean and Vietnam wars,
support to anti-communist dictators in the Third World, etc. The con-
tainment of the Soviet Union was the main challenge for the US in this
period, and therefore the most significant influence on foreign policy.
The second great challenge was the powerful wave of economic nation-
alism in the Third World, beginning in the 1960s and culminating in the
early 1970s. Here, the US was faced with a broad and united coalition of
developing countries demanding a new international economic order
based on principles that ran counter to American principles and US
economic interests. The result was a prolonged diplomatic confronta-
tion between the US-led bloc of capitalist developed nations and most of
the developing world (Mortimer 1984; Krasner 1985).
The containment of the Soviet Union and the challenge of economic
nationalism of the Third World were naturally decisive to foreign policy
and in many cases completely overshadowed concerns for democracy,
economic development, human rights and a rules-based international
system. And it certainly did not help that the culmination of the Third
World challenge – the attempted use of oil as a weapon against the
US by oil-exporting developing countries – coincided with the American
defeat in Vietnam and the growing economic strength and competitive
pressure from allies and the concomitant rise of economic protection-
ism in the 1970s. These developments led to a significant weakening
of the American position which justifiably can be labelled a crisis of
American hegemony, beginning in the late 1960s and lasting well into
the 1970s. Indeed the previous strength was not really regained until
well into the 1980s.
The declared mission of President Reagan as he stepped into office
in 1981 was to rebuild American economic, political and moral strength,
and one has to admit that this has been accomplished to the fullest.
During the years of Reagan and Bush, the Cold War was won,
the economic and technological leadership of the US was recaptured
and consolidated, the prolonged GATT negotiations of the Uruguay
Round finally cracked a hole in the European system of protectionism
in agriculture, and the coalition of developing countries was effectively

broken up (Sell 1999; Braithwaite and Drahos 2000; Raghavan 1990).
This brings us to the present phase where the world order, as argued in
Chapter 3, is considerably closer to fundamental American principles
than ever before. The US was not alone in creating this situation where
the market democratic order is globally dominant and where the inter-
national system is based to such an extent on principles in accordance
with the ‘American system’. However, the fact that the US has played a
crucial role throughout the turn of events seems undeniable, and that
efforts to produce such a world order – the American mission – charac-
terize a main feature of US foreign policy should be equally clear.
These observations must be supplemented by two long-term trends
that have been significant throughout the 200 years that the US has
existed, albeit with varying degrees in different periods. These involve
themes already discussed in Chapters 3, 5 and 7, and the aim of this
section is to point to their relevance to the position of the US in the
world.
The first concerns economic internationalization. The point is simply
that the US has been a significant contributor to this development and
there are no other countries whose total involvement in the world – in
terms of exports, imports, direct and portfolio investments and financial
activities in general – are so extensive and differentiated. The set of
economic interests that the US has been pursuing alongside the interests
of world order have naturally developed and changed in step with this
development and the technological change, but altogether have become
increasingly extensive and differentiated.
The second trend is the construction of an ever more extensive and
differentiated system of global governance. The point here is that when
looking at the main features – to which there are of course exceptions,
important ones too – the US has played a leading role in shaping it,
and the special American tradition has had a significant influence of its
form. As emphasized by, among others, Murphy (1994) and Braithwaite
and Drahos (2000) and as discussed in preceding chapters, the system of
governance has deep historical roots, and the US has taken a lead role in
most of this construction process. The central position in the creation of
the UN system and the Bretton Woods organizations in connection to
the end of World War II are commonly known, and although the League
of Nations established on American initiative in the wake of World War
I was, in most respects, a failure, it nevertheless testifies to the continued
American efforts to produce a world order based on peaceful multilateral
cooperation. It is also worth noting – especially at a time where the
American commitment to multilateralism is often questioned – the

significant role played by the US when considering the multitude of
institutions and regimes that have developed since World War II. Thus
the conclusion of Braithwaite and Drahos following an extensive and
detailed analysis of regime formation across a wide variety of issues –
primarily economic – that the single most important actor is undoubt-
edly the US (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, pp. 475ff.). Another central
point is, as argued in Chapter 5, that to the extent that there is some-
thing resembling a unified management or coordinating body in this
system, this is the formal and informal cooperation taking place be-
tween leading Western nations, institutionalized among other things
in G-7 cooperation and in the OECD, and the US has generally played a
crucial role in the development of such coordinating mechanisms. As
Ruggie (1993) points out, this is not merely the result of the US occupy-
ing a hegemonic position following World War II. The US has shaped the
role in a particular American fashion (1993, p. 31), especially with a
preference for multilateral cooperation. There are different kinds of
hegemonies, and the world would have been a different place had
another political tradition and culture played the role.
5 Conclusion
The American state has indisputably played a decisive and leading role
in the construction of the current system of global governance, but this
does not amount to saying that this state has been or is globally domin-
ant. This is implied in the specification of the concept of power in this
context, i.e. as relating to social forces and not states. Nor is it correct if
one considers the American state as a representative of the dominant
coalition of social forces within the US – regardless of how this is
analysed – because this is a component of a more comprehensive and
composite global power bloc, as argued in the previous section. Within
this bloc, the dominant American forces take up a particularly powerful
position and there is a mutually supportive connection between this
and the leading role of the American state. In light of the described
theoretical perspective on foreign policy and the description of the main
historical trends of this particular state’s external behaviour, this leading
role must be understood from the double perspective of the power/
persistence duality. As a persistence factor for the American society,
the US has furthered an international order of a certain kind, namely
market democratic and based on multilateral international cooperation,
and has simultaneously taken on the role of the leading architect of the
global persistence function by virtue of its superior power capabilities.

This view is not entirely alien to the hypothesis of hegemonic stability,
except that it does not exclude the possibility that the persistence
function could be conducted differently. As an expression of the forces
and ideologies dominant in the US, the US has done this in a specifically
American way. The conclusion, then, is that the duality also applies to
US foreign policy. Thus, on one hand, US leadership has been and is a
significant contribution to the development of the global persistence
function as embodied in the current pattern of global governance, but
on the other, this pattern is shaped in conformity with US interests and
the reproduction of the particularly influential position of the American
state. In other words, transversing the – often soundly based – criticism
of American foreign policy, there has been a clear and historically
progressive dimension to the American leadership since its establish-
ment during World War II (as argued by Shaw 2001). In this connection
it should be pointed out that the duality perspective in itself says noth-
ing about the balance between reproduction of power relations and the
persistence function, nor about the influence of one on the other. It
only points out that in general the US cannot pursue its own interests
and maintain its position of power without simultaneously attending to
the global persistence function and that, reversely, the US attends to this
in ways that reflect American power and interests.
These conclusions also mark the end of the substantive discussions
and analyses of this book. American hegemony was treated as a separate
issue that belongs to a different level of analysis from the systemic
perspective applied in previous chapters. The contention is that this
makes it possible to theorize the predominant role the US has played
and continues to play in a way that recognizes that the American state is
not the only powerful actor in world politics and that American social
forces are not alone in occupying a dominant position in the global
constellation of power relations. The world is not an American empire,
but the American social forces are hegemonic within the dominant
coalition, and the American state has played a decisive leading role in
organizing the interests of the coalition and in developing the system of
global governance. What remains now is a summary of the main argu-
ments of the book and some concluding comments.
10
Conclusion
This book set out to analyse political globalization. This topic poses
theoretical as well as empirical challenges for social science research
and in consequence the purpose has been double: to clarify and develop
theoretical concepts that are adequate to the task, in particular by
moving beyond state-centred perspectives on international politics
and transcending the traditional intellectual division of labour between
international and comparative politics, and to employ such perspectives
and concepts in empirical analyses.
The book was organized as an alternation between theoretical and
conceptual reasoning and empirical investigations. This particular mode
of exposition was chosen in order to make the empirical relevance and
potential of each of the main theoretical points stand out as clearly as
possible, but this may have been at the risk of making it difficult for
readers to maintain a clear overview of the overall logic of the argument.
Therefore, in this concluding chapter I will give a summary overview of
the main points, but this time organized differently: first a summary
of the main theoretical arguments, then an equally brief recapitula-
tion of the empirical conclusions. Finally, I will comment on some of
the key arguments presented in the book and their implications.
1 Theoretical overview
The theoretical discussions dealt with several problems located at differ-

ent levels of abstraction. Some concerned basic and general questions
that are common to all social science theory, as clarification of the
position of the present writer as a prelude to the more substantial con-
ceptual developments pertaining to global political phenomena. The
first group will be mentioned here briefly, without elaboration. They
194
Conclusion 195
concerned the notion of Bohrian complementarity, which was intro-

duced as a theoretical principle to be used at some key points in the
ensuing discussion; the question of structure and agency which was
specified by use of the notion of complementarity; and the role of ideas
and material forces. Furthermore, it was argued that the task at hand
required a ‘global polity’ research perspective that explicitly focuses on
global politics in a holistic and idiographic manner, in other words that
attempts to theorize global politics as a whole as a unique (there is only
one global polity) phenomenon in a process of ongoing development,
calling for a historical, macro-sociological approach.
The concept of world society was used frequently in the text to denote
the totality of societal institutions, structures and processes, including
human agency, and it was argued, as a methodological principle, that
political phenomena should be analysed in the context of this totality.
Hence, in consequence of the chosen macro-sociological perspective, an
investigation of the structuration of world society is required as a con-
text for the analysis of political phenomena. The term global or world
polity was used to denote the most encompassing totality of political
relations, structures and activities in world society. Within this broad
field global governance was used for those structures, institutions and
processes through which policies with a global or quasi-global scope
are decided upon and carried out. A central argument was that when
analysing the global polity and global governance, theoretical concepts
from general political and societal theory, including concepts developed
for use in analysis of national societies, could and should be brought
into play, although only after critical scrutiny and at the outset in their
most abstract and general formulations. This brings paradigmatic differ-
ences and theoretical disagreements between the various approaches
to politics to the forefront of the discussion, entailing the necessity
of making clear and explicit choices. The choice here was a state-
theoretical approach, largely inspired by but not uncritical of historical
materialism. This in turn led on to a closer scrutiny of the concept of the
state.
I argued that the state is a complex phenomenon and that therefore it
is useful to distinguish between several aspects of statehood: the state as
the centralized monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, the state as a
structured political arena, the state functions, the state as a legal order,
the state as an embodiment of relations of power, and the state appar-
atuses, i.e. the government machinery or the state institutions with
particular emphasis on executive state bureaucracies, and the state in
its relation to people/nation, i.e. the question of national community.
The list did not claim to be complete, it might be useful to identify

additional aspects, but the purpose here was to present those aspects of
statehood that were selected for closer analysis. The central point was
the suggestion that the globalization of politics, i.e. the rise of a
global polity and global governance or, in the terminology of classical
historical materialism, the rise of a global political superstructure, can be
theorized as the uneven and partial globalization of the various aspects of
statehood.
Moving to a higher degree of theoretical specification, I selected two
aspects of statehood for closer investigation. The first was state insti-
tutions or apparatuses, with a focus on the bureaucratic infrastructure
of government agencies that not only implement policies, but also
generate policy proposals and provide analytical input, and thus con-
tribute significantly to political leadership. The second was the state’s
functions which were subjected to a detailed discussion. A key conclusion
was that there is an inherent duality in the state’s general function
which at the same time is a function of cohesion and persistence for
the societal totality and a function to reproduce relations of power and
dominance. Following the principle of Bohrian complementarity this
led on to the conclusion that complementary analyses of these two faces
of state functions are required. Therefore the discussion branched out
to follow each of these faces separately at an even higher degree of
theoretical specification (or conversely at a lower level of abstraction,
if you like).
The function of persistence was discussed with its application to global
society in mind. Hence it was not considered in relation to a pure
theoretical model of capitalist societies, but in the context of the more
open theory of states in general. The function was specified through a
discussion of several contributions, among them works based on neo-
classical economic theories of market failures and public goods, Marxist
theories of the state and several others. This led on to the identification
of six modalities of the function of persistence: maintenance of social
order, providing the institutional infrastructure for a capitalist market
economy, stabilizing the business cycle, promoting expansion to less
developed areas, the reproduction and qualification of the labour force
and population, and securing environmental sustainability. An import-
ant point was that whereas it is possible in theory to identify a critical
core or minimal level at which these tasks must be performed for society
to persist, the further specification cannot be undertaken in the abstract.
The reason is that the level and quality at which these functions should
be performed is inherently political; the identification of market failures
Conclusion 197
requires a standard of performance that markets fail to live up to, and

this standard cannot be identified through theoretical reasoning, it is a
political question. Therefore the persistence function is shaped by polit-
ical processes, in addition to being subject to continuous change and
development following the ongoing processes of economic and political
changes in the society whose persistence is involved.
The second complementary branch of reasoning that followed the
power/persistence duality at the core of the state’s functions concerned
the reproduction of relations of power. This required a discussion of the
concept of power, focusing on the referent object of this concept.
The reason for this choice is that the whereas the concept in much
international relations theory refers almost exclusively to states and
relations between states, there are also contributions in which it refers
to social forces or to combinations of the two possibilities. The answer to
this question depends on the concept of state employed, and based
on the approach taken to this issue it was argued on theoretical grounds
that the most satisfactory solution is to posit social forces as the proper
referent object. In other words: relations of power are relations between
social forces. This in turn necessitated a closer look at concepts of social
forces and class. First, it was argued briefly that whereas non-economic
sources of differentiation and identity can have significant and some-
times decisive impact on the way in which individuals perceive and
articulate interests and act upon them politically, material interests are
also highly significant, in particular in issues relating to economic and
material matters. More attention was paid to some of the complexities
in the analysis of social forces, in particular that social forces are only
constituted as such to the extent that they perceive shared interests and
develop the capacity to act upon them, and that relations of power
between social forces never are simple and reducible to a simple hier-
archy or ranking, but rather make up complex and dynamic patterns of
alliances, compromises, mutual support, dominance and subordination.
Furthermore, it was pointed out how, in principle, economic inter-
nationalization complicates the picture of class formation to the extent
that a dislocation between social forces and states takes place. Social
forces have interests in relation to more than one national society, and
states pursue policies in relation to social forces rooted in several soci-
eties. A further implication is that the question of transnational class
formation becomes central to the analysis of power in global society.
Finally, the question of hegemony or leadership was separated from the
issue of relations of power. Not because it is unrelated, but because it was
found useful to let the concept of hegemony refer to a different level of
analysis. Whereas the preceding theoretical deliberations aimed at de-

veloping concepts and perspectives for use in the analysis of the totality
of the global polity, the concept of hegemony, as defined and used here,
refers to a specific policy role performed by a single state, thus moving
the perspective from systemic considerations to state actions. This led
on to a discussion of theories of foreign policy. Basically, foreign policy
was defined as the external aspects of state functions, which, in a glob-
alizing world implies four sets of determination: the state is engaged in a
domestic persistence function and in the reproduction of domestic
relations of power, and it is engaged in a global persistence function
and the global reproduction of relations of power. The other aspects of
statehood are also of relevance, but they were not considered here. The
further specification of this perspective, however, has to take the form of
idiographic theory on specific states in relation to time specific stages of
the development of world society and along these lines, the analysis of
hegemony must be a historically rooted analysis of America’s engage-
ment with the world, based on an examination of central features of
American society.
This completes the brief summary of the main theoretical arguments
presented and argued in greater detail in the text. They have served as
theoretical guidelines for the empirical investigation of the globaliza-
tion of politics, or rather of selected aspects thereof. Let us now turn to
an overview of the main empirical results.
2 Empirical overview
The main purpose of the empirical sections was to examine the uneven
and partial globalization of selected aspects of statehood. But in con-
formity with the principle of relating political phenomena to their
societal context this required an analysis of the structuration of world
society. The most salient features were argued to be the predominance of
the market democratic type of society, defined by capitalist market
economy, modern capitalist states and democratic regimes, along with
intensified economic, political and cultural integration, i.e. what nor-
mally goes under the name of globalization. Several aspects of this
homogenization were described, leading, among other things, to the
conclusion that this novel world order is likely to be more peaceful than
the more heterogeneous orders that preceded it. This does not amount
to a world without conflicts, but rather to an order in which conflicts are
dealt with peacefully, through negotiation, compromise and mediation,
and an order in which salient conflicts increasingly but not exclusively
Conclusion 199
are generated within and between the market democracies. This is the
societal context in which the globalization of aspects of statehood is to
be seen.
The next empirical section focused on the institutional infrastructure
of the global governance system, encompassing international institu-
tions as well as nation-states, and representing the globalization of the
institutional aspect of statehood. The system was characterized as bifur-
cated, centred on the UN family and the G-7–OECD nexus respectively,
and decentralized and marked by unclear and overlapping competen-
cies. The G-7–OECD nexus plays a central role in bringing together the
core of industrialized market democratic countries in an increasingly
integrated institutional infrastructure of national governments and
international institutions, marked by dense contacts, routinized infor-
mation exchange, mutual surveillance and peer pressure, strong analyt-
ical and statistical resources and a capacity for development of joint
strategies and policies. To the extent that there is leadership and
guidance across issues in the governance system, it is provided by this
core of market democratic states through this institutional infrastruc-
ture, and into which attempts are made to integrate the rest of the world
and in particular the dynamic ‘emerging markets’. What has happened,
it was pointed out, and is likely to continue to happen, is a gradual
or ‘creeping’ internationalization of administrative state apparatuses,
focused on the G-7–OECD nexus.
The third empirical theme was the globalization of the function of
persistence, conceived as the development of state functions towards
the persistence of global society. The six modalities identified in the
theoretical discussion were examined separately, and it was shown that
there has been significant globalization of them, but unevenly so. It has
been rather limited but not absent in the area of maintenance of social
order backed by the nation-states’ monopoly on the legitimate use of
violence; far more developed concerning securing the basic precondi-
tions for the market economy; to some extent there are institutions and
policies that cater to the stabilization of the business cycle, but contin-
gent on agreement between the dominant states organized in the G-7,
and hence only occasionally effective; and a range of activities underpin
the expansion of industrial capitalism to less developed areas. In the
area of reproduction and qualification of the labour force, a distinction
was made between a core of uncontested activities that are strongly
globalized, and a broader contested band that testified to the political
nature of this and other state functions. And finally, it was argued that
environmental sustainability has become one of the more developed
aspects of a global persistence function that caters to the shared interests

of humanity. Thus, to repeat a phrase from the Commission on Global
Governance that was quoted repeatedly, the capacity of humankind to
organize life on the planet has clearly been strengthened.
This represents, however, only one side of the dual nature of the
global governance system. The other side calls for a complementary
analysis of relations of power and in this regard attention was first
turned to the question of transnational class formation and a trans-
national ruling or dominant class that has been suggested by several
scholars. Based on the available evidence it was concluded that such
claims are premature; business communities are still predominantly
organized and constituted as social forces at the national level; with
regard to other social forces, the process of transnational class formation
is even less developed. The exception to this is that some NGOs, argued
to represent universal or global interests pertaining to the environment,
development and human rights, have emerged as significant trans-
national forces. But otherwise relations of power must be analysed as
relations between nationally constituted social forces. Given the com-
plexity of this issue it was only possible to give a tentative outline of
these. The central feature was a dominant coalition of business commu-
nities from the market democratic heartland which undoubtedly is the
most powerful social force in contemporary world society. But this social
force is involved in a range of alliances and depends on support from a
variety of social forces in the developed as well as the developing world
that are also able to promote and sustain their particular interests,
although in varying degrees. The illustrative example used was that of
Southern European farming communities that have been able to defend
their interests at the European level and globally in the WTO, thanks to
the role they play in the complex set of compromises on which the
European integration project depends. It should be noted that in the
interpretation developed here it is not the dominant social forces that
play the leading role in the development of the governance system; it is
in conformity with their interests, but the main driving actors are states
acting according to their dual roles of securing societal persistence and
reproducing relations of power. Transnational class formation and more
generally the transnational activities of social forces, whether organized
nationally or internationally, are a response to the state-driven develop-
ment of the governance system on which they seek to gain increased
influence. This point is supported by the observation that the globaliza-
tion of the various aspects of statehood is more advanced than the
process of transnational class formation. Thus, as was observed several
Conclusion 201
times, at the level of agency, states are the predominant players, and
this leads on to the final empirical topic considered, namely American
hegemony.
The dominant position of the American business community within
the globally dominant coalition was taken as a starting point, but the
main purpose was to analyse the leading role of the US state. This
required a closer look at key features of American society, centred on
the exceptionalism of American political culture. It was argued that the
state’s persistence function in relation to the teleological element in
political culture, combined with the size, strength, competitiveness
and expansionism of the economy is at the root of what is called ‘the
American mission’. Central in this is the drive to transform the external
world in accordance with American values and principles, i.e. the pro-
motion of a world order based on the market democratic type of society,
but also, in contrast to earlier European global projects, to be based on
national sovereignty and a rules-based international system. This mis-
sion marks an enduring thread of continuity in American foreign policy,
but a thread that has been transfigured several times during the history
of the republic in accordance with shifting international circumstances
and transformations of world society. As a result the US has played a
major role in the homogenization of world society and in the building
of the global governance system, wherefore American foreign policy
must be understood in the light of the dual nature of the system: as a
contribution to the progressive evolution of humankind’s capacity to
organize life on the planet, and as a concomitant pursuit of the repro-
duction of the position of the hegemonic position of American social
forces in the global relations of power. The dual perspective also applies
to the US role in the world.
3 Concluding comments
On duality and complementarity

One of the central arguments in the preceding analysis was that the
global governance system has a dual nature (an ontological argument)
that requires complementary ‘descriptions’ in Niels Bohr’s sense (an
epistemological proposition). This was argued theoretically and demon-
strated empirically, but at this point a concluding comment on the
philosophical status of the argument is in order. It is possible to coun-
ter-argue that the ontological question is still unsettled, and that it
eventually will turn out to be possible to develop satisfactory theoretical
accounts of the global governance system that do not require notions of
duality and complementarity. Against this counter-argument a softer

version of the propositions forwarded in this book can be posited.
Perhaps in the final analysis there is no ontological duality; neverthe-
less, in the absence of concepts that effectively can rule out ontological
duality, the better strategy is to accept ontological duality for the time
being and proceed with complimentary theoretical perspectives. Thus
the conclusion still is warranted: The way in which persistence is se-
cured in global society is deeply marked by prevailing configurations of
power, dominance and subordination. But the reverse is also true: the
way in which relations of power are reproduced in the global polity is
deeply marked by the imperative of global persistence, and increasingly
so. There is a duality leading to different ‘descriptions’ of the object for
analysis, and it is hard to see a better way of describing the relations
between these theoretical accounts of global governance than through
the Bohrian notion of complementarity.
On causality
This book has not attempted to develop a causal explanation of the
evolution, form and policies of the global governance system. The am-
bition was the more limited one of developing concepts and perspec-
tives to provide a theorized description and assessment of the system in
state-theoretical terms and in a way that respects the complexity of the
issue. But the question of how to explain the rise, form and policy
content of the governance system deserves a few comments in this
conclusion. The first point is that this question can be addressed at
different levels of abstraction and aggregation and in short- and long-
term perspectives. As indicated briefly in the discussion of Bohrian
complementarity, macro-analysis cannot be built exclusively on the
aggregation of micro-analyses and, conversely, is it not possible to
deduce with any degree of certainty the behaviour of micro-phenomena
from the results of analyses at the macro level. Explanations of the
formation and evolution of single institutions and regimes and their
form and policy content rests upon a multitude of causal factors,
the identification of which have progressed significantly thanks to
the efforts of regime analysis. States’ concerns about absolute and rela-
tive gains, the interference of domestic politics, a variety of ideational
factors including policy input from epistemic communities, and trans-
national actors have all been identified as important factors, as have
structural factors such as the distribution of power, and the nature of
the common interests that underlie the regime in question. In principle,
a broad range of factors can be important and can be included in causal
Conclusion 203
explanations, but the mix of explanatory factors and their relative

weight must be expected to vary considerably between regimes and
over time. What has been emphasized in the preceding analysis,
however, is that a useful contribution to such explanations is to be
found in the dual nature of the governance system. This means, on
the one hand, an examination of the state function of which the policy
in question is a part, based on the assumption that the closer it is
to the core of a global persistence function, as specified in relation to
the current structuration of world society, the stronger the incentives
will be for actors to develop that policy. In other words: a historical and
societal specification of the nature of the ‘public good’ in question
should be part of the explanation. On the other hand, it means that
the way in which problems are addressed is profoundly shaped by
prevailing relations of power.
At the aggregate level of analysis, where the focus is on the develop-
ment of the governance system as a whole, the situation is different. To
be explained now is a long-term process of historical evolution, and
explanatory factors of an equally aggregate nature must be identified.
This agenda has not been pursued in the preceding analysis but never-
theless a few observations are offered here. Obviously the long-term
process of economic and technological development, the development
of an increasingly rational and science-based culture, the expansion of
industrial capitalism across the globe, and the increased economic inte-
gration of world society have all played important roles in creating the
problems that global governance addresses, as well as the capacity to
deal with them. But it is equally obvious that this is insufficient; there is
no automaticity that translates economic change into political action.
Political developments have been important too, among them the his-
torical experiences of colonization and decolonization, the growth of
democracy and the lessons learned from devastating world wars and
economic crises, putting a premium on peaceful and cooperative solu-
tions to international problems. Humane norms, as expressed in the
various declarations and conventions on human rights, have had an
impact of their own and in shaping these norms the struggle for social
justice and equity at the domestic level in many societies has played a
role. And finally, the distinct contribution of the United States must be
recognized, in spite of all the criticism, however justified. The contem-
porary global political superstructure is the product of a long historical
process in which all of these factors and probably several others have
played a role, resulting in a system that, on one hand, represents a
significantly increased capacity of humankind to organize life on the
planet and, on the other hand, is deeply marked by relations of power in

world society.
On the prospects for global governance

The arguments presented in this book have several implications for the
understanding of contemporary patterns of global governance and
the prospects for its future development. The often-debated prospect
of a major break between Europe and the US, for example, due to
American unilateralism, economic rivalry, and disagreements about
the role of the United Nations in global governance, must be considered
a rather unlikely possibility. This is not only due to the intense eco-
nomic interdependence between the two sides of the Atlantic, it is also
due to their shared position in relation to the global function of persist-
ence. The societal determination of their respective states impresses
upon them a shared responsibility for this function and binds them in
a community of fate with the rest of the world. Institutions and organ-
izational forms may change, but according to the logic of the globalised
function of persistence, the incentives to uphold cooperation in this
regard is far stronger than the incentives to let it break down.
At a more general level, as argued already, the analysis leads to the
expectation that the global political superstructure will continue to
develop in the years ahead. As to the direction this will take, it is
illuminating to turn back to Marx who in the opening chapter was
quoted in order to frame the overall discussion of the global political
superstructure. The passages on the dialectic between economic and
political and ideational change quoted in Chapter 1 were followed by
these observations:
No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for
which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations
of production never replace older ones before the material conditions
for their existence have matured within the framework of old society.
Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to
solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem
itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are
already present or at least in the course of formation.
(Marx 1970, p. 21)
Any notion that capitalism has exhausted its developmental potential

seems highly implausible, and its replacement with a radically different
social order, whether desirable or not, is not within sight. In a similar
Conclusion 205
vein it seems that the preconditions for a drastically reordered system of

global governance, for instance in the shape of one unified global state
with a world government, has not been established so far. The condi-
tions for developments in that direction may be ‘in the course of forma-
tion’, but there is nothing in the arguments presented here that suggests
that a global superstructure modelled on the territorial nation-state is
a likely outcome. If Marx was right that humankind ‘sets itself only such
tasks as it is able to solve’, given the immense productive capacity of
the world economy and the strengthened capacity of humankind to
organize life on the planet, what is within grasp over the next couple
of decades, but far from certain and entirely dependent on relations of
power and human agency, is the strengthening of the global function
of persistence in a more equitable manner and thus the establish-
ment of the foundations for a truly welfare oriented system of global
governance.
A final comment
This brings me to the final comment on the inherent and deliberate bias
of this book. World society is in a continuous process of development
and change and in any period in time the new coexists with the old,
which it only gradually replaces and not without resistance and back-
lashes. I have focused on new aspects which I find good reasons to
believe will continue to grow. Thus the enduring elements of anarchy,
interstate rivalry, aggression and war, and unsolved problems of devel-
opment, poverty, injustice and equity have been downplayed. I find this
bias justified because only in this way is it possible to focus sharply on
the new phenomena and ascertain their characteristics and potentials.
The deep historical roots notwithstanding, the globalization of political
life and statehood is a fairly recent phenomenon and, while not irrevers-
ible or predetermined, one that is likely to strengthen and intensify in
coming decades. It is, therefore, an important task for social science to
develop adequate theoretical tools and perspectives to describe, explain,
interpret and evaluate it. This volume is a contribution to the pursuit of
this task.
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Index
Action Programme on Essential Drugs Australia 50, 72, 73, 119, 122
and Vaccines 139 Austria-Hungary 57
Action and Reaction in World Politics autonomy (absolute/relative) 23
(Rosecrance, 1963) 34
Afghanistan 45, 52, 120, 127 balance of power 182, 183, 186, 189
Africa 44, 50, 138 Baldwin, D. A. 146
Age of Extremes (Hobsbawm, 1994) 44 Bangladesh 50
ageing 77 Bank of England 129
agency (human) 19–22, 27, 195, 205 Bank for International Settlements
Aggarwal, V. 30 (BIS) 71, 75, 77, 130
agriculture 83, 136, 154, 166–7, 191, banks/banking 45–6, 129, 130, 136,
200 137
AIDS (acquired immuno-deficiency Baritz, L. 180
syndrome) 139, 163 Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
al-Qaeda 52, 53, 127 (1974–) 130
Albrow, M. 5 Bayne, N. 78
Algeria 52, 56, 88 Beaudrillard, J. 177
Almond, G. A. 4 Becker, W. H. 185
Ambrose, S. E. 185 Bergsten, C. F. 134
American Chambers of Commerce 156 Bhalla, S. S. 36
American Creed 180 Bhaskar, R. 19, 21
‘American system’ 186–91 Bilderberg conferences 74
Amnesty International 73, 147, 158, Bohr, N. 13, 14, 15–19, 20, 21, 95, 105,
163 144, 195, 196, 201, 202
Analysis of Political Structure (Easton, Bosnia 122
1990) 62 Bourdieu, P. 19
Angola 56 Braithwaite, J. 4–5, 45, 74, 119–20, 128,
Annan, K. 75 146, 149, 151, 160, 162, 191–2
ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and the Brazil 47, 50, 53, 88, 89, 151, 167
United States) 72–3 Bretton Woods system 71, 74, 75, 129,
Archer, C. 4, 69 133, 189, 191
Argentina 47, 50, 88 Brown, S. 31
Aristotle 96 Building Institutions for Markets (World
Asia 49, 50, 87, 130 Market, 2002) 46
Asian values (Singapore) 53 Bush [Snr], G. H. W. 190
Asiatic mode of production (Marx/ Bush [Jnr], G. W. 143
Engels) 100, 102 business 164
aspects of statehood 95, 105–6, 168, family firms 154
195, 200 foreign-owned 156
uneven globalization 2, 143–4, 196, global regulation 146
198–9 medium-sized 154
Association of South-East Asian business associations 147, 155, 160–1
Nations 73 European 150
‘Atlantic ruling class’ (Pijl) 9, 146, 160 international/transnational 161, 162
atomic physics 15–17 business cycle 117, 144
224
Index 225
business regulation 119–20 Choi, S-Y. 43

Buzan, B. 8, 34–5, 123 ‘clash of civilizations’ (Huntington) 36,
52, 54
Cairns Group 166, 168 class 9, 100, 104, 106, 197
Calleo, D. P. 171, 184 dominant 149, 162, 169
Canada 50, 72, 75 ruling 147, 153
capital 158 climate change 143
foreign 156 Clinton, W. J. 138
preconditions for continued Cold War 28, 42, 56–9, 121–2, 124, 136,
accumulation 111 182, 190
capital movement 93 end 27, 43, 44, 170
capital transfers 162 collective action 153
capitalism 111, 117, 136, 161, 177, Colombia 47, 88
204 colonialism 57, 120, 121, 135, 136, 186,
duality and complementarity 96–9 188–9, 203
global (birth pangs) 58 Commission on Global Governance
global spread 43–5 (1995) 116, 144, 200
industrial 57, 199, 203 Common Agricultural Policy (EU) 166
liberal 184 Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels,
modern state 45–8 1848) 97
process of development, system of competition policy 83
exploitation 97 competition state (Hirsch) 73
securing conditions for complementarity 105
expansion 117 Bohrian 13, 14, 15–19, 20, 195, 196,
tensions with non-capitalist types of 202
society 56 loose/strict 18
versions 36 Complementarity and Political Science
capitalist (Rasmussen, 1987) 15
classes 51 conditionality (good governance) 46,
development 108 51
industrialism 109 Congo, Democratic Republic of (formerly
market economy 117, 127–32, 144 Zaire) 46, 47
relations of production constructivism 19, 20, 25
(reproduction) 112, 137 containment (of communism) 183, 190
Caribbean 126, 127 contract 45, 128
Carlsnaes, W. 172 ‘cosmopolitan approach’ (Kaldor) 123
Carnegie Endowment 119 Cox, R. W. 5, 7, 9, 31, 34, 61, 73, 146,
causality 202–4 149, 156, 159–60, 163, 171
Central Africa 120 crimes against humanity 42
Central Asia 44 crises (economic) 71, 130, 203
central banks 129, 130, 133 Cuba 40, 187
century of extremes (Hobsbawm) 56, 58 culture 36, 43, 185, 203
Cerny, P. G. 115 Customs Cooperation Council
Chase-Dunn, C. 31 (1952–) 124, 127
Chechnya 123 Cutler, A. C. 6
Chicago University (supply-side Czech Republic 43, 72, 84, 87
approach) 91
Chile 47, 50, 88 Danish Institute of International Affairs
China 40, 44, 47–50, 87–9, 120, 123, (DUPI) / Dansk Udenrigspolitisk
150–1, 180, 187 Institut ix, 71
226 Index
Deacon, B. 119, 140 Economic Organization of West African

decolonization 135, 187, 189, 203 States (ECOWAS) 122
Degnbol-Martinussen, J. 98, 114–15 education 83, 113, 117, 136, 137, 140
democracy 41, 42, 48–53, 123, 181–2, Egypt 47, 52, 88
189, 203 Eichengreen, B. 28
disputed concept 48–9 Einstein, A. 18
liberal 177, 184, 186, 190 Eleventh of September (2001) x, 52, 53,
‘waves interrupted by 122, 127
backlashes’ 49–50 Elias, N. 19, 26
denationalization (Zürn) 5, 67 employment 76, 89, 90, 96, 132, 133,
Denmark 86, 94 134, 144, 154, 167
dependent development 98 Encyclopaedia Britannica 9
determinism 18, 20 endangered species 124, 126
economic 11, 12, 112 Engels, F. 26, 100–2
developing world/Third World 44–7, environmental protection/
49–50, 54, 56, 136, 151, 180, sustainability 78, 83, 87, 109, 113,
189–91, 200 118, 140–3, 164, 196, 199–200
see also North–South divide Ethiopia 47, 120
development 164, 200, 205 ethnicity 153, 164
development assistance 135, 184, Europe 49, 53, 58, 158, 182, 186, 188,
189 190–1, 204
‘development of Central 43
underdevelopment’ 137 Eastern 44, 50
dictators/dictatorship 41, 182, 190 economic organization 189
‘domestic politics’ (Gourevitch) 174 monetary unification 135
Drahos, P. 4–5, 45, 74, 119–20, 128, Southern 44, 65, 167, 200
146, 149, 151, 160, 162, 191–2 Western 43, 72
drugs 58, 124, 125, 127 European Information &
duality and complementarity 201–2 Communications Technology
Dunbar, R. 26 Industry Association (EICTA) 156
Dynamic Asian Economies 87 European Union 72, 73, 75, 150, 151,
dynamic emerging markets 199 161, 162, 166–7, 168
evolutionary biology 25–6
East Timor 122 exchange rates 76, 133–4
Easton, D. 4, 62, 65, 147 exchange value (Aristotle/Marx) 96
economic ‘external other’ 179–80
conflict 162
development 51, 190 factors of production 155
factors (‘seldom only sources of fascism 57, 65, 188, 189
change’) 27 figuration (Elias) 19
growth 90, 112, 117, 132–5, 137, Finland 72
167, 183 Fioretos, O. 162
interests 153, 155, 189 fiscal
internationalization 27, 167, 191 consolidation 93
economic foundation/political deficits 135
superstructure (Marx) 10–11, 23–4, policy 90
26–7, 63, 116 Foley, M. 177
consequences of economic Folse, H. J. 16–19
internationalization 12 foreign direct investment (FDI) 43, 128,
global 12, 196, 204 154, 155
Index 227
foreign policy global market-based order (Murphy,

content (USA) 179, 181–2 2003) 54
cyclical or pendulum swings global polity 3–10, 107, 195, 196, 198,
(USA) 182 202
definition 174, 198 concepts and perspectives 4–5
deviation argument (USA) 179–81, domestic analogies 6–9
182 idiographic macro-sociological
four sets of determination 198 approach 27–9
hegemony 171–6 methodology 6–8
idiographic rather than nomothetic nomothetic theory 27, 28, 29–32
research perspective 175–6, 185 patterns of power 165–9
internal and external interplay 173–5 power relations 145–69
long-term trends 191–2 research themes and agendas 3–4
‘moral content’ interpretations 183 totality perspective 31
origins and determinants 173 global warming 167
political economy interpretations globalization 5, 33, 92–3, 115
(USA) 183 argument 13–14
style (USA) 179, 182 causality 202–4
theory 172, 198 concepts 2
France 75, 122, 166, 178 ‘crucial societal precondition for’ 59
Franklin, B. 26 duality and complementarity 201–2
free trade 90, 93, 162, 166 empirical overview 198–201
Freedom House 44, 48, 49, 50 historical background 120
Fukuyama, F. 54 political 1–3, 194–205
functionalism 99, 110 property and contract 45
‘Future Results of British Rule in India’ prospects for global
(Marx, 1853) 97 governance 204–5
purpose of book 1
Gaddis, J. L. 179, 182–3 ‘requires reconsideration of
Gardner, L. 177 statehood’ 66–8
gender 83, 153, 164 theoretical overview 194–8
Genius of American Politics (Boorstin, winners and losers 154
1953) 177, 178 Globalization of Politics (Luard, 1990) 2
Germany 43, 57, 75, 189 Gómez-Dantés, O. 138–40
West Germany 50 Gourevitch, P. 173–6
Giddens, A. 19, 21, 99 ‘governance without government’
Gill, S. 5, 69, 75, 162 (Rosenau) 7, 107
Gilpin, R. 95, 98, 145, 150, 171, 184, 188 governance system 200
‘global age’ 33 government agencies 154, 196
global governance ix–x, 3, 63, 109, 144, Gramsci, A. 61, 166, 171, 185
166–7 170, 191–3, 195–6 Greece 43, 49
causality 202–4 Greenpeace 147, 163
dual nature 200, 203 Group of Seven (G-7) 69, 75–8, 84, 86,
duality and complementarity 201–2 87, 125, 133, 134, 135, 144, 192
institutional infrastructure 69–94, membership 75
196, 199 summit (Houston, 1990) 84
overview 70–5 summit (Lyon, 1996) 77
prospects 204–5 summit (Denver, 1997) 77
‘global layer of state’ (M. Shaw, Group of Seven–OECD link 78–80, 81t
2000) 123 G-7 nexus (Gill) 69, 75, 94
global legal order 67 G-7/OECD nexus 69, 152, 199
228 Index
Group of Seven: FATF (Financial Action human

Task Force) 126, 127 history 25–6
Group of Seven: Senior Experts Group on rights 27, 37, 41, 42, 48, 51, 164, 181,
Transnational Organized Crime 190, 200, 203
(Lyon Group) 126 trafficking 124, 125, 127
Group of Seven/Eight (G-7/8) 75 humanitarian assistance 122, 137
Group of Ten (G-10) 75 humanity/humankind 138, 144
Grunberg, I. 112, 119, 138, 140 Hungary 43, 72, 84, 87
Gulf War (1990–1) 122 Huntington S. P. 36, 49, 52–3, 178
Guttry, A. de 78 Hurrell, A. 37
Haas, P. M. 142, 143 IBM (International Business

Haiti 122 Machines) 156
Hall, P. A. 162 idealism 179, 180, 181
Hall, S. 100 ideas 35, 185
Halliday, F. 12, 34, 54, 55 ideational
Handbook of International Organizations factors 100, 153, 154, 155, 166,
(1999) 119, 158 172–4, 176, 202, 204
Hartz, L. 181 interests 189
Hasenclever, A. 3, 20, 29 patterns 32
Haufler, V. 6 identity 67, 185, 197
Hawking, S. W. 16 ‘ideography’ versus ‘idiographic’ 28
health 113, 117, 136–41, 144 ideology 64, 178, 185
‘hegemonic projects’ (Jessop) 104 idiographic theory 195, 196
hegemonic stability theory 188, 193 ‘imperial state’ (Petras and Morley,
hegemony 170–93, 197–8 1981) 137
concept 171 imperialism (Leninist theory) 56, 58
foreign policy 171–6 India 41, 47, 50, 53, 58, 87–9, 115, 123,
Greek meaning 171 150, 167, 189
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle 16, individuals 38–9
17 Indonesia 46, 50, 52, 53, 56, 87, 88
Held, D. 2 inequality 36, 98
et al. (1999) 2, 212 inflation 90, 91, 133, 134, 135
Henderson, D. 83–4 Inflation: The Present Problem (OECD,
Henning, C. R. 134 1970) 89
Hewlett-Packard 156 institutional infrastructure (global
Hirsch, J. 104, 112 governance) 69–94, 196, 199
Hirst, P. 2, 4 institutionalist theory:
historical materialism 10–13, 24–6, 31, nomothetic 29–32
56, 59, 61–2, 195–6 institutions 19–22, 30, 136, 185
Historical Materialism and Globalization fulfil a function 99
(Rupert and Smith, 2002) 12 political 32, 149
Hitler, A. 58 societal 195
Hobden, S. 30 state strength 150–2
Hobsbawm, E. J. 44, 56, 97 ‘intangible instruments of trade’ 128
Hofstadter, R. 178 intellectual property 71, 129, 168
Hollis, M. 173 interest rates 133, 134, 135
Holman, O. 158 international
homogenization 35, 39, 43, 53–5, 56, agencies/organizations 43, 67, 109,
59, 201 119, 148, 149, 150, 165, 167
criticism 36 law 37–9, 162, 181, 187, 190
Index 229
International Atomic Energy Agency Jackson, R. H. 46, 62, 65, 110

70 Japan 43, 72–3, 75, 77, 122, 150–1, 162,
International Business Association 167, 182, 187–9
(USA) 156 Jessop, B. 62, 64, 65, 100–1, 103, 171,
International Chamber of Commerce 104
(ICC) 128, 161
International Confederation of Free Kaldor, M. 123
Trade Unions (ICFTU) 159 Kant, I. 55
International Energy Agency (1974–) 82 Kapital (Marx) 96, 97
International Fund for Agricultural Kashmir 58, 123
Development (IFAD) 44 Katzenstein, P. J. 28
International Herald Tribune (IHT) 122–3 Kaul, I. 112, 119, 138, 140
International Institute for Unification Keck, M. E. 4
of Private Law (UNIDROIT, Kegley, C. W. 173
1924–) 128 Kennedy, P. 34
International Labour Organization Keohane, R. O. 3, 4, 28, 29, 69, 142
(ILO) 70, 74, 159 Kindleberger, C. P. 112
International Law Association 128 Klingberg, F. 180
International Monetary Fund Knutsen, T. L. 34
(IMF) 45–6, 48, 53, 71, 74–6, 98, Koenig-Archibugi, M. 69
130, 133, 135, 151, 158, 163, 189 Korean War 190
International Organization of Korpi, W. 90
Employers 161 Kosovo 122
International Organization for Krasner, S. D. 3, 28
Standardization (ISO) 132, 160 Krippendorff, E. 34, 35
International Relations (IR) 8, 31, 35, Kurds 122
59, 61, 63, 65, 67 Kuwait 58, 122
core issues 62 Kyoto 70, 143
ideas and material forces 22–7
realist school 56 labour/labour force 90, 111, 153–5,
research 28, 107, 171 158–9, 167
rules-based 186, 201 reproduction 113, 117–18, 137–40,
theory 146 144, 199
International Systems in World History land registration 45
(Buzan and Little, 2000) 34 language and communication 26
International Telegraph Union Latin America 44, 49, 50, 87, 127, 130
(1865) 120, 131 law enforcement/law and order 48, 121,
Internationales System als Geschichte 125
(Krippendorff, 1975) 34 League of Nations 121, 128, 182, 188,
internationalism 155, 159, 180, 181 191
internationalization 33, 67, 86 Lebanon 126
‘internationalization of state’ (Cox) 156 Lenin, V. I. 56–8, 101–2
Interpol (1923–) 124, 126 Levin Jr, N. G. 184, 185
investment 71, 74, 136 Levine, A. 99
Iran 47, 52, 88, 120 Levy, M. A. 142
Iraq 58, 122 liberalism 177, 184
Islam 36, 52–3 ‘embedded’ 159
isolationism 179, 180, 181, 188 Liberia 122
Israel 88, 126 Liechtenstein 126
IT Brancheforeningen (ITB) 156 life 138, 141
Italy 43, 57, 75, 130, 189 Lipset, S. M. 178
230 Index
Little, R. 34–5 modalities 100–3, 109, 114–18, 119,

living conditions 36, 167 164, 199
Locke, J. 177 economic, ideational, political 101
Louis, W. R. 185 mode of production 32, 44, 63, 154
Lowi, T. J. 115 Model Treaties on Extradition 125
Luard, E. 2, 5 monetary policy 90
Lundestad, G. 179 monetary system 113, 117, 129–31
money laundering 125
macro-economic coordination 76–7, money supply 129, 133, 135
92, 114, 132–5 Monroe Doctrine 187
macro-sociology 31, 33, 195 Moravcsik, A. 7, 8, 64
Maddison, A. 99 Morocco 88, 120
mafias 125 Mueller, J. 58
maintenance of order 121–7, 196 Multilateral Agreement on Investment
Malaysia 46, 47, 52, 88 (1995–2000) 82, 128
Marcussen, M. 86, 93–4 multilateral surveillance and peer
‘market democracy’ 36, 40–3, 191, 192, review 82, 83–6, 87, 92, 93, 199
198, 199, 200, 201 multilateralism 192
market economy 123, 189, 199 Munck, R. 159
market failures 108–9, 112, 196–7 Murphy, C. N. ix, 5, 9, 34, 35, 54, 109,
eight groups (Zacher and Sutton) 114, 117, 119, 191
111 Mutual Assistance in Criminal
market forces 24, 137, 146 Matters 125
market functioning 90, 111
Martin, L. L. 3, 29 nation-state 1, 5–6, 14, 31, 64, 66–8, 73,
Martinussen, J. 104 119–20, 144, 147, 149, 170, 199, 205
Marx, K. 10–11, 12, 19, 26, 31, 95–8, national
100–1, 111, 166, 204, 205 bourgeoisie 51
Marxism 56, 101, 110–11, 140–1, culture 178
183–5, 196 governments 131, 133, 148
material factors 172–4, 176, 204 identity 155, 178, 179
material infrastructure 131 sovereignty 127, 131, 139, 201
Mayer, P. 3, 20, 29 territory 108
McCracken report (June 1977) 90, 135 nationalism 66, 155
McGrew, A. 4 economic 190
means of production 26, 96 methodological 6, 8, 12, 148
media 43, 51 nationality 153
Mercosur 73 nationalization 67
meta regimes (Aggarwal) 30 Nau, H. R. 184–5
methodological nationalism 6, 12 Nazism 42, 57–8, 65, 188, 189
methodology 119–20, 195 nébuleuse 9
Mexico 43, 49, 72, 84 neo-classical economic theory 108, 111,
micro- and macro-analysis 18, 202 196
Microsoft 156 neo-conservatism 136
Middle East 136 neo-institutionalism 19
Milner, H. V. 4 neo-liberalism 136
Minimum Standards for Supervision of neo-realism 4, 30, 146
International Banking Groups and New Zealand 50, 72, 73, 122
their Cross-Border Establishments Nexon, D. 30
(1992) 130 Nigeria 50, 88
Mobuto, S. S. 46 nomothetic theory 27, 28, 29–32
Index 231
non-governmental organizations OECD: Dynamic Non-Member

(NGOs) 37, 73, 139, 150, 162–4, Economies (DNMEs, 1989–) 87
200 OECD: Economics Department 91
norms (international) 37–9, 41, 42, 67, OECD: Emerging Market Economy
124 Forum (EMEF, 1996–) 87–8
North America 43, 49 OECD: Forum for Future Conference on
North American Free Trade Agreement Long-Term Prospects for World
(NAFTA) 73 Economy (1991) 92
North Atlantic Treaty Organization OECD: International Futures
(NATO) 72, 75, 122 Programme 92
North Korea 40, 44, 45, 47, 123 OECD: Jobs Study (1992) 91–2
North-South divide 54, 137, 151, 159, OECD: Jobs Study: Implementing the
167, 168 Strategy (1995) 92
Nye, J. S. 4, 29, 172, 177 OECD: Liaison and Coordination
Unit 88
objective knowledge 17 OECD: Manpower and Social Affairs
observed/observer interaction 16, 17 Committee 91
OECD (Organisation for Economic OECD: New Framework for Labour Market
Co-operation and Development) 3, Policies (1990) 91
43, 47, 54, 50, 70, 74, 75, 158, 160, OECD: Standard Codes for Official
163, 192 Testing of Agricultural Tractors
activities 80, 82–6 (1987) 83
aims 72 OECD: Towards a New Global Age:
concerted action programme Challenges and Opportunities Policy
(1978) 90 Report (1997) 93
economic surveys 83 OECD: Transition Economy
G-7 link 69, 78–80, 81t, 152, 199 Programme 87, 88
idea authority 86 OECD Convention (1960) 72
instruments (five types) 82–3 Ohmae, K. 5
involvement of non-members 86–9 oil 90, 91, 136, 168, 190
members 72 ontology 25, 201–2
medium-term economic strategy open-door policy 187, 188
(1976) 90 Osama Bin Laden 53
multilateral surveillance and peer Ostry, S. 80
review 82, 83–6, 87, 92, 93, 135, Oudraat, J. 149
199 Ougaard, M. 65, 83, 171, 179, 185
official history 82, 86 overdetermination (Poulantzas) 103
process of organized cooperation 86 Oxfam UK 162, 163
strategy development 89–94
structural topics surveys 84, 85t Pakistan 47, 58, 88, 123
trade pledge (1974) 91 Paterson, M. 142
website 82 peasantry 44, 153, 166–7
OECD: Centre for Cooperation with persistence function 95–118, 120,
European Economies in Transition 156–7, 165, 174, 176, 193, 197, 201
(1990–) 87 contemporary world society 119–44
OECD: Centre for Cooperation with Non- domestic 196
Members (CCNM, 1998–) 88 environmental protection 140–3, 144
OECD: Declaration on Trade Policy expansion to less-developed
(1980) 91 areas 135–7, 196, 199
OECD: Development Assistance global 151, 172, 196, 202–5
Committee 87, 136 globalization 199–200
232 Index
persistence function (contd.) globalization effects 154

institutionalization 151 institutionalization 151
maintenance of order 121–7 international 176
modalities 114–18, 196, 199 reproduction 147, 189, 193
preconditions for capitalist market prices 132–3, 154
economy 127–32 see also inflation
reproduction of labour force 137–40, private property 45, 111
144 productive force (Marx) 96
stabilizing business cycle 132–5, 144 Promise of American Life (Croly,
unevenness 144 1965) 178
persistence of society 103, 106, 114, property rights 113, 117, 128–9
117, 118, 189 protectionism 190–1
Peru 88 public goods 111–15, 171
pharmaceutical industry 162, 163 global 138
Philippines 46, 50, 126, 187 international 112, 139
Pijl, K. van der 5, 146, 158, 160 productive/distributive 115
planned economies 40, 44, 54 redistributive 115
Poland 43, 72, 84, 87, 126 regulatory 115
political public management 83
arenas (Poulantzas) 64, 67 public opinion 37, 58, 178
economy 184 Putnam, R. D. 174
institutions 155
parties 165 quasi-states (Jackson) 46
systems 4
Political Power and Social Classes race 153, 164
(Poulantzas, 1968, 1973) 100, Ramsey, H. 159
101–2 Rasmussen, E. 15–20, 98–9
politics 113 Reagan, R. 91, 135, 190
approaches 195 realism 146, 180–1, 182–3, 184
concept 7 reductionism 149, 183
definition 4 regimes 29–30
domestic 3, 181 form 35, 40, 41
global 3, 29 formation theory 30
Porter, T. 6 reification 21
Portugal/Portuguese Empire 43, 49, 120 Reinicke, W. H. 4
Poulantzas, N. 61, 62–6, 95, 99–106, ‘relational theory’ (Jessop) 104, 105
109, 114, 141, 147 relations of power 102, 104, 106, 113,
poverty 36, 137, 138, 205 195, 200, 202, 205
Powell, G. B. 4 duality and complementarity 156
power 144, 171, 172 global 170, 196
actor-oriented perspective 146, 150 reproduction 105, 156, 168, 196, 197
definition 146 religion 36, 153, 164
global patterns 165–9 ‘Restricted Democratic Practices’
global polity 145–69 (Freedom House) 48
institutions and state strength 150–2 Retreat of State (Strange) 107
referent object 146, 147, 197 revolution 11, 180, 186
social forces 153–7 revolutionary expectations 12, 97
transnational class formation 157–65 Rio Declaration (1992) 38, 142
power/persistence duality 172 Rise and Fall of World Orders (Knutsen,
power relations x, 152, 197 1999) 34
composite constellations 154 Risse-Kappen, T. 4
Index 233
Rittberger, V. 3, 20, 29 structure and agency 19–22, 23–4, 27

Robinson, W. I. 5, 12 society 109
Robison, R. 46 economic structure 35
Roman Empire 57 global 196
Rosecrance, R. 34, 35 levels/realms 23
Rosenau, J. N. 107, 110, 173, 174 pre-capitalist type 57, 58
Ruggie, J. G. 184–5, 192 type 42
rule of law 46 Somalia 47, 122
Rupert, M. 11 Sorensen, G. ix, 4, 34, 55
Russia 43, 47, 75, 76, 122, 123, 126, Soskice, D. 162
130, 150, 151 South Africa 47, 50, 53, 88, 162, 163
Russian Revolution 57, 180, 188 South America 120, 135, 187
Rwanda 47, 122 South Korea 43, 50, 72, 73, 84, 122
Southeast Asia 44, 46
Saddam Hussein x, 58, 122 sovereign states 186, 190
Saudi Arabia 51, 52, 88, 168 Soviet bloc 45, 47, 87, 180
Scandinavia 135 Soviet Union 40, 44, 50, 182, 190
Schlesinger, A. M. 178, 183 Spain/Spanish Empire 43, 49, 187
Schmitter, P. 158 Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) 130, 133
Scholte, J. A. 2, 7, 163, 164 Sri Lanka 50
SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) 130, 133 stabilizing business cycle 132–5, 196,
Seattle 163 199
security 110, 182 Stalin/Stalinism 42, 57–8
Sell, S. 162 standards 131–2
Service, E. R. 106 state 31, 165
Shaw, M. 2, 4, 5, 68, 98, 106, 123, 193 concepts 8, 14, 60, 61–8, 95, 195, 197
Sikkink, K. 4 dual perspective 119
Simmons, B. A. 3, 29 external aspects 64–5
Singapore 53, 88 general function 101, 103
Sklair, L. 5, 146, 149, 160 general theory 100
Skocpol, T. 30 ‘instrument of class rule’ (Lenin) 102
Slovak Republic 72, 84, 87 legal order (Poulantzas) 64, 195
Smith, A. 173 Marxist theory 140–1
Smith, H. 11 modalities 100–3, 109, 114–18, 196,
Smith, S. 173 199
Sober, E. 99 modern capitalist 45–8
social monopoly of legitimate violence
conflict 109 (Weber) 63, 68, 105, 108, 127, 144,
forces 145–50, 152, 153–7, 164, 195, 199
166–7, 171–2, 197, 200 neutral place (Moravcsik) 64
formation 31, 63, 104, 116 power 145–50
function 110 preconditions for capitalist
issues 83, 90 growth 112, 114
order 100, 102, 113, 116–17, 144 ‘regional’ theory 101, 103–4
relations 104 role 73
reproduction 153 social function 102
safety net 108 social theory (Wendt) 8
social science 15–19, 99, 172, 173, 194, ‘strategic terrain’ 104
205 strategic-relational theory
causality (relative weights) 24–5 (Jessop) 104
fundamental issue 22 structured political arena 195
234 Index
state (contd.) structure/actor relation 172

technico-economic functions 102 structure and agency 100, 172, 173,
theory 62, 95, 100, 140–1 195
types 32, 35, 40 structures 173, 195
state apparatuses (Poulantzas) 64 ideational 24, 25, 27
state functions 195, 196, 199 societal 195
arguments 107–9 Suganami, H. 7
author’s typology 116–18, 119–44 Sullivan, S. 82–4, 89, 91
cohesion, 106 superstructure, political, global 11, 12
contingent 116, 117 sustainable development 38, 118, 142
essential 116, 117 Sutton, B. A. 108–9, 111, 147
globalization 67, 94, 95, 106 system of production 118
modalities of persistence
function 114–18, 199 Taiwan 46, 50, 88, 122
political logic 110–14 Taliban 52, 53, 127
power/persistence duality 99–107, taxation 83, 108
197 terrorism 58, 76, 78
typologies 115–16 Thailand/Siam 47, 50, 88, 120
state institutions 196 Thatcher, M. 91, 135
state power (Poulantzas) 63 Theory of Global State (Shaw, 2000) 68,
State, Power, Socialism (Poulantzas, 1978, 106
1980, 2000) 101, 105 Thompson, G. 2, 4
state system 109 Tocqueville, A. de 177
state theory 10 Tokyo Round (1973–9) 91
state-theoretical approach 195 Towards a Global Polity (Ougaard and
statehood Higgott, 2002) ix
aspects 60, 61–8, 73 Theory of Global State (Shaw, 2000) 2
duality 145 trade 43, 91, 108, 128, 154, 186, 187
globalization uneven 66–8, 106, 127 liberalization 90, 143
‘imagined community’ 64 trade unions 155, 158
Poulantzas 62–6 Trade-Related Intellectual Property
power/persistence duality 149 Rights (TRIPS, 1994–) 129, 162,
states 109, 156–7 163
domestic and international realms transformational model of social activity
(lines blurred) 149 (Bhaskar) 19
fourfold set of functions 149 transformationalism 2
strong/weak 152 transnational
States and Markets (Strange) 147 capitalist class (Sklair) 146, 149
Stern, M. A. 112, 119, 138, 140 class formation 9, 157–65, 200
Stopford, J. M. 147 corporations 137, 150, 154, 159–62,
Strange, S. ix, 4, 6, 8, 107–8, 110, 114, 165, 183
147 dominant/ruling class 200
Streeck, W. 158, 162 managerial class (Cox) 146, 149, 159,
structural 163
adjustment 91 organized crime 77, 125
reform 93, 135 ruling class (Sklair) 160, 161
theory 112 treaties 37
structuralism 65 Trilateral Commission 160
structuration (Giddens) 19, 21, 22, TRIPS (Trade-Related Intellectual
24–5, 195 Property Rights, 1994–) 129, 162,
world society 33–60, 198, 203 163
Index 235
Turkey 43 United Nations Food and Agriculture

Turkmenistan 45 Organization (FAO) 139
‘two-level games’ (Putnam) 174 United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (‘Kyoto’) 70
UNAIDS 139 United Nations General Assembly 70,
unemployment 90, 96, 108 125, 152
‘natural’ 135 ‘United Nations and Global
unintended consequences 100 Organization’ (Ougaard) ix
United Kingdom 75, 129–30, 186–9 United Nations High Commissioner for
United Nations 94, 121, 135, 182, 183, Human Rights 70
189, 204 United Nations Security Council 70,
agencies 137 122, 123, 151
covenants (1966) 38 United Nations Universal Declaration of
one state, one vote 152 Human Rights (1948) 38
summits 67, 70–1 United States of America 14, 27, 50,
system/family 70–1, 74, 125, 152, 72–3, 75, 77, 120, 134, 146, 150–2,
163, 199 162, 166, 168–9, 203
United Nations Charter (1945) 36–7, access to (European) colonial
38, 70, 74, 75, 122 markets 188
United Nations Children’s Fund business community 201
(UNICEF) 70, 139 crisis and recovery (1970s, 1980s) 190
United Nations Conference on Human economic interests 186, 187, 190, 191
Rights (Vienna, 1993) 38, 39 economic power 172
United Nations Commission on exceptionalism 178, 201
International Trade Law (UNCITRAL, foreign policy 170–1, 198
1966–) 128 hegemonic leadership 169, 170–93,
United Nations Commission on 201
Sustainable Development 142 incoming FDI 155
United Nations Congress on Prevention ‘idea nation’ 178
of Crime and Treatment of Offenders ideals 180
(1975) 125 industry 176
United Nations Convention on Contracts international involvement (main
for International Sale of Goods themes) 185–92
(1980) 128 mission 179–85, 188, 191, 201
United Nations Convention against Illicit monetary hegemony 130
Traffic in Narcotic Drugs (1988) 125 national interest 184
United Nations Development political culture 176–85, 201
Programme (UNDP) 98 power 148
United Nations Department of Economic self-righteousness 179, 181
and Social Affairs (UN DESA) 158 society 178
United Nations Economic and ‘soft’ power 172
Social Council (ECOSOC) 74–5, unilateralism 204
158 values 178, 179, 201
ECOSOC Commission on Crime United States Navy 186
Prevention and Criminal use-value (Aristotle/Marx) 96, 103
Justice 126
United Nations Educational, Scientific values 181, 182, 185, 201
and Cultural Organization Venezuela 47, 88
(UNESCO) 139 Verstehen 172
United Nations Environment Programme Vienna Convention of Drugs and Money
(UNEP) 142 Laundering (1988) 125
236 Index
Vienna Sales Convention (1980) 128 World Bank 45–6, 48, 53, 71, 74–5, 80,
Vietnam 56, 180, 190 98, 136, 137, 139, 151, 158, 163, 189
voluntarism 18, 20, 21 World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD) 161
Wallerstein, I. 31 World Customs Organization (WCO),
Waltz, K. N. 4 see Customs Cooperation Council
war and peace 55–60, 113, 121, 179, World Directory of Trade and Business
205 Associations 160
armed conflict 124 World Economic Forum (Davos) 67, 74,
civil war 58 160
inter-state war 58, 117, 127 World Food Programme (WFP) 70
intra-state war 122, 123 World Health Organization (WHO) 70,
military capability 43 139
national liberation wars 56, 57, 58 WHO–FAO Codex Alimentarius 132
nuclear competition 123 World Ministerial Conference on
world wars 183, 203 Organized Transnational Crime
World War I 57, 58, 187 (1994) 125, 126
World War II (and aftermath) 57–8, World Social Forum (Porto Alegre) 67,
188–9, 191–3 74, 163, 164
War and Change in World Politics world society 144, 195, 205
(Gilpin, 1981) 145 homogenization 34
Warren, B. 98 periodization 33, 34–7
Washington Consensus 136 structuration 33–60
Webber, M. 173 World Trade Organization (WTO,
Weber, M. 61, 63–4, 66 1994–) 48, 53, 72, 74–5, 78, 152,
weights and measures 113, 117, 158, 163, 166, 168, 200
131–2 Doha Round 167
Weiss, L. 4, 73 GATT 71, 166, 189, 190
welfare 113, 133, 159 one state, one vote 152
Wells Jr, S. F. 185 Uruguay Round (1988–94) 71, 167,
Wendt, A. 8, 20 190
Williams, P. 124–6 World at 2000 (Halliday, 2001) 12
Williams, W. A. 183 Wright, E. O. 99
Wilson, President T. W. 180, 184, 188
Windelband, W. 28 Yearbook of International Organizations
Wittkopf, E. R. 173 (1998) 69
Wood, E. M. 12 Yugoslavia 122
world
economy 188 Zacher, M. W. 108–9, 111, 147
government 205 Zürn, M. ix 2, 5

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Political Globalization

State, Power and Social Forces

General Editor: Timothy M. Shaw, Professor of Commonwealth Governance

International Political Economy Series

List of Tables viii

2 General Theoretical Issues 15

3 The Structuration of World Society 33

4 Concepts of State: Aspects of Statehood 61

5 The Institutional Infrastructure of

6 The Function of Persistence 95

7 The Persistence Function in Contemporary

8 Power Relations in the Global Polity 145

9 The Trajectory of Hegemonic Leadership 170

5.1 G-7– OECD policy links, 1975–99 79

administrative staff at the Programme on Intercultural Management at

AIDS acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome

Parts of the material and arguments presented in this volume have

1 Introduction: globalization and politics

international public-private partnerships. This area is to be approached

rise of multiculturalism, global environmental problems, proliferation

2 The global polity perspective

Rather it is an argument that state-centred perspectives are insufficient

domestic politics, to politics within the territorial sovereign state? The

key concepts and theoretical approaches. This, of course, is not new

2002). Robert W. Cox provided a good illustration of the situation with

There is no clearly definable institutional structure in place that

3 A historically and socially contextualized state-theoretical

The basic idea informing this study of political globalization is the

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into

to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The

Two of the problems posed by this text require a brief comment.

Leaving aside the revolutionary expectation and the problem of

high level of aggregation as a proposition about long-term societal

4 Overview of the argument

After this attention is turned to political phenomena and this

This chapter discusses four theoretical questions of a general nature. The

In the social sciences the term complementarity is often used about

It should be made clear at the outset that such an application is not

This, then, is the key lesson in Bohr’s notion of complementarity for

Another case of complementarity in the social sciences, according to

2 Structure and agency

The question of structure and agency is one of the most fundamental

perceptions and discourses in shaping social action. Also here a large

indispensable in social enquiry. The conclusion, then, is that it is exactly

people do not create society. For it always pre-exists them and is a

I abstain from confronting this understanding with other proposals for

3 Ideas and material forces

The relative weight of ideational forces versus economic and political

and the international distribution of military capabilities) make up the

completely separated; they pertain to two qualitatively different dimen-

4 An idiographic macro-sociological approach

There is a reason why historical, macro-sociological approaches are

insights, has limits when analysing the global polity. It is necessary to

is common, and vice versa. Furthermore, idiographic analysis of a

A note on nomothetic institutionalist theory

of the resulting overall ‘regime architecture’. One reason, probably, is

number of differentiating concepts have been developed over the years.

Political phenomena should be considered in their societal and histor-

1 Systemic periodization and homogenization

Theoretical discussion of systemic periodization is not a dominant

The latter fall in three system types: pre-international systems, eco-

Charter and the international conventions on human rights. While

One of the major controversies in international relations theory revolves