Approaching the Internationalization of the State: An Introduction Markus Wissen and Ulrich Brand Institute of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria;
[email protected],
[email protected]
The state seems to be back again. In the face of the current economic and environmental crises, the “constitutive incompleteness” of the capital relation (Jessop 2000:325)—that is, its tendency to permanently undermine its own conditions of reproduction—has been revealed in the clearest manner. Without the intervention of the state even more banks and businesses would have failed in the last several months (or would fail in the months to come). The neoliberal project, which essentially has consisted of commodifying more and more aspects of social and political life, is thus confronted with a crisis. However, there is no reason for critical science or progressive social forces to be triumphant. First, there are the social consequences of the crises: millions of people have lost their home, their work or their retirement provisions. Second, the debts now accumulated by states in order to stabilize the financial system could foster a new round of social spending cuts or further privatization of public enterprises and infrastructure once the situation normalizes again and the clean-up begins (provided the crisis of neoliberalism does not become a political crisis through the activities of progressive social forces). Third, and strongly connected with the previous point, it is far from clear what kind of state is in again (this will emerge only from current and future social struggles) and how it is operating in various policy fields and social conflicts. Is it a state which stabilizes the crisis-ridden neoliberal model in an authoritarian way, or one whose newly gained economic position can be utilized as part of progressive attempts to overcome both the project of “neoliberalism” and the practices of neoliberalization, or even to transcend the underlying modes of societalization? The question of which state is in again also has a spatial dimension. On the one hand, it could be argued that it is the national state. Because of their financial resources, national governments seem to be playing the major role in crisis management, whereas inter- and supranational institutions serve mainly as coordinating bodies. On the other hand, Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 1–11 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00808.x C 2010 The Authors C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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the EU and the IMF are quite important for the stabilization of East European economies, both in strategic and financial terms. Furthermore, the financial crisis is international in character, and has already spread to many parts of the world through the dense network of global finance. The cross-border dimension also characterizes another crisis—the phenomenon of manifold environmental crises and especially climate change. In the dominant discourse the latter is a global threat which therefore has to be dealt with at the international level. Thus, whereas state territoriality could have been strengthened in the course of these crises, the scalar reconfigurations that can be observed since the 1970s have not lost their significance. The crises thus re-emphasize a requirement which has existed before: that of examining more closely the spatial dimensions of recent transformations of the state in order to identify changing forms of political power and domination, their contradictions and the opportunities for emancipatory politics.
Conceptualizing the Spatial Dimensions of State Transformation In political science the spatial dimensions of state transformation are mainly grasped through concepts such as global or multi-level governance. In relation to European integration, or the political dimensions of globalization—especially in the form of new international organizations and constellations of actors—these concepts reveal an increasingly complex spatio-institutional configuration, where the national state has lost its role as an autonomous international actor and is instead embedded in a network of regulations spanning different spatial levels (Bache and Flinders 2004; Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). Another prominent approach addressing the spatial changes of the state, at least implicitly, is regime theory, which sees international cooperation among national states as crucial to solving international problems and overcoming the free-rider problem. Regimes—and here, in particular, international organizations—are conceptualized as an instrument of national diplomacy, as an arena or as a more or less strong actor. However, the emergence and functioning of international regimes and the articulation with the national scale is mainly explained in a functionalist manner through the need to solve common problems (Hasenclever et al 1997; Martin and Simmons 1998; on constructivist regime theory, see Ruggie 1998). Oran Young is more explicitly interested in the question of how problems of “vertical interplay” between different spatial levels of social and political organization affect the solving of problems and how this interplay could be shaped more effectively and democratically (Young 2002). The merit of such approaches lies in overcoming the methodological nationalism of many social science concepts where it is taken for granted C
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that the national state is the principal level at which socio-economic processes take place and compromises are negotiated. Instead, they suggest a relational understanding of politics: the latter can only be understood (and shaped) if the complex relationship between various spatial levels is taken into account. The problem, however, is that mainstream political science tends to conceptualize the new spatioinstitutional configurations in a rather static way. The contested process through which they are produced is often excluded from analysis. The same applies to their specific social content determined by the social relations of forces which are inscribed in the arenas of global and multilevel governance and which account for the strategic and structural selectivities of the latter. In short, the aforementioned political science approaches are more concerned with the interaction of pre-given spatial levels and less with their production.1 In contrast, the scale debate, which originates in radical geography but has also been shaped by political scientists such as Neil Brenner and Bob Jessop, has developed a much more process-oriented understanding of the spatial dimensions of the transformation of the state. It focuses attention on social struggles and changing power relations. Furthermore, where the multi-level governance approach tends to interpret the emergence of multiscalar forms of governance as a search for the solution of problems that lie beyond the problem-solving capacities of individual states, within the scale concept the same processes are understood as a means of stabilizing, shifting or challenging power relations through social conflicts. More recently there have been attempts systematically to combine scale with other dimensions of space, such as territory, place and networks, in order to grasp the ongoing spatial transformations in their complexity (Jessop et al 2008). On the one hand, these attempts are motivated by theoretical discussions on a possible overstretching of the scale concept. Having successfully overcome the “territorial trap” (Agnew 1998:51ff) that the social sciences were caught in, the scale debate has run the risk of privileging scale over other spatialities (Leitner and Miller 2007:116). On the other hand, and against the background of the financial and environmental crises, there is strong empirical evidence that the territorial dimension of space has acquired new importance. A recent report by the Spanish NGO GRAIN (2008), for example, has detected a “new global land grab”: governments as well as enterprises buy up vast areas of land abroad for the production of food or agrofuels, thereby giving rise to new territorial constellations and conflicts. This and other developments underline the necessity of addressing the spatiality of the state in its various dimensions, focusing on the process of its social production as well as its possible hegemonic effects and the opportunities for counter-hegemonic emancipatory strategies. C
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Historical-Materialist State Theory and the Spatial Transformation of the State The contributions to this issue address the spatial transformation of the state from a historical-materialist perspective. In so doing, they are strongly inspired by the debates in critical geography sketched out in the previous section. However, they also aim to fill a certain gap in these debates, providing a more detailed analysis of the issues of regulation and hegemony—an aim which is not least due to the academic background of the authors in political science. Pursuing this aim requires, first, a focus on political institutions and their structuring effects on society (as well as discourses and their effects on the formation of identities and definitions of problems, which, of course, also need to be considered). Political institutions and their effects are not conceptualized in a narrow way—that is, without taking into account the contradictory social relations in which they are entrenched. Instead, they are analysed in the very context of these relations, with the aim of finding out how they contribute to the (always temporary and contested) stabilization of societal contradictions and how the stabilization of relationships of domination may be challenged or even transcended in emancipatory terms. Thus, the internationalization of the state, as understood by the authors of this issue, is not about the interaction between different levels of government and their potential or failure to solve pre-given social problems. Instead, drawing on Marx, Gramsci, Poulantzas and Foucault, the articles that follow are about the reproduction and contestation of domination through the transformation of the state. Spatial strategies are understood as a means through which societal and state actors seek to transform political institutions. In turn, altered spatio-institutional configurations, through the power relationships inscribed therein, create new strategic and structural selectivities and thus shape societal conflicts, establish new terrains for the negotiation of agendas and compromises, influence the way in which interests are formed and, to a degree, affect societal actors’ chances of successfully articulating and generalizing their interests through state politics. Related to this, a second dimension of historical-materialist state theory and a perspective broadly shared in the articles is the concept of the state as a social relation or, more specifically, with Poulantzas (1980), as a “material condensation” of the societal relationships of classes and other social forces. In this theoretical tradition, the market is understood not as a more or less efficient mechanism to allocate resources but as a societal institution constituted by class, gender and ethnic relations and shaped by deeply embedded imperatives such as economic competition and the need for capital accumulation. Similarly, the state is not the social entity that resolves social problems and embodies the general will of C
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society but a structure that is both shaped by the forces of domination and contested, within the context of the complex reproduction of capitalist societies. As shown in different contributions here, this understanding is not limited to the national scale but can be linked to a multiscalar understanding of the state (cf Brand et al 2008). A third central category examined in several contributions is that of “political form”. This refers to the political dimension of the reification of social relations—that is, the perception, processing and normalisation of these relations in such a way that their antagonistic character does not undermine the reproduction of society. At an abstract level of theorizing, the political form of capitalism is the result of the centralization of the apparatus of violence and its separation from society. As emphasized by Joachim Hirsch and John Kannankulam in their contribution, “political form” cannot be equated with “political institutions”. Instead, the latter are the spatially and historically variable manifestations of the former. The centrality of the category “political form” in this issue is due to the authors’ theoretical background: Joachim Hirsch was involved, in 1970s Germany, in the state theory debate where the concept was developed (the so-called “state derivation debate”, which owes its name to the attempt to derive the general form of the state from Marx’s analysis of capitalism) and has since been advancing Marxist state theory (Hirsch 2005); Heide Gerstenberger has contributed to the historical-materialist debate on the state, especially by combining theoretical work with historical analysis (Gerstenberger 2007); more than 30 years ago Sol Picciotto, together with John Holloway, edited a volume in which the German debate was presented to an international audience and critically discussed (Holloway and Picciotto 1978)2 ; all the other contributors, who belong to a younger generation of scholars, have at least been influenced by the debates of the 1970s and have critically engaged with them. The analytical value of the concept of “political form” for an understanding of recent developments is, of course, not simply assumed but also critically examined. Furthermore, “form analysis” is combined with the concepts of such theorists of the state as Antonio Gramsci, the aforementioned Nicos Poulantzas (who reflected on the internationalization of the state as early as the 1970s; see Poulantzas 1975: chapter 1) and Bob Jessop, all of whom focus more on social struggles, the relationships between social forces, their institutional forms and the issue of hegemony.
The Contributions to this Issue The common reference point of the contributions to this issue is a process which we call the internationalization of the state. In C
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addition to the theoretical considerations outlined above, this concept is an attempt to interpret the restructuring of the last three decades. It refers, first, to the internationalization of societal forces and processes of societal reproduction (especially socio-economic ones)— what from a Gramscian perspective is called civil society. These are not separated from public and state policies but heavily interrelated with them: privatization, deregulation and liberalization, to name just some important trends, are state policies and shape civil society. Second, political institutions or the state apparatuses at the national and local level are transformed. An “interiorization” of “external constraints” into national state apparatuses and the perceptual patterns of national policy makers has been taking place. These constraints became more important in the process of globalization and internationalization of capital because the effects of world market competition—a crucial structural principle of capitalism which has become even more important than before—are less “cushioned” than in the previous phase of “embedded liberalism” (Ruggie 1982). The state apparatuses, policies and discourses become more dependent on external developments. The state does not vanish, nor is it hollowed out or less able to implement industrial, social and other policies, but its main “logic” is transformed, and those apparatuses that are important for competition (such as finance ministries or central banks) dominate the political processes. The debates on “governance”— that is, new modes of governing—have to be seen in the light of these developments and may lead to the conclusion that the mode of governance is not necessarily more participatory and democratic but goes hand in hand with intransparent and authoritarian political structures, actor constellations and policy-making. Third, the transformation of the national state implies a change in the articulation with other state-spatial scales. Here, the increasing importance of formal and informal regional and international political entities and processes needs to be emphasized. These are not constructed in order to solve (world-)societal problems; nor are they an expression of a general will at the global level. Instead, they are mainly a mode of organizing and securing dominant developments and interests and, at the same time, terrains to deal with political conflicts. All these developments affect the forms and content of liberal democracy and the ability of different actors to articulate and pursue their interests and values. The articles in this issue aim to grasp the novelty of these processes, or of selected aspects of them, to explain them, to elaborate their implications for territoriality or societal relationships with nature and to identify efforts to politicize the contradictions of the internationalization of the state in an emancipatory manner. The first three contributions are those in which the “form analysis” approach to the spatial transformations of the state is the most pronounced (although it is also problematized). Joachim Hirsch and C
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John Kannankulam address the challenges that the internationalization of capital and state institutions has posed for historical-materialist state theory. In doing so, they pay special attention to the relationship between rescaling and the territoriality of the state. The latter, in the form of the system of competing national states, allows for the dividing of classes internally alongside national borders, facilitating alliances between classes on the national scale in order to gain competitive advantages vis-`a-vis other nations and making societal antagonisms processible. The existence of competing territories is not a historically contingent phenomenon that can be overcome by the processes of internationalization, but an essential element of the reproduction of the political form of capitalism and thus a structural component of the capitalist mode of production. The scalar diversification of the state apparatus advanced by neoliberal globalization has not resulted in a centralized and autonomous global state apparatus endowed with the “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence” (Max Weber). It has, however, weakened liberal-democratic national states and thus sharpened the contradictions between political institutions and political form, making the latter more precarious and, as a consequence, the reproduction of the capitalist mode of societalization more unstable and crisis prone. Also starting from Marxist form analysis, but distancing himself from Weberian concepts present in the argument of Hirsch and Kannankulam, Alex Demirovi´c makes a somewhat different assessment of the internationalization of the state. The author begins by analysing the development of Marx’s thinking on the state. He demonstrates that Marx, having originally perceived the state as an illusion, in contrast to the “reality” of class struggles, in his later work conceptualizes the state as a form in which humans become aware of their relations with each other and carry out their conflicts. Combining this form-analytical approach with Poulantzas’ state theory, Demirovi´c further elaborates on the relationship between social forces and the state. His central argument is that, on the one hand, the state apparatus mediates the constitution of societal interests and thus organizes the relationship between social forces and, on the other hand, is itself shaped by this relationship and its shifts. Starting from these theoretical considerations, Demirovi´c analyses the changing role of the state in an environment characterized by increasingly global accumulation strategies. He detects the emergence of a “transnational network state”, which consists of an ensemble of local, national and international state institutions and aims at organizing the transnational component of the ruling classes. Heide Gerstenberger problematizes the concept of political form as it has been applied in historical-materialist state theory so far, especially in the German state derivation debate. She argues that despite the strength of those contributions to this debate that conceive of the formal neutrality C
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of law vis-`a-vis the fundamental inequality of society as the core of the political form of capitalism, there are significant shortcomings: Marxist state theory has remained largely ahistorical, since it has not explained the state form as a result of historical struggles, and has tended to generalize the Western bourgeois state as the essence of the political form of capitalism. In contrast, more recent Marxist approaches on imperialism and geopolitics address the transformation and plurality of capitalist states but do not offer a form-analytical explanation for it. As a result, Marxist theory lacks an explanation for recent phenomena that bring the separation of the political and the economic into question, such as the privatization of military services, the rise of private arbitration bodies regulating conflicts in international business or the constitutive importance of criminality in postcolonial states. Gerstenberger thus calls for an acknowledgement that various political forms of capitalism exist and, at the same time, for the question of what constitutes the essence of the capitalist state to be addressed. This challenge is taken up by Sol Picciotto who offers an empirically rich analysis of processes which, according to Gerstenberger, question the concept of political form. Picciotto addresses two interrelated developments of the last 30 years which have blurred the separation between the political and the economic: first, the privatization of a broad range of state activities, which has given rise to new forms of regulation, both public and private; second, the growth of supra-, interand transnational regulatory networks of a “hybrid” character (that is, neither clearly state nor clearly market), which respond to the need to govern socio-economic processes that are internationally integrated and at the same time dispersed and diverse. A problematic consequence of these developments is the “destabilization of normative hierarchies”— that is, the emergence of overlapping legal systems that enable powerful actors to challenge the norms of one system (like those of a national state) by appealing to another (like an international arbitration body). Furthermore, the two developments have resulted in the proliferation of “soft law” (codes, guidelines, declarations, and so on) as well as the functional fragmentation and technicization of political processes (through, for example, the rise of expert networks), although these can also be used for progressive purposes. Birgit Sauer and Stefanie W¨ohl address economic globalization and the internationalization of the state from a feminist materialist perspective. The latter is characterized by a combination of Poulantzas’ concept of the state as a material condensation of the relations between social forces and the Foucauldian perception of the state as an arena where identities are shaped through discursive and institutional practices. Sauer and W¨ohl detect a new international division of labour fostered by neoliberal globalization. This consists of a white, masculinist sphere of global finance and production, alongside a C
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precarious, feminized economy of reproductive services (with, for example, women from the global South working in rich households of the global North). The internationalization of the state is understood as the political regulation of this gender-specific and ethnicized division of labour. Although the political representation of women, compared to masculinist modes of decision-making at the national level, has been strengthened, the new forms of (global) governance have not questioned the gender aspect of existing power relations and created more democratic structures. Rather, since gender equality has been treated as a resource for promoting economic growth, subaltern positions have been integrated into the hegemonic masculinity of neoliberalism. According to the authors, global governance thus rests on and strengthens unequal, though transformed, gender relations. Whereas Birgit Sauer and Stefanie W¨ohl extend the horizon of research on the internationalization of the state from a feminist point of view, Miriam Heigl strengthens the perspective of the global South. Based on Bob Jessop’s strategic-relational approach, she analyses the transformation of the Mexican state from a developmental state into an “internationalized competition state”. In so doing, she addresses a multifaceted deficit in current materialist research on state transformation: the tendency to neglect the experiences of Southern countries and to focus instead on the industrialized world; the tendency in development studies either to overemphasize internal forces or to conceptualize peripheral states as mere effects of the capitalist world system; and the lack of approaches that conceptualize the relationship between institutions and social forces in peripheral societies in a suitable manner. Heigl’s focus is thus on the “complex interaction of international conditions, institutional developments and social forces”. This enables her to show how the nationalist Mexican state project, which continued until the late 1970s, was replaced by a neoliberal one, against the background of shifting socio-economic power relations, institutional reconfigurations, the growing importance of technocrats in the state apparatuses and the debt crisis of the 1980s, the latter resulting in the increasing influence of international, neoliberal forces and institutions. In the final contribution, Ulrich Brand, Christoph G¨org and Markus Wissen conceptualize the internationalization of the state as a new form of the institutionalization of societal conflicts and power relations. Drawing on regulation theory, the scale debate in radical geography and materialist state theory, especially the work of Poulantzas, they introduce the concept of “second-order condensations” of societal relationships of forces. This concept allows an understanding of multiscalar institutional configurations as being shaped by and at the same time shaping social discourses, struggles and power relations in general. Furthermore, it makes it possible to assess the significance of international state apparatuses without losing sight of the continued C
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importance of the (transformed and internationalized) national state and the international system of states. This is demonstrated with special reference to the regulation of societal relationships with nature. Taking the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as an example, the authors show how competing societal interests in the protecting, and/or commodifying of natural resources inscribe themselves in multilateral environmental agreements and thus create new spatio-institutional terrains where conflicts over access to natural resources and regulation of the environmental crisis are fought out. The structuring effects of such institutional configurations are, however, by no means guaranteed. Instead, they may be challenged by subaltern actors or dissenting governments. The geographical scale for dealing with environmental problems thus constitutes an essential element of social and international conflicts. The perspectives on the internationalization of the state and the themes explored in this special issue are, of course, not exhaustive. Although manifold dimensions of the subject are highlighted, as well as various ways of addressing these theoretically and conceptually, there remains much empirical and theoretical research to be done in the future. As indicated at the beginning of this introduction, this is not least due to the current multiplicity of crises (economy, environment, energy, food), which will certainly also affect the spatio-institutional shape of state politics. Further spatial transformations of the state will probably be a means through which societal actors attempt to manage the crises, or to contest the dominant modes of crisis management. These struggles, their implications for various social relations of power and domination, as well as their emancipatory potential, should be a major concern of critical research which, from our point of view, would benefit from an intensified dialogue between geography and political science. In putting the internationalization of the state up for discussion in Antipode we thus also hope to contribute to fostering this cooperation, with the aim of further deepening our understanding of space and the state.
Acknowledgements We wish to thank Noel Castree and Andrew Kent from Antipode for their editorial support, the anonymous referees of Antipode for their reviews, Ross Beveridge, Wendy Davies and Emma Dowling for translating and editing the German contributions and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research for supporting the translations financially. Furthermore, we would like to thank the editors of the German journal PROKLA: Zeitschrift f¨ur kritische Sozialwissenschaft where earlier versions of four of the following articles were published (Gerstenberger, Heigl, Picciotto, Brand/G¨org/Wissen), for their cooperation and their comments on the original versions. Not least, we thank the publisher of PROKLA, G¨unter Thien of Westf¨alisches Dampfboot, M¨unster, for permission to reproduce the texts in a revised form.
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Endnotes 1
For a more detailed discussion of the global governance concept, see Brand (2005); for a discussion of the multi-level governance approach see Wissen (2009). 2 For a recent overview on Marxist state theory which also mentions the German derivation debate, see Hay (2006).
References Agnew J (1998) Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics. London: Routledge Bache I and Flinders M (eds) (2004) Multi-Level Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press Brand U (2005) Order and regulation: Global governance as a hegemonic discourse of international politics? Review of International Political Economy 12(1):155–176 Brand U, G¨org C, Hirsch J and Wissen M (2008) Conflicts in Environmental Regulation and the Internationalisation of the State. Contested Terrains. New York: Routledge Gerstenberger H (2007) Impersonal Power: History and Theory of the Bourgeois State. Leiden: Brill GRAIN—Genetic Resources Action Network (2008) Seized! The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security. http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=212 (last accessed 30 September 2009) Hasenclever A, Mayer P and Rittberger V (1997) Theories of International Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hay C (2006) (What’s Marxist about) Marxist state theory? In C Hay, M Lister and D Marsh (eds) The State: Theories and Issues (pp 59–78). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan Hirsch J (2005) Materialistische Staatstheorie: Transformationsprozesse des kapitalistischen Staatensystems. Hamburg: VSA Holloway J and Picciotto S (1978) State and Capital: A Marxist Debate. London: Edward Arnold Jessop B (2000) The crisis of the national spatio-temporal fix and the tendential ecological dominance of globalizing capitalism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24(2):323–360 Jessop B, Brenner N and Jones M (2008) Theorizing sociospatial relations. Environment and Planning D 26:389–401 Leitner H and Miller B (2007) Scale and the limitations of ontological debate: A commentary on Marston, Jones and Woodward. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32:116–125 Martin L L and Simmons B A (1998) Theories and empirical studies of international institutions. International Organization 52(2):729–757 Poulantzas N (1975) Classes in Contemporary Capitalism. London: New Left Books Poulantzas N (1980) State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso Rosenau J and Czempiel E-O (eds) (1992) Governance Without Government. Order and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Ruggie J G (1982) International regimes, transactions and change: Embedded liberalism in the postwar economic order. International Organization 36(2):379–415 Ruggie J G (1998) What makes the world hang together? Neo-utilitarianism and the social constructivist challenge. International Organization 52(4):855–885 Wissen M (2009) Contested terrains: Politics of scale, the national state and struggles for the control over nature. Review of International Political Economy 16 (forthcoming) Young O R (2002) The Institutional Dimensions of Environmental Change: Fit, Interplay, and Scale. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press C
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The Spaces of Capital: The Political Form of Capitalism and the Internationalization of the State1 Joachim Hirsch and John Kannankulam Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universit¨at, Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften, Robert-Mayer-Str. 5, 60054 Frankfurt am Main, Germany;
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract: In the course of the neoliberal globalization offensive capital has become more international. This development has placed the question of the state on the agenda once again. The central issue here is the extent to which the existing plurality of states should be seen as a historically contingent state of affairs which might not in principle last indefinitely, or as a structural component of the capitalist mode of production. One important aspect of this issue is the question of how the relationship between the “political form” of capitalism and “institutions” is understood. More often than not, even approaches that use Marxist theory have tended to address this question in an unsatisfactory manner. Keywords: state theory, internationalization of the state, historical materialist form analysis
In the course of the neoliberal globalization offensive capital has become more international. This development has placed the question of the state on the agenda once again and in a very specific way. The questions that arise relate both to the ongoing transformation of states and the state system, and to the significance of processes of supranational politicaleconomic integration—in particular, the case of the European Union (see Jessop 2008:198–224). The central issue here is the extent to which the existing plurality of states is a historically contingent state of affairs, which could in principle be overcome, or a structural component of the capitalist mode of production (on this point, see the controversy between Callinicos 2007 and Teschke and Lacher 2007). It is now beginning to be more generally recognized that neither a mere description of these developments nor a generalization of current trends will suffice. Current developments can only be understood if the analysis rests on an adequate theory of the modern, of the capitalist state. If one proceeds on the basis of the historical materialist theory of the state, one of the main questions to be answered is what ongoing internationalization processes mean for the political form of capitalism. In the debate about the internationalization of the state the analysis of this question has been unsatisfactory up until now. A clear indication of this is the fact that in debates the term “form” itself is used in a manifold and diffuse Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 12–37 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00809.x C 2010 The Authors C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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way (for example in Gerstenberger 2007a). Our own approach relies on the argumentation about social forms developed by Marx in his critique of political economy. Marx’s form of analytical argumentation meant substantial progress compared with classical economical theory which, according to him, provided the central key to an understanding of capitalist society (Marx 2005:89–90, 94–96). Hence our thesis is that the recent transformation processes of the state and the shifting of political scales can only be understood if we bring the problematique of ‘form’ into the centre of analysis. Our approach rests on the results of the— unfortunately—long-forgotten West German “State Derivation Debate” of the 1970s (see Bieler and Morton 2003; Clarke 1991; Holloway and Picciotto 1978), which we try to combine and develop further with the state theoretical arguments of Antonio Gramsci and Nicos Poulantzas. In our attempt to combine these apparently contradictory theoretical approaches (for this critique, see Holloway and Picciotto 1991), we see a promising and important opportunity for the further development of historical materialist state theory (Hirsch and Kannankulam 2006, 2009; Kannankulam 2008:36–63). One important aspect of this issue is the question of how the relationship between “political form” and “institutions” is understood. More often than not, even approaches that use Marx’s theory have tended to address this question in an unsatisfactory manner. The concept of political form is often equated with the concrete institutional structure of the state and its apparatuses (for examples of this, see Jessop 1982:190; 1990:206). This is, at the very least, imprecise. The political form of capitalism and the institutional shape of the political apparatus are not identical, and they cannot be derived from one another; their relationship to each other is complex, and involves both correspondence and contradiction. The concrete institutional shape taken by the state apparatus is form determined, that is to say, it is subject to structural constraints which result from existing relations of production and exploitation. These, in turn, impose limits on the range of possible modes of institutionalization. However, the political form can manifest itself in a range of different institutional configurations. This depends on specific historical paths, concrete economic relations and class constellations, relations of social power, and the way social conflicts develop. Our article is structured as follows: first we explicate how the political form of capitalism is to be understood and how the pivotal question of the relation between political form and concrete processes of institutionalization is to be dealt with. Our argument here is that processes of institutionalization are generally form determined but that form determination should not be misunderstood as if there is only one unilinear way in which this occurs. As a second step we give reasons for why the plurality of states is not simply a historically contingent appearance of capitalist relations of production but, in fact, a C
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structural element of it. Although there is no causality between the genesis of a geopolitical pluriverse and capitalism, the plurality of states is nevertheless an essential precondition for the reproduction and existence of modern capitalism. “Genesis” and “validity” (Geltung) are analytically to be distinguished, a fact which is too often overlooked in the recent debates. On this basis we explore what exactly is to be understood by internationalization of the state and what consequences this has for recent scalar re-configurations. Finally, we discuss what implications the internationalization of the state has for the political form and the existence of the global system of capitalism in general. In this article, we do not explicitly deal with contemporary geographical debates, but we refer to them as a theoretical background. Our assumption is that the spaces in which economic processes unfold, and to which political institutions relate, are not predetermined. They come into existence as a result of conflictual processes of societalization and dispute, in a range of historical constellations. Spaces that are demarcated by political power are never congruent with other spaces, such as economic and cultural ones. In fact, one has to proceed on the basis that there is a heterogeneous diversity of spaces which overlap, intersect and in part have a hierarchical relationship to one another. In these spaces, different relations of dominance and power and different terrains for dealing with problems and interests manifest themselves. One example of this is the transfer of economic processes and political decision-making to the international level in the course of neoliberal globalization, which has led to a fundamental shift of power in favour of capital and to the disadvantage of the working classes (Brand et al 2008; see also Brand and G¨org 2003; Brenner 2004; Delaney and Leitner 1997; Harvey 1982; Marston 2000; Swyngedouw 1997).
Basic Theoretical Considerations We start with a brief exposition of our basic theoretical assumptions. These relate to the political form of capitalism and the relationship between social form and institutions. We do not deal with the legal form, which together with the political form and the value form is among the basic structural features of capitalist society (see Buckel 2007). As Marx and Engels observed, the shape taken by any given organization of rule depends essentially on the prevailing property relations and relations of exploitation (1953:20–22; on this point, see also Brenner 1985; Teschke 2003:8–9). The formation of the modern state is closely connected with the successful establishing of capitalist relations of production, but this is not a straightforward causal relationship. The particular political form of capitalist society manifests itself in the modern state. This society is fundamentally characterized by private ownership of the means of production, formally free labor, C
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private production, the exchange of commodities, and competition. The commodities produced take the value form, and the law of value regulates societal production. The appropriation of surplus by the economic ruling class does not arise, as it does in the case of feudalism, through direct compulsion, but rather through the (formally equal) exchange of goods; and labor power is one of these goods. However, private production, the exchange of goods, and competition presuppose that members of the economic ruling class do not use direct physical violence either in their dealings with wage earners or within their own class. This means that fully developed capitalist relations come into existence only when violent physical compulsion is separated from every class in society, including the economic ruling class. The separation of “economy” from “politics” and of “state” from “society” is thus a crucial condition for the possibility of the existence and reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. The result of this is the “relative autonomy” of the political and of the state— or, because this expression can lead to confusion, what we call their separatedness or particularization (Besonderung). Because capitalist society breaks down into competing individuals and antagonistic classes, it is impossible for the members of that society to reach direct and conscious agreement on issues that affect them all. Just as the social character (Gesellschaftlichkeit) of their work imposes itself as an enforced external relationship mediated by the circulation of capital, so their political communality (Gemeinschaftlichkeit) is forced to take an objectified, reified shape that is separated from individuals. Individuals encounter this communality in the form of the state, as an external context of compulsion. The economic value form, the legal form and the political form must be seen as the basic structural features of capitalist society, features which are related to one another. The political form does not just constitute a “superstructure” resting on the economy, it is itself—as institutionalized in the state—an integral part of capitalist relations of production (Hirsch 2005:20–39). Economic (value) form and political form designate the historically specific manner under which class relations of capitalist societies are shaped and how classes relate to each other. The modality of the constitution of classes and class struggle are crucially shaped through these forms. The particularization of the state creates the conditions for an objectified and depersonalized mode of organization of social and class relations. The state is capitalist because it is an integral part of capitalist relations of production and is tied to these relations by virtue of its structure and functions, but it does not function as the immediate instrument of the economic ruling class or classes. The state is not a person, and it is not a consciously created organization set up for a particular rational purpose; rather, it must be understood as the material C
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condensation of antagonistic class relations (Poulantzas 2000:123–139) and of relations of rule connected with these (race, gender) (Demirovic and P¨uhl 1997; Jessop 2008:157–177; Karakayali and Tsianos 2003; Nowak 2006, 2009). By means of a process of socialization that takes the form of a state, members of the exploited classes are disorganized as individual citizens. Simultaneously, the state constitutes the terrain on which the development of a shared policy to be pursued by the ruling classes, who are actually competing economically with one another (the power bloc), becomes possible at all. Because the state is an institutionalization of competing and antagonistic class relations, it is not a closed apparatus but takes the shape of a heterogeneous network of agencies which are partly in conflict with one another. We can say that capitalist social forms, and so then the particularization or relative autonomy of the state, are not functionally predetermined and guaranteed, but rather produced and reproduced by societal action that is shaped by existing class relations and relations of exploitation. The existence and reproduction of these social forms are therefore fundamentally precarious. It is possible that societal struggles and disputes call into question the capitalist forms and thus ultimately the reproduction of societal formation as a whole. Social forms are thus objectifications of societal contexts that result from general principles of capitalist societalization which confront human beings in a reified way. They structurally determine the general orientations of perception and behavior that prevail in society. These orientations become concretized in societal institutions. This means that institutions can be seen as materializations of societal determinations of form (Holloway 1991:254–257). However, institutions and forms are not identical. Social forms, as the expression of a contradictory societalization context, establish, support and set limits to institutionalization processes, but this does not mean that such forms are fixed once and for all or that they will always appear in a specific configuration. For example, the value form that determines capitalism can be manifested in very different systems of money and credit. The concept of social form thus designates the context of conciliation (Vermittlungszusammenhang) between societal structure, institutions and social action. Because action that establishes and reproduces institutions is shaped by the antagonisms and conflicts that are specific to the capitalist mode of production, contradictions can arise between social forms and institutions. This means that it is in principle possible for existing structures to become incompatible with the process by which capital is valorized. It follows from this that the nation state is only one possible mode of institutionalization of the capitalist political form, albeit one that in historical terms has succeeded in establishing itself for a long period of time. Nevertheless, the transformation of C
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societal relations associated with this, characterized by what Max Weber (1946:77) called the “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence” within a bounded territory, the principle of the formal rule of law, and a bureaucratic rationality that is predictable to a certain extent, has proved to be extremely advantageous for the reproduction of capitalist relations of production. Weber is certainly to be criticized for his theoretical foundations. This is especially true for his perspective of a historically continuing process of rationalization and the assumption that the modern bureaucratic state is an expression of this process. What is seriously masked here are the antagonistic class relations and structures of exploitation. But what is nevertheless to Weber’s merit is the fact that he clearly argued that the modern state is not to be defined by any historically changing means (function), but through its ends (form) alone; Weber is very precise in arguing that the modern state is a specific institutionalized form of physical force and violence (1946:77). And any serious attempt to analyze the changing institutional shape and functions of the state does need to take this as its starting point. To paraphrase Bob Jessop (1982:135), that is to say that form constitutes function, not only problematizes it, and function problematizes form. Having said this, we would argue that in recent criticisms of Weber, and the demand that his conception of the state should be abandoned, there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater (Robinson 2001; see also Teschke 2003:49–53; 2006:543–546). Authors who argue along these lines fail to see that it is precisely the way the apparatus of force has become centralized and autonomous that makes it a central element of the capitalist political form. Even Robinson, who proclaims the arrival of the “transnational state”, is forced in the end to admit that this form of the state lacks the power to establish itself successfully, the capacity to use force, so that while “fiscal intervention, credit creation, tax redistribution and control over capital and labor allocations” may be formulated to a growing degree in the supranational policy arena, they can only be established in practice by the nation state (Robinson 2001:181; for criticism of Robinson’s position, see Block 2001).
The Nation-State System It is certainly correct in principle to call for a move away from “methodological nationalism” in the analysis of the state (Smith 1995). However, this does not answer the question of why there was such a close connection between the coming into being of the modern nationstate system and the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, and its success in establishing itself, in the period between the 17th and the 20th centuries. C
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The historical course of events reveals no causal connection between the successful establishment of capitalism and the emergence of the modern system of states (Gerstenberger 1990, 2007b; Hirsch 2005:50– 58; Reinhard 2000; Teschke 2003; Tilly 1975). These two processes cannot be reduced to one another, but they were historically connected and served to strengthen each other. The decisive preliminary conditions are to be found in the upheavals in feudal relations of power and property that occurred in Western Europe from the 11th century onwards. These changes were characterized in particular by the usurpation of imperial power by the feudal lords (Teschke 2003:76–96). The antagonism between the power of the church and secular rule, which was characteristic of the Holy Roman Empire, played an important part here (Spruyt 1994:34–58). The feudal mode of exploitation and accumulation contained an inherent tendency to territorial expansion (Brenner 1985b:238–239; Benz 2001:13; Teschke 2003:61–69, 83– 104). This led to military rivalry between the feudal lords, and between the lords and their vassals, and provided the decisive dynamic that contributed to the coming into existence of the modern state system. Military expansion required an increase in the internal power of the state and led to a greater demand for resources, and as this happened the feudal estates, in conflict with their rulers over the latter’s attempts to impose higher taxes on them, were able to force the rulers to give them more of a say in a range of important matters. Under medieval law and its principle of quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus debet comprobari, exceptional taxes could only be imposed if those required to pay them gave their consent (Anderson 1974:45). In combination with the adoption (reception) of Roman law, which took place between the 13th and the 16th centuries, this led to the setting up of a centralized administrative apparatus. At the same time, the money economy developed further. The pressure both to mobilize and to extract more resources (the coercion–extraction cycle) was one of the most important foundations of the modern state (Tilly 1975; Reinhard 2000). The wars and conflicts associated with religious schism were another factor that made it possible for absolutism to establish itself successfully in Europe. The parceled-out medieval form of rule was gradually overcome, though the precapitalist-feudal mode of accumulation remained in existence for the time being (Teschke 2003:264–268). Spatially separate territories came into being, as did centralized and professional administrative apparatuses. Step by step, the princely court was separated from the administration of the state (Hirsch 2005:54). This means that the development of the market and the money economy was not the result of a specifically economic dynamism, but was driven first and foremost by “disputes about the extent and forms of personal rule” (Gerstenberger 1990:512). The decisive factor in further developments was the fact that in England, as the result of a specific class constellation described by Marx C
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in chapter 24 of Capital, and to a significant degree as a consequence of the way the class of large landowners who had emerged from the feudal system organized themselves politically in parliament, absolutism was not strengthened. What happened instead was that capitalism and the modern state became more closely interlinked with one another, so that they both developed more rapidly (Teschke 2003:249–268). By contrast with developments in continental Europe, the English feudal nobility gradually transformed itself from a military caste into a demilitarized and successful class of large landowners against which the peasants in their recurring revolts failed to establish freehold control over the land (Brenner 1985a:30–37, 46–62). After the Civil War fought against Stuart absolutism (1642–1649), the alliance between the capitalist landed nobility and those engaged in trade with the colonies succeeded in securing a situation in which private property rights were combined with commercial rents and political freedoms. Or, to put it another way, they managed to reestablish a traditional order within which parliament had long held a strong position (Magna Carta in 1215, the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 and Westminster in 1259; on these points, see Benz 2001:39; Grimm 1987:62; Teschke 2003:252–255). This provided the basis for the country’s economic and military dominance, which exerted increasing pressure on the continental European states to adapt to it. In contrast to developments in Britain, the feudal nobility in continental Europe did not manage to transform itself into a capitalist class. The French king was able to ally himself with the (trading) cities and to attain absolute power (Spruyt 1994:77–108). Against this background, it was the task of the bourgeois revolutions to impose by force a far-reaching “expropriation of the personal ownership of power” (Gerstenberger 1990:52). But these revolutions were, strictly speaking, only “bourgeois” in a limited sense. It would be more accurate to say that they were triggered by complex struggles over property and privileges in which the role of the bourgeois class was not initially prominent (Teschke 2003:254–255). This did, however, lead to a separation between the state and society, politics and the economy, which was a decisive precondition for the establishment of capitalist relations and so for the ultimate formation of the modern state. We can therefore summarize these developments by saying that it was not capital or the capitalist bourgeoisie that laid the foundations of the modern state, but a dynamic of power and conflict that was already present in the structure of medieval society as it underwent transformation, but which at the same time pointed beyond the existing historical shackles. Teschke is surely making a point against the a-historic school of neo-realism within the discipline of international elations in insisting that the Westphalian Order of 1648 was not an order of sovereign states in the modern sense, since the internal organization of states such as France still rested on dynastic and therefore feudal foundations C
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(Teschke 2003:225–246). But it is one thing to argue that it was only in England that a sovereign state emerged and that this laid the foundations for capitalist development, and it is another thing to conclude that in feudal political structures such as in France the possibility for capitalist development could not be traced further back in history and/or that it could not be found in geographic regions other than England (Spruyt 2006:516). In Teschke’s argument it is either capitalism or feudalism, and one has to decide (Teschke 2003:96–97, chapter 4 passim). But this argumentative prison is too narrow. Even his theoretical mentor Robert Brenner allowed himself the freedom of admitting that he did in fact generally accept the explanatory models he was criticizing and that his aim was to add further explanation, not to reject them (Brenner 1985b:217). Therefore, we have to admit that the classic argument of Perry Anderson (1974) is more convincing to us than the narrow passage that Teschke offers, that: the actual movement of history is never a simple change-over from one pure mode of production to another: it is always composed of a complex series of social formations in which a number of modes of productions are enmeshed together under the dominance of one of them (1974:423).
Nevertheless, historical developments thus show that one cannot assume that the coming into being of the modern state was a simple matter of a causal economic connection or a structural relationship, as the basesuperstructure theorem has it. However, this does not settle the question of whether the development of capitalism in the context of a plurality of competing apparatuses of rule was no more than a historical accident, or whether the compartmentalization of the political form into a large number of territorially demarcated spaces (individual states) is one of the fundamental structural features of capitalism. Nobody denies that it was this plurality that drove forward the emergence of capitalism and the modern state. Teschke and Lacher (2007) conclude, on the basis that the emergence of capitalism and of the modern state are two processes that cannot be reduced to one another, that the connection between capitalism and the existence of a large number of states is both genetically and structurally contingent, and that capitalism could equally well have come into existence within the political structure of an empire (2007:574). Both of these conclusions are questionable. Teschke’s confusion stems from his argument that, on the one hand, the successful establishment of capitalism as a relation of production rests on a differentiation between politics and the economy, which means that exploitation takes place without immediate physical compulsion and so “‘the state’ no longer needs to interfere directly in the processes of production and extraction” (2003:143). This means, Teschke argues further, that the C
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state can confine itself to the essential functions of institutionalizing the capitalist property regime and “legally enforcing civil contracts among politically (though not economically) equal citizens” (2003:143). However, Teschke then goes on to claim that capitalism does not need a geopolitical pluriverse or a system of states in order to reproduce itself (2003:144–145, 266–267). If there is no need for a states system, a world state will be the only alternative. However, one needs to show that a world state is possible under capitalist conditions. Teschke confuses historical description with theoretical argument. Capitalism did not cause the territorially fragmented system of states to come into being, but it does not follow that this system is not necessary for the reproduction of capitalism. Against the background of the analysis as we have summarized it here, one could pose the question of how it can be that “a specific state form is internally related to capitalism as a social property relation: modern sovereignty”, as Teschke himself says, only to conclude in the next breath that this cannot explain the territorially bounded nature of the modern state (2003:144). It is undoubtedly the case that the geopolitical world of diverse states changes historically, and that this cannot be explained in a mono-causal way in terms of mechanisms of “economic” competition, but one cannot in any way conclude that we should therefore abandon the idea of systematic connections between capitalism, territoriality, sovereignty and the state. The parcelling-up of the apparatuses of rule does not arise from capitalist relations, but the historical course of events itself shows that it was one of the decisive preconditions needed for the development of those relations and for their success in establishing themselves. A central role is played here by the specific way in which the political form of capitalism is institutionalized, and the theoretical debate has so far paid little or no attention to this problematic (this is also true of Callinicos 2007). What happens is that the political form, that is to say the particularization or relative autonomy of the state, reproduces itself essentially via the mode of competition between states. The establishment and preservation of this form rests on the competition between individual states, each with its own institutionalized class relations and compromises. As we have shown, the capitalist state with its relative autonomy is a precondition which makes it possible for the contradictory and antagonistic relations between classes and groups to be regulated in such a way that societal reproduction can take place. This is because a joint policy for the economic ruling classes can only be formulated by means of the state, so that those subject to this rule can be bound both repressively and consensually into existing relations of power and exploitation. The capitalist mode of regulation is constituted territorially, rests on a politics of separation, and is coupled with a specific regime of C
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citizenship and with the potential to mobilize nationalism that goes with this. This rests essentially on the fact that the classes facing each other in the context of global accumulation and valorization are themselves politically divided by the existence of individual states competing with one another. As a result, the possibility arises at the individual state level that cross-class coalitions will come into being with the goal of securing shared competitive advantages in the world market. The system of competing states organizes social contradictions and conflicts in such a way that the particularization of the individual state apparatuses in their relations with the different classes is strengthened. The plurality of states is therefore a constitutive expression and component of capitalist relations of exploitation and competition. States can thus be understood as the institutional materializations of an international network of contradictory class relations (Poulantzas 1974). The political fragmentation of the world market in the form of its political organization into individual states continues to be the basis of and precondition for differently structured conditions of production and class relations. One consequence of this is that capital, which is able to move across borders, can maximize its profits by connecting these spaces with each other or playing them off against one another. The development of capitalism is fundamentally characterized by considerable space–time differentiations, a set of circumstances described by Lenin (1974) as “the law of uneven and combined development”. This refers to the fact that competing capitals have to pursue the goal of extra profit because they may be ruined if they do not do so, and the result is the creation of systematic economictechnological differences. These differences are strengthened further by the advantages provided by the creation of regional clusters (Callinicos 2007:544–545; Morton 2007:612–615; see also Brenner 2004:12–32; Harvey 1982, 2001; Rosenberg 2005; Smith 1984; Wissen and Naumann 2008). Since the relationship of forces among classes condenses in ways that vary from one state to another, capitalism develops differently in different locations. These differences take the form of a pressure to adapt which is felt by those who have not been at the forefront of economic-technical and societal developments that are profitable for capital, and so are economically weaker. In this way, the class relations that are organized differently at state level exert a reciprocal influence on one another. This means that class relations at the level of individual states are always also determined by global structures mediated via the competition between states. The particularization of the state is thus the condition of possibility for the formation of specific class constellations on which the different conditions of competition rest, and this particularization is constantly being reproduced via the mechanism of valorization of capital and competition. C
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The political form of capitalism is in the final analysis also the basis for the contradictory relationship between economic and geopolitical competition that is typical of capitalism (Harvey 1982, 2003; see also Callinicos 2007). The consequence of the separation of politics from the economy, and of the particularization of the state, is that economic competition and the competition between states are processes which relate to one another but function according to different dynamics. The relationships between states are determined not only by economic developments and interests, but also by strategies pursued by political actors which can be traced back to particular bases of reproduction and legitimation. The preconditions for the valorization of capital (which vary spatially and temporally) and thus, in turn, the relations between economic spaces, are also fundamentally dependent on the strategic options of these actors. This complex mechanism of competition also contributes to the preservation of the political form and the particularization of the state. For an analysis of imperialistic structures and dynamics these interrelations will certainly be of importance (ten Brink 2008). Neo-Realist approaches within the field of international relations argue that geopolitical competition and conflict do not merely stem from economic dynamics but follow dynamics of their own (Waltz 1979, 2008; Mearsheimer 2001; for a critique see Czempiel 2002). In arguing so they certainly point out an important aspect of international political processes but at the same time tend to neglect basic class, competitive and exploitative relations. This means that the process of global accumulation both presupposes and has as its consequence the existence of different political-societal spaces. These spaces are tied to the constitution in territorial form of states as apparatuses of force with their specific national processes of identification and legitimation. The real unity of the world market establishes itself with and against the form of the individual state, and this itself is one of the forms taken by the mechanism of capitalist competition. However, it is important to distinguish between the nation state and the national state. Territorial states are not necessarily, or even usually, “national” states in the strict sense of the word. The concrete form of the state system has not been fixed permanently. States can disappear, break up, and merge. As a result of the contradictions and conflicts that are inherent in the capitalist mode of societalization, the concrete configuration of the state system changes constantly. This, however, does not explain why individual states tend to be nation states. Nations do not occur naturally; they are the products of relations of power and rule (Anderson 1983; Balibar and Wallerstein 1992:197– 224; Jackson and Penrose 1993:202–205; Reinhard 2000:440–458). Exaggerating only slightly, one can say that states, as apparatuses of rule, use existing historical and cultural conditions to create the nation. The construction of national identities makes it possible to C
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cover up social tensions and to neutralize class struggles. One can also say that nationalism cannot be “deduced” from capitalism; it follows as a consequence of historical processes and struggles that are initially independent of capitalism. At the same time, however, this connection indicates that capitalist production relations require specific patterns of legitimation that they cannot create themselves. The construct of “the nation” thus corresponds to the capitalist political form in a fundamental way. Under conditions of capitalist societalization humans are not only broken down into antagonistic classes, but are also simultaneously and systematically isolated and flexibilized as marketdependent individuals and robbed of their traditional social ties by incessant economic upheavals. There is therefore a tendency constantly to undermine and change radically social relations, cultural common ground, and collective orientations and life contexts, those things that make a society possible at all as a particular entity that is conscious of itself and capable of continued existence (Reinhard 2000:440–458). The modern nation and nationalism are the field on which social coherence is symbolically based. To put this in simple terms, it means that the “nation” is the ideological cement that holds together a society divided into classes and shaped by competition between individuals. One could follow Alain Lipietz here (1992:46) and speak of an “ex post functionalism”: historical developments do not follow a masterplan, but in retrospect one can nevertheless say that capitalism and nationalism, or to be more precise capitalism, the territorial state, citizenship and the associated nationalism are systematically connected with one another. One can therefore assume that regardless of the transformations that states and the state system undergo in future, the nation-state form of the individual state will not lose its significance.
Internationalization of the State? Concerning the internationalization of the state there exists a huge literature, which cannot be dealt with here in detail (see, for example, Bieler et al 2006; Cox 1989; Hardt and Negri 2000; Held and KoenigArchibugi 2005; Mandel 1975; Murray 1971; Robinson 2004; Shaw 2000). Whilst it is frequently said that the state is being internationalized, the term remains rather vague. It refers both to an increase in individual states’ dependency on international economic-political processes and to the development of state-like structures at the supranational level. In this section we argue that the nation state or individual state has been, at least in historical terms, an important level at which the political form of capitalism has been able to concretize itself, but it is not necessarily the only level where this can happen. There have been state-like structures at the international level ever since the modern state system came into existence, since the competitive relation between states does not solely C
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exist in open and sometimes armed conflicts but also in regularized modes of coordination, which, if need be, are institutionalized in corresponding international organizations and regimes (Teschke and Lacher 2007:570). The internationalization of the state has received a decisive impetus from the neoliberal restructuring of capitalism that has been described as “globalization”. This rests on the far-reaching deregulation of markets for commodities, capital and finance, and is at the same time characterized by comprehensive privatization. As a consequence, economic interdependence increases and there is also a greater risk of comprehensive economic crises. The global process of valorization and accumulation is increasingly escaping from the hands of individual states, which means there is now more need for regulation at the international level—as the global financial crisis that began at the end of 2007 showed (for a more detailed elaboration, see Hirsch 1998, 2005). The processes and struggles associated with these developments show clearly that in the context sketched above, in which principles of capitalist form are connected with historically specific patterns of institutionalization and conflicts mediated through crises, upheavals and processes leading to disassociations take place which challenge and transform the existing configurations of form and institutions. It is thus clear that the connections and dynamic of principles of form and patterns of institutionalization are expressions of existing contradictions rather than a harmonious, stable, and long-lasting relationship. Increasing demands for international regulation also arise as a result of growing threats to the environment, which cannot be dealt with by individual states acting on their own. At the same time, the globalization of capital is in a way accompanied by a globalization of subalterns expressed in growing levels of cross-border migration. Reactions to this involve tighter state control, which is an increasingly significant instrument used to regulate labor power on a global scale and has led in part to an institutionalization of surveillance and control at the supranational level (Buckel, Kannankulam and Wissel 2008). Against this background, the internationalization of state administration has received a boost. However, this mainly rests on the fact that the end of the East–West conflict opened up an opportunity for the powerful capitalist states, led by the USA, jointly to dominate the world and to impose economic and societal structures that would work to their benefit. One of the most important aspects of this was the interest of multinational corporations in securing the conditions of valorization at a level above that of the spaces of individual states. Another significant factor is the concern to create a system of states prepared to follow the neoliberal agenda of economic deregulation, privatization, and securing property. C
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The advanced internationalization of capital, which was by then taking on new forms, was one precondition for this development, which replaced the Fordist variant of capitalism that entered a period of crisis in the 1970s. Companies which operate and are integrated internationally have become much more flexible in both economic and technical respects, and it is now easier for them to evade structures of regulation set up by individual states (as well as the class relations institutionalized in these forms of regulation). The neoliberal strategy designed to overcome the crisis of Fordism had two goals: to shift the relationship of social forces towards the interests of capital and to open up new opportunities for profitable investment. The result of this was a major shift of the global structuring of space towards the supranational and subnational levels, which was to the disadvantage of the institutionalized structures of regulation set up in the nation-state context. The transformation of states into “competition states” exposes them to intensified competition between economic locations in relation to opportunities for the profitable utilization of capital (on this point, see in particular Brenner 2004). This is combined with a clear dominance of decision-making processes located at the international economic and political level. In this way capital has succeeded in negating to a considerable extent the effects of structures enabling social compromises set up at the level of individual states. As a result its profits have increased significantly. The kernel of the processes labeled as globalization ultimately lies in a reorganization of class structures on a global scale which has led to a change in the relations between the classes and the states’ apparatuses in which the relationship between forces has clearly been changed in favor of capital. There are a number of dimensions to these processes that one can summarize with the help of the concept of the internationalization of the state. Firstly, it involves the internationalization of the state apparatuses themselves: a greater degree of dependence between individual states on international economic and political processes—though this depends on their economic strength and the extent to which they are integrated into the world market. This exposes them at the same time to greater reciprocal competitive pressure and is expressed in extensive restrictions on the room for maneuver they have regarding intervention in economic and social policy (“the national competition state”, Hirsch 1995). As a result of the constraints caused by competition between economic locations, institutionalized democratic processes in the framework of individual states become increasingly irrelevant (Hirsch 2005:202–240). It is important to note, however, that this development has not simply been forced on the states from outside, but was instigated and actively carried out by the states themselves in the period since the global liberal– conservative political turn at the end of the 1970s. Seen in this light, this is by no means a straightforward weakening of the states by an external process but a strategic self-transformation carried out by the C
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states themselves. In a way that seems paradoxical until one looks at it more closely, the states are actors in a reconfiguration of spaces in which the individual state level declines in importance (Brenner 2004:30, 64). Another aspect of this development is the privatization of politics, which is advancing at both the individual state and the international levels. This is the result of a strategy designed to extend private property rights and open up new investment opportunities for capital. The states are confronted by internationally operating companies, actors whose weight has increased considerably. This means that politics is increasingly taking place in state–private negotiation and decisionmaking structures that are almost impossible to control. It is true that the “cooperative state” is not something completely new (Ritter drew attention to the phenomenon as early as 1979), since under capitalist conditions governments have always been forced to come to arrangements with powerful societal groups. But this has become much more significant and has led to a major shift in the relationship between politics and the economy, and between the state and society, and so too to new conditions for the reproduction of the political form of capitalism. One result of the internationalization of capital and the deepening competition that followed this is the development of regional economic blocs under the leadership of strong metropolitan states, especially the North American Free Trade Area and the European Union (EU). The EU is a special case of internationalization of the state, because what we can observe here is a more marked formation of state-like apparatuses at the supranational level (Bieler 2005). A further development that can be attributed to the dominance of the capitalist metropolises is the growth in the significance of international organizations, especially the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, and the WTO, and the attempts to use these organizations to organize and impose the interests of the metropolises. In addition, there are less firmly institutionalized contexts of cooperation and networks such as the environmental and climate conferences, in which non-governmental organizations as well as international companies play an important role, G7 or G8 meetings, and others (on this point, see Schoppengerd 2007). The combination of these factors has led to a stronger spatial diversification of state levels and functions. It is true that no level has come into existence that is genuinely independent of the individual states, because the international organizations and regimes rest on the interest in cooperation of at least the strong states, and these states determine and place restrictions on how effective they can be (Wissel 2007b). However, these organizations are not purely intergovernmental. They develop dynamics of their own which have an effect on the policies of individual states. At any rate, attempts to evade these dynamics are costly and involve risks that cannot be precisely calculated. C
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The internationalization of the state, in particular the diversification of spatial scales and functions and also privatization, is accompanied by a significant degree of internationalization of law (Cutler 2003; G¨unther and Randeria 2001; Meyer 2005; Randeria 2006). There is a trend towards the replacement of laws enacted by the state and universally valid within a particular territorial unit by “legal pluralism”. This is characterized by the existence of a number of different systems of judicial norms which are often in competition with one another, stemming in part from private sources (the so-called lex mercatoria), and in some cases regulating the same issues by applying different norms. The development and application of laws are thus decoupled to some degree from the individual states. However, it is important to distinguish between the generation and the enforcement of laws. When a conflict arises, the law is applied by individual states, which enjoy a monopoly on the use of force, and its application depends on the effectiveness of that monopoly (Randeria 2006). It is easier for “strong” states than for weak ones to evade international legislation and the international administration of justice, to the extent that strong ones do not recognize international legal authority at all. A final important background element in the internationalization of the state is the development of an international managerial class, which is also driven by the internationalization of capital. This class is made up of functionaries of states and international organizations, representatives of companies and the media, employees of academic think tanks, and so on. The interests represented here continue to be shaped by the competition between companies and states, but more firmly institutionalized contexts of debate have been created in which joint strategies can be discussed and formulated (Apeldoorn 2003; Cox 1993, 1998; Pijl 1997). This means that the “internationalization of the state” thesis needs to be qualified in a number of respects. This process is by no means one that takes the same form everywhere and envelops all states in the same manner, but rather a reconfiguration of political spaces on a global scale: a process that is largely determined by the dominance of the capitalist metropolises of the North/West; a process that serves to reinforce this very dominance. This rests mainly on the politics of a group of states which operate according to their interest to secure the conditions for the valorization of internationalized capital. The capitalist state is not a closed container or a unified subject, but rather an ensemble of heterogeneous apparatuses where different class relations which in principle go beyond the state are materialized. It is also imprecise to speak of the development of “statehood” at the international level. “Statehood” is a very vague concept—compared with, for example, Gramsci’s concept of the integral state (Gramsci 1971:244, 267). In the modern, capitalist sense the concept of the state is closely connected C
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with the centralization and particularization of the apparatus of violence, and there are no serious signs of this happening at the international level. It is therefore false to say that the levels at which state-like institutions develop are in principle of equal status (Jessop 2002), or that the dominance of one level is a historical and empirical question rather than a theoretical one (Brenner 2004:73). As we have tried to show, it is possible to answer this question more precisely if one takes into account the political form of capitalism. Nor does the internationalization process do away with the conflicts between the metropolitan states, which can be traced back to different factions of capital, different constellations of social forces, and different forms of social integration. A result of this is that at the international level, state-like institutions are on the whole not very stable. The diversification of the state apparatus at different spatial levels has led not only to the erosion of liberal-democratic institutions that exist only at the level of the individual state, but also to a systematic irresponsibility, lawlessness and unruliness in politics. It makes it possible for “scale shifting” to take place: decisions that cannot be pushed through at one level are shifted to another level so they can be put into effect through external compulsion. Or this can work the other way round: decisions taken at the supranational level may not be implemented at the level of the individual state or the local level, or they may only be partially implemented (Randeria 2006 deals with this and provides some graphic examples).
Internationalization and the Political Form We conclude this discussion by addressing the question of what the developments described above mean for the political form of capitalist society. Or, to be more precise, whether and to what extent they lead to institutional configurations which have a contradictory relationship to the maintenance and reproduction of that form and what consequences follow from this. Brand and G¨org state that internationalization leads to intensified state-like “second-order condensations”, that is, at the subnational and supranational levels rather than that of the individual states (Brand and G¨org 2003; see also Brand, G¨org and Wissen 2007). This is a reference to Poulantzas’ definition of the state as the material condensation and institutionalization of a relationship of forces (Poulantzas 2000:128–129). There are some problems with this way of conceptualizing the question, since it suggests a hierarchy when in reality this is a matter of different qualities (see also Wissel 2007a:129). Indeed, strictly speaking, one would have to call this a second-order material condensation or second-order materiality. The specific element here is not that condensation in the sense of dealing with contradictions takes place at the international or transnational level, but C
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rather that the materiality of the condensations takes on another quality because there is no international state or monopoly on the use of force. Within the individual state, the specific manner of the condensation of power relations is essentially determined by the centralization of the apparatus of physical violence and its formal particularization in relation to social classes, or as Weber puts it, the “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence” (1946:77). Within the framework of the individual state, the condensation of class relations applies to this apparatus of violence and so acquires a particular quality of durability and coherence. This means that social compromises can be embodied institutionally and it is easier to establish hegemonic relations. There is no doubt that internationalization affects the individual state’s monopoly on the use of force in a number of ways. It changes the relationship between the state and society and between politics and the economy, and it affects the particularization of the political. At the same time, however, there is no centralized and autonomous apparatus of violence at the global level (no “world state”), and under capitalist conditions no such apparatus can develop. Attempts to bring such an apparatus into existence have failed. The Charter of the United Nations (Art. 47) provides for the setting-up of a UN Military Staff Committee and for the placing of armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council, but this has never been implemented. In practice, the UN Security Council functions as a kind of body responsible for passing on the instructions of the dominant military powers—to the extent that the five countries with power of veto ever come to an agreement. This means that the “second-order materializations” coming into existence at the international level are bound to remain dependent on the degree to which the states that set them up and determine how they work are actually interested in cooperation. As a result, their scope is limited. They remain functionally restricted and fragmented. For example, they can be used to guarantee private property rights but are of very little use in any attempt to bring about binding material redistribution. The ongoing process of internationalization is being decisively shaped by the fact that individual states are determined to hang on to their own monopoly on the use of force. This even applies within the EU, though in this case there seems to be an initial move towards the creation of a supranational apparatus of violence in the shape of FRONTEX, which is a borderpolice coordinating agency responsible for the control and surveillance of migration. This is a consequence of the creation of a political territory that goes beyond the individual states (Buckel and Wissel 2008). But even if the EU were one day to develop into a genuine state, this would do nothing to change the existence of a state system that has always been characterized by changes in its concrete configuration. NATO, on the other hand, functions as a kind of joint apparatus of violence of the metropolitan states, but its effectiveness depends on whether or not these C
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states are prepared to cooperate. And, as we have seen recently, this is by no means always the case. Finally, global relations of violence are currently being shaped by the fact that the USA, because of its military predominance, functions in practice as a kind of generalized apparatus of violence acting globally in the interests of international capital and of states allied with the USA. This, however, is a consequence of existing relations of military dominance and dependency, and it is certainly not leading to a generally institutionalized state-like apparatus, as the repeated instances of unilateralism in US foreign and military policy demonstrate. The system that consists of the dominant capitalist states, what Shaw (2000:199–208) calls the “global western conglomerate of states”, is neither a world state nor a supranational one. The internationalization process associated with neoliberal “globalization” has several consequences for the reproduction of the political form of capitalism. Firstly, the range of forms taken by the privatization of politics is leading to a change in the relationship between the state and society. The growing importance of private actors in different spheres, including policing and security, together with the spread of state–private negotiation systems, means that the “particularization” of the state or its “relative autonomy” is becoming more precarious and the dividing line between “politics” and “the economy” more difficult to identify. In the literature, this has been described as a movement towards the “refeudalization” of politics (Held 1991:223–227; Maus 1992; Scharpf 1991). Functions which regulate society are increasingly being taken over by businesses or nongovernmental organizations, and at the same time important foundations of representative liberal democracy are increasingly being called into question. The partial “denationalization” and pluralization of law is significant in this regard (Randeria 2006). Secondly, the differentiation of the state apparatus into separate levels changes the way in which class relations are institutionalized. Internationally operating capital, in particular, relates to a large number of fragmented state-like apparatuses. This can make it easier for capital to pursue its interests successfully via “forum shifting”, but it makes it more difficult for it to formulate and follow a relatively consistent policy. “Forum shifting” takes place when governments try to enforce their interests in changing between different regulatory institutions. This can be seen, for example, in conflicts around intellectual property rights that take place between WTO/TRIPS and WIPO (see Brand et al 2008; Braithwaite and Drahos 2000, chapter 24). The particularization of the state is the precondition for the very possibility of such a policy, establishing a relationship with the exploited and dominated classes that goes beyond competition between capitals. Further, it is questionable whether it is possible to compensate for the absence of a centralized state apparatus at the global level by anything like coordinated action C
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on the part of the “international manager class”. In practice, capital carries out its policy in a network of different state apparatuses and systems of negotiation that is as heterogeneous as it is complex, and the democratic procedures involved here are largely limited with respect to the associated procedures for mediation and reaching compromises. This also has a negative effect on the prospects for the establishment of hegemonic relations. As a result, the capitalist power bloc is becoming more fragmented and heterogeneous (Wissel 2007a:108–130). Thirdly, the fact that international companies are becoming less and less dependent on contexts of reproduction organized on the basis of individual states means they are losing interest in societal integration as a whole. This is deepening divisions within societies. The erosion of liberal democracy is weakening a mode on which the particularization of the state rests to a considerable extent. Poulantzas (1973:58–65; 1977:81–114; see also Jessop 2006:53–56) points out that bourgeois exceptional regimes can give the authoritarian state more freedom of action in the short term, but in the medium and long term they are unable to recalibrate an “unstable equilibrium of compromise” between classes because the channels and regulatory mechanisms available in the “normal” liberal-democratic state (free elections, a free press, the multi-party system, and so on) have been weakened or even eliminated. It is true that the transformed post-Fordist state is not an “exceptional state”, but it has comparable features up to a point in that it takes the form of authoritarian statism (Jessop 2006, 2009; Kannankulam 2008; Poulantzas 1973). This means that in the course of internationalization, the political form of capitalism is called into question in this respect too. We can therefore conclude that the processes described as the internationalization of the state are leading to a situation in which the concrete shape of the system of political institutions is increasingly coming into conflict with the political form of capitalism. The political form remains fundamentally determining, but overall it is becoming more precarious. This not only leads to increased violence in society and in international relations, but also makes it more difficult to formulate and carry out successfully a policy designed to preserve stability in the long run. Since the stability of capitalist society and its capacity to reproduce itself depend essentially on the extent to which its political form can be guaranteed, we can expect that it will become generally more unstable and crisis prone. However, one cannot say with certainty what follows from this. Capitalism is not fundamentally “stable”; it develops with and through crises, and the result of this is constant radical change in its economic and political structures. The possibility of a gradual transition to a society that is no longer capitalist in the strict sense of the term but is characterized by other, more immediate forms of rule and exploitation cannot be ruled out altogether, although it is not very likely. However, future developments are not determined by any C
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logic or “set of historical laws”, but depend on social struggles and the strategies of actors engaged in these struggles. It is not only conceivable but probable that neoliberal, globalized, post-Fordist capitalism will prove to be a historical episode just as Fordism was. However, it is fairly certain that it would be premature to proclaim the end of the nation state and the arrival of an era of democratic world governance (see, for example, Beck 1998; Beck and Grande 2005; Grande 2005; Held 1995; Z¨urn 1998). There are good reasons to believe that we can expect capitalism to remain organized politically into individual states, and that the structures of rule, division and exclusion associated with this will not disappear—even if there are fundamental changes in the internal shape of states and their global configuration.
Endnote 1
Translated by Dr Gerald Holden.
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Materialist State Theory and the Transnationalization of the Capitalist State Alex Demirovi´c Technical University of Berlin, Franklinstraße 28/29, FR 3-11, D-10587 Berlin;
[email protected] Abstract: In contrast to assertions that the capitalist state is either losing control or that it has returned, this article argues that during the last two decades the state itself has been reshaped. To understand the processes that the capitalist state is exposed to it is necessary to conceive of it as a series of form-specific practices. Which practices form “the state” is not a result of pre-given institutions but of conflicts and struggles. The capitalist state, separated as it is from the relations of production, must not be made synonymous with the national state. Only as a result of certain relations of force does bourgeois rule acquire the form of the national state. These relations between classes are currently being dissolved by the ruling classes. The capitalist state is being reorganized and is constructing new elements of a transnational network state, whilst the state itself is governed through new techniques—that is, those of governance. Keywords: capitalist state, form analysis, power, neoliberalism, transnational network state, financial crisis
Does the national state still make generally binding decisions or have decision-making processes been transferred to international organizations and/or the private sphere? In the past 15 years, state theory has addressed this question, reflected in current debates on the state’s loss of control, which has supposedly prepared the ground for a new architecture of political rule. The alternative view is that the state remains the central actor in the exercise of power. Whether this is true is not only related to empirical changes but also depends on the concept of the state used to analyse these processes. In this paper, I first delineate my conception of the state in terms of Marx’s form analysis (the first and second sections). Secondly (in the third section), I critically deploy Nicos Poulantzas’s state theory to offer an understanding of the national state that differs from the usual analytical frameworks of political sociology or public law. My argument is that political power is being reorganized and that this reorganization also affects the state. It doesn’t make sense to conceive of recent developments in terms of an increase or a decrease in state power. The way the state exercises its power is changing, meaning it is taking a new form. This new form is not yet determined but it is Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 38–59 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00810.x C 2010 The Author C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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unlikely to correspond to the model of the national state or that of a new supra-state subject. Accordingly I speak of the emergence of elements of a transnational network state. On the one hand this new state form consists of specific transnational state apparatuses and, on the other, it relies on regional or national state apparatuses permeated by transnational priorities and decision-making processes.
The Capitalist State as Form and Practice An essential difference between critical-materialist state theory and mainstream political science approaches is that the former does not take the state for granted as an empirically given, self-constituting object but approaches the existence of what is termed “the state” from a critical epistemological position. It is certainly not evident what the state comprises, how a multiplicity of practices come to be subsumed under the term “the state” and what determines how it comes into being and is reproduced. What turns a group of men with weapons and a collection of buildings into a government? Why do we recognize an individual wearing a uniform as a person with a state function and not as someone wearing silly clothes? Why do we not throw away a letter demanding that we pay a fine, but feel obliged to pay? And why do we not turn to our neighbours and friends for help when we receive a threatening letter like this? Why do we not regard it as violent and unacceptable if a group of people are forcefully detaining someone in the street or dragging him or her away? Instead we recognize this act as an arrest, and the buildings in which people are forcibly confined as prisons. The state is an idiosyncratic object, in the words of Marx: a sensual and super-sensual practice. Methodological doubts about the apparent implicit concreteness of the state can be traced back to Marx. This is one reason that Marx did not develop a theory of the state. In The German Ideology ([1845] 1970), the manuscript he co-authored with Engels, the state is described as the collective interest, which acquires the form, as the state, of an objective power over people. The state assumes an independent structural presence aside from real individual and collective interests. That is why the state can also be described as an “illusory community”—whilst real community (“Gemeinwesen”) is found where individuals cooperate to produce life in all its aspects. All struggles within the state “are merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another” (Marx and Engels 1845 [1970]:54). Here, the state is determined as a form. However, conceptually, it remains on the level of an Aristotelian form: the state is a kind of shell for its substance, the real struggles between classes. Class struggles are the essence, whilst the state is only an external expression of these struggles, an illusion. In the form of Ideologiekritik the authors warn against being C
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deceived by the external appearance of the state and call for penetrating to its essence, which comprises classes and their struggles. The state and class struggle stand opposed to one another as the palace to the street. Even in his later work, Marx still claims that the only possible objects of research are economic processes as material forces. “Civilized countries” display a wide diversity of state forms, as the contours of the state change with its changing borders (see Marx [1875] 1989:94). But one can still study the state as an intelligible and theorizable object. Because different states all rest upon modern bourgeois society, they have “certain essential characteristics in common” (Marx [1875] 1989:94). In the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy ([1859] 1980:469) Marx distinguishes the economic base of the capitalist mode of production from its “immense superstructure”. This superstructure has multiple forms, the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophical forms that he terms “ideological”. What is crucial here is that Marx speaks of how, in these forms, human beings become conscious of the conflict between their real cooperation within the social division of labour and existing property relations and, more importantly, how they engage in struggles within these forms. The superstructure, consisting of the ideological forms, thus gains a new meaning. Superstructures are no longer conceived as illusion or deception, precisely because the aforementioned conflicts are fought out within them. Compared with Marx’s earlier writings, this actually reverses the understanding of the superstructure, making them a central focus of analysis. Class relations and the material questions of the production of life are still the main concern, yet now Marx pays attention to the superstructure itself. It is in these “ideological forms” that human beings become “conscious” of material questions; within the realms of religion, philosophy or politics, contradictions are expressed through conflict. How human beings become conscious of this conflict within the superstructure and how they engage with it are essential aspects of the continued development of the relationship between social classes. Thus, Marx transcends the mere ideological critique of the forms of superstructures and views them as both material practices and as fields of social struggle between classes, consequently designating their analysis as the central object of critical-materialist research and theory. He emphasizes this explicitly in Capital with a note on method: It is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than, conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialized forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic and therefore the only scientific one (Marx [1867] 1996:375).
Against any form of reductionism in the analysis of the state, Marx emphasizes that there is an autonomous object of materialist state C
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theory: this is what determines why the ideological—more concretely, political—form of the state emerges out of real-life conditions. Due to the effect of the state form, ruling practices no longer appear as arbitrary acts on the part of one particular group or class against another, but as a specific form of rule in the name of the general will. The form effects the transformation, precisely because it is not simply an expression of a fundamental substance, but something specific. The form is where Marx identifies the mechanism through which real contradictions can be solved: contradictions that cannot be resolved because they are inherent in social relations and develop a form that allows them to continue and at the same time to be reconciled. Marx describes this in the first volume of Capital with a reference to the ellipse as the form of motion that arises out of one body continuously falling towards another body whilst at the same time constantly flying from it (Marx [1867] 1996:113). In the analyses of Marx and Engels the bourgeois state is identified as a strategic field. The state does not create order directly, in the sense that it tries to eliminate or suppress conflicts. Moreover the specificity of the state lies in its constitutive nature as a specific social field in which conflicts occur without endangering the reproduction of society. Bourgeois society reproduces itself through an infinite number of activities that are observed and conceived of as statistical regularities by bourgeois society, forming an “ideal average” of all oscillations or movements. The state contributes to the formation of such statistical regularities as a result: taxes, staff, decisions . . . Thus the state represents a compromise that makes the antagonistic classes carry out their conflicts in a particular way. Consequently, it seems as if the state exists above classes and exercises a neutral function in maintaining order. Indeed—and this is a second aspect—in the interest of the hegemonic class faction, and by and through conflicts and concessions, the state gains a certain autonomy in order to perform its function as a pacifying and ordering force—referring to a common good defined by those groups and classes in power. Engels provides a materialist reading of the bourgeois narrative of the common good, according to which the increasing socialization of capitalist property relations generates an irrational form that simultaneously rises higher and higher above society and becomes more connected to society as it takes on an increasing array of tasks that allow it to become the “ideal personification of the total national capital” in the long term (Engels [1894] 1987:266). This tendency has resulted in an ever-growing number of tasks falling under the remit of the state since the 1930s, precipitating a crisis of crisis management and—from the perspective of the ruling class—an inability to govern in the 1970s. Neoliberal policies were then implemented in response, to reduce the state’s responsibilities. Yet the financial market and economic crisis that has encompassed ever wider parts of bourgeois society since 2007 has led to another strategic C
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shift: with state guarantees and economic stimulus packages, previously unseen quantities of social resources are being mobilized. It follows that what is expressed time and again in materialist state theory, namely that the state secures the general conditions for reproduction of capital, is actually incorrect and overgeneralized. The state does organize the interests of ruling groups but these are not pregiven and it is unclear whether they are to the advantage of the whole bourgeois class. Rather, certain capitalist factions and their ensuing strategies for the exploitation and appropriation of the labour force are determined by the political conflicts between ruling groups. In this process, the interests of dominated classes are considered to varying degrees. The concrete form of “common good” emerges from the double compromise between sections of the ruling class and between the ruling class and subaltern groups—a compromise formula that is defined by the dominant faction within the power bloc (defined in the most comprehensive sense as the bloc that organizes the relation to nature, the relation between structure and superstructure, the relation between ruling and subaltern classes, and the form that everyday life takes, based on the world view (or conception) of a dominant and leading class). This group decides on the general conditions of the reproduction of capitalist valorization. Although these elaborations are still very general, they have some important consequences. Firstly, the capitalist state is not determined by the requirement that it should secure the general conditions for the reproduction of capital, because individual capital units may be unable to do this on their own. The state does provide some general conditions for the reproduction of capitalist production and valorization, for example the police force, infrastructure such as roads, transport, water and health care, and a certain degree of general and professional education or credit guarantees. However, precisely which tasks are considered necessary for general reproduction and thus to be performed by the state is only decided through actual conflicts between the different ruling factions within the state. Thus even the question of what conditions are considered universal is decided through conflict and compromise. Secondly, the state is not conceptualized as a subject imbued with agency, a body that does this or that. The state is the specific form in which the bourgeois class is organized as a class and its social power is given the form of a collectively binding will. In this respect the state is in itself a specific and autonomous social relation. The boundary between this relation and other social relations is always the contingent outcome of social struggles between movements of the subalterns and the dominant classes. The autonomy of the “capitalist state” as a formspecific social relation and its distance from other social relations— those of production, those between the sexes or generations, or between C
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“white” and “black” people (so-called race relations)—are not fixed but always shifting.
Social Relations of Forces and the Tasks of the Capitalist State The ruling classes organize themselves into a power bloc in order to maintain their domination (see Poulantzas 1973). This power bloc, with its many different relations of domination vis-`a-vis the dominated classes, exists in the form of the state. The state is not a subject with agency, nor is it an instrument. It is the terrain and the strategic field where conflicts occur. Secondly, it is a specific extension and execution of struggle: taxes, subsidies, education, laws, police, justice . . . Thirdly and finally, it is deployed strategically and tactically in social struggles. There is never any certainty as to the extent or the way that the state should rule. This is because the state must appear sovereign—that is, as if it owned the initiative and defined the situation. The imaginary of the state as sovereign and as the decision-maker is the basic feature of conservative state theory from Hobbes to Schmitt. The state can overextend itself and disintegrate into a political and governmental crisis. These reflections were summarized by Poulantzas in his depiction of the state as a social relation, in what has become a classic definition: Some of my earlier formulations may now be made more precise. The (capitalist) state should not be regarded as an intrinsic entity: like “capital”, it is rather a relationship of forces, or more precisely, the material condensation of such a relationship among classes and class factions, such as is expressed within the state in a necessarily specific form (Poulantzas 2000:128f.).
The power bloc and the state are not separate entities, as the power bloc only exists in the form of the state. The condensation of the relations of force between its factions—based on and determined by the specific strategies of appropriation of the surplus labour of dependent workers— materializes in different state apparatuses. These apparatuses organize the specific relations between the ruling classes or—more succinctly— they organize individual capitalists and capitalist groups into ruling forces. Their specificity stems from the concrete constellation they are organized in within the state. Consequently, ruling classes do not exist prior to or independently of the state and develop their interests within specific relations of force. State power is paradoxical in this way: the interests and the social classes represented by the state are only constituted through mediation by the state. The state thus takes on a multiplicity of tasks over longer periods of time. With this, time becomes a central medium of state power. It is one of the determining features of the state that it gives the ruling classes and their sub-groups a head start over those who are subjected to their C
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domination and that it manages expectations: collating knowledge and information in documents and files, training civil servants, maintaining access to scientific expertise and advice; ensuring property relations, the value and convertibility of money, the regularity of legislative periods and democratic elections; taking decisions that determine many decades of economic investment, scientific research and development, or the qualification profiles of many millions of people; healthcare legislation and the regulation of pensions that only come into effect after many decades—when many companies no longer exist, whilst the capital relation—according to the expectations of the bourgeoisie—still does. It is the state apparatuses, not individual classes or components within the ruling classes as such, that organize and condense the relations of force. This has consequences for the policies of these apparatuses. The relations of force determine which organizational form the state apparatus assumes: whether through the creation of a ministry with subordinate authorities, a public body, a private business, or a non-profit organization; as well as the relation between these different components of the state apparatus. It also determines what tasks the individual state apparatus takes on (in the case of the military, the primary function could be defence, civil protection, wars of aggression and conquest, peace services, rebuilding assistance, occupation and control). Thirdly, the policies that are pursued are by no means unitary but rather an attempt to organize compromises between the different groups within the bloc in power. This necessarily leads to certain volatilities and incoherencies. The policies within an apparatus, as well as between one apparatus and another, can be contradictory—along one or more lines of conflict. The unity of these policies is certainly not secured a priori but has to be produced repeatedly through a process of unification and generalization. Although there are epicentres of state power (the office of the president, the prime minister), it cannot be taken for granted that they can impose unity, as expressed through formal policy procedures. The political representatives—the so-called political class—deceive themselves into thinking that they have power and can make decisions based on their own will and independent judgement. Moreover, the decisions that they make may be ineffective if the administration does not carry them out fast enough or at all. Likewise, power can be transferred onto subordinate apparatuses that become centres of resistance against the politics of the formal centre of power, even developing their own autonomous policies. The discrepancy between formal and illusory power on the one side and real power on the other can foster crises of government. In German parliamentary history, a motion of no-confidence has repeatedly led to a change of government before the official end of a term. The material condensation of relations of force within state apparatuses encompasses different aspects. One aspect is that a political strategy condenses in a state apparatus, meaning—crucially—that a C
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policy, a task area, is instituted for the long term, and the apparatus is equipped with specifically trained personnel. Insofar as the state does not experience an existential crisis, such an apparatus can exist over long periods of time. Because there is no formal division between public and private within the state apparatuses—as Gramsci, Althusser and Poulantzas emphasize—they can certainly encompass the kinds of organizations and activities that are conceived of as part of civil society—that is, associations, non-governmental organizations, clubs, loose conventions of citizens or forums (such as the World Economic Forum) (see van der Pijl 2001). On the other hand this means that only a few state activities are imbued with a formal legal character, whilst many others remain in a grey area of disciplinary control and social normalization at the level of nonjudicial power (see Foucault [1974] 2002:57). Only a small number of personnel have the status of civil servants, whilst in changing proportions a large part of state activity is carried out through citizen initiatives. Civil servants are recruited from above and are qualified accordingly. In their activity they are bound to laws and directives that are determined on the basis of laws. The lower levels of the hierarchy have no direct access to the top. But on the other hand, the top levels of the civil servant apparatus— and this is even more so for the top political levels—have no right to intervene in the lower levels of the hierarchy and have to use “official channels”, which in themselves become a mechanism with which to wield political power: the questions of who is allowed to, or is forced to, listen to whom, and who has access to the attention of the powerful, are constantly the objects of new struggles (see Schmitt 1954). Technical-administrative communications are formalized and precisely regulated; decisions are made on the basis of existing records. It is one aspect of the juridically formalized and proceduralized state power to collect knowledge that is independent of any individual member of the state personnel. This knowledge becomes the abstract operational means of the state apparatus, a form of knowledge connected to modern law as Enquete, an investigative process through which state power is constituted and which allows the state to turn the lives of individuals into something that can be recorded, to capture and fix identity, to control individuals, and grant rights or rescind them. The state personnel higher up the hierarchy acquires much more knowledge than the political leaders, due to their training, experiences and continuous practice. They have multiple connections with representatives of political parties, interest groups and the media. These processes lead to the emergence of long-term and stable communication and decision-making practices that characterize a specific mode of power. The administration should not be understood as a legally regulated flow of information, decisions and practices, as Max Weber’s juridical conception of the state intimates. Agency within state administrations C
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constantly shifts between legality, extra-legality and illegality, and the movement of actors between these three areas is strategic. Likewise, all these elements of agency are part of a political constellation of power and the relation of force. Information is sought or ignored, passed on or “forgotten”; decisions are made and acted upon, in the same way that non-decisions happen either deliberately or accidentally (sometimes with the knowledge of superiors, sometimes behind their backs; see Karakayalı 2008) or the execution of a task is delayed for political reasons, files are not passed on or are put in the wrong place, laws and rules are not followed, favours are granted, a procedure is halted or civil servants moved or not promoted. All this can certainly happen in favour of particular interest groups and with the knowledge and informal agreement of superiors or higher authorities. Precisely because of the interplay between legality, extra-legality and illegality, where a balance of interests is maintained through habits and routines that have developed over decades in symbiotic processes, these relations of force are difficult to transform. Hence the state apparatus loses mobility and flexibility and cannot adjust dynamically to rapidly transforming circumstances and relations of force. Yet this may actually be desired by the ruling forces who wish to secure the stability of a constellation through administrative hierarchies and the long-term occupation of civil servant positions. A corporate practice and mentality emerges amongst administrative and political personnel who develop a belief in the state that makes habitualized power relations and routines almost immutable. Externally, this can give the impression that a constellation is determined by the particular interests of people within the state apparatuses. Yet changes in strategy and new power constellations within the power bloc can reveal quite suddenly to participants that they were wrong. It is precisely at the conjuncture of administratively condensed Fordist constellations of interest and state obligations where the target of neoliberal strategies for reconfiguring the state apparatus lies. The term “New Public Management” denotes this process. The number of civil servants was reduced, their positions were no longer secured through the system of promotion, and measures of performance and performancerelated pay were introduced. A further formative policy mechanism in recent years has been the involvement of consultants, think tanks and management consultancies in the administrative and decision-making processes (Demirovi´c 2007). These have assisted external intervention in the hierarchies and routines of administrations. In many instances this expertise, bought in at considerable cost, relies upon the knowledge developed within the administration and turns it against the civil servants. These external consultants can be deployed by political forces to implement unwelcome decisions against the will of the administrative staff or without their knowledge. This ruling practice is further supported C
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by commissions as advisory and legislative bodies that have the effect of undermining decision-making processes within the administration and within political parties to a certain extent. As a result, well-established paths of communication and influence are interrupted and decisions that favour certain forces are made easier and quicker—without “time being wasted on talking” as the politicians’ jargon would have it. There is no time for resistance to develop and there is not enough information, support or impetus from the administration itself. The acceleration of time, flexibility, uncertainty, mobility, connectivity and network formations become elements in the new way that the state governs. It depends upon retrenched state apparatuses that are made more dynamic and are characterized by a fast and flexible decision-making rhythm. In this context, political parties as sites of deliberation and decision-making are weakened and extend to modalities of civil society deliberation and decision-making. These changes in the way the state governs are part of a transformation and recomposition of the power bloc itself. What is termed neoliberalism is thus a strategy to change the relations of force within the power bloc, and in particular the relationship between the state apparatuses and the subaltern classes. The former neocorporatist compromise between the state, capital and the trade unions is dissolved through more or less radical political measures, and the balance of forces is shifted in favour of the bourgeois class. As a result, the different groups themselves are transformed. Within the power bloc, new forces become dominant and form new kinds of relationships with the national state and its tasks. These forces are sometimes too hastily marked by their function in the circulation of capital (that is, industry, trade or credit) and, on the basis of their dominant disposition towards financial markets, are understood as finance capital. Yet this faction should not be delineated too narrowly; elements of transnationally operating businesses, as well as businesses that continue to operate predominantly within a national market, also belong here. Of significance is that this faction of the ruling class positioned itself against the welfare state. The welfare state guaranteed equal competition for the factions of capital that belonged to the neocorporatist bloc by stabilizing certain sectors, creating the corresponding infrastructure or guaranteeing professional qualifications. This was ensured through subsidies, public assistance for research and development, the opening up of the education system, the involvement of trade unions and the forging of sector-wide productivity deals. This led to homogeneous wage and labour relations: relatively high wages across the board, a high level of consumption and a less uneven development of regions and cities. The corporatist compromise meant that the trade unions were a factor in the systematic destruction of capital (those individual capital units that were not able to provide high wages or productivity deals). At the same time, a growing economy and C
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state investment enabled the maintenance of such individual capital units so that the total social profit was distributed more broadly within the bourgeois class. In the crisis of the 1970s, it was precisely this pattern that provoked the shift of capital towards a neoliberal strategy of destroying and weakening existing compromises in what was a non-homogeneous and experimental process. This passive revolution did not target a rapid and simultaneous reconfiguration of living conditions and even in the bourgeois camp only gradually restructured class compromises, or left them in a situation of uncertainty for a long period of time. No attempt was made to force through new measures and decisions, and where there was resistance, the process was halted and renewed attempts made at a later date or in stages over a longer period of time. The logic of this transformation seems novel: the changes are not geared towards reaching a point of saturation; these are neoliberal changes that themselves provide the dynamic of change. Against the logic of the general applicability of the law, as was widely recognized within the welfare state, the state is not only restructured at the organizational level. Its strategies and goals also alter. Given changing power relations within the power bloc, state policy no longer looks to the creation of a homogeneous national space for business and for the population. With this ruling strategy of liberalization and deregulation, state duties are reduced, subsidies are redirected, and parts of business and capital income are relieved through tax restructuring. Benchmarks, internationally fixed norms and competitive standards now inform the evaluation and modification of finance and expenditure, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the state. Public responsibilities such as education, social services and infrastructure are privatized, thus opening up new spheres of valorization for capital. To ensure the competitiveness of specific capital units, the state promotes certain areas of quality production and advanced and specialized technologies, special businesses or branches of the economy, infrastructures or regions. To this end, resources are combined and deployed in a way that puts many other competing capital units at a disadvantage. Correspondingly, a restructuring of educational and professional qualifications in both the further and higher education apparatuses occurs, and social inequality increases. Businesses look for strategies that increase profitability and minimize risk. They do this by commodifying individual elements of their companies and subjecting them to speculation on capital markets. Capital is only bound to constant capital as long as it can ensure a corresponding valorization within determinable expectations, which change considerably for many businesses. This is because businesses now orientate their real economy profits towards the expected interest gains on the capital market. Businesses that do not do this of their own accord and achieve a corresponding profitability have to expect to be bought up and broken down into individual profitable segments. C
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On the whole, an enormous elimination of capital takes place. In turn this enables a reorganization of property relations, the dispossession and appropriation of businesses and the reorganization of the whole production apparatus. Overall we can conclude that the relationship of the state to society is substantially transformed with the changes in the ruling forces that support the state and organize themselves within it. These forces transform the existing neocorporatist coalitions into competition alliances within the workplace. Workers are exposed to the hazards of the labour market through processes that make labour precarious: rising unemployment, agency work, temporary contracts, and lower wages, often below the level required for a secure existence, extension of working hours, and increased pressure on productivity. The kinds of assistance and provisions that previously fell under the remit of the welfare state are passed back to individuals as their own responsibility: health, education, and pensions—while, at the same time, the conditions in which people seek to provide for themselves deteriorate. Employees in the public sector lose the state as their employer due to privatization, and in the process of rationalization they lose their jobs; thus they lose income and a series of privileges with respect to their working hours, extra benefits and securities. If they remain in the service of the state, they are subjected to intensive performance control and the rationalization of working relations, whilst their income goes down. The petit bourgeoisie who make their living from trade also experience a deterioration in their living conditions as the concentration of business and competition with large companies for customers put pressure on prices; competition forces an extension of working hours, projected interest rates make the conditions for refinancialization more difficult. That section of the petit bourgeoisie who are described as hedonistic and postmodern—that is, “creative workers” in the information and communication industries—are also affected by increasingly irregular employment, low wages, lack of possibilities for gaining further qualifications, and extended working hours. Freeing itself from the compromises within the national state through this process, the bourgeois camp orientates itself increasingly towards the insulation of its own class, with security measures that rely on an extension of different elements of the police apparatus, its closer networking, increased interventions in bourgeois civil liberties through such practices as the use of torture, increasing numbers of prisons and prisoners, the control of public space, a politics of re-armament and the militarization of foreign policy.
The National State and Transnationalization The changes described above have far-reaching consequences for the form of ruling-class self-organization. Concurring with Nicos C
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Poulantzas I argue that the capitalist state is an essential feature of the capitalist mode of production. This mode of production consists firstly of relations of production that acquire the specific economic form that is characterized by the logic of the market. For Poulantzas it is important that the autonomous sphere of the economy is the outcome of social struggles and the conscious decisions of those who govern by these principles. Secondly, the capitalist mode of production is determined by the existence of a sphere of politics and the state that is separate from the relations of production, in which—as already demonstrated—the ruling classes organize themselves into a power bloc. Thirdly, there is the equally autonomous sphere of ideology—that is, the sphere where the cultural and scientific reproduction of society takes place—which I will not engage with in any detail here. As the capitalist state develops with the capitalist mode of production—or rather, as the pre-existing feudal state institutions of government, force, taxation and the legal and judicial system are reorganized—it is not necessarily predetermined as a national state. In fact, we need to turn the argument around and clarify how it was that the national state became the site of government, which historically for a long time took the form of city states or associations of cities or large colonial empires. Historically, the deep incision into the trajectory of modern capitalism occurred quite late, namely after the Second World War and, ultimately, only in the 1970s. The last decolonization, in the 1970s, meant that for the first time in its history, capitalism could not simply take advantage of foreign territories or people, but was actually restricted to the area previously considered the core of the state. Violence, the exploitation of the global South, human trafficking and slave labour continue to exist; yet beyond this, capitalism has been forced to develop new ways of appropriating and exploiting the resources and labour of people in foreign territories that have now become formally independent states; namely through the more regulated channels of contracts and respect for their formal equality and sovereignty: trade agreements, investment protection, credit agreements, privatization, the protection of intellectual property, legal and illegalized migrant waged labour, the undermining of state sovereignty, corruption of officials, military threats. Only in the last few decades in the course of decolonization has the national state become the dominant and generalized political model of power. Today it is reproduced 192 times worldwide—precipitating many conflicts because the national state as a political form is often unsuited to local and family-clan type relations of authority, forcing groups who have power to come together when they have no interest in the collective reproduction of their domination and thus do not seek to develop a power bloc in which they control their conflicts and rule together over subaltern classes amidst a regulated distribution of power. C
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In the following I build on Poulantzas’ thesis that the formation of the national state is the result of a material condensation of relations of force between social classes. This consideration has far-reaching implications. It has been customary in Marxist debates to conceive of the world market as a space where a process of self-valorization of value exists on the one side, and the national state on the other. Poulantzas shifts the terms of the debate, no longer asking how the sovereignty of the national state is determined by the movements of capital. The capitalist mode of production is defined by capitalist relations of production as well as the relations of political domination; logically both always go together but in different forms, one of which is the national state. There is a “dissociation of state and nation within the very framework of capitalism” (Poulantzas 2000:94). They do not conform to one another; the connection between the two is historically contingent and dependent upon social struggles. Depending on the constellation of forces, the form of political authority can remain below the level of the national state or rise above it. According to Poulantzas, the national state forms with the development of the capitalist state, articulating a territory with a historical tradition. Even if government is not separate from place or space, it is not predetermined inside a geographically connected and unified national territory with particular borders. The production and reproduction of the connection and homogeneity of territory as well as its borders are the object of many different social conflicts (see Harvey 2007). Clearly prompted by the reflections of both Foucault and critical geographers, Poulantzas held that territory is derived from a spatial matrix created by capitalist relations of production and their corresponding social division of labour. The division of labour that separates the immediate producer from the means of production implies a historically novel and specific space matrix: a “fractured, parcelled, cellular and irreversible space” (Poulantzas 2000:103). This space consists of a series of distances, voids and fractures, enclosures and borders, “but it has no end: the capitalist labour process tends towards world-wide application” (Poulantzas 2000:103). Frontiers in the modern sense emerge, “limits capable of being shifted along a serial and discontinuous loom which everywhere fixes insiders and outsiders” (Poulantzas 2000:104). These discontinuous spaces develop in different time frames and form a hierarchical relation to one another. From Poulantzas’ perspective it is decisive that the capitalist state constitutes itself in the process of this space matrix, becoming materialized in its apparatuses—that is, the state discerns between an inside and an outside, thus creating a unified territory that forms an internally uniform, even cell-like space in which both homogenized and individualized citizens move in controlled and regulated ways: school, the military, the factory and cities. Territory thus becomes national state territory. C
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What matters for my argument here is that there is no reason to make a necessary conceptual link between the capitalist state and a space organized and homogenized as a national state. The national state is the condensation of a relation of force through which the bourgeoisie in numerous conflicts since the nineteenth century created a certain space of accumulation with a specific market form. Following the increasing expansion and socialization of the capital relation, new communication and information technologies and valorization chains at the end of the 20th century, a new global social division of labour emerged, transforming the space matrix itself. Crucially, a relevant part of the bourgeois class opted out of the class compromise of the welfare state through the creation of a concrete and new global market. In only a few years, this new global market has subsumed the living labour power of hundreds of millions of people under capital (in Russia, China and India), enabling the exploitation of wage discrepancies, weakening the unionizing power of employees in the centres and undercutting or even completely obliterating protective rights and tariffs. This has not happened in a linear fashion but in a more experimental way as labour processes, productivity, the level of qualification and people’s willingness to engage in conflict, social and environmental standards, taxation levels, product quality, infrastructures and politicalcultural environments are constantly reviewed, analysed, evaluated and tested in terms of transaction costs and the possible advantages in different temporal perspectives. What matters is that all of these social connections become isolated factors that are subjected to permanent analysis in order to be made the objects of the art of government. Space is transformed by such accumulation strategies and loses its national state character. On the inside it is no longer homogeneous; asynchronicity increases. In the centres themselves we find highly condensed nodal points of power in a globally networked financial economy based upon production and consumption, coexisting with social peripheries of superfluous and immiserated populations. On the one hand large population groups are concentrated in urban spaces (like Vienna, Athens, Istanbul, Tokyo, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo), where infrastructure is intensified and accelerated. On the other hand cities, villages and regions are left to decay—resulting in the collapse of buildings, factories, infrastructure, access to information, everyday provisions—or they are not further developed, which drives further centralization and labour, particularly young people, emigrates from the rural regions all over the world. The relations of space that were condensed within the state apparatuses are dissolved. Where Hardt and Negri speak about deterritorialization (2000:XII), I wish to insist on the territorial character of capital accumulation and the state. Yet the capitalist state is changing its form. It no longer organizes power blocs on a national level but acquires the contours of a state that organizes a C
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transnational faction of the ruling classes (see van der Pijl 1998; Wissel 2007:128ff.). This is why I speak of the formulation of transnational political authority and of elements of a transnational state apparatus. The transnational state must be conceptually distinguished from the internationalized state. The latter connotes a capitalist state that remains a national state but increasingly incorporates international aspects into its strategies: militarily, in order to secure resources and the economic interests of the home economy; legally, to protect property, including patent and copyright law; monetarily, in terms of the stabilization of a currency’s value and its convertibility; scientifically, with regard to research policy, competitive technologies and innovation. This internationally orientated state tries to promote the competitiveness of certain sectors of its national economy within the framework of a globalizing world market (see Hirsch 2001; Jessop 1997). Even the Poulantzian concept of condensation becomes a process in two stages: national politics, in itself a result of a condensation, is again condensed on an international level in international organizations, depending on the power of the national state (see Brand and G¨org 2003; Brand, G¨org and Wissen 2011). I also wish to differentiate the transnational state from an international organizational and decision-making power to the extent that the latter displaces national state competencies to formal inter-state or private organizations (see Genschel and Zangl 2008). When I use the term “transnational state” I also do not mean that a state has developed in a way that it can be thought of as analogous with the national state— that is, a state with a unified apparatus, a unified sovereign will and a definition of a generally binding will. This seems to be what Hardt and Negri mean when they denote Empire as the “political subject”, the “sovereign power that governs the world” (Hardt and Negri 2001:XI; see also Robinson 2001). Rather, the transnational state apparatus is condensed in autonomous political organizations, but primarily consists of a network of political units, apparatuses, individual departments, offices and committees, which formally are organized at the international level, or even still at the national state level, yet have the specific functions of organizing the transnational element, developing policy and controlling the reproduction of the global accumulation process in the interest of this capital sector. This is the direction in which Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2004) as well as David Harvey (2004) indicate that the transnational state apparatus is organizing, particularly in relation to the dominance of finance capital. Until the 1970s, the USA ensured the general reproduction of the global capital relation and under its aegis a functional system was created in which the collective reproduction of the relations of production could take place: NATO, the Bretton Woods System that made the dollar into a worldwide reserve currency, thus favouring the US economy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), foreign direct investment, the economic order for the large C
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part of the Western world, forms of political decision-making and public-democratic culture, cultural industry consumption patterms and knowledge practices such as sociology, political science, opinion polls and psychology. Following a phase of crisis and restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s, the American state achieved new heights for a global reproduction of the capital relation: because new technologies resuscitated the productive base; because it provided the universal model for the restoration of profit in other capitalist countries; and because it promised to create the conditions for the integration of global capitalism (through the dynamics of consumption and the valorization of foreign capital in the USA). The Federal Reserve and the Treasury in particular became the dominant state apparatuses in the USA and imposed neoliberal policies. As the Federal Reserve adopted the function of a global macroeconomic manager its leading role within the American state apparatus expanded. Nonetheless, this reorganization was unstable. “Moreover, this instability is dramatically amplified by the fact that the American state can only rule this order through other states, and turning them all into ‘effective’ states for global capitalism is no easy matter” (Panitch and Gindin 2004:39). Panitch and Gindin seek to explain how the leading role of the USA came about. This means that the leading role of the Federal Reserve can only indicate a leading position, whilst the close cooperation with corresponding apparatuses of other states indicates instability. In contrast, I claim that with the domination of the US Federal Reserve, Wall Street and a few credit-rating agencies, a specific power complex emerges that forms part of a more comprehensive power network which the IMF, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, central banks and finance ministries of other countries, consultings, business schools, economics departments, journals and clubs also belong to. Together they organize a transnational component of the bourgeois class in a specific way, following and reproducing the corresponding accumulation strategy. This component does not develop its own supra-state but organizes itself in international organizations, in informal meetings (G7, G8, G20, World Economic Forum), in national state apparatuses or individual departments that contribute to the organization and reproduction of this component of the bourgeois class and constitute a far-reaching network (see Wissel 2007:128f.). The development of the financial crisis that peaked in September/ October 2008 is illustrative of this. For a long time, consumption was the driving force of growth in the global economy; the enormous per capita debt and the deficit of the USA were not regarded as problems. Now, during this crisis, there has been a shift in values and there is a discourse of “irresponsible consumers”. In particular, neoliberal politicians in Germany and Switzerland who spoke out against state intervention in order to maintain political order utilized this discourse C
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to thwart the US plea to European governments for assistance with interventions and guarantees for the crisis-ridden banks. They argued that all those affected needed to find a national solution, unrealistic in light of the prior events and the interlinkages within global economic cycles. With the accelerating collapse of various banks and the efforts of the US government to change the dynamics of the crisis through the provision of liquidity to the banks, taking on credit guarantees, or even buying up credit and placing banks under government control, the crisis started to have more of an effect on European banks. These banks had participated in the property speculation because of its high returns, and now saw themselves confronted with the fact that they had acquired high-risk so-called “toxic credit” for which they could not expect any repayment and which they could not sell elsewhere. The collapse of the banks threatened the credit market in Europe and consequently also other areas of the economy so that governments decided to take action. Thus national governments were forced by their ministries and central banks to develop a relatively unified political strategy to tackle the growing crisis. This happened through multilateral agreements and the transfer of policy instruments, but also through effective support mechanisms from foreign banks (for example, the deposits of Swiss citizens in Icelandic banks were secured because the Belgian and Dutch governments supported the subsidiary companies of Icelandic banks in Luxemburg, which are themselves owners of the bank branches in Switzerland where the bank accounts are). The empirical process demonstrates that although the US Federal Reserve has a global responsibility it does not exercise this solely in the interests of the US leadership; nor does it act alone, but cooperates closely with state-level actors in so-called foreign countries. This also highlights that the crisis was not merely met with technical solutions in the sense of reproducing the conditions of production. The process itself has been marked by considerable conflict: remember, for example, the severe doubts as to whether finance minister Paulson’s rescue programme would actually have the desired effect. The bourgeois camp, not just in the USA but also in other OECD countries, was divided over the issue. For several days the House of Representatives was not able to reach an agreement; and subsequently some liberal politicians concerned about order recommended that banks with bad business policies should be left to their own devices. In the search for a way of dealing with the crisis, the status of the IMF was enhanced, so that some now consider it the centre of crisis politics. China proposes transforming the IMF special drawing rights into a global reserve currency, meaning that the IMF would become a permanent global central bank as lender of last resort. What I am tentatively suggesting, which might be called a transnational network state, is thus an apparatus that consists of an ensemble of state apparatuses on a local, national and international C
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scale as well as formally private organizations. They organize a new mode of decision-making that frees them from national welfare-state class compromises reproduced in the entrenched party-orientated and neocorporatist negotiation patterns between politics, administration and associations. This puts ruling groups at an advantage: according to their strategic calculations they can consider when and where to make decisions within a widely scattered network of state power. They delink the exercise of state power from the formally determined spaces of decision-making. New connections are forged between government and governance that flow into one another in dynamic and flexible ways. New, often informal committees and private institutions become part of a quasi-official decision-making process. Additionally, this network stretches between different vertical and horizontal nodal points of decision-making. This is why I agree with Bob Jessop (2007:198ff.) when he conceptualizes the policy process in terms of multi-scalar and multi-level meta-governance. The extent of decisions, responsibilities, actors, the level of decision-making, committees—all this is the object of multiple conflicts and negotiations. Existing political institutions participate in this, but civil society organizations—already existing or newly created—are also integrated in the network process of policy elaboration, decision and implementation. This complex can be called a transnational network state because public and private actors articulate with each other at different scales, without necessarily creating formal hierarchies. Corresponding policies gain autonomy, reaching beyond the existing national and international political institutions. In that way, a transnational capital component organizes itself spatially and temporarily in an extensive way. It imposes itself on other capital factions by organizing political power and domination. I follow here the idea of Carnoy and Castells: It is a state made of shared institutions, and enacted by bargaining and interactive iteration all along the chain of decision making: national governments, co-national governments, supra-national bodies, international institutions, governments of nationalities, regional governments, local governments, and NGOs (in our conception: neo-governmental organizations). Decision-making and representation take place all along the chain, not necessarily in the hierarchical, pre-scripted order. This new state functions as a network, in which all nodes interact, and are equally necessary for the performance of the state’s function. The state of the Information Age is a Network State (Carnoy and Castells 2001:14).
However, while agreeing up to a point I question their state-centric and neo-pluralist analysis of state transformation because the authors are no longer able to identify coherent projects of domination. The state is understood as an actor with its own interests and not as an organizer C
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of dominant societal interests. This results in the assumption that the network state is undergoing a crisis of legitimation because it cannot meet the expectations of the subaltern classes. On the contrary, from my perspective the formation of the transnational network state is a result of successful dominant strategies to abandon compromises formerly reached with the subaltern classes and to undermine their struggles through the pace and spatial mobility of domination. Another criticism that can be made is Carnoy’s and Castells’ assumption that networks as such are openly accessible and non-hierarchical. The opposite is the case: power is exercised in and through networks; access to these and the flow of decisions are controlled. A more flexible and accelerated form of domination gives rise to a flexible geometry of power with various intersections. The consequence of this new state form is what Colin Crouch (2004) calls, in a negative sense, post-democracy—that is, the effect of the power of global corporations on nationally organized, democratic, decision-making processes. But beyond that we can also observe a devaluing and weakening of existing forms of interest organization in the form of nationally organized power blocs. The new form of power also precipitates new forms of political and governmental crisis. Political parties are eroded (Germany, Japan); regulation of the circulation of power between government and opposition via democratic, parliamentary processes is weakened (Italy); large coalitions are formed to undermine party-linked interests (Germany, France, USA); formal state apparatuses are increasingly exposed to corruption; the tendency towards reactionary, authoritarian forms of government increases, which means that making or acting on collective decisions is becoming more difficult. Internally, the powerful OECD states are confronted with increasing polarization; externally, they are forced to be active in numerous crisis regions. Terrorism, and transnational migration as a result of unemployment—particularly among young men—prove to be considerable crisis phenomena. The shift to a market-led orientation undermines the education system and thus the training of young people, as well as research and innovation; businesses no longer make long-term investments, so that the production apparatus as a whole tends to be more susceptible to crisis and the scope for profit-making declines. These developments constitute an enormous challenge for emancipatory and democratic politics. This is because on the one hand the increase in global socialization and the rising level of unresolved global social problems provide an opportunity for radical democratic change. At the same time the erosion of national state politics means that it is more difficult for those promoting emancipatory processes to make direct links with positive trends. Left-wing parties, parties of the environmental movement, trade unions and social movements are C
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in a weak position as a result of the developments that have taken place in recent years. There have been successes, and new models of organization and strategy have been developed (the World Social Forum and regional social forums such as the European Social Forum; social movement organizations such as People’s Global Action, Third World Network, Action Aid International and ATTAC, all now active in numerous European countries; the development of grassroots trade unions; indigenous movements in Mexico or Bolivia; anti-neoliberal policies in a number of Latin American countries and forms of solidarity economics; and the re-emergence of socialist parties in some European countries). Yet to date these initiatives and the cooperation between them has not been able to stabilize. The greatest weakness appears to remain the fact that—after the failure of the attempt to realize the goal of socialism, out of the historic struggles for social and democratic rights— no comprehensive renewal of this goal has taken place in a manner that could win the trust of already existing emancipatory forces and thereby lead to common action. Such a goal cannot be forged through talking or planning. However, there needs to be renewed commitment to the search for and conceptual development of alternatives to the capitalist mode of production.
Acknowledgements I wish to thank an anonymous reviewer, Bob Jessop and Markus Wissen for their comments.
References Brand U and G¨org C (2003) Postfordistische Naturverh¨altnisse. Konflikte um genetische Ressourcen und die Internationalisierung des Staates. M¨unster: Westf¨alisches Dampfboot Brand U, G¨org C and Wissen M (2011) Second-order condensations of societal power relations: Environmental politics and the internationalization of the state from a neoPoulantzian perspective. Antipode 45(1) Carnoy M and Castells M (2001) Globalization, the knowledge society, and the Network State: Poulantzas at the millennium. Global Networks 1(1):1–18 Crouch C (2004) Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press Engels F ([1884] 1972) The Origin of the Family, Private Property and The State. Moscow: Progress Publishers Engels F ([1894] 1987) Herr Eugen D¨uhring’s revolution in science (Anti-D¨uhring). In id. Collected Works, Vol 25 (pp). London: Lawrence and Wishart Foucault M ([1974] 2002) Truth and juridical forms. In J D Faubion (ed) Power— Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Vol 3 (pp 1–90). London: Penguin Genschel P and Zangl B (2008) Metamorphosen des Staates—vom Herrschaftsmono polisten zum Herrschaftsmanager. Leviathan 36(3):430–454 Hardt M and Negri A (2001) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Harvey D (2004) Die Geographie des “neuen” Imperialismus: Akkumulation durch Enteignung. In C Zeller (ed) Die globale Enteignungs¨okonomie (pp 183–216). M¨unster: Westf¨alisches Dampfboot C
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Harvey D (2007) Zwischen Raum und Zeit: Reflektionen zur Geographischen Imagination. In B Belina and B Michel (eds) Raumproduktionen. Beitr¨age der Radical Geography (pp 36–60). M¨unster: Westf¨alisches Dampfboot Hirsch J (2001) Die Internationalisierung des Staates. In J Hirsch, B Jessop and N Poulantzas (eds) Die Zukunft des Staates (pp 101–138). Hamburg: VSA-Verlag Jessop B (1997) Die Zukunft des Nationalstaats—Erosion oder Reorganisation? ¨ Grunds¨atzliche Uberlegungen zu Westeuropa. In S Becker, T Sablowski and W Schumm (eds) Jenseits der National¨okonomie? Weltwirtschaft und Nationalstaat zwischen Globalisierung und Regionalisierung (pp 50–95). Hamburg: Argument Jessop B (2007) State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach. Cambridge: Polity Karakayalı S (2008) Gespenster der Migration. Zur Genealogie illegaler Einwanderung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bielefeld: Transcript Marx K ([1859] 1980) Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In id. Collected Works, Vol 16 (pp). London: Lawrence and Wishart Marx K ([1867] 1996) Capital, Vol I. In id. Collected Works, Vol 35 (pp). London: Lawrence and Wishart Marx K ([1875] 1989) Marginal notes on the programme of the German Workers Party. In id. Collected Works, Vol 24 (pp). London: Lawrence and Wishart Marx K and Engels F (1845/1970) The German Ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart Marx K and Engels F (1848/1976) The Communist Manifesto. In id. Collected Works, Vol 6 (pp). London: Lawrence and Wishart Panitch L and Gindin S (2004) Global capitalism and American empire. In L Panitch and S Gindin (eds) Socialist Register 2004: The New Imperial Challenge (pp 1–42). London: Merlin Press Pijl K Van Der (1998) Transnational Classes and International Relations. London: Routledge Pijl K Van Der (2001) »Private Weltpolitik«. Zur Geschichte der liberalen Weltordnung. In T Br¨uhl et al. (eds) Die Privatisierung der Weltpolitik. Entstaatlichung und Kommerzialisierung im Globalisierungsprozess (pp 82–103). Bonn: J H W Dietz Nachf Poulantzas N (1973) Political Power and Social Classes. London: New Left Books Poulantzas N (2000) State, Power, Socialism. London: Verso Robinson W I (2001) Social theory and globalization: The rise of a transnational state. Theory and Society 30(2):157–200 Schmitt C (1954) Gespr¨ach u¨ ber die Macht und den Zugang zum Machthaber. Pfullingen: Klett-Cotta Weber M ([1919] 1994) The profession and vocation of politics. In P Lassman and R Speirs (eds) Max Weber—Political Writings (pp 309–369). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wissel J (2007) Die Transnationalisierung von Herrschaftsverh¨altnissen. Zur Aktualit¨at von Nicos Poulantzas’ Staatstheorie. Baden-Baden: Nomos
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The Historical Constitution of the Political Forms of Capitalism Heide Gerstenberger Riensberger Strasse 25, 28213 Bremen, Germany;
[email protected] Abstract: This article provides a general overview and critique of approaches to state theory, from the Marxist “state derivation“ debate of the 1970s, through to regulation and world-systems perspectives, to theories which encompass imperialism. It proposes that a theory of the political forms of capitalism should have three elements: it should be based on analysis of the different historical processes by which capitalist states have been and are constituted; it should elucidate the specificities of the various political forms of capitalism; and it should explain the continuing existence of a plurality of states and imperialist relations. Keywords: legal form, capitalism, separation of state and society, plurality of capitalist states, juridification international relations, imperialism, different capitalist states
Today, state analysis has, once again, taken centre stage in materialist theoretical endeavors. One of the reasons for this renewed interest is the fact that recent political developments have provoked a debate on “new imperialism”. This article suggests that present debates can be improved by critically taking stock of theoretical approaches to state analysis, which have been proposed in the context of materialist analysis. The general overview it provides concentrates on the question of the essential specificity of capitalist state power and of the relation between this specific structure and concrete historical processes. Beginning with a very short summary of instrumentalist versions of state theory the paper goes on to discuss the state derivation debate of the 1970s as well as some of its sequels. It suggests that all the contributions to this debate mistook the bourgeois state form as being “the” general form of the capitalist state while, in fact, it is a historically specific form of a capitalist state. Despite this critique it is suggested that present debates could be improved if the concept of the separation of state and society as it has been developed in the course of the derivation debate were once again taken into consideration. One of the problems that has been neglected in the derivation debate is that of the plurality of states. In recent years it has been suggested that national sovereignty has not only been transformed by internal revolutionary processes but also (or even more so) by competition between states. This paper discusses different answers to the question Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 60–86 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00811.x C 2010 The Author C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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of whether or not the plurality of states, although pre-dating capitalism, is an element of capitalism. The paper considers that theoretical progress in materialist state analysis will only be possible by taking history seriously whilst not abandoning the question of whether or not an essential form of capitalist state power exists.
The State In . . . .? For long periods most critics of capitalism used to conceive of the state as the instrument of a dominant class. To demonstrate this conception descriptions of actual state activities were adduced. The focus was on the use of repressive state power for the disciplining of the exploited.1 Notwithstanding the many differences in the explanations of the state put forward by Lenin ([1917] 1970) on the one hand and Miliband ([1969] 1972) on the other, both authors (and many others) concur in the assumption of a general form of the “state”. They then go on to explain its special features in capitalist societies.2 Although their theories have radically different political implications than, for example, interpretations by Charles Tilly (1992) or Wolfgang Reinhard (1999), they correspond theoretically. While the latter authors have provided us with impressive insights into the importance of religion in pre-bourgeois societies, into the development of the military or the fiscal administration of principalities, and lately have even debated specific features of the “European state”, the state in all of these theories always remains the “state in. . .”: the state in medieval times, the state in the epoch of absolutism, the state in capitalism, the state in Europe and so forth. This theoretical concept prevents any theoretical analysis of the political form of capitalism: the capitalist state.
The Capitalist State As Bourgeois State? All those who in the 1970s participated in the Marxist debate on state theory tried to do just this: explain the political form of capitalism.3 Since many endeavored to derive its general form from the analysis of capitalism developed by Marx, this debate has become known as the “derivation debate”.4 It was provoked by two concepts which both aimed at the definition of the historically specific form of state power in the current epoch of capitalism: the theory of “state monopoly capitalism” (Stamokap) and the theory of “late capitalism” in the work of J¨urgen Habermas and Claus Offe. The theory of “state monopoly capitalism” was intended to adapt the revolutionary theory that had become a dogma in the context of Leninism-Stalinism to present day conditions. While “Stamokap” had been developed by intellectuals in the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic as well as in European communist C
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parties, it was also present in the left wings of social democratic parties as well as in everyday language. Adherents of this theory assumed that in the current phase of capitalism a social revolution was not only necessary but also possible, and this was for two reasons: first, because the dynamics of the development of productive forces would produce a contradiction between these forces and existing social forms of production and hence provoke revolution; and second, because state and monopoly capital had now become amalgamated into one large power block. Since this development had transformed the state into the ideal capitalist of monopoly capital the interests of non-monopoly capital were no longer taken into account by state policies. This broadened the social base of fundamental opposition against monopoly capital and hence against capitalism as such.5 The theoretical concept of “late capitalism” (Sp¨atkapitalismus) was of a different brand. While in the 1960s many still had faith in the potential of the state to plan social developments and while many academics accordingly offered themselves as counselors for sophisticated policy making,6 Claus Offe suggested that planning had to be interpreted as the first sign of a fundamental crisis. Since capital accumulation increasingly depended on political steering, the state could no longer restrict itself to the task of bringing about economic as well as international political stability: instead, it now also had to produce and preserve the loyalty of the masses (1972:77). But the very necessity of state intervention in society was thought to prevent the successful delivery of policies for the management of these contrasting needs. Political shortcomings would provoke the crisis of the legitimacy of the state and hence the crisis of the legitimacy of the existing social order. For Offe the crisis of the existing social order not only became evident in the form of a political crisis; for him the crisis of late capitalism had to be conceived of as a crisis of the state. Wolfgang M¨uller and Christel Neus¨uß (1970) denounced the theory of “state monopoly capitalism” as well as the theory of “late capitalism” as new brands of revisionism. While they did not object to the assumption that societies could to a certain extent be stabilized as well as changed through politics, they insisted that any materialist analysis has to define the structural limits of policies, a requirement always neglected by adherents to revisionism. In their opinion the “concentration on politics” demanded by Offe (for example, 1975:9)7 should be rejected. Instead, state theoreticians should seek to explain the form of the state and the structural limits to politics which this form implies. In other words, theoretical analysis has to explain why the political form of capitalism is the separation of state from society. This was to become the leitmotiv of the derivation debate.8 All the participants in this debate tried to answer Pashukanis’ question of why class domination in capitalism is not exercised by an apparatus of C
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the dominating classes but, instead, takes on the form of public power ([1929] 1970:119f). All of them agreed that it was not sufficient to describe the relation between state and society as being inherent in state activity, because it was exactly the “separation” of the state from society which had to be seen as the expression of the social order of capitalist societies. As far as the explanation of the “separation” was concerned, different solutions were suggested. Some maintained that it emerged as a functional prerequisite from the potentially destructive effects of competition and the insufficient delivery of general preconditions for the profitable use of capital (Altvater 1972; L¨apple 1973:chapter II), adding that the state also had to develop policies to overcome crises of capitalism. Such policies, however, would always remain limited because politics could only deal with the surface (Oberfl¨ache) of capitalism. It would never be possible to “manage” politically the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. Flatow and Huisken, on the other hand, saw the state form as deriving from the sphere of circulation because in this sphere the owners of different sources of revenue have a common interest: they all want to have their source of revenue protected against forms of acquisition outside the processes of market exchange (1973:109). According to Flatow and Huisken this common interest not only constitutes the bourgeois state but also explains why workers—despite struggles over their share of the value produced—conceive of the state as the guardian of public welfare.9 Looking back, it becomes clear that the most remarkable position was formulated by theoreticians whose arguments centered on the generality of law. Bernhard Blanke, Ulrich J¨urgens and Hans Kastendiek (1974) argued that the general precondition of capitalist forms of production and reproduction is the protection of any form of private property by the state. The production of commodities makes it imperative that capital owners can freely dispose over the means of production including labor power, the use of which they acquired on the labor market. But the exchange of commodities necessitates regulations which protect not only the owners of capital but all owners of private property. Therefore, the state has to be formally neutral in its relation towards the different forms of property. This formal neutrality is embodied in the principle of the generality of the law. And it is exactly this neutrality towards the fundamentally different forms of private property—that is, the ownership in one’s own labor power on the one hand and the private property of capital on the other—that makes the capitalist state an integral part of the class structure of capitalist society. It was only with this theoretical concept that the merely instrumental explanation of the class character of the capitalist state was overcome. In contrast to those participants in the derivation debate who placed state functions at the center stage in their arguments, these authors C
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actually proposed an explanation of the political form which is specific to bourgeois capitalist societies—the formal separation of the state from the class structure of society. While this formal separation has been present in capitalist societies from the beginning it is no accident that this theoretical concept could only become influential in a historical situation in which it was at all possible to conceive of the state as being formally neutral towards society. While Blanke, J¨urgens and Kastendiek have declared themselves opposed to any explanation which would take the legal constitution or the institutions of specific states into consideration they have always taken for granted that a capitalist state would have a parliamentary constitution, with more or less general suffrage. For them the political form of capitalism is the “bourgeois state”: the state of western industrial societies. This holds true for all the contributions to the so-called derivation debate. Although this debate was directed towards the production of a theory of the capitalist state, a theory that would be able to decipher the general structural prerequisites for the state form in capitalism, which is hidden behind concrete historical developments of states and policies, hindsight makes it very clear that it was always assumed that the political form of developed capitalist societies of the “west” constituted the adequate political form of capitalism. This also implied the assumption of a historical path of development which we can sum up in the concept of western modernization. For a very long time theoreticians of quite different political color were convinced that this was, in fact, a universal process which as soon as capitalism was established would be implanted in all hitherto non-modern and non-capitalist societies. This was not the only theoretical generalization of very specific historical conditions. Today it is easy to recognize that central arguments put forward in the derivation debate had been fostered by conditions of the historical epoch in which the Bretton Woods agreement was still in effect. Not only was it generally accepted that the political form of capitalism was the sovereign nation-state but it was also assumed that the very nature of the capitalist state invites hopes and demands of increased welfare. Since the world market and neo-liberal strategies invaded national politics in the mids-1970s even the “surface” of the capitalist state is much less seen as a battlefield for struggles over more or less public welfare provision. In spite of these shortcomings, the derivation debate represents an impressive advancement of materialist theory, one yet to be recognized in international debates. Apart from the participants in this debate, the theoretical concept of a “separation between state and society” is usually simply understood as separation of two spheres of action, that is, strategies of appropriation are focused on the market while— corruption apart—competition in the realm of politics is about power. It follows that adherents to this interpretation usually point out that C
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especially (but not only) in France the separation between economic and extra-economic power was only achieved in the course of the nineteenth century. The consequence of such reasoning is that the separation of politics from the economy must be seen as withering away with the growth of various forms of public–private partnerships. This interpretation of the separation brings historical materialism very close to typical liberal thinking about the state and to the conclusion that it is no longer historically appropriate. The concept of the essential capitalist state form, on the other hand, focuses on the fact that the capitalist state transforms the inequality of social positions into the equality of the subjects of law. The problem of the derivation debate was not this hypothesis but its theoretical foundation. Instead of explaining the state form as being the result of historical struggles and ensuing practices, it was explained as being a necessity for the functioning of capitalism. In other words, the theoretical structure of the capitalist state was logically derived from the theoretical structure of capitalism. While this circularly constructed theoretical concept invited the illustration of its general logic by allusions to empirical facts it did not offer any guidance for empirical analysis. No wonder, therefore, that most of the participants in the derivation debate put its arguments to a back shelf when changing economic and political conditions made it very obvious that the economic determinism inherent in the logical derivation was not able to grasp sufficiently the relevance of new historical developments. To remedy this shortcoming some critics of the a-historical character of derivation theory welcomed the “intermediate concept” offered by regulation theory. As far as the state was concerned, regulation theory at first only explained its economic functions (see, for example, Liepitz 1992). It focused on national accumulation regimes and modes of growth. Critical comments provoked revisions. This opened the path for the integration into regulation theory of Nicos Poulantzas’ concept of the state as the material condensation of the relation between different classes and between different fractions of classes (2002:159) as well as of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the state as the integral ensemble of political society and civil society. This theoretical strategy developed a particular popularity when it was suggested that in the decades after World War II “co-evolution” of accumulation regimes and modes of regulation resulted in a historic bloc which Bob Jessop sometimes terms “Atlantic Fordism” while most speak of Fordism tout court. While Jessop (2002:38f) does consider “key features of the capitalist type of state” it is “the general form of the postwar state”—that is, the ideal-typical “Keynesian welfare national state” and the possible development of a consolidated “post-fordist competition state”—which are the object of his theoretical endeavors (2002:2). Only this can explain why a theoretical treatise about “The Future of the Capitalist State” C
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simply excludes the repressive state apparatuses from the discussion (2002:3). In “explaining” the general form of the Fordist state Jessop makes use of the concepts of “correspondence”, “co-evolution” and “structural coupling”. Notwithstanding sophisticated scholastic edifices of institutions, apparatuses and so on, these analytical tools aim at the description of factual developments. While the proponents of regulation theory who had concentrated almost exclusively on the analysis of links between accumulation regimes and regulation had proposed several theoretical explanations, the crises of accumulation regimes (see H¨ubner 1990:passim), endeavors precisely to analyze economic developments have become rare since state analysis has been integrated into regulation theory. Even for critics of economic determinism Joachim Hirsch’s hypothesis that social processes can only be analyzed satisfactorily when the primacy of politics is accepted is a bit hard to swallow (2005:57). Although Hirsch is not (like Jessop 2002) identifying the institutional apparatus of the state with its essential form, his argument excludes the debate about the limits of politics. In other words, the question of M¨uller and Neus¨uß which provoked the derivation debate in the first place is, once again, not even asked. The dangers inherent in the conception of the state as the “condensation of social relations” become most obvious when it is made use of for the analysis of international institutions like the WTO or the IMF. Paul Cammack, for example, wants to grasp theoretically the nature of these institutions by applying the “Marxist concept of relative autonomy” (2003). Notwithstanding that struggles about and within these institutions have not been entirely without success and that the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the WTO has gained the functions of an international trade court, this reduction of state analysis to the evaluation of regulations amounts to a drop in the level of theoretical discussion which had been reached in the derivation debate. This critique also extends to most concepts of the internationalization of the state (for example, Scheuplein 2008). While it is undeniable that processes of globalization have gone hand in hand with the development of international regulation, the political form of capitalism has remained the nation state. This is not because the state does indeed sometimes act as an agent for the interests of (the dominant fractions of) national capital. Rather it is because the monopoly of legitimate violence—though historically dating back to pre-capitalist processes in Europe (Gerstenberger [1990] 2007)—has become the most important agency for the reproduction of (those) capitalist social relations that function through the institution of contracts instead of the application of direct violence. Combined military interventions notwithstanding, the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence is still grounded in the nation state. C
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Differing fundamentally from the analytical strategy which has inspired adherents to concepts of regulation theory, John Holloway strives against the radical dissolution of structural analysis into historical analysis (2002:91 and passim). While Joachim Hirsch and others hold the opinion that “a new type of capitalist state” has been brought about by processes of globalization (Altvater 1998:92 and passim; Hirsch 1998:33), Holloway insists that the essence of the capitalist state has not changed. According to him the “capitalist state” has always been and still is the stabilized (“fetishized”) expression of social relations. As these relations tended, from the very beginning of capitalism, to become global, it has always been wrong to conceive of national capitalist societies as having their own specific state apparatus (2002:14). Instead, nation-states have never been anything other than the fragmented forms of world society (1993:18–25). Holloway offers illustrations for the symbolic as well as repressive elements of this fragmentation: the use of national anthems, oaths of allegiance to the flag, discrimination against “foreigners”, the checking of passports, the organization of armies, and the continuation of wars (2002:95f). But Marxists, according to Holloway, should look behind the surface of these outer signs of nationstates, because it is not the nations which constitute states. Instead, the existence of states derives from the fact that in capitalist societies some elements of social relations are defined as being “political”, hence separated from the “economic”. This institutionalized practice serves to obscure the nature of society. Therefore, any real change of society is impossible as long as strategies solely aim at the transformation of “the political” (2002:94). Theoretical critique of the state must start from a critique of the autonomy of the state (2002:92). Many will agree with Holloway’s critique of state oriented strategies, and hardly anybody will deny the principally global character of capitalism. But a structural analysis of the state which neglects historic specificity not only makes it impossible to debate the relevance of concrete historical changes, it also prevents an understanding of the political (see Bensa¨ıd 2005:183; Hirsch 2003:38). Holloway explains the historical development of states as the result of class struggles. If this concept is offered as a roadmap for empirical analysis it becomes vital empirically to specify the classes that are engaged in this struggle. Serious obstacles have to be dealt with. First of all, if “class relations” are taken to be the dominant form of the contradictory social relations present in capitalist societies, it does not follow that classes should or can be conceived of as something like social groups engaged in struggles against each other.10 The theoretical concept of “class relations” and the historical dynamics inherent in their contradictory character is not to be equated with the theoretical construction of classes as historical agents. Holloway is not the only Marxist who has given in to the temptation of interpreting classes as agents of struggle.11 While evidence from C
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earlier epochs often seems to support this line of reasoning, the problems always inherent in this conception can no longer be overlooked when it is applied to the analysis of global society. It is hardly possible to subsume all those children, men and women who toil outside of any form of labor contract into the concept of a class which is struggling against capital, thereby also determining state activity. Therefore, a proponent of the theory of class struggle at the global level in search of possible agents of radical transformations has no choice but to appeal to the creative power of the many individuals who (somehow) have to become “we”. The end of capitalism then has to be conceived of as the result of millions of bee stings (Holloway 2005:271) or of “screams”. Holloway wants us to think of these screams as the expression of rage which transcends itself and leads the way to an open future (Holloway 2005:6). Notwithstanding its many differences from the concept of Michael Hardt and Toni Negri (2000)12 this romantic revolutionary theory is also in search of the mystical multitude which Hardt and Negri hope will destroy the Empire, that is, the totality of power relations (see also Hirsch 2003:40). Holloway’s insistence on a historically invariant essence of the capitalist state is not the only attempt to keep the analysis of the “state form” (Staatsform) alive. Sonja Buckel (2007) focuses on the question of how the practice of the “legal form” (Rechtsform)—together with other practices—produces individual subjects. While every individual subject is constituted as an ensemble of specific differences integrated into structures of hierarchy and is at the same time isolated from all other individual subjects, contrarily, the “law form” transforms individual citizens into equal and therefore identical subjects of law. It homogenizes legal subjects. Buckel has not only taken up the questions which were discussed in the derivation debate but has suggested answers which can further advance materialist state analysis. In refraining from characterizing her analysis as an analysis of the essential form of capitalist states, she accepts Joachim Hirsch’s insistence that the form of the state as the fetishized expression of the whole of society is also brought about by such additional features as universal suffrage, certain political discourses and the development of social policy. But Sonja Buckel not only establishes the essential element of the capitalist state form, she also contends that this cannot be explained in the manner suggested by participants in the derivation debate—that is, as “requirements” of capitalist production (2007:132). Instead of seeing the state in terms of the logic inherent in capitalist production she wants to understand it as the result of “effects” of historical developments. This is similar to Gerstenberger’s explanation of the formation of bourgeois states ([1990] 2007). Provoked by the a-historical reasoning of the derivation debate this analytical concept focuses on the specific historical preconditions for the development of the bourgeois state form. C
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According to Gerstenberger these preconditions were inherent in the structures and the crises of the (specifically European) domination form “ancien r´egime”. Instead of seeing the bourgeois state form as being logically derived from the essential structures of capitalism, she insists that capitalist social relations could only become historically dominant when the private proprietors of powers of domination, including not only dynastic sovereignty but also all sorts of privileges, were dispossessed— that is, when the bourgeois state was constituted. This historical interpretation also extends to the analysis of the legal form. While the equality of the subjects of law became a prerequisite for the functioning of capitalism, it was historically established through struggles against specific inequalities inherent in European societies of the “ancien r´egime”. It has always been mistaken to see the agents of these struggles as “capitalists in waiting”.
The Plurality of Capitalist States For Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980) the “modern state” enters history as the ideal general capitalist of merchant capital. According to him the development of strong territorial states was a product of the European commercial expansion which began in the sixteenth century and was to bring about the “Modern World System”. The transformation was possible because the concentration of capital in the centers not only offered the financial base but also the motivation to constitute strong states. This reasoning fails, however, adequately to consider the fact that successful accumulation strategies on the part of merchants depended much more on the defense of privileges against potential newcomers than on territorial expansion.13 In pre-capitalist Europe territorial expansion was either motivated by endeavors of plunder (Andrews 1984) or by the drive for “land and people”—that is, for the enlargement of the base of taxation and of the possibility of integrating nobles into the centralized structures of princely domination. The slow and always precarious stabilization of personal property in powers of domination attained a rather more stable structure when—at the end of the devastating 30 Years War—the principle of “proprietary dynasticism” was agreed upon. Benno Teschke has conclusively demonstrated that the Treaty of Westphalia was not a treaty between states but between dynasties and that it did not refer so much to the domination over a certain territory as to the possession of rights (2003:238 and passim). It was only in the course of the dispossession of personal proprietors of sovereignty that states in the modern sense came into being. This transformation of the plurality of sovereign dynasties into the plurality of states predates the spread of capitalist social relations. But for Teschke belligerent competition between states not only brought about abstract sovereignty but also inaugurated the C
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spread of capitalism. For him the conflicting relations between the already capitalist state in England and the not-yet capitalist states on the European continent resulted in the transformation of property relations in affected countries (2003, 2005, 2006). While capitalism in England had been the result of internal dynamics, political appropriation hindered any autonomous dynamics towards capitalism on the continent. Only in England did the transformation of the power of a dynasty into modern abstract sovereignty become possible without external influences (Teschke 2005).14 It is from the standpoint of this radical international analysis that Teschke criticizes any comparative analysis of the constitution of capitalist states (2005). While Teschke’s critique of the widespread tendency to treat the capitalist “state” as if it existed only in the singular form is well founded, he offers no explanation for the essential political form of capitalism. His description of the historical development of the English state in the second half of the seventeenth century is on the same theoretical level as Bob Jessop’s description of the Atlantic Fordist state: it equates the institutional apparatus of the state with its essential form. If it might be possible to explain the drive to abstract sovereignty as an effect of conflicting international relations, this does not hold true for the establishment of formally equal subjects. When this came about, in France, in Prussia or in Sweden, it was of course inspired by international developments but it was, nevertheless, the result of opposition to very specific local forms of domination. The outcome of these processes of opposition has become known as the bourgeois state form. If the constitution of the capitalist state form is reduced to a separation of functions it might, indeed, be tempting to think that capitalism, once established, “requires some form of (geo-) political organization” but does not require “a system of states” (Teschke and Lacher 2007:574). On first sight Justin Rosenberg’s conception of the “Empire of Civil Society” (1994) as well as Ellen M. Wood’s conception of the “Empire of Capital” (2003) seem to confirm the Teschke/Lacher hypothesis. Both maintain that the advent of capitalism has, once and for all, transferred the center of historical dynamics to the economy. They stress that the state has important functions for capitalist society but also that there is no requirement for the state to get involved in the privatized sphere of production (Rosenberg 1994:127). The “transnational whole of economy produces political effects independently of the agency of the state” (1994:13). While Rosenberg’s hypothesis of the transformation of the nature of sovereignty through capitalism refrains from any reference to the plurality of states, Wood expressly contends that this plurality is still vital. According to her, “the new imperialism, in contrast to older forms of colonial empire, depends more than ever on a system of multiple and more or less sovereign national states” (2003:141). They are necessary “to perform the administrative and coercive functions C
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that sustain the system of property and provide the kind of day-to-day regularity, predictability, and legal order that capitalism needs more than any other form” (2003:141). These concepts have convincingly undermined the theoretical foundations of realist international relations theory by scattering the edifice of an a-historical system of competing political actors, but their specific interpretation of the separation of state and market is not convincing. First of all, it is not able truly to grasp functional changes. Rosenberg’s conception, for example, forces him to maintain that processes of nationalization diminish the sovereign character of state rule (1994:127–128), and Wood’s conception prevents satisfactory theoretical treatment of the growing number of public– private partnerships (Harvey 2006:159).15 But Max Weber was quite correct in contending that there is no state function—in his terminology, no purpose (Zweck) of state activity—which cannot be fulfilled, and at some time or other has not been fulfilled, by non-state agents ([1921] 1972:section 17, 3). The identification of the capitalist state with certain functions for capital is not sufficient for the theoretical explanation of the continued existence of a plurality of states. David Harvey is not very far from the Teschke/Lacher hypothesis when he maintains that if the bourgeois state is “the preferred condition for capitalist activity” (2003:91) capitalists do not necessarily require such a framework to function. Wood, of course, would not concur, because for her the guarantee of private property, the day-to-day stability of the system, combined with the disciplining of laborers, have been and still are preconditions for capitalist accumulation. “The state lies at the very heart of the new global order” (Wood 2003:139). In analyzing this new global order Ellen Wood sticks rigidly to her line of reasoning when she insists on the purely economic character of capitalist imperialism. For her, violent and belligerent forms of appropriation are the expression of pre-capitalist social and political relations. They have been superseded by that new form of imperialism which has been brought about by capitalism: economic imperialism (2006:17 and passim). Instead of colonial Empires we now have an “Empire of Capital”. The difference between “economic imperialism” and all the older forms of imperialism is capitalism’s “unique capacity of economic power to detach itself from direct political coercion” (2006:18). This contention leaves Wood with the necessity to explain the fact that wars still do happen under capitalism. Focusing on the current epoch she maintains that the state is called upon to create an international order which is “congenial” for the movement of capital on a global scale (2006:26). Staying within her theoretical edifice we might say the state can no longer resign itself only to shaping the infrastructure of the national territory but also must do so on a global scale. According to C
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Wood the establishment of such a congenial order is above all a “military project”. But while in former times military force was used in order to achieve specific results, it is now employed for the demonstration of predominance, military and otherwise (2006:27). This, however, furthers the tendency of political strategies to be shaped by military logic. In order to illustrate this hypothesis she refers to the war in Iraq. According to her, the oil-producing countries of the Middle East have no interest whatsoever in denying their product to anyone who is willing to pay the price demanded (2006:27). Military force, therefore, is not used to safeguard the access to oil supplies, but to establish a sort of general supervision of the global system. There is much to be said for this reasoning. One can easily follow the militarization of politics maintained by Wood by simply looking at official publications. For example, in the “Bottom Up Review” to the Congress by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin in 1993, the objective of defense after the end of the Cold War is very clearly spelt out as the promotion of the political and economic power of the USA. This includes the safeguarding of “a healthy free trade regime”.16 In A National Security Strategy for a New Century, which was published in 1997, the functions of the military to “shape” and “prepare” have been accorded even more importance, as has the orientation towards potential(!) threats. “Our primary economic goal remains to strengthen the American economy.”17 At the same time, the orientation of military strategies towards potential threats and the defense of economic interests everywhere in the world first spelt out by the US government has been accepted by the member states of NATO, thereby transforming the alliance into an instrument for the defense of any vital interest of its member states by military means. This includes the management of crisis by conducting “non-Article 5 crisis response operations”,18 in other words, by conducting military operations “out of area”—outside of the NATO member states—in order “to keep risks at a distance”.19 If these remarks strengthen Wood’s interpretation of recent developments they do not support her assumption that the plurality of states has been satisfactorily established not only as a historical fact but also as a continuing structural prerequisite of capitalism. It is only when competition between states is considered to be essential for the reproduction of capitalism that this continuation can be explained (Hirsch and Kannankulam 2011). We will come back to this. David Harvey’s use of the term “imperialism” implies a conception which takes the competition between capitalist states for granted. But his theoretical edifice is not quite as clear as that. What Harvey has been dealing with all along is the spatial dimension of the “logic of capital”. It derives from the fact that capital is constantly in need of a “spatio-temporal fix”20 (1982, 1989, 2001, 2003). Because of the tendency of over-accumulation the advantages of certain locations C
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have to be made use of wherever they can be found. This suggests a geographical version of Schumpeter’s concept of “pioneer profit”. Since for Harvey the exploitation of advantages that can be found in new locations is equivalent to the use of new technology (2003:94) it is very clear that his notion of a “spatio-temporal-fix” is not to be understood as implying any structural necessity of the territorial expansion of direct political domination. Instead, it implies the necessity of a continuous territorial mobility of capital (see also Belina 2006:59– 60). But capital has to overcome political as well as economic obstacles to its mobility. Many investments require a specific infrastructure and/or large quantities of locally fixed constant capital (Harvey 2003:99–100). Sometimes the profitable use of this capital is endangered not only by economic risks, but also by political and even terrorist threats. Therefore the “geographical patterning of capital accumulation” (2003:101) is principally unstable. If this argument sets Harvey’s concept against the general continuity of geographical patterns of exploitation as it has been formulated by Immanuel Wallerstein and others in the context of their theories of a capitalist world system, Harvey nevertheless holds that temporally stable geographic configurations are possible. He calls them “regions”, specifying that regional economies “achieve a certain degree of structured coherence to production, distribution, exchange, and consumption, at least for a time” (2003:102). But according to Harvey the “geographical patterning of capital accumulation” is not only brought about by the logic of capital but also by the territorial logic of power as expressed through the politics of state and empire (2003:103f). In refraining from interpreting the state as the agent of national capital Harvey avoids an instrumentalist conception of the capitalist state. On the other hand, his “logic of territory” concept brings him very close to authors who postulate that there exists something like a trans-historical nature of “the state”. In those interpretations the historical specificity of states comes in via the linkage between the logic of power and the logic of a historically specific mode of production (see, for example, Mann 1986, 1993). And indeed, if we do find thorough analyses of present-day hegemonic policies, as well as analyses of the valorization of capital in Harvey’s publications, there is no discussion of the possibility that there is a “territorial logic” which is specific to capitalism. When Harvey writes that capitalist imperialism is the result of a dialectical relationship between the territorial logic of power on the one hand and the capitalist logic of power on the other (2003:184) then the reference to dialectics—as so often in the history of Marxist theory—only conceals the fact that no precise analysis of the relation in question is delivered.21 Indeed, Harvey himself remarked, that he has used the generic term of a territorial logic of power to obscure the absence of a theory of the state in his work (2007:67). C
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The theory of imperialism minus a theory of the state that Harvey presents is founded on the crisis theory of the tendency towards over-accumulation. In the present epoch, strategies that are termed “neoliberal” are deployed to overcome the tendency towards overaccumulation. Harvey calls “imperialism” the use of state power to establish economic liberalism throughout the world. His focus is on the causes and the relevance of the neoliberal hegemony of the USA in the period from the 1970s to the year 2000 and on the serious difficulties which this hegemony has encountered in recent times (2007:70). During this period the model of a “neoliberal state”—that is, a state which actively furthers the valorisation of capital—was established in the USA and has since been spread across the world through the policies of USAmerican governments and the IMF. This is an argument and a terminology which can be used to promote public debate. But if we insist that the theoretical concept of imperialism should be stringently developed we do not get very far with Harvey. According to him the economic content of neoliberalism is “accumulation by dispossession”. He wants us to accept this as a partial reformulation of Marx’s theory of “primitive accumulation”. But Marx termed “primitive accumulation” the separation of producers from their means of production and hence their subjugation under the laws of the market, while Harvey wants to include processes of redistribution in the concept. “Why would we want to classify as accumulation by dispossession the normal capitalist process of exploitation . . .?” asks Robert Brenner (2006:101; see also Fine 2006:143–147). In his response to this critique Harvey points out that the term “primitive accumulation” is only understood by people who know Marx, while those who do not, immediately understand what is meant by “accumulation by dispossession” in relation to pension rights, the privatization of water, the loss of health-care rights and other current developments (2006:158). If this is the endearing remark of somebody who, all along, has been striving to overcome the boundaries of academic discourse, it also makes it very clear that the term “imperialism” is used for the sake of political provocation. In theoretical terms, however, the foundations are not strong enough. The debate about competition between capitalist states (that is, imperialism) suffers from an inclination to interpret capitalism predominantly as an economic system. Competition with other states is either considered to be more or less determined by problems of capital accumulation or is interpreted as being more or less contingent in relation to conditions of accumulation. If Benno Teschke and Hannes Lacher overlook the continued tendency of capitalism to reproduce uneven development—that is, the prerequisite for the achievement of super profits—this fails to prove Alex Callinicos’ assertion that the C
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continued existence of the “law of uneven and combined development” amounts to a theoretical explication of the plurality of states. This plurality can only be successfully established if the competition between states is considered a prerequisite for the reproduction of capitalism. Joachim Hirsch and John Kannankulam have suggested this should be done by integrating form analysis into the analysis of international competition (2008). If they agree with Alex Callinicos in stressing the continued importance of seeking extra profit they maintain that this is (also) possible by making use of the capacity of capitalist states to organize supra-class coalitions. These coalitions aim at securing advantages in the context of global competition. Since exclusion is inherent in the regime of citizenship it is possible to mobilize nationalism for economic ends. Hirsch and Kannankulam contend that if the conditions both of accumulation and the realization of profits have become global, classes have not. Classes are still fractioned because of the existence of competing nation states (2008). This results in competition between states becoming one of the structural elements of capitalism. While China Mi´eville (2005) is not trying to establish the structural requisite of the competition between states, he explains how the coercion inherent in this competition functions in the realm of legally equal sovereign states. He starts out by revisiting Pashukanis and spells out very clearly that his concept was not that of a legal form without content. Despite his reservations against the practice of criticizing only the (class) content of law, Pashukanis asserted that the legal form is a form of bourgeois society (see also Arthur 1978:28, cited by Mi´eville 2005:118). Hence it not only refers to commodity exchange but also to “social relations of exploitative inequality embedded in the wage relation” (Mi´eville 2005:118). It is because of the commodification of labor that exploitative class relations can be “brought in the realm of the juridical as a commodity form” (2005:120). While all of this reads like a revisiting of the derivation debate, as indeed it is, Mi´eville goes much further. His proposal of a Marxist theory of international law begins by pointing out that “violence—coercion—is at the heart of the commodity form” (2005:126). Contracts cannot exist without constraint. In agreement with Colin Barker (1997:27–28, cited by Mi´eville 2005:127) and in opposition to Pashukanis, Mi´evielle contends that coercion backed by force is implied in the generalized form of law and directed by one individual towards another (2005:127). This, of course, implies that the capitalist state in the form of the bourgeois state—that is, a state which usually manages effectively to rule out the use of direct coercion between persons—is not a necessary form of capitalism. The bourgeois state superimposes itself onto the legal form. Mi´eville’s contribution to the theory of international law consists of the application of the analysis of the legal form to the sphere C
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of competition between states. In modern international law all states have become formally equal and the relation between states has been juridicalized (in every international conflict all the states involved refer themselves to one or the other of the internationally established rights). But in contrast to the commodity form in bourgeois societies, legal relations in the sphere of international law are non-guaranteed. Between two rights, force decides. Hence the futility of any attempt to criticize imperialism with legal arguments. Looking behind the screen of formal rule over colonized people Mi´eville contends that imperialism is a continuous element of capitalism. There were and there are shifts in policy. (2005:274). The phase of formal colonialism was one of these shifts. It was, as most experts on colonialism now agree, a very costly deviation from the strategy of making use of formal sovereignty. Individual owners of capital found new possibilities for profit; individual state employees, including members of the army and the navy, profited from new career possibilities; and settlers could make use of chances for the economic advancement of their families. On the whole, however, colonialism did not open up new markets for the products of “national capitals” (Bairoch [1971] 1992; Giraud 1996). The national economies of industrialized societies have not really profited from the sufferings and the longterm economic damage that was inflicted on subjugated people. The historically exceptional strategy of formal political domination apart, strategies of imperialism centered on the profitable use of the formal equality of sovereign states. This strategy has already been inaugurated in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Mi´eville does not enter into the analysis of formal rule but shows that the US strategy of imperialism through the recognition of formally independent postcolonial states predates the phase of colonialism of the end of the nineteenth century. He does not have to explain expressly that this strategy became global when in 1960 the United Nations—in the General Assembly’s Resolution 1514—decided to “grant” independence to colonial countries and peoples. By this declaration and its subsequent interpretations the requisite of effective sovereignty was erased from the sphere of international law. Instead, it is in the realm of the formal equality of states that coercion is applied. While this analysis is not new (see, for example, Chemillier-Gendreau 1995:321), Mi´eville’s stringently worked out suggestion of applying the analysis of the legal form of capitalism to the sphere of the competition between states is important enough to provoke further analysis.
Why the Political Form of Capitalism Should be Revisited Recent historical development has come as a contradiction to dominant conceptions of materialist state analysis. Theoretical conceptions of the C
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separation between state and society which focus on a separation of functions are inadequate for a theoretical integration of the dramatic enlargement of the “empire of civil society”. The inadequacy of dominant conceptions of regulation theory, on the other hand, becomes evident by the simple fact that they do not offer any guide for the analysis of those states which, though they have been molded according to the institutional pattern of bourgeois capitalist states, do not resemble them in any way. How does regulation theory deal with states which, according to the dominant political lingo, have “failed” or are in danger of “failing”? The globalization of capitalism has barred the simple option of declaring that they are not in fact capitalist states. In what follows I will try to further explain these critical remarks by pointing to some developments that are conspicuously absent from recent debates on state theory. If there has been discussion about the reasons for and the effects of privatizing social services which, at least in some capitalist states, had been considered the obligation of the state, reference to the privatization of prisons and of military services is rare. But what are we to do in theoretical terms about the fact that military services are increasingly organized in the form of private business? The world market for these services has been growing immensely in recent years. Already some years ago it was possible to lease a complete, if small, air force—planes, flying and maintenance personnel included (Singer 2003:173). The US administration could decide on the use of arms in its “war against drugs” without informing Congress because it was paying a private firm to do the job. P.W. Singer is certainly correct in contending that international security has become complicated both by potential market dynamism and by the fact that the locus of judgment on how military operations are carried out in the field is no longer solely within state control (2003:169). Deborah D. Avant sums up her analysis of the market for force by stating that it has led to a less stable control over force (2005:7). In any case it weakens the possibility of any democratic control over the use of military force. Privatizing military services is an encroachment on the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. But processes of globalization have also reduced the ability of states to codify law. In recent years more and more cases of conflict arising in international business transactions are submitted to private arbitration bodies. If parties to arbitration can fall back on national courts this does not alter the fact that a growing number of contracts function independently of state sanction. The incongruity between the reach of capitalist relations and the reach of national sovereignty has resulted in manifold forms of private governance. The most important of these is regulation by contract (Collins 1999). Contracts assume an agreement between equals, be it between states, between a state and a company, or between two or more business partners. Although differences of power and hence of C
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coercion are never absent, contracts offer stability for a certain time and hence the possibility of achieving at least some of the economic aims of all the parties concerned (Dezalay and Dryant 1996:76 and passim). Lex mercatoria—as private forms of governance and litigation are sometimes called in reference to practices of international trade developed in medieval times—concerns the governance of market relations, not of class relations; but from the contract concluded between the management of a ship and its charterer, to the contract concluded between an oil company and a government the conditions of contracts and results of litigation often also affect labor conditions. Another affront to the functional conception of the separation between state and society is apparent in the commodification of national sovereignty. When governments of sovereign states offer offshore conditions on the respective world markets, they are not offering to sell parts of their sovereignty but are marketing a deviation from their sovereign competence in national regulation. The creation of specific legal spaces for non-citizens22 amounts to the creation of “islands” within the generality of national law. While the term “offshore” now commonly used for these spaces suggests far-off regions, offshore conditions are offered not only by small island states in the Caribbean Sea or the Pacific Ocean but also in the centers of highly industrialized capitalist states. These legal spaces come in three versions: the establishment of financial services outside of national laws, the offer of special conditions for foreign investors in so-called export-processing zones and the offer of registration in the national ship register. Some offshore conditions are publicized with a more-or-less open declaration that national legal regulation which formally also applies to investments under offshore conditions will not in fact be applied. But the fact that the line between legality and illegality is often not very strictly drawn or observed does not alter the fact that the legal exception from the generality of national law has in each of these cases been decided upon by a government. It has been convincingly argued that in the 1960s and 1970s governments of highly industrialized countries, instead of trying to prevent these developments, actually accepted and sometimes even encouraged the possibility of conducting business outside the realm of national taxes, national bank laws and national regulations of labor (including the possibility of managing ships under “flags of convenience”). The possibility of circumventing the high standards of national regulation seemed—at least for some time—to be a means of avoiding conflicts with national interest groups. However, “the onshore regulators then often found that they had helped to create a monster they could not properly control” (Picciotto 1999:54). In Sol Picciotto’s terms this monster is the “state as legal fiction” (1999). There is no doubt that C
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the offshore phenomenon has advanced the process of deregulation and hence the processes of globalization. If the offshore phenomenon has to be seen as a critique of functional explanations of the separation between state and society it should also be realized that many postcolonial states, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, constitute a critique of conceptions of state theory that focus on the state apparatus. If political judgment has been ready to accept rankings of states which range from those with a general resemblance to wholesale models of a rational and efficient Weberian state to those that are in danger of failing or have already “failed”, there is also a continuing serious theoretical discussion about how best to theoretically understand the African state. This has remained more or less unnoticed by those taking part in theoretical debates about the capitalist state. But it is in this very task of attempting to grasp theoretically the nature of the postcolony (Mbembe 2001) that state theory could seek to prove that it is able to achieve more than a sophisticated description of state apparatus. Only a few remarks about the theoretical issues this raises are possible here. Although many men and women fought for their emancipation from colonial domination, the sovereignty of post-colonial states was not a result of their effective appropriation of the means of power but of the decision of hegemonic states to grant them sovereignty. International law defends this sovereignty not only in regard to other states but also in regard to people within a particular state asserting their demands for autonomy. Furthermore, the granting of sovereignty not only constitutes sovereign national states but also the “nations” that are to be the proprietors of this sovereignty. Endeavors to tackle analytically the “African state” have been developed more or less separately from the discussions outlined above. Leaving aside the politically motivated practice of interpreting the actual circumstances as the result of “bad governance” there are those who maintain that the granting of sovereignty has produced only “quasistates” (most prominently, Jackson 1990:21 and passim) and expect that these will, in the course of time, become real states. This concept dovetails neatly with the long-dominant assumption of a universal historical path of development. But if the concept of a “real state” not only refers to the formal state apparatus but to the essentials of the bourgeois capitalist state, it should be remembered that the latter was the result of historical processes which, among many other important elements, experienced a pre-bourgeois and pre-capitalist development of public debate and public opposition—something that was definitely absent from colonial states. And if today almost everybody agrees that the development of social policy in western states was not only brought about by “good government” but has been effectively demanded by organized labor then it must be accepted that the potentially global competition between workers has thoroughly changed the conditions C
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for the success of organized labor in countries where specialized labor power is rare. While some contend that the African state has “not yet” become a real state others eliminate the theoretical problem by arguing that African capitalism has “not yet” become “real” capitalism. But even if many children, women and men in Africa are engaged in subsistence agrarian production—albeit often with very limited success—others work for big international companies. Many women were employed in textile firms until the end of the quota system for the export of textiles made it possible for their Chinese owners to relocate these firms to China. And there are all those employed in tasks which are usually captured by the term “informal labor” and of whom Jan Breman rightly insists that we should not consider their labor as being outside of capitalism but as being integrated in its structures, albeit as its “dirty belly” (2000:17). These are not the only forms in which citizens of African states are integrated and affected by global capitalist competition. Many members of governments and state administrations are involved in money laundering, in diamond smuggling and other valuables, in the trade in women, children and drugs. Participation in illegal international transactions has become so intense that some experts on modern Africa talk about the criminalization of the state in Africa (Bayart 2004; Bayart, Ellis and Hibou 1997, 1999; Hibou 1999). Corruption is not seen as an aberration from the normal working of the administration but as its essence (Chabal and Daloz 1999). In other words national sovereignty is exploited for almost exclusively private means (Mbembe 1999; 2001; Reno 1999). Historical analysis not only reveals that the implantation of the institutional apparatus of bourgeois capitalist states has not simply erased the fundamentally different pre-sovereign development but also that the political strategies of corruption used by the competing powers during the Cold War have implanted the practice of exploiting national sovereignty for private gain. If at that time it became common practice to sell the “national voice”, more or less openly, in the general assembly of the UN, private gain is now possible when permits for export or import are granted, licenses for the production of oil are issued, the importation of dangerous waste is permitted, and so on. Experts trying to grasp the special character of the African state often make use of concepts like patrimonialism or neo-patrimonialism. Sometimes “praetorianism”, “sultanism”, the notion of the prebendary state or even feudalism are suggested, and bolstered by reference to the political sociology of Max Weber. What all these terms are supposed to express is the importance of hierarchical personal relations and the absence of a society as a separate realm from the state (K¨oßler 1994). But the personal relations to which all the analytical concepts refer function in parallel with a state apparatus which formally corresponds with the institutions in “real” capitalist states. The administration in each C
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of these states is formally molded after the pattern of modern impersonal bureaucracy. Even if the result of litigation can often be bought, formal equality before the law has been instituted in all of these states, and if general elections usually result in the giving access of successful members of the opposition into the net of reciprocal personal favors, they are, nevertheless, an institution that was absent under patrimonialism or sultanism. If we are not content with describing the ways in which local forms of capitalism in African states differ from those in de-industrialized regions of developed capitalist economies, or with an explanation of the ways in which the African capitalist state differs from the bourgeois capitalist state, Fordist or otherwise, then we must once more try to answer the question of what constitutes the essence of the capitalist state.
Endnotes 1
If it is easy with hindsight to see the theoretical flaws of this conception we should also remember that, at the end of the nineteenth century, the labor movement had hardly any choice but to consider it an adequate expression of reality. After the end of the “Old Regime” workers and servants, be they male or female, experienced a state which was “the state of the bourgeois”. No equality in the right to vote for men, total exclusion of women from the body politic, class justice, criminalization of the poor, prohibition of trade unions, the use of troops in order to suppress strikers, all these expressions of state power clearly and daily told workers how state power was used in order to safeguard the economic position of capital owners. 2 The title of Miliband’s book “The State in Capitalist Society” (1969) adequately expresses this theoretical concept. Miliband explained the instrumental nature of the state as the result of linkages between the personnel of the state apparatus and dominating groups (especially chapter V). 3 If this debate has also influenced debates on state theory in other countries (see for example Reuten and Williams, 1989) it was in West Germany that it was to become most influential for the production of Marxist theory. 4 All the participants agreed on the fact that Marx himself had not worked out a theoretical concept of the capitalist state. Going back to Marx’s writings some concentrated on his early writings while others focused on “Capital”. 5 For a thorough critique see Wirth (1972) and her extensive bibliography on the debate. 6 Edgar Wolfrum has pointed out that in the BRD the peak of expectations from planning was in the time of the coalition between CDU and SPD (2006:230). On literature which appeared during this time see Wolfrum (2006: note 108); see also Grottian (1974) and Grottian and Murswieck (1974). 7 For a discussion of the changes in the theoretical conception of the state in the publications of Offe, see Ronge (1977:206–212). 8 John Holloway and Sol Picciotto (1978) have translated extracts of those contributions to the derivation debate which they thought were most important, thereby furthering its international influence. But in their introduction to the collection they have not only evaluated the German essays but have themselves offered a very stringently argued contribution to the development of a Marxist theory of the state. 9 Flatow and Huisken maintain that specific state activities are engendered by the requirements of capitalist production and reproduction. These requirements work “behind the back” of the agents. They assume not only that the state is separated from society but also that it is able to—at least partially—surmount the anarchy of C
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capitalist production. A closer look at reality must disappoint: in the real world, states rarely function according to this theory. 10 Kosmas Psychopedis has pointed to the dangers of any over-emphasis of the element of struggle. It might be understood “as an irrational and spontaneous act regardless of the historical and social relation and the social division of labour” (1991:190f). 11 It is, for example, also present in the writings of Perry Anderson and, following Anderson, in those of Teschke (see, eg, Teschke, 2003). 12 Holloway considers that the theory of the “Empire” which has been suggested by Hardt and Negri is only another term for neoliberalism (2002:187). 13 On the difference between pre-bourgeois merchant capital (Kaufmannskapital) and capitalist trading capital (Handelskapital) still unsurpassed, see Marx (1972, Vol 20, chapter 20). 14 Wood ([1999] 2002:174ff) also maintains that there was no autonomous development towards capitalism on the continent. She points out that in France small peasant production continued for a long time, as did the private usufruct of the results of the tax state. I would insist, however, that the French Revolution did bring about the separation of state and society in France in the sense that this is conceived by Buckel. The form of the bourgeois state was constituted before the breakthrough of capitalist social relations. 15 Colin Barker has already remarked years ago that Wood refrains from really analyzing “the state” (1997:part 6). 16 Report on the Bottom Up Review, Les Aspin, Secretary of Defense, October 1993 (http://www.fas.org/man/docs/bur/index.html), under the heading “New economic dangers and opportunities”. 17 A National Security Strategy for A New Century (www.fas.org/man/docs/ strategy97.htm). For the “shape” and “prepare” functions, see some of the sub-titles in this report. 18 The Alliance’s Strategic Concept (approved April 1999) (http://www.nato.int/docu/ pr/1999/p99-065e.htm), Article 4. 19 The Alliance’s Strategic Concept (approved April 1999) (http://www.nato.int/docu/ pr/1999/p99-065e.htm), Article 48. 20 In earlier publications he uses the term “spatial-fix”. 21 For his concept of the different logics Harvey explicitly refers to the work of G. Arrighi. But Arrighi remarked that in his own work not only the territorial logic but also the capitalist logic are conceived of as determinants of state activity (2005:28, note 15). In contrast to Harvey he also refrains from assuming that all market processes are steered by capitalist logic. 22 Even if offshore conditions are sometimes only valid in specific places, it is theoretically imperative that offshore is not to be understood as a territorial category but as a legal space. (see Hampton 1996).
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International Transformations of the Capitalist State1 Sol Picciotto Law School, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, UK;
[email protected] Abstract: There has not been a retreat but a transformation of the state, involving significant changes in both the public sphere of politics and the so-called private sphere of economic activity, and in their modes of interaction, especially law. The privatization of state-owned assets and the reduction of direct state economic intervention have not led to a reduced role of the state but to changes in its form, involving new types of formalized regulation, the fragmentation of the public sphere, the decentering of the state and the emergence of multi-level governance. This has been complemented by the increased salience of “private” regulation, so that in many ways the apparently private sphere of economic activity has become more public. In fact, there has been a complex process of interaction with a blurring of the divisions between apparently private and public regulation. Despite talk of deregulation there has been extensive reregulation, or formalization of regulation, and the emergence of global regulatory networks, intermingling the public and the private. The transition from government to governance means a lack of a clear hierarchy of norms, a blurring of distinctions between hard and soft law, and a fragmentation of public functions entailing a resurgence of technocracy. Keywords: state, law, globalization, regulation, late capitalism
Introduction: From Government to Governance The term governance has come into increased use, generally to describe changes in governing processes from hierarchy to polyarchy. In international relations theory, it denotes the management of world affairs in the absence of a global government (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992), hence the term “global governance” has become commonplace. For theorists of the state it refers to the “hollowing out” of the unitary state, or the decentering of government, and the shift to “governing without government” (Rhodes 1997). Two interrelated processes seem to have been involved over the past 30 years. First, major changes have taken place in both the political or “public” sphere of the state and the “private” sphere of economic and social life, as well as in the relationships between the two. Most visible has been the extensive privatization of state-owned firms and assets, accompanied by the introduction of contracting into public arenas and the delegation of a range of activities (from waste disposal to the running of prisons) to service providers. Conversely, however, there has Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 87–107 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00812.x C 2010 The Author C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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been a parallel and complementary trend, much less discussed, in which the apparently “private” sphere of business and economic activity has become more public. The corporations and business networks which dominate the so-called “market”, even as they urge a reduction in intrusive state controls, find their activities governed by an increasing plethora of various types of regulation. Indeed, the biggest paradox has been the growth of industry and corporate codes of conduct, the private sector adopting public standards for itself, although this has generally been in response to pressures from their customers, workers and suppliers, and sometimes in order to forestall the imposition of legal obligations (Haufler 2001; Jenkins, Pearson and Seyfang 2002). The second and interrelated process has entailed transformations in the international coordination of governance. The classical liberal international system of interdependent states relied on coordination through governments, operating on the international plane through public international law; while they had exclusive legitimate powers internally, and considerable scope to decide how to fulfill their international obligations through domestic law. On the domestic axis, national law governed individuals and legal persons, and governments could insulate their internal management of the national economy from external forces and shocks by controlling cross-border flows of money and commodities. However, as the demands on government have become greater, national economic management has become more difficult and complex. At the same time, there has been a movement towards deeper international economic and social integration, facilitated by international economic liberalization through the substantial removal of border barriers to economic flows (tariffs and currency controls), and greatly improved communications. This shift towards more “open” national economies did not create a unified and free world market but, like an outgoing tide, it revealed a craggy landscape of diverse national and local regulations. Trying to deal with these differences has generated an exponential growth of networks of regulatory cooperation, coordination and harmonization. These are no longer primarily of an international character, but also supranational and infranational, frequently by-passing central government. They also reflect and reinforce changing public–private forms, since these regulatory networks are very often neither clearly state nor private but of a hybrid nature. Indeed, a major reason for the growth of corporate and industry codes has been concerns that state-based regulation is ineffective and leaves too many gaps (Haufler 2001:114–115). Thus, there has been a movement from the classical liberal international state system, towards one that is too often merely denounced as neoliberal. In my view this perspective is both simplistic and defeatist. Hence, I prefer the term post-liberal, emphasizing that its features are still emergent and contestable, and indeed offer significant C
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opportunities for progressive politics, albeit in new forms. The next section will sketch out some of the main elements of these changes. The third section will analyze three main problematic features of the new landscape: the destabilization of normative hierarchies, the blurring of distinctions between normative forms, and the political problems caused by the fragmentation of statehood accompanied by the growth of technocratic governance.
Dilemmas of the Post-Liberal System Changing Public–Private Forms and Relations Privatization appeared to be part of a wider move away from statecentered direction of the economy, especially as it was powered by anti-statist ideas and accompanied by much talk of deregulation and free markets. In fact, this movement was not initially ideologically driven, but generally began as pragmatic reforms (by political parties of the right and sometimes also the left), and only subsequently became articulated as broader systemic projects to “roll back the state” (Feigenbaum, Henig and Hamnett 1998). The outcome generally has been the decentralization of operational responsibility for a wide range of activities to cadres of managers. Although privatization is often justified in terms of shifting of risk, the importance of collective and infrastructural services in practice has meant a continuing role for the state in providing subsidies and acting as lender of last resort. State regulation also has often very direct effects on profitability through: regulated pricing of utilities such as electricity and water; the granting or withholding of intellectual property and other property rights; approval or disapproval of oligopolistic positions and practices; public approval and procurement, for example, of military equipment and pharmaceutical drugs; regulatory obligations for matters such as environmental protection, and various forms of tax breaks and subsidies.2 Thus, privatization did not substantially reduce the importance of the state, but instead entailed changes in its form, with a shift to indirect provision of services within a regulatory framework (Feigenbaum, Henig and Hamnett 1998; Vogel 1996). It has been the increased demands being made on the state which have resulted in its fragmentation, as regulatory functions have increasingly been delegated to public bodies or agencies with a status semiautonomous from central government. Such agencies are generally not formally part of the government, and may be constituted as private organizations, with a mandate either laid down by public law or by private legal forms such as contract, or a mixture of the two. These bodies themselves may deploy a greater variety of forms and techniques of regulation. In the USA, which had almost no state ownership and a long C
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tradition of regulation by independent agencies, there was some criticism of “command and control” forms of regulation for being excessively legalistic and adversarial (Bardach and Kagan 1982), leading to new debates and theories about regulation and its design (eg Noll 1985). This has spread to other countries (notably Australia), and generated debates about new approaches to “smart regulation” (Gunningham and Grabosky 1998). These build on the seminal work of Ayres and Braithwaite who argued that business regulation should be viewed as an interactive process, involving both firms themselves and civil society actors, with the “big stick” of the state being a last resort (Ayres and Braithwaite 1992). The character of regulation has significantly changed, away from the top-down hierarchical model of state command, towards more fluid, often fragmented, and interactive or “reflexive” processes. This involves a mixture of legal forms, both public and private, and an interplay between state and private ordering. Thus, a private legal form such as a contract can be used as a tool to achieve both managerial and policy objectives, either when private firms are entrusted to deliver public services, such as refuse collection or hospital cleaning, or even entirely within the public sector if quasi-markets are introduced (Vincent-Jones 1999). This is not to say that such adaptations are successful. Contracts provide flexibility, but private contract law does not easily accommodate and may undermine the public interest safeguards developed by public or administrative law (Freeman 2000). On the other hand, public bureaucracies find it hard to achieve genuine responsiveness to individual citizens, although they have tried to do so by adopting a managerial culture of service delivery (corporate plans, customer charters, performance targets, etc). Hence, some authors have argued that traditional administrative law approaches should be modified to find new ways of applying public norms to private actors (Aman 2002; Freeman 2003). From this broader perspective of regulation it can be seen that “private” economic actors also may take on a regulatory role. This may occur if the state adopts a policy of “deregulation”, leaving a void which may be filled by a non-state actor. Thus, private bodies may themselves assume tasks which are of a public character, or entail provision of “public goods”. The role of private entities may even extend to controlling public as well as private activities (Scott 2002), for example bond rating agencies (which classify state as well as corporate debt), and technical standards compliance certification institutions, both of which assess public as well as private entities.
State Transformations The so-called “retreat of the state” left a gap which was quickly filled by new corporatist institutions and techniques of regulation. In place of C
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administration based on close social ties within closed corporate state bureaucracies, new types of formalized regulation have emerged. But state restructuring has stumbled through an often bewildering variety of experiments, with many dramatic failures and few clear successes.3 These developments have been seen as a shift from the Keynesian welfare state to a “new regulatory state” better able to deal with the “risk society” (Braithwaite 2000). Thus, the state having failed to deliver on expectations raised by state-centric models now has a new role of trying to maintain coherence via steering, since roles previously considered as those of government have been recast as societal problems concerning a variety of actors (Kooiman 1993; Pierre 2000). Influential ideologists have argued for a redefinition of the role of government, to separate “steering” from “rowing’: politicians should define aims and targets but subcontract delivery, which should be competitive and aim to meet the needs of customers (Osborne and Gabler 1992). More critically, followers of Foucault have argued that the state is a “mythical abstraction”, without either the unity or functionality attributed to it, and suggested a broader understanding of “governmentality” as involving “a proliferation of a whole range of apparatuses pertaining to government and a complex body of knowledges and ‘know-how’ about government” (Rose and Miller 1992:175). In this light, the shift from welfarism to neoliberalism means, according to Rose and Miller, that: private enterprise is opened, in so many ways, to the action at a distance mechanisms that have proliferated in advanced liberal democracies, with the rise of managers as an intermediary between expert knowledge, economic policy and business decisions (1992:200).
The disintegration of hierarchical bureaucratic structures in both the public and private sectors can be seen as a shift in modes of social control towards more dispersed and internalized disciplinary forms, “from the cage to the gaze” (Reed 1999). From a broader Marxist perspective, the shift towards new forms of governance may be seen as rooted in the transition from the Fordist model of industrial capitalism based on the mass worker, to a latecapitalist high-technology economy and knowledge society. In many ways this entails new processes of socialization of economic activity and de-commodification, as production is increasingly immaterial and much more directly social (Hardt and Negri 2000, 2005). Thus, there has been a shift to “lifestyle” products and the “services” economy. The increased importance of intangibles and services means that the product of labor is no longer physically commodified, creating new tensions both for the appropriation of surplus value in production, and its valorization in circulation. At the same time, this has entailed pressures towards re-commodification, as seen in the very concept of the sale of C
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“services”, as well as the increased emphasis on intangible property, or intellectual property rights (IPRs), ranging through trademarks, copyright, patents, and other proprietary rights over information and culture. While this re-commodification and re-individualization may re-establish the conditions for production and circulation based on exchange, it also requires dense institutional networks to manage the flows of information and remuneration. These institutions and networks are generally of a hybrid public–private character, for example the Rights Remuneration Organizations (RROs) that license activities such as the public playing of music, or the networks of peer-production based on “bazaar governance” regulating open-source software and other types of knowledge products (Benkler 2002; Hope 2008; von Hippel 2005). These changes have led to increasingly formalized regulatory arrangements, generally based on a fragmented but loosely coordinated “epistemic community” of regulators, whose mainly private negotiations with corporate managers are periodically brought to public attention by a drama or crisis. It has proved very difficult to design an adequate institutional framework enabling public debate of key issues such as the extent of public service obligations and the proper scope of competition, due to the substantial reliance on technocratic legitimation. In sectors such as telecommunications, key issues arise such as interconnection rights and the funding of new investment in networks. In the case of the railways in the UK, the public regulator–private operator split broke down due to the crisis over safety standards dramatized by successive rail crashes in 2000–2001, leading to the establishment of a new type of body in Network Rail. This is a “public interest company” supposed to “operate on a sound commercial basis”, with instead of shareholders, members representing both the rail industry and the public interest. The difficulties facing the transformation of national states have been exacerbated since they also resulted from the pressures of renewed globalization. In the UK, the very machine which was used to push through the drastic restructurings, the strong parliamentary central government, was itself becoming “hollowed out”, with the transfer of significant powers upwards to Brussels, and downwards to Edinburgh and Cardiff. Similarly in other countries, various types of national corporate-state arrangements have also been undermined, although they have followed different trajectories. The relatively formal neo-corporatist institutions which in some countries, especially in continental Europe, tied governments, business and trade unions together in bargaining over wage rates and macro-economic policy could not easily be maintained in a more competitive and fluid world economy. The attempt to recreate institutions to represent “organized interests” at the regional level in Europe also failed (Schmitter and Streeck 1991). Instead, the EU has evolved into a paradigm of networked governance (Castells 1998:ch 5; Kohler-Koch and Eising 1999). From the 1980s, C
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the earlier impetus to supranationalism and integration gave way to the “new approach” to harmonization of technical regulations (Joerges 1990; Woolcock 1996). This aimed to reduce the role of European legislation to the setting of minimum essential requirements, based as far as possible on performance, leaving it to technical organizations (public, private or hybrid, but anyway usually dominated by industry experts) to specify detailed standards. To complement this, the European Court of Justice developed the principles of mutual recognition and equivalence of standards, to prevent national regulations from acting as a barrier to imports. The dynamic of state transformation has obviously played out differently in different contexts: most starkly in the collapse of state socialism, which clearly experienced a systemic social breakdown, both of political autocracy and economic centralization. However, all states have experienced major shocks and crises leading to a variety of radical reforms, whether of US regulated corporatism, the cartelized-corporate states of Japan and Korea, or the post-colonial bureaucratized states of underdeveloped countries. Large rapidly growing countries such as China, India and Brazil also adopted new forms of public–private mix, as well as variations of layered governance. Hence, as outlined at the beginning of this section, the changes in the public and private spheres and in their interaction also have an international dimension. Economic liberalization has further exacerbated the pressures on the political sphere, which have led to its increased fragmentation and the growth of new regulatory forms. The new types of hybrid public–private regulatory networks often develop in response to the need to govern economic activities that are increasingly internationally integrated and yet take place in very dispersed and diverse geographic and cultural contexts. Indeed, public functions may more easily be provided in the global sphere by private bodies. They nevertheless face the dual difficulties of partiality towards specific private interests and power-political interference by governments. Two paradigmatic instances may serve as illustrations: international financial markets, and the internet. The liberalization of financial flows has certainly created an internationally integrated financial system, but it consists of a maze of networks involving banks and other financial firms, organizations such as exchanges and clearing houses, specialist traders of many kinds, and professionals such as lawyers, with both private associations and public bodies playing regulatory and supervisory roles. Financial markets and transactions are in fact highly regulated, but a large amount of this regulation is generated by and among market participants themselves (Abolafia 1985). For example, the terms of complex transactions in financial derivatives are governed by the standard agreements drawn up by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association.4 Perhaps better C
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known is the important role of rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poors in evaluating the credit worthiness of bond issuers, not only private firms but governments (Sinclair 2005), already mentioned above. Of course, such private regulation is not autonomous, but intersects with more public forms of supervision and control. However, as Tony Porter (1993) has argued, international public institutional arrangements have generally been developed only when private governance is absent or weak, the converse of the movement we have seen at the national level where the retreat of the state has led to the formalization and privatization of regulation. Even then, the role of public international bodies often takes the form of “meta-regulation”, or the supervision of the adequacy of private regulation. Thus, for example, the capital adequacy standards developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) have been refined in the so-called Basel II Capital Adequacy Framework which is now being introduced. The BCBS still maintains its basic rule of an 8% ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets, as well as its general standards on definition of capital. However, the new approach in Basel II allows each bank to decide its own risk management system (generally based on well known models), provided it meets specified minimum requirements, and is subject to review by the local supervisor of the bank’s systems and controls (BCBS 2005: 2). Thus, the BCBS essentially acts as a node of coordination in a network of public–private regulatory arrangements. Like financial markets, the internet, although highly decentralized and apparently anarchic, is in fact a highly ordered system. Also in somewhat similar fashion to finance, the development of the internet has been substantially driven by the formulation of norms and standards by nonofficial groups, networks and institutions.5 Probably most successful has been the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which has been responsible for developing the technical standards that enable the internet to function and grow. The IETF itself developed in an entirely unplanned way, as a network of specialists, who evolved very non-bureaucratic methods of cooperation, based on principles which later became clarified as: open process, volunteer participation, technical competence, consensual and practical decision-making, and responsibility.6 Of course, this work has been greatly facilitated because its subject matter is specialist and the participants may be said to share a common commitment and understandings, and hence form an “epistemic community” (Haas 1992). However, as Michael Froomkin points out in his fascinating analysis of the IETF and internet regulation (2003), the commitment of the IETF community is not to a closed apolitical technicist task, but to the much broader normative value of ubiquitous global communication (2003:810–811). He contrasts the IETF with C
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another key body, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). ICANN was also set up as a private entity, although at the suggestion of the US government, to take over from the IETF the task of managing internet domain names, and it claimed to model its procedures on those of the IETF. However, Froomkin demonstrates that in practice ICANN’s methods have been closed and secretive rather than open, and its decisions made by fiat rather than consensus (Froomkin 2003:838ff, especially 852–853), resulting in severe legitimation problems. This he attributes to the greater political and especially economic contentiousness of the subject-matter, as well as ICANN’s institutional design failures.
Regulatory Interactions in Multilayered Network Governance The previous section sketched out the tensions in the classical liberal state system which have led to its fragmentation, involving both changes in the nature and interaction of the private and public, and the shift towards networked international coordination, which distinguishes the post-liberal from the classical liberal system. This section will look more closely at three major features of these international regulatory networks.
The Destabilization of Normative Hierarchy A central feature of global governance in the classical liberal state system was that legal rules fell into relatively clear categories and hierarchies, with international law binding states, and national or local law governing legal persons. This made it possible, at least in principle, to determine the validity of rules and to decide which should apply to a particular transaction or activity. In networked governance, normative systems overlap and inter-penetrate each other, and the determination of the legitimacy of an activity under any one system of norms is rarely definitive, since powerful actors are usually able to mount a challenge by reference to another system. In addition, the fragmentation of the public sphere often entails the creation of largely private arenas to which only the more privileged or powerful economic actors have access, resulting in a kind of privatization of justice. Thus, international law now includes supranational law, which may have direct applicability to legal persons. However, this possibility is not definitive, since the interaction is often indeterminate or problematic. The most developed supranational law is EC law, which was greatly expanded by the ECJ’s development of the jurisprudence of “direct effect” of some treaty provisions and Directives (which formally are addressed to states not legal persons). Yet managing these interactions depends on accommodations between the national-level authorities and C
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courts and those at the EU level, as shown for example in the German Constitutional Court’s reservation of Kompetenz–Kompetenz in its famous Maastrichturteil. Importantly, the supranational character of EC law gives private parties (especially firms) a legal basis to challenge national laws and administrative practices which might limit the market freedoms enshrined in EC law. Supranational law is much less developed globally, at least from the formal viewpoint. Notably, states have taken care to insist that WTO law does not have direct applicability as part of national law. Nevertheless, the WTO’s rules impose sweeping obligations (or in WTO-speak “disciplines’) with which national measures must comply. This compliance is ensured both by elaborate monitoring procedures through the WTO’s Committees, and in the final resort by binding adjudication through the WTO’s powerful Dispute-Settlement Procedure. Although this is formally a state–state procedure, the two most powerful trade blocs have established procedures to give (some) private entities procedural rights to invoke WTO law at national level: in the USA under section 301 of the Trade Act, and in the EC under the Trade Barrier Regulation. These create what has been described as a system of public–private partnerships, so that “WTO law, while formally a domain of public international law, profits and prejudices private parties” (Shaffer 2003:3). An even starker example of the carving out of a specific and privileged jurisdictional arena is provided by international investment or market liberalization agreements.7 These give “investors” (essentially TNCs) a direct right of access to international arbitration if they consider that national laws or administration have contravened the broad nondiscrimination and property-protection provisions of the treaty. This basically enables the private rights of a legal person to be used to challenge the public policy decisions of government and state bodies, using secretive procedures modeled on private commercial arbitration. The effect is to destabilize the legitimacy of national laws, even if the outcomes of such arbitrations rarely override national law in any definitive way. The threat of such a claim, which could lead to an award which may run to hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as the cost of defending it, gives foreign investors a powerful weapon especially against poor states.8 This grant by states to private parties of a right to international arbitration acts in effect as a governance mechanism, in which private rights, enforced by an extension of the private procedure of commercial arbitration, may override formal state law (Van Harten 2007). There has also been a growth of what may be called infra-state regulation: legal and quasi-legal regulatory arrangements, involving both public and private, as well as hybrid, bodies. For example, tax authorities in the main OECD countries have developed procedures for C
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the coordination of taxation of related members of corporate groups (TNCs). These operate under provisions in bilateral tax treaties which authorize information exchange, as well as consultations between the “competent authorities”, for the purposes of ensuring that taxation is in accordance with the treaty. These procedures enable international consultations between the two (or sometimes more) tax authorities and the TNC (or its advisers, usually the large accountancy firms), in particular to debate and negotiate the methodology each firm uses for setting transfer prices for goods and services supplied between its constituent parts. Agreements between the competent authorities, which may relate to individual cases or to more general issues of interpretation of the treaty, have an ambiguous legal status: they may be treated as no more than a statement of intent by and between administrative authorities, although a good argument can be made that they are binding international agreements (Picciotto 1992:297–299). They clearly have a very hybrid character, with elements of public and private, national and international law. A major destabilizing factor is the creation of jurisdictions of convenience or “havens”. These entail a kind of privatization of sovereignty (Palan 2002), in which a legal enclave offering privileges for certain types of private business is created, often designed by lawyers acting as intermediaries between government and private interests. These aim to provide the beneficiaries with a legal refuge or protection from the laws of other states, without needing to relocate in any real sense since they can use the legal fictions of corporations or trusts. A notable example is “flags of convenience”, which originated in the 1920s when the US Board of Shipping allowed the registration of US-owned ships in Panama, to reduce costs while ensuring availability of the ships in wartime.9 The flag states essentially offer a ship registration service, the administration of which may have little or no physical contact with the state itself, being sub-contracted to private firms. Notably, the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry is run from Vienna, Virginia USA, which made it possible to continue operation uninterrupted, despite the collapse of the Liberian state due to civil war.10 The actual surveys and the issuing of safety certificates for ships are done by recognized private classification societies, including the American Bureau of Shipping and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping.11 Due to longstanding concerns about the safety standards of such “open registries”, led by a long-running campaign by the International Transport Federation (ITF) of trade unions, a form of global governance of shipping has emerged, albeit with some significant gaps and deficiencies.12 It combines international standards for safety both of ships and of shipboard employment conditions,13 with enforcement by port state inspection systems of ships, and by the ITF of employment conditions, coordinated through international networks (ITF 2005). C
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As these examples show, networked governance disrupts the channels of democratic accountability, which in the classical liberal system are through national constitutional structures, ideally parliamentary representative democracy. A number of suggestions have been made to help structure global governance arenas in ways that can facilitate democratic deliberation, insulated as far as possible from private or special interests, and based on principles of accountability, transparency, responsibility, and above all, empowerment (Picciotto 2001). This does not mean abandoning existing democratic structures, but suggests that they must be complemented by new forms of direct democratic deliberation based on transparency and accountability in all arenas.
The Blurring of Distinctions between Normative Forms A corollary of the erosion of the hierarchical norm structure of classical liberalism has been both the erosion of the public–private law distinction (discussed already above), and the growth of formal law but also complemented by quasi-legal forms of regulation in global arenas. These are generally referred to as “soft law”, as opposed to formal “hard law”, and include a wide range of types, such as codes, guidelines, declarations, sets of principles, and memorandums of understanding (MOUs).14 Although not binding law, in practice they often have considerable normative force, as much or more than does “hard” international law, which in any case mainly relies on consensual rather than coerced compliance. Such soft law forms may be used in inter-state agreements, which often take the form of declarations or “proclamations”, for example the principles of sustainable development, announced at the conclusion of major international conferences from Stockholm in 1972, to Rio in 1992 and Johannesburg in 2002. From a formal lawyer’s viewpoint they may seem to consist of no more than fine-sounding rhetoric. However, they are linked to action programmes (in particular, “Agenda 21” adopted at Rio), and their principles may be given substantive effect, or lead to more specific hard-law instruments.15 Sometimes, this type of instrument is chosen to emphasize the aspirational character of the norms, as with the ILO’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the adoption of which was strongly resisted by the governments of some developing countries. Its impact therefore greatly depends on the effectiveness of the procedures for encouraging and monitoring compliance. These may be quite rigorous, for example the implementation of the Recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has been closely monitored, through “peer-review” procedures, and “naming and shaming” jurisdictions which fail to meet the standards. The efforts to reform the “international financial architecture”, following financial crises both of states and financial institutions in the 1990s, led to the formation of the Financial Stability C
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Forum, which identified a Compendium of Standards, and since 1999 compliance of national regulation with these has been monitored by the Standards and Codes programme of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, supported by the FATF (IMF & WB 2005). Codes and guidelines have been developed since the late 1960s to establish standards at the international level addressed directly to firms. Here again, a non-binding form is often deliberately chosen, yet the implementation in practice could be rigorous (though often has not been), and could involve adoption or transformation of the soft law norms into hard law. For example, the Baby-Milk Marketing Code adopted as a Recommendation by the WHO in 1981 has been used as a basis for national legislation in a number of countries, although the main pressure for compliance has come from a sustained and vigorous international campaign.16 In the 1990s, following a decade or more of pressures by business on states to reduce regulation and dismantle barriers to market access, TNCs themselves began to introduce corporate Codes of Conduct in order to reassure customers and other stakeholders of their adherence to international standards of social and environmental responsibility (Haufler 2001; Jenkins, Pearson and Seyfang 2002). Firms have generally preferred “voluntary” codes, stressing the need for flexibility to adapt the norms to the specific characteristics of the business, and the desirability of raising standards by encouragement and self-generated commitment, as opposed to the rigidity and instrumentalism of externally imposed and bureaucratically enforced law. Corporate critics and skeptics have countered by challenging the effectiveness of self-selected and self-monitored standards, and have argued that competitive equality requires generally applicable rules rather than self-selected codes. However, on closer examination it becomes clear that the sharp distinction between voluntary codes and binding law is inaccurate: codes entail a degree of formalization of normative expectations and practices, and may be linked to formal law, both public and private, in various complex ways which may be described as a “tangled web” (Webb and Morrison 2004), so the question is how they should be articulated (Picciotto 2003). Finally, the growth of international regulatory networks linking public bodies at “sub-state” level has involved the use of novel forms of agreement, especially the MOU. These are often very specific and establish detailed arrangements: for example, there is a network of MOUs between regulators of financial markets and exchanges for cooperation in information exchange and other enforcement activities.17 These also may be stated to be “non-binding” although in practice compliance may be quite effective. In this case, the formally non-binding character is because it is often not clear whether they fall under national or international, public or private law. Under international law, sub-state or non-state bodies are not considered to have the capacity C
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to bind the state or government concerned. In some cases they may be regarded simply as “private” contracts, if the parties are legal persons: for example, agreements between stock exchanges or futures markets to enable reciprocal trading of products or cooperation in market monitoring and enforcement. Yet they may have a very hybrid character, as with the international tax “competent authority agreements” discussed above. Generally, the growth of soft law and the blurring of the public– private law divide indicates that the range and depth of international normative coordination no longer fits within the classical liberal model of agreements negotiated by central governments on behalf of states (Reinicke and Witt 2000). Soft law allows regulatory regimes to be developed and applied directly by those involved, rather than through diplomatic channels and foreign offices, and for them to involve a wider range of participants regardless of their formal status as state, public, or private entities. Soft law is not necessarily fuzzy or vague, it is often specialized and detailed; but it does provide greater flexibility for adaptation to change. Equally, it may be ad hoc or particularistic, and lack independent mechanisms for ensuring and monitoring compliance.
Functional Fragmentation, Technicization and Legitimacy The fragmentation of statehood and the transfer of specific functions to relatively autonomous public bodies is also a further extension of the process of technicization in the modern state. In the traditional Weberian perspective, technocracy is seen as a means merely of implementing policies which have been formulated through political processes. From this viewpoint, the growth of delegation to specialist regulators is a response to the problems of governing increasingly complex societies, by giving greater autonomy to technocratic decision-makers within a policy framework set by the government. However, the new forms of governance are more decentralized and interactive, which further exacerbates the problems that Weber already identified with controlling the irresistible advance of bureaucracy to safeguard individual freedom and democracy (Weber [1914] 1978:1403). Indeed, functional fragmentation may also be seen as reflecting the broader changes in the nature and relationship of the “public” and the “private” sphere which we have been discussing. The transfer of specific public functions to what have been described as “nonmajoritarian” regulators (Coen and Thatcher 2005) is often justified in terms of the need to insulate some areas of decision-making from influence by private special interests and the short-term considerations which dominate electoral politics. Hence, it also reflects changes in political processes, with the breakdown of representative government, which “public choice” theorists have argued is prone to capture by C
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private interests (Buchanan and Tollison 1984). In place of partydemocracy there has been the emergence of what Bernard Manin has called “audience democracy” (Manin 1997), increasingly based on populist forms of political mobilization. This in turn poses the question of whether the decentralization or fragmentation of hierarchical government based on formal or instrumental rationality, and the shift to networked governance requiring reflexive interactions and based on communicative rationality, may offer a basis for new forms of deliberative or discursive democracy (Dryzek 1990, 1999). The changes in public–private interactions discussed above make it vital to find ways to remodel the sphere of political debate and decision-making. Central to this are questions about the nature of technocratic governance and the basis of its legitimacy. This is especially relevant to global governance, since much of the activity of international regulatory networks has been generated by technical specialists or “epistemic communities”. There is certainly evidence that global expert action networks have been extremely effective in mobilizing and sustaining global governance regimes. Far from being depoliticized, however, such networks often include activists as well as technical specialists; and even if the issues are specialized, the participants share common social values. This seems to be the case, for example, with the computer scientists of the IETF who have developed and maintained internet standards, discussed above. The contribution of technical specialists to international diplomacy is often to help gain acceptance for proposals which are put forward as objective and scientific, although actually carefully calibrated for political acceptability. In this context, the importance of expertise suggests that the dangers of technicism must be addressed. This is especially the case since so many decisions now entail inputs often from different specialist or expert fields, as well as an evaluation from the general public perspective. Technical rationality can operate in an autocratic way, if it seeks to claim a spurious authority. This can be counter-productive, as has occurred in the frequent episodes when it has resulted in a spiral of public mistrust of science, and scientists’ despair at public ignorance. To avoid technicism, specialists need to acknowledge the ways in which their techniques rest on formal models based on assumptions which allow them to abstract the specific aspects of an issue or the data with which they are concerned from the entirety and complexity of the issue in the real world. Since the conclusions they can reach based on such assumptions can only have a partial or conditional validity, they should not be treated as determinative of the issue as a whole, but as an important contribution to more general public debates. Scientific responsibility should therefore include cognitive openness and reflexivity (Dryzek 1990, 1999).18 C
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Conclusions This article has argued that the far-reaching changes in both the sphere of politics and that of the economy have further eroded the distinction between the public and private. The transition to a new form of statehood, described as networked governance, creates a new terrain of power and struggle. However, it would be illusory once again to attempt the separation of public and private. What is needed is to develop modes of interaction which can more effectively ensure the primacy of public over private interests in the management of economic activities generally, while preserving the merits of decentralization of the operation of economic activities. The new forms of governance are far from stable, but contradictory and crisis ridden. Various types of linkages have emerged between different but related regulatory networks, but their kaleidoscopic character makes it difficult to establish overall coherence. This gives private parties, both individuals and especially legal persons such as firms and organizations, opportunities to manage regulatory interactions through strategies of forum selection and forum shifting. Indeed, as has been argued by Boltanski and Chiapello (1999:444), power in a networked world derives from mobility and connectedness. A wide variety of social movements have also developed counterhegemonic strategies based on fluid and flexible networks, although they are as likely to be anarchic and destructive as emancipatory and progressive. Hence, the most important need is to rescue democracy by supplementing and reinforcing the traditional structures of political representation and accountability with new forms of direct democratic deliberation.
Endnotes 1
This paper is based on research conducted over a long period, especially during a Research Fellowship generously granted by the Economic and Social Research Council 2004–7 (Award RES-000-27-0117). The material in this article has been discussed at greater length in a book, Sol Picciotto, Regulating Global Capitalism, to be published by Cambridge University Press in April 2011. 2 In Marxist terms, in late capitalism state intervention is very important in the competitive and uneven process of equalization of the rate of profit. 3 For a strong critique of the New Zealand experiments, which were for a time put forward as a paradigm for others to follow, see Kelsey (1995). Michael Moran (2003) has provided a detailed study of the emergence of the new British regulatory state, as a sharp transition from the stagnating traditional British system of government by “club rule’, which had legitimized a high degree of independence from state control throughout corporate business, finance and the professions, from 1880 to 1980. He cogently argues that the class compromises which underpinned this system were weakened by the end of empire and the collapse of social cultures of deference to authority in the 1960s, and its transformation was precipitated by the economic crisis of the 1970s and the ensuing renewed burst of globalization, which revealed the exhaustion of both the traditional modes of public operation and of the regulation of private corporations, C
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neither of which provided adequate accountability of managers. However, the shift from closed communities of self-regulation to the formalization and codification of regulation resulted in what he describes as a roller-coaster ride of hyper-innovation and policy disasters, “from stagnation to fiasco” (Moran 2003:155ff). 4 ISDA: see www.isda.org 5 Even though, as is well known, the internet began as a US military project; for further details see Leiner et al (2003). 6 See “A Mission Statement for the IETF”, Request for Comments 3935, October 2004; available from http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3935.txt (accessed 15 February 2005). 7 The main type are Bilateral Investment Agreements (BITs), which have been used since 1959, but have developed into a much more widespread network since the 1990s (UNCTAD 2000). The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a multilateral agreement between Canada, Mexico and the USA, includes a strong version of such a treaty as its Chapter XI. An attempt to negotiate an ambitious Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) through the OECD collapsed in 1998 (Picciotto and Mayne 1999). 8 From 1987 to the end of 2005 some 219 such cases are reported to have been formally initiated, although the number is likely to be understated since there is no obligation to publish complaints. Over 40 of these have been against Argentina, mostly claiming compensation for losses resulting from its decision to abandon the link of the peso with the dollar; so far one of these has been successful, resulting in an award of $133 million, although the Argentine government is attempting to block the award (UNCTAD 2005). On the other hand, a private tribunal rejected a $970 million claim brought against the USA by Methanex, a Canadian company, alleging that Californian gasoline regulations discriminated against methanol which it produced. Cases may be affected by political controversy: for example, Aguas del Tunari, a majority foreign-owned firm which had been awarded a concession to run privatized water services in Cochabamba, Bolivia brought a claim for compensation for cancellation of the concession due to strong local opposition to the privatization and the consequent sharp increases in water charges; in January 2006 the claim was reported to have been withdrawn, although the firm had won the initial jurisdictional stage of the dispute. This was a controversial decision, since by a 2–1 majority the tribunal accepted that the complaint could be brought under the Bolivia– Netherlands investment treaty, even though the main investor was the US firm Bechtel, which created a Netherlands holding company as part of a financial restructuring and for tax reasons following the grant of the concession. This decision, in common with others brought through the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), can be found at http://www.worldbank.org/icsid/cases/ An excellent source is Investment Treaty News produced by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (available at http://www.iisd.org/investment/itn/). 9 William Cromwell, of the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, having helped to engineer the US-supported secession of Panama from Colombia in 1903, became that country’s representative in the USA, and also acted for US shipowners, so was able to mediate their negotiations with the Shipping Board; he was succeeded in this role by John Foster Dulles, the future Secretary of State (Carlisle 1981:16). 10 This arrangement was originally devised by a group including former US State Department officials, headed by Edward R. Stettinius, who after working in the corporate sector at General Motors and as chairman of US Steel, had been Roosevelt’s Secretary of State. In 1947 he formed Stettinius Associates with other former State Department staff, and established a number of development projects in Liberia on a profit-sharing basis with the government, of which the ship registry became the most long-lasting; indeed it became the leading flag of convenience by 1955. The Stettinius group drafted Liberia’s Maritime Code (with contributions from Esso and State Department lawyers), aiming to take over the flags of convenience business from Panama, one of its advantages (from the perspective of shipowners) being that the administration of the ship registry C
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was sub-contracted to a private company based in the USA (Carlisle 1981). During the 1990–1996 civil war its contribution to the Liberian government budget increased from 10–15% to 90%. However, in 1996 Charles Taylor, who had launched the rebellion in 1989 and was at that time a member of a six-person Council of State, initiated challenges to International Registries Inc of Virginia (IRI) which was running the registry, and from which Taylor had been unable to obtain funds during the civil war. Legal proceedings were begun in the US courts alleging that IRI was diverting shipowners from Liberia to the Marshall Islands registry, and was failing to account properly to Liberia for its receipts. Taylor worked with a US lawyer, Lester Hyman, and on Taylor becoming President of Liberia the Liberian government signed an agreement with Hyman for the establishment of a new company, the Liberian International Shipping and Corporate Registry (LISCR), which took over the business in 2000 (United Nations Security Council 2001). It continues to provide a significant proportion of Liberian government revenue, although competition for the ship registry business, as well as the costs of ensuring adequate safety standards for the ships it registers, mean that LISCR makes profits mainly from the corporate registry side of the business (United Nations Security Council 2001; interview information), which essentially facilitates tax avoidance. 11 See http://www.liscr.com/. Ten such bodies have formed the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS), which in December 2005 adopted a set of Common Structural Rules for ship classification and approval (see http://www.iacs.org.uk/csr/index.html). 12 See Couper et al (1999:172–176); Gerstenberger and Welke (2002); some argue that the central dynamic of “flagging out” is to avoid regulation, and that even if Port State Control has tightened enforcement by the main flag authorities, it has exacerbated the problem of “race to the bottom” due to the emergence of new competitors (Alderton and Winchester 2002). The main problem is perhaps rather that regulatory fragmentation creates a lack of coordination between regulation of ship safety standards (which have improved overall), and other issues especially taxation and labor standards. 13 The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the intergovernmental body with primary responsibility for shipping, was committed to the principle of regulation by the flag state, despite the failure to establish a genuine link requirement. However, the ITF campaigns led to the adoption by the International Labour Organization (ILO), of Convention 147 on Minimum Standards in Merchant Ships in 1976. This requires flag states to exercise effective jurisdiction over their ships and to establish laws and regulations covering a range of safety standards and shipboard employment conditions “substantially equivalent” to those in a specified list of related ILO conventions. Importantly, however, article 4 gave jurisdiction for port states to enforce these standards, including taking measures necessary to rectify conditions “clearly hazardous to safety or health”, although they must also not “unreasonably detain or delay the ship”. This provided encouragement and authority for the development of a network of arrangements for inspection to enforce international standards using Port State Control, beginning with the Paris group of European countries, followed by AsiaPacific, Caribbean and Latin American groups. In this way, cooperating maritime authorities have established sophisticated inspection systems, based on checklists of internationally agreed standards, deficiency reporting, a computerized database, and the ultimate sanction of detention (see http://www.parismou.org). This has been further strengthened by the IMO’s reorientation to accepting that its standards should be internationally enforceable, rather than relying entirely on the flag state. 14 See generally Shelton (2000). 15 For example, the Montreal Protocol on Substances Depleting the Ozone Layer, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. 16 A key role has been played by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) which is a grassroots-based non-governmental organization (NGO), although it has C
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received substantial support from UNICEF. Details on the monitoring of compliance with the Code may be found on its website (http://www.ibfan.org). The early history of this Code was recounted by Chetley (1986), and a more recent account of corporate codes which deals with it in detail is Richter (2001). 17 These grew on a bilateral basis in the 1980s, but became coordinated through the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), in which the public supervisory authorities agreed the Boca Declaration of 1996, which is intended to augment the MOUs agreed between the (private) exchanges themselves; the Boca Declaration and the lists of MOUs between supervisory authorities are available on the IOSCO website at http://www.iosco.org/library/index.cfm?section=mou 18 Michael Froomkin’s interesting account and analysis of the governance of the internet (mentioned already above), suggesting that the success of the IETF in terms of both efficacy and legitimacy was due largely to its essentially democratic participative procedures, which he argues is an exemplar of Habermasian practical discourse ethics; in contrast, ICANN suffered a legitimation crisis, because its operations were secretive and claimed legitimacy from a rigid corporatist representation system (Froomkin 2003).
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Feminist Perspectives on the Internationalization of The State Birgit Sauer and Stefanie W¨ohl Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Neues Institutsgeb¨aude, Universit¨atsstraße 7, A-1010 Vienna, Austria;
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract: The state is often described in transition: public spaces are rearranged by private companies, national social welfare is being privatized to some extent, and supranational institutions have more influence on national policies. “A view from the kitchen” (Diane Elson) is helpful for understanding the changing dynamics of states and societies because different women are affected by these policies in different and often ambiguous ways: women of the globalized South migrate to the North, creating global care chains, while women in Western industrialized countries are confronted with changing welfare regimes, leaving mainly highly educated women to profit from this situation. This article contributes to feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization. Our feminist materialist perspective allows a critical view on dominance and power in “governance”. Thus, the article adds to feminist debates on globalization from the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance from the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations. Keywords: gender, state transformation, feminist materialist state theory, global governance critique, re-masculinization of politics
Asking Gender-Critical Questions: An Introduction The feminist literature of the last decade has usually been rather sceptical about the consequences of globalization for women (see, among others, Klingebiel and Randeria 1998; Meyer and Pr¨ugl 1999; Sassen 1996, 1998; Sauer 2001a). For example, structural adjustment measures put women in Africa in a precarious and exploitable position between subsistence and informal economy (Connelly 1996; Mulyampiti 2001). Additionally, in the Asian globalization crisis, women were especially affected by unemployment (Elson 2002:29ff), and the reconstruction of welfare states in countries of the North, despite all the critique of the “patriarchal welfare state”, was seen as an unfriendly act towards women. Both as employees in these welfare systems and as those reliant on social benefits in the form of childcare or financial support— women are negatively affected (see, among others, Jenson 1996; Sainsbury 1996; Wright 1997). Social reproduction is still politically ignored as a crucial topic in processes of global restructuring; instead, Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 108–128 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00813.x C 2010 The Authors C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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welfare-to-work programmes have been installed, not only in the United States (Mitchell, Marston and Katz 2003) but also in strong welfare states such as Germany and Austria. The globalization of politics and state transformation, on the other hand, is perceived as being far more positive (see, among others, Holland-Cunz 2000; Meyer and Pr¨ugl 1999). In the last decade economic globalization and political internationalization gave birth to new forms of political decision-making at international, national and local levels. In political science, these new forms are termed “governance” (Pierre and Peters 2000). Examples of such governance structures apply, on the international terrain, to the political decision-making regimes of the European Union and the United Nations, and on the national level, to the new negotiation networks in the local area, and to extraparliamentary forms of cooperation on specific topics (for example, the German “Ethikrat”, or Ethics Council). The characteristic of these discussion fora and decision-making structures is that the (nation) state’s administration is no longer the dominant actor; rather, social groups are already integrated at an early stage in political processes. The state’s defining and decision-making monopoly is thereby relativized so that the attempt to create non-hierarchical, cooperative and more specifically heterarchical forms of politics is associated with governance structures. Additionally, in feminist debates in the German-speaking context, governance—especially on an international level—is seen as an opportunity structure to overcome androcentric, racist and classist forms of world order that are based on (nation) statehood and as a chance to establish more inclusive, more deliberative, more participatory and more responsive forms of political decision-making (see, among others, Holland-Cunz 2000:26). Governance structures are here conceived as a gain for women’s groups in the area of decision-making and participation, because the nation state’s hierarchical structures (must) make room for new groups of actors and women who obtain more possibilities of influencing the formulation of policies (Ruppert 2002:54). Ilse Lenz (2002:82) even considers a global “gender democracy” possible. Governance is certainly an indication of the reworking of gender relations in a globalized political space. However, besides the issue of representation, the contradictory social foundations for these new forms of statehood must also be viewed critically so as not to fall into the trap of power-blind argumentation (Brush 2003; W¨ohl 2008). Moreover, the contradictions and the hegemonic process of inclusion of subaltern positions have to be recognized in order to avoid the risk of underestimating the state-centredness of new “governance” regimes. The new institutional power structures at the national and international level as well as their neoliberal orientation, which has led to new forms of gendered exploitation of labour and new export-producing zones C
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in countries of the periphery, lead to the further vulnerability of the poorest (Wright 1997). The hegemonic “neoliberal frame” (Runyan 1999) of these policies and processes, as well as the ambiguous and repressive effects that thereby emerge can easily disappear from view (Ruf 2000:170; Young 2002). Even the political perspectives for women that governance—the new political field of action—does allow are often falsely interpreted or simply overestimated (Brand et al 2001:8). Therefore, we would like to outline the gendered processes of this international transformation of statehood. Our article seeks to contribute to these feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization with a feminist materialist approach towards state and state transformation (the second and third sections). This approach allows a critical view on dominance and power in the political field of action described as “global governance” (fourth section). Thus, we would like to add to feminist debates on globalization the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations. In the process of the restructuring of the (nation) state, one thing is certain so far: gender regimes that are fenced in by the nation state are breaking up and new gender identities are being interpellated as a foundation for political action. The dynamic of globalization can admittedly lead in the direction of further hetero-normative regendering—especially along the lines of class and ethnicity in the case of migrant women as care workers in Western countries. But economic globalization can also lead in the direction of de-gendering of social institutions such as the family and to greater gender equality, as for instance in the dual (adult) breadwinner model. Thus Western industrialized countries can no longer organize their gender regimes based on the model of the Keynesian welfare state; rather, these regimes must be readjusted. As a result, well-educated women in the North are definitely counted as being among the winners as a result of globalization and, in the course of global capital restructuring, traditional gender regimes in the countries of the South are also rearranged (Mulyampiti 2001). However, the social and political transition we currently find ourselves in has the gendered structure of modernity. There is much indication that globalization, as Janine Brodie (1994:8) writes, results in a “phallocentric restructuring”. New gender identities are developed from processes of simultaneous persistence and dissolution as well as from the non-concurrence of different social and political spaces, and individuals are required to assume these new identities. The reconfiguration of state and politics in the guise of “governance” at various local, national, and supranational levels has the organization of gender-specific, ethnic and classist structures of inequality at its foundation. It is therefore not a democratic form of political action and C
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decision-making, but instead has only narrow scope with regard to gender equality or fairness. The deregulation of political fields of action as conceived by the nation state, in the context of the internationalization of state and the development of forms of “governance”, does not as yet suggest gender-democratic structures. Rather, “governance” is the political form of regulation of still unequal “ethnicised binary gender identities” (Gutierrez Rodriguez 1999). It restructures the hierarchic topography of gender relations in the political field of action. To explore these considerations, we firstly clarify our feminist materialist concept of state and present a feminist reading of contemporary globalization processes, which reveals the gender ambivalences in the processes of state restructuring at various levels. Secondly, we outline the current social shifts in the process of economic globalization. These social changes are the material basis of current political state transformations. Thirdly, we argue that these changes show that the internationalization of state in the new forms of “governance” rests on unequal gender relations, and therefore instead of democratically increasing women’s political agency it tends to make politics less accessible to women.
Global Restructuring of State as a Hegemonic Project: an Analysis from a Feminist Materialist Perspective To grasp the gendered dimension of state transformations in the era of globalization we first need a feminist materialist concept of the state. In this perspective, the state is not only conceptualized as a bureaucratic apparatus and a liberal-democratic framework of institutions, but— according to Nicos Poulantzas—as a field of social relations and power, where social forces fight over meaning, representation and interests (Poulantzas 1973). This is the “material basis” of states. To explain state transformation it is therefore important to analyse this material basis of the state—that is, the transformation of social relations and social forces. The state is, further, the institutionalization of a discursive field of social and political identities as well as social practices (Pringle and Watson 1992). State institutions and norms originate from social discourse about the organization of social relations. The state is a terrain upon which structures of inequality are built, where they consolidate, and where hegemonic forms of perception are developed (Sauer 2001; W¨ohl 2007). Additionally, each nation state—its specific gender and ethnic regime—which Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez (1999:252) describes as “gendered ethnicity”—originates from this state-driven discourse. Typical of the patriarchal state relations of Western industrialized societies were, for instance, gender-discriminatory welfare state regimes as well as the male bias of state institutions. C
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These ethnicized gender regimes are made secure by hegemonic compromises. Common norms, systems of belief and conviction about gender, ethnicity and class make up the hegemonic foundation of any state (Stienstra 1999:265). The divisions of social spheres into public and private, or state, market and household economies, are essential techniques in these hegemonic state compromises. Furthermore, the modern state is also based on the existence of borders between nation states. All these structured differences, which are coupled with the border regimes, have always been and are still the modes of constructing social inequality: state borders and citizenship construct inequality qua ethnicity or nationality; power over resources for production, and the division of manual and mental labour, produce class inequality; and the granting of access to gainful employment or assignment to reproductive labour creates gender inequality. However, in the discourses and practices of the state, social positions and political identities are not simply prescribed compulsorily; rather, they must be actively appropriated or “contrived”. In this sense, the state is not only a repressive monolithic apparatus, but also an arena where subjects actively develop their identities and interests, and in which they could also potentially initiate change. Gender identities and gender regimes are also objects of social discourse and change. The material basis of the androcentric state and its political institutions are consequently configured by these social power relations and hegemonic constellations. Liberal democracy, the political representational form of the bourgeois-masculinist state, is not only an institutional setting of participation, of majority rule and of the selection of political elites, but rather a social relationship. Democratization then means inversely the transformation of state in a more comprehensive sense, as outlined above. The catch-all term “globalization” in mainstream literature (see, for example, Beisheim and Geworg 1997) encompasses social, political, cultural as well as economic transformation dynamics. Globalization is characterized by the dissolution of boundaries between nation states through media-communicative networking and migratory movements, the internationalization of political decision-making bodies, and the reduction of distance in space and time through rapid media interaction. Most of these concepts of economic globalization assume the decline and erosion of the nation state due to international regime-building or due to the power of international companies. Critical accounts of economic globalization and political internationalization point to the fact that “globalization” first of all refers to the almost worldwide expansion of capitalist modes of production. Critical economists and state theorists define globalization as the “unleashing” of capitalism after the decline of real socialism and the “disembedding” of capital and financial flows from national contexts. These processes do not erode nation states but C
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create a new material basis for statehood in nation states, once the political “bed” of capitalism (Altvater and Mahnkopf 1996:107). These dynamics also create new forms of political democratic representation, labelled governance, at the national and international level. The change in economic and political post-war relations is not inherently necessary for capitalism. The globalization of capitalism, like its “nationalization” after the Second World War, is politically produced and intended (Bergeron 2001:996). Globalization is also not a linear, but a multidimensional process which is temporally, spatially and socially unequal. Globalization should hence be conceptualized as a set of contingent political, economic and cultural transformation discourses and practices (see also Marchand 1996:597). The hegemonic globalization discourses and practices are one and the same: they reconfigure economic, social, political and symbolic spaces at local, national and international levels and frame them in a competitive and efficiency-related context. Globalization is hence more appropriately characterized as a “global neoliberal restructuring” (Marchand and Runyan 2000:3; emphasis added). Globalization also encompasses specific thought patterns, rooted in the minds and bodies of people, which explain the world and at the same time prefigure political solutions. In the current globalization practices, people (re)produce identities and interests and develop new norms and institutions (Brodie 1994:52). In other words, globalization as a “structural context” (Jessop 1998:280) must be appropriated by citizens: “Women and men . . . are struggling to make sense of the conditions of economic restructuring and to find better ways of living under the conditions of globalisation” (Jenson 1996:10). These new “technologies of the self” are based on neoliberal knowledge about effectivity and accomplishment, employability and forms of depreciation and exclusion associated with neoliberalism (Foucault 2000). The dynamic of global restructuring is now propelled by the processes of the drawing-up and dissolution of boundaries. Not only do new border regimes between nation states emerge, not only is the “domestic-foreign frontier” shifted (Rosenau 1997), but new limitations and boundaries also come into being within nation states between the spheres of market, state and everyday life or family economy. The market, under the magic word “deregulation”, is enlarged in comparison to the state sphere, social state regulation of work and everyday life is minimized, and finally, the ratio of employment and reproductive labour is reformatted. Globalization therefore fundamentally changes social relations—labour, reproduction, international and gender-specific division of labour, social paradigms and hegemonic compromises are restructured. The politics of neoliberal restructuring can also be characterized as a “political revolution” (Brodie 1994:55) because the spheres of the political are rearticulated and the boundaries of the political are likewise newly C
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defined. The transformations of border regimes require new state projects as well as new forms of political regulation and democratic representation, as expressed in the political paradigm of “governance”. Governance is thereby the political regulation of neoliberal social relations. Governance is a description of statehood in the context of its globalization and internationalization, of a new technique of governing and controlling. Governance consequently does not describe the “other” of state organization and dominance, it is hence not a “counter model” to the eroding nation state, it is rather its “successive form” (Brand et al 2001:9). In other words, governance is a—primarily discursive— project of the revision of dominant statehood as defined by neoliberalism and only understandable in the context of globalization of politics and economy (for more detail, see W¨ohl 2008:64ff). Global restructuring is therefore not a transformation beyond the logic of gender that then (only) affects gender relations; rather, it is an intrinsically gendered process, which on the one hand is based on specific gender arrangements, and on the other hand reproduces and thereby also modifies these arrangements (Marchand 1996:602), because the gender-specific and ethnicized grammar of current transformations is also based on a shifting of boundaries, as outlined above (Eisenstein 1997:142f). Neoliberal discourses and practices enable new gender identities and new gender relations to develop because they imply—like all hegemonic discourses—a reshuffling in everyday life and a new way of regulating the conditions of social experience. Such a conceptualization focuses on how institutional practices reproduce gender relations in the global restructuring process, but also on how gender identities, the configuration of femininities and masculinities, “communicate” the global transformation process. In the following, we seek to outline the material basis of the new form of statehood from a gender perspective. This new state form and structure originate in new gender relations, which develop out of major social shifts in the context of global neoliberal restructuring—the shift between markets and the household economy and between capitalist production in the North and the South.
The Materiality of the Neoliberal State: New Gender Relations or an Androcentric Gender Compromise? The new ways of regulating gender relations, in the countries of the North as well as in the South, focus on the reorganization of market and state, of gainful employment, as well as on the reshaping of the reproduction of population. In the context of globalization, the decline of labour is often spoken of in Western industrial countries. This thesis needs to be reformulated: society has not run out of labour; rather, traditional forms of gainful employment and the associated C
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binary division of society—men as employees and women as reproductive workers—are tailored anew. The protected segment of lifelong—masculine—fulltime employment also “loses its boundaries” or is dissolved, as are the firmly established family and reproductive labour relations. More and more men are falling out of the formalized labour force and are unprotected, exposed to the capitalist conditions of valorization—a reality that previously primarily affected women, or women reproductive workers. Even when the correlations between globalization and the transformation of working conditions are too complex to trace back to a distinct causal relationship (Leitner and Ostner 2000:40) they still allow for an explanation of the simultaneous trends of economic flexibilization and the “dissolution of the boundaries” of labour. With the orientation of national production and reproduction towards international competition and international markets, traditional forms of gender-specific division of labour as well as traditional gender identities begin to weaken. Femininity can no longer be identified merely as the responsibility for reproduction, and hegemonic masculinity is being defined less and less by lifelong employment, and increasingly by a specific kind of performance-related and efficient employment. In particular, work in the management of the world market is masculinized and coded with being white. Wendy Larner calls these groups of welleducated manager elites, who are primarily employed in finance and higher service sectors in international corporations, the “new boys” (a group to which, no doubt, a few “girls” also belong) (Larner 1996:33f). These new forms of gendering of employment are connected to ethnicity and locality. A good education will still have to be bought in global centres like the USA. This, of course, requires opportunities and resources for temporary or permanent mobility. On the other hand one can currently speak of a “feminization” of labour in three ways (Bakker 2002:18f): firstly, feminization signifies the increasing number of employed women in the so-called “First World”, as well as in the “Third World”. Capitalization means, for instance, that many women in southern Africa have the chance to engage in— although more precarious—self-employment (Mulyampiti 2001). The emancipation of women through employment and self-employment, with the concept of “entrepreneurship” for instance, strives towards the goal that women will be able to fulfil their tasks in the family (that is, reproduction) more and better than before (as argued in a paper from UNCTAD, cited in Runyan 1999:214). In Western states, educational policy since the 1970s has created conditions for women’s employment and made employment a self-evident element of feminine everyday life. A group of well-educated women is increasingly able to find entry into the established world market, into highly paid jobs, even when their progress is slowed down by the existence of a glass ceiling. However, C
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the simple financial necessity for (married) women to be employed is on the rise, since the man’s and thereby, family’s income is decreasing. In the class of the “working poor”, a McJob no longer suffices to support a family. Secondly, feminization means a casualization and informalization of labour conditions: namely, the increase in intermittent employment, unprotected employment, temporary contracts, new self-employment and part-time employment that does not secure or provide a livelihood (Jenson 1996:6). Production in the so-called “First World”, but also in the “Third World”, develops a demand for flexible working conditions which accommodate the demands of global capital: for example, parttime work is a way for companies to reduce costs (salaries, insurance, entitlement to pension). This new segment of unprotected work is a segment of women’s labour, and the demand for a feminine labour force—or more accurately, the demand for what is construed as a “feminine” labour force—is increasing. Expressed euphemistically, the demand for feminine workers fits with the necessity—primarily of mothers with small children—to combine work and family. Thirdly, feminization of employment means a decrease in the wage level to that of women’s labour—to that of “additional labour”—as well as a differentiation in women’s salaries. The politics of “structural adjustment”, for example, initiates a feminization of poverty in the South. In industrial countries women and migrants who are not well educated are ghettoized in a segment of miserably paid and casualized employment. The feminization of employment is an aspect of the contradictory redefinition of the circumstances of productive and reproductive labour. The dissolution of the boundaries of employment is accompanied in Western welfare states by a reprivatization of former state-organized sections of care-giving labour as well as other services and benefits formerly provided by the welfare state. The increasing integration of women into the labour market in the countries of the North occurred simultaneously with the withdrawal of the welfare state from specific areas. For example, all OECD countries decreased expenditures on family allowances and reprivatized the costs of childcare between 1965 and 1990—parallel to the increasing integration of women into the labour market (Mitchell and Garrett 1996). Furthermore, welfare state measures that enabled a minimum of social redistribution, further education opportunities for women and more “fair-to-women” participation in labour, fall victim to the state project of the “Schumpeterian workfare state” (Jessop 1994) and its strategies of reprivatization. This “limitation” of the welfare state pushes women back to the private realm and restricts women’s agency and selfdetermination. Diane Sainsbury (1996) concludes that women in all welfare regimes are clearly disadvantaged by this process of C
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restructuring, because it limits the fields of action and decision-making. Vulnerable social groups, like single parents, are especially and drastically affected by the restructuring of the welfare state. These strategies of reprivatization now assume that an unlimited supply of unpaid women’s labour exists, which the political transformations of the welfare state can absorb. Yet these strategies are based on a construction of family that has not existed for a long time: the nuclear family is neither a dominant form of life, nor does the idea of a single family income depict reality. Women are no longer at home in front of the stove, and the global transformations in employment contribute considerably to the fact that they also no longer return to the stove. Through the withdrawal of state and the mobilization of familial back-up systems, the private sphere is expanded and enlarged—and women are overburdened (Larner 1996:46). Because the labour of caregiving remains a form of badly paid work, these politics produce new gender relations in the private sphere: the social responsibility for the reproduction of future as well as current generations is (once again) more firmly bound to the feminine gender. A gender-specific redistribution of productive and reproductive labour is not in sight and is also politically not intended. In the course of the re-privatization of care-giving labour, households with top earners gain a new “employer function”. The integration of women into top positions in Western industrial societies ensues on the basis of a broadening of informal feminine working conditions in the home economy. The feminine members of the “global club” must and can buy a woman reproductive worker—usually from the South or from Eastern Europe (Rommelspacher 1999:245). Reproductive labour is also not only feminized, but also ethnicized. This has, in recent years, given rise to flexible and de-normalized “care-giving markets”. De-normalized means that the people employed in the home economy are usually operating in completely unprotected working conditions. Strategies of differentiation therefore cause the economic, ethnic and class differences between women in Western metropolizes to become even greater. Through the neoliberal dissolution of boundaries, the forms of international gender-specific division of labour are reconfigured. In the era of national capitalism, the international division of labour was a division of labour between zones of production and markets of nation states. International gender-specific division of labour was based on a duplication of the structures of inequality in the countries of the periphery, namely on an export of gender-unequal forms of labour and the “housewifization”1 of employment in the countries of the South as additional labour in the masculinized so-called “centres”. The international unequal division of labour has been de-territorialized over the past decades through the relocation of production and through migration streams; it is no longer tied to the locality “on-site”. Rather, C
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the international assembly line returns to the metropolises. These shifts of boundaries as well as the processes of dissolving or recreating boundaries allow ethnicized gender regimes, gender practices and gender identities to develop, especially in the industrial countries, such as in eastern Europe. Today’s border regimes construe, using citizenship, belonging to a community or the exclusion from it. Border regimes are therefore also means of regulating productive and reproductive labour, formal and informal or illegal labour. Neoliberal practices of dissolving boundaries imply first and foremost the easier crossing of boundaries for commodities and services, but these practices also imply a limitation, in terms of the exclusion of people. The new border regimes are usually gender selective and racist, because they construct subjects that are “useful” and “useable” in the local or national labour market and subjects that are “of no value” to the national economy. Women from the South primarily make up the new (sexualized) service class of the North (Gather, Geissler and Rerrich 2002). Neoliberal economic restructuring is hence not only a process of a new kind of gendering, but it is also one of “racification” (Larner 1996:40f). The changes in the relations between productive and reproductive labour result in an intensified intertwining of formal and informal labour markets in the countries of the South as well as in the countries of the North. The formal economy (of industrial countries) increasingly needs the informal, semi-public economy (of the South). The new neoliberal labour conditions thus produce new gender-coded positions of employment all over the world: the more formal the employment is, the more likely it is that it remains a white man’s reservation; the more informal it is, the greater the probability that it is the work of a non-white reproductive labourer. Marianne Marchand (1996:586) hence identifies two simultaneous and interwoven global gender-specific restructuring processes: a “masculinist” process of a highly technologized world of global finance and production, and a “feminized” globalization process of the inferior economy of sexualized and ethnicized services with intimate activities in the home or private sphere. The feminized globalization is the “privatised other” of the masculinized processes. Statehood is without a doubt undergoing changes specific to gender and ethnic identities, because of the relocation of production facilities, the conquest of global markets, and migration in a globalized world: ethnicization as a form of state discourse becomes more visible, more manifest as well as, and even in connection with, gender discourse. The “dissolution of boundaries” and condensation of space and time in the context of globalization is also a process of the intensification of gendering and ethnicizing of the worldwide production of “centres” and “peripheries” and the structures of inequality they are bound to. C
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The production of “one’s own” and of “foreign” becomes a hegemonic form of the nation state’s discourse in the process of neoliberal restructuring. Neoliberal discourses and practices are furthermore masculinist because they do not in principle eliminate the sedimented gender asymmetry; rather, they restore it—in its individual components. The economic and political restructuring process takes gender inequality into consideration as a resource to legitimize the new functional divisions and boundaries (W¨ohl 2007). Gender relations therefore remain power relations. The following section closes with a gendercritical acknowledgement of the political regulations of these global social changes. The section looks critically at global governance as a new form of statehood based on unequal gender relations.
Global Governance: Women’s Political Perspectives on the Internationalized State Denationalization and internationalization, and the fact that democracy in nation states is challenging boundaries, therefore allowing for new political spaces and needing to find new forms of institutionalization, definitely offer appealing feminist perspectives. Since the nation state as the container for democracy never was very favourable to women, it seems from a feminist point of view that in this shift there are aspects that are open and formable: even conceptualizations of a “cosmopolitization” or “post-national” democracy (see, among others, Held 1995:108ff) partially overlap with feminist ideas of democracy. Of course, the state and its forms of representation do not “erode”; rather, the state apparatus executes “a change of form in the architecture” (Altvater and Mahnkopf 1996:116). The “end of the (nation) state” is hence more accurately identified as the “adjustment” of states to the new economic doctrine: nation states primarily produce optimal conditions of valorization for local capital, or the capital it wants to attract, so as to allow it to be a high-performance player in the context of international competition (Hirsch 1995:103). This reorganization of nation states creates new political institutions and forms of representation at the national as well as the international level. These new institutions are there to “effectively” accompany, moderate and legitimatize the globalization of capital. The new forms of political representation and decision-making at the national as well as the international level must thereby be seen within the context of economic and social transformations. In the following we briefly discuss these new forms of political representation in a gendered perspective, having in mind that the project of state transformation is contested, that the internationalized state is an arena of struggles between different social forces, and one in which new identities and anti-hegemonic strategies are created. C
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Hence, the project of restructuring hegemonic masculinities through economic globalization and political internationalization has not yet been finalized, but is a contradictory and ambiguous process. On the national level, an informalization of politics can be identified in the substructures of negotiation rounds and in networks in the extraparliamentary area. State institutions are now only facilitators; they are no longer the only, or even the privileged, actors in politics. Even the importance of political parties in decision-making processes is decreasing. In these networks, the social actors as well as the social movements are no doubt partially integrated. However, these forms clearly have problematic effects: Vivien Schmidt (1995:85) speaks of “asymmetries” of state power, because through the process of informalization, primarily the power of the executive is strengthened compared with that of the legislature. In the “negotiating state”, democratically legitimate institutions lose their monopoly on political problem definition, agenda-setting and problem-solving strategies to corporatist networks, strong social groups such as industry, the churches, the media and academia. This process of “de-parliamentarization” also becomes obvious with the invention and appointment of new brain trusts, for example the “Ethikrat” (Ethics Council) in Germany which works on issues such as genetic bio-banks. These processes of “privatizing” politics result in gender-political ambivalences: the national negotiation regimes entail dedemocratization and remasculinization because they weaken any organs of representation and negotiation, like parliament, where women have fought to gain a quota of access. The decision-making in systems of negotiation also usually excludes the public. Privatization then means that politics tend to remain withdrawn from an examining public. This removal of the public results in decisions being made by old boy networks, because in these negotiation networks men are almost exclusively the actors in important positions. Usually linked to such forms of arcanization of politics is its homogenization—and a gender homogenization as well. The more intensive form of informal interweaving of lobbies, bureaucracy and private actors tends to increase the influence of men, making successful interventions for women and equality difficult. With the nation state’s loss of the primacy of regulation to capital and labour, nation states increasingly cede authority to supranational bodies like the EU or the IMF. Internationalization and denationalization of politics mean that political and social interactions are expanded beyond the nation state’s boundaries and political decisions are negotiated in international “regimes” or “governance” rounds. Compared with international relations in the years of the Cold War and to the Realist Theory of international relations, “global governance” appears to be a revolutionary paradigm shift, since it seems to indicate a shift away from C
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the ideas of military security to a model of conflict resolution through cooperation (Ruppert 2000:51ff). Politics beyond the nation state, in international networks of cooperation between women of the South and of the North, has in fact opened up new feminist fields of action in the last decade. The history of women’s NGOs at the UN conferences can in this regard be considered success stories: in this way the descriptive and therefore quantitative representation (Pitkin 1967) of women in international bodies like the World Bank and the UN has noticeably increased (D’Amico 1999), and in the context of UN conferences, women’s groups or women’s NGOs have grown to become important global actors. The fields of action and decision-making in international negotiation regimes could also be considerably expanded to include women politicians and women’s NGOs. Women’s movements became one of the central building blocks of “global governance”; in fact the international women’s movement can even be considered a co-initiator of “global governance” structures (Ruppert 2002:61). Additionally, the substantial representation of women2 was also achieved more widely in the last decade: in international regulation regimes, women’s groups were successful in gendering the political agenda (Meyer and Pr¨ugl 1999:5). Because of these engagements, it was possible to establish the political field of “international women’s politics” (Ruppert 2002:60) and make gender an important international issue. Feminist experts were able to increase the knowledge about gender in important international institutions like the UN and the World Bank, sensitizing these organizations to the questions of gender and the gender-sensitive “framing” of their political issues. The international women’s movement, for example, gave determining impetus to including women’s rights (including reproductive rights, protection from violence against women, and the recognition of rape as a war crime) on the human rights agenda (Klingebiel 2000:162; Meyer and Pr¨ugl 1999:3, 7). Similar successes can also be noted at the EU level. The European Commission, which can likewise be identified as a “governance” structure, is considered the initiator of European women’s networks (Abels 2001). The European Commission, in cooperation with the European Court of Justice, adopted quite women-friendly policies and was able to implement them in unwilling nation states like Germany. Without doubt, new “governance” forms were also fought for by international movements and NGOs, and by women’s movements. They are the results of negotiation processes between different elements of civil society, including economic actors, and the nation state’s administrative structures at national and international levels. “Global governance” is the political regulation of social relations in the process of global neoliberal restructuring, the political form of “economic regime-building” (Runyan 1999:211). This state-theoretical and C
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dominance-critical view sheds a more differentiated light on the process and structures of “global governance”. Against this background we would like to outline some of the problematic consequences of “governance” that affect the democratic configuration of gender relations. As we have shown, “governance” is a deeply gendered process. The redefinition of political space is coupled with a remasculinization of the public and institutions, as well as a narrowing of the room for manoeuvre for women’s politics. Additionally, supranational institutions were historically developed by excluding women; they are inscribed with a masculinist bias. The apparatuses of international statehood are very obviously “manned”. In powerful institutions like the World Bank, the IMF, the European Central Bank or the WTO, women are significantly underrepresented (Lenz 2002:84ff). Beyond that, women are not only marginalized in the largest organizations of global governance, but even in NGOs (Lenz 2002:79). Symbolic as well as nominalist masculinism has not been abolished on these levels. In these new political forms, women are perhaps more visibly integrated; yet the gender-specific and ethnicized invocations associated therewith are integrated into a setting that is not free of power and dominance, which reconfigures the power relations of gender, ethnicity and class: being white, being a man and belonging to the new class of the “hyperbourgeoisie” (Duclos 1998), acting worldwide, are rearticulated in the process of the transformation of the international gender-specific division of labour and have become the social foundations of power in the “new” neoliberal state. The “anarchy” of single states’ manhoods are replaced by new powerful networks of “world manhood”. The global economy and international politics create new heroes of manhood, new masculine conqueror types (Kreisky 2001:85ff): it is no longer the “warriors” and military heroes who conquer the world, although even these are also becoming more dominant; global virility obtains in the stockbroker, in the “managermanhood of transnational corporations” (Connell 1998:102) or in the mondial “spin doctor” a refined nuance—and is thereby also potentially accessible to women. The hegemonic manhood of neoliberalism is also defined by the “pattern of calculated egocentrism” of the stock market and by the “compliance and dominance of bureaucracy” (Connell 1998:101). Uta Ruppert (1998:96ff) therefore arrives at the sobering conclusion that traditionally strong international organizations are not questioned in their dominant positions by women’s NGOs, but that these organizations are in fact more interested in a political supplement of women’s organizations. This hegemonic inclusion of women’s movements fosters their image and even strengthens their power, since subaltern positions can be “silenced” through integration. They are marginalized in the political process and are dominated by commercial organizations. The C
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women’s movements of the North as well as of the South lack the resources—finances, professional and symbolic capital—to be able to participate as powerful players in the international “governance” structures (Ruppert 2000:60). Despite the growth of international organizations’ magnitudes and breadths, the international women’s movement can only expect a few improvements when it comes to their involvement or the implementation of their demands. The informal institutions of a “post-national network democracy” are just as impermeable to gender-specific themes as the national institutions, because the channels of influence are additionally installed “underground”: they seal themselves up against new, unknown women actors more successfully than the formalized structures do, because they are not transparent and are hidden from public (Sauer 2001b). The generation of international regulation patterns is by no means connected to the questioning of the reified pattern of manhood. On the contrary, even the supranational state operates traditionally masculine practices. One reason lies in the fact that the neoliberal framing of “global governance” creates and privileges the economic hegemony of international organizations like the World Bank and the WTO (Cox 1996) and “market-friendly NGOs” (Runyan 1999:212). Even feminist organizations run the risk of mutating into a “trade-related feminism” (Shiva 1995:37, cited in Runyan 1999:218)—perhaps because that is the only way they can successfully put gender issues on the political agenda. Furthermore, the danger exists that global women experts will be absorbed by the process of neoliberal hegemony and their antihegemonic potential will get lost. Gayatri Spivak criticizes, for example, the “feminist apparatchiks who identify conference organising with activism” (Spivak 1996:4, cited in Runyan 1999:212). Additionally, Christa Wichterich identifies a group of “jet-set female lobbyists” (Wichterich 1998:236, cited in Klingebiel 2000), who lack reference to women’s movements. Women are substantially underrepresented in “global governance” structures; their interests are dismissed and are only selectively perceived. Gender was indeed made a central category of international politics, and women from the so-called “Third World” were recognized for their importance to economic growth and to population politics, in short to development. But gender equality is developing much more into a resource for economic growth in the countries of the periphery (as stated in the World Bank Report 2001, ch II, cited in Ruppert 2002:56; Klingebiel 2000:164) rather than being the foundation for emancipation and empowerment. In this sense, empowerment programmes (such as reproductive rights and women’s health) are economically framed and reinterpreted, and women are assessed on the basis of their value to growth and economic development. C
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This precarious “discovery” of gender places women primarily in relation to men and to the so-called “First World” (keyword: population “explosion”). Feminine empowerment is reduced to economic success and economic efficiency, and women’s freedom is sacrificed to commercial “freedom” (Runyan 1999:218; W¨ohl 2008:69). Anne Sisson Runyan therefore fears that “governance” perceives and construes women in a way “that can undermine feminism” (Runyan 1999:210). Women are functionalized as symbols—as per Gayatri Spivak’s verdict at the Beijing Conference: “[T]he financialization of the globe must be represented as the North embracing the South. Women are being used for the representation of this unity” (Spivak 1996:2, cited in Runyan 1999:210). Thus, the global South is constructed by the feminized discourse of the North, instead of “governance” advancing gender equality.
Conclusions In this article we have shown that “global governance” is not a genderdemocratic alternative to masculinist forms of decision-making at the national level. Global governance in our feminist materialist perspective is a new form of statehood, originating in the (global) change of social relations in the context of neoliberal restructuring. While the forms of global governance at first glance promise a transformation of the state apparatus towards more participation and inclusion of women’s movement actors in decision-making, a second look at social power relations reveals that global governance is the restructuring of patriarchal statehood in the process of globalization and thus a political form which neoliberal restructuring requires in advancing the global project of capitalist transformation. The advancement of masculinist hegemony of the international state is still an incomplete project in which women’s movements can intervene and which they can change. Many aspects of this neoliberal project are of course already in place, yet the deregulation of national patriarchal fields of action also allows chances for anti-hegemonic political action. For feminists, the chance that remains is the paradoxical intervention of anti-state politics with state actors at national and international levels—and thereby also the engagement in “governance” structures. State- and dominance-critical reflections must certainly remain part of such an emancipatory project if it does not want to be defeated in the struggle against economic and masculinist hegemony. At the same time, feminist politics should not overlook that it is itself a part of the neoliberal discourse to negate and disarticulate existing political—specifically women’s political—conditions, resistances and oppositions. Now, as before, the everyday life of women is the source of discrepancy and contradictions. Women’s movements in the global C
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South could sing a loud song about this (Bergeron 2001:1000f). Feminist perspectives can reveal these contradictions of women’s everyday practices, show the gaps and broken pieces that neoliberal restructuring leaves behind, politicize and change them. These “politics from the kitchen” (Elson 2002) are still a way to more democracy— and to politicizing contradictions in the male hegemonic project of globalization. However, the latter requires more feminist theoretical work on the transformation of statehood to fill remaining gaps (Rai and Waylen 2008). The focus on state theory in our article has been on a materialist conception of the state, relying on a neo-marxist debate in the Germanspeaking countries. Another strand of feminist state theory, which focuses on “subjectivation“ and knowledge/power complexes (W¨ohl 2008), might be useful to explain not only the politics of identity but also the politics of intersectionality and the interplay of women’s movements and states in a globalizing context (Sauer 2008).
Endnotes 1
This expression refers to the degradation of waged labour into unpaid or worse-paid and precarious work, such as housework (Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen and von Werlhof 1988). 2 Action taken “for” women within an institution or within a policy process is what is to be understood by this term (Pitkin 1967).
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D’Amico F (1999) Women workers in the United Nations. In M K Meyer and E Pr¨ugl (eds) Gender Politics in Global Governance (pp 19–40). New York: Rowman & Littlefield Duclos D (1998) Die Internationale der Hyperbourgeoisie. Le Monde Diplomatique August:10–11 Eisenstein Z (1997) Women’s publics and the search for new democracies. Feminist Review 57:140–167 Elson D (2002) International financial architecture. femina politica 1:26–37 Foucault M (2000) Staatsphobie. In U Br¨ockling, S Krasmann and T Lemke (eds) ¨ Gouvernementalit¨at der Gegenwart. Studien zur Okonomisierung des Sozialen (pp 68–71). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Gather C, Geissler B and Rerrich M S (eds) (2002) Weltmarkt Privathaushalt. Bezahlte Hausarbeit im globalen Wandel. M¨unster: Westf¨alisches Dampfboot Gutierrez Rodriguez E (1999) Intellektuelle Migrantinnen—Subjektivit¨at im Zeitalter von Globalisierung. Opladen: Leske und Budrich Held D (1995) Democracy and the new international order. In D Archibugi and D Held (eds) Cosmopolitan Democracy. An Agenda for a New World Order (pp 96–120). Cambridge: Polity Hirsch J (1995) Der nationale Wettbewerbsstaat. Staat, Demokratie und Politik im globalen Kapitalismus. Berlin and Amsterdam: Edition ID-Archiv ¨ Holland-Cunz B (2000) Politiktheoretische Uberlegungen zu Global Governance. In B Holland-Cunz and U Ruppert (eds) Frauenpolitische Chancen globaler Politik. Verhandlungsverfahren im internationalen Kontext (pp 25–44). Opladen: Leske und Budrich Jenson J (1996) Some consequences of economic and political restructuring and readjustment. Social Politics 3(1):1–11 Jessop B (1994) Ver¨anderte Staatlichkeit. Ver¨anderungen von Staatlichkeit und Staatsprojekten. In D Grimm (ed) Staatsaufgaben (pp 43–73). Baden-Baden: Nomos Jessop B (1998) Nationalstaat, Globalisierung, Gender. In E Kreisky and B Sauer (eds) Geschlechterverh¨altnisse im Kontext politischer Transformation (pp 262–292). PVSSonderheft 28. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag Klingebiel R (2000) Global Governance contra Nationalstaat? Internationale Konferenzen aus Frauensicht. In B Holland-Cunz and U Ruppert (eds) Frauenpolitische Chancen globaler Politik. Verhandlungsverfahren im internationalen Kontext (pp 159–168). Opladen: Leske und Budrich Klingebiel R and Randeria S (eds.) 1998 Globalisierung aus Frauensicht. Bilanzen und Visionen. Bonn: Dietz Kreisky E (2001) Die maskuline Ethik des Neoliberalismus—Die neoliberale Dynamik des Maskulinismus. femina politica 2:76–91 Larner W (1996) The “new boys”: Restructuring in New Zealand, 1984–1994. Social Politics 3(1):32–56 Leitner S and Ostner I (2000) Frauen und Globalisierung. Vernachl¨assigte Seiten der neuen Arbeitsteilung. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B 48:39–46 Lenz I (2002) Geschlechtsspezifische Auswirkungen der Globalisierung in den Bereichen Global Governance, Arbeitsm¨arkte und Ressource. Gutachten f¨ur die Enquete-Kommission “Globalisierung der Weltwirtschaft—Herausforderungen und Antworten”, http://www.bundestag.de (last accessed 13 September 2010) Marchand M H (1996) Reconceptualising “gender and development” in an era of “globalisation”. Millennium 25(3):577–603 Marchand M H and Runyan A S (2000) Feminist sightings of global restructuring: conceptualizations and reconceptualizations. In M H Marchand and A S Runyan (eds) Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances (pp 1–22). London and New York: Routledge C
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Meyer M K and Pr¨ugl E (eds) 1999 Gender Politics in Global Governance. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Mies M, Bennholdt-Thomsen V and von Werlhof C (1988) Frauen, die letzte Kolonie. Zur Hausfrauisierung der Arbeit. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowolth Mitchell D and Garrrett G (1996) Women and the welfare state in the era of global markets. Social Politics 3(1):185–194 Mitchell K, Marston S A and Katz C (2003) Life’s work. An introduction, review and critique. Antipode 35(3):415–442 ¨ Mulyampiti T (2001) African women in the globalisation process. Osterreichische Zeitschrift f¨ur Politikwissenschaft 2:171–181 Pierre J and Peters G B (2000) Governance, Politics and the State. New York: St Martin’s Press Pitkin H F (1967) The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press Poulantzas N (1973) Political Power and Social Classes. London: NLB Pringle R and Watson S (1992) “Women’s interests” and the post-structuralist state. In M Barrett and A Phillips (eds) Destabilizing Theory. Contemporary Feminist Debates (pp 53–73). Stanford: Stanford University Press Rai S M and G Waylen (2008) (eds) Global Governance: Feminist Perspectives. Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan Rommelspacher B (1999) Neue Polarisierung und neue Konvergenzen: das Geschlechterverh¨altnis im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. In G Schmidt and R Trinczek ¨ (eds) Globalisierung. Okonomische und soziale Herausforderungen am Ende des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (pp 243–258). Baden-Baden: Nomos Rosenau J (1997) Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Ruf A (2000) Kritische Anmerkungen zu Global Governance. In B Holland-Cunz and U Ruppert (eds) Frauenpolitische Chancen globaler Politik. Verhandlungsverfahren im internationalen Kontext (pp 169–177). Opladen: Leske und Budrich Runyan A S (1999) Women in the neoliberal “frame”. In M Meyer and E Pr¨ugl (eds) Gender Politics in Global Governance (pp 210–220). New York: Rowman & Littlefield Ruppert U (1998) Die Kehrseite der Medaille? Globalisierung, global governance und internationale Frauenbewegung. beitr¨age zur feministischen theorie und praxis 47/48:95–105 Ruppert U (2000) Global governance: Das Ende der Illusionen oder ein neues Ideal internationaler Frauenpolitik? In B Holland-Cunz and U Ruppert (eds) Frauenpolitische Chancen globaler Politik. Verhandlungsverfahren im internationalen Kontext (pp 45–66). Opladen: Leske und Budrich Ruppert U (2002) Aufgaben und Chancen im Rahmen der Globalisierung, um die Situation der Frauen in der Gesellschaft zu verbessern. Gutachten f¨ur die Enquete-Kommission “Globalisierung der Weltwirtschaft—Herausforderungen und Antworten”, http://www.bundestag.de (last accessed 13 September 2010) Sainsbury D (1996) Gender, Equality and Welfare States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Sassen S (1996) Toward a feminist analytics of the global economy. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 4(1):7–41 Sassen S (1998) Women under fire. In id. Globalisation and Its Discontents (pp 79–131). New York: The New Press Sauer B (2001a) “Feminisierung” eines m¨annlichen Projekts? Sozialstaat im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. In E Appelt and A Weiss (eds) Globalisierung und der Angriff auf die europ¨aischen Wohlfahrtsstaaten (pp 67–83). Hamburg and Berlin: Argument C
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Sauer B (2001b) Vom Nationalstaat zum Europ¨aischen Reich? Staat und Geschlecht in der Europ¨aischen Union. Feministische Studien 1: 8–20 Sauer B (2008) Bringing the state back in. In K Hagemann, S Michel and G Budde (eds) Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (pp 285–301). Oxford: Berghahn Publishers Schmidt V (1995) The New World Order, Incorporated. Daedalus 124(2): 34–42 Stienstra D (1999) Of roots, leaves, and trees: Gender, social movements and global governance. In M Meyer and E Pr¨ugl (eds) Gender Politics in Global Governance (pp 260–272). New York: Rowman & Littlefield W¨ohl S (2007) Mainstreaming Gender? Widerspr¨uche europ¨aischer und nationalstaatlicher Geschlechterpolitik. K¨onigstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag W¨ohl S (2008) Global governance as neoliberal governmentality. In G Waylen and S M Rai (eds) Global Governance: Feminist Perspectives (pp 63–83). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Wright M W (1997) Crossing the factory frontier: Gender, place, and power in the Mexican Maquiladora. Antipode 29(3):278–302 Young I M (2002) Imagining a global Rule of law. Ethnicities 2(2):154–156
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Social Conflict and Competing State Projects in the Semi-Periphery: A Strategic-Relational Analysis of the Transformation of the Mexican State into an Internationalized Competition State Miriam C. Heigl Georgenstr. 102, 80798 Munich, Germany;
[email protected] Abstract: This article draws on the strategic-relational approach in state theory and examines the transformation of the Mexican state into internationalized competition state. It does so by analyzing the rise of the neoliberal forces and the neoliberal state project inside Mexico during the 1970s while taking into account the important modifications in the international division of labor and the evolving international regulation. These developments resulted in the transformation of the Mexican state into an internationalized competition state which adopts a Ricardian strategy of competition and is characterized by the tendencies towards the denationalization of statehood and the internationalization of policy regimes. Keywords: internationalized competition state, semi-periphery, strategic-relational approach
Introduction During the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) and those of his successors, Mexico adopted a neoliberal development path: a policy of export orientation was implemented, the financial market liberalized and the attraction of short-term investment as well as the influx of direct foreign investment intensified through financial incentives and modifications to the law (Stallings and Studart 2006:184; Teichman 1995:89–93). Thus Mexico became one of the pioneers of the neoliberal paradigm in Latin America. Today, the Mexican state has been transformed into an internationalized competition state which focuses mainly on the adoption of competitive policies in such areas as trade and finance. The objective of this article is to address a gap in the existing literature by providing a historical materialist account of the transformation of Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 129–148 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00814.x C 2010 The Author C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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the Mexican state from a developmental state into an internationalized competition state. It does so by tracing the changes in the balance of forces and the institutional setting within Mexico while taking into account the importance of the international setting. To tackle these issues the article draws on the strategic-relational approach developed by Bob Jessop and seeks to expand on it in places. The strategicrelational approach considers the state to be a social relation—that is, the crystallization of past and current strategies of different agents and as a part of the capitalist division of labor. The main benefit of employing the strategic-relational approach is that it recognizes the interaction of strategies and institutional structures in the national and the international spheres. This contrasts with earlier analyses of the peripheral state—that considered it a mere effect of the structure of the capitalist world system (see in particular Frank 1966; for an overview see Kay 1989)—as well as with more recent approaches on failed states (Ghani and Lockhart 2008; Hoffmann 2006)—which overemphasize the role of certain social forces within a specific nation at the expense of a critical analysis of institutional and international dynamics. The argument presented proceeds as follows. In the first section the strategic-relational understanding of the society–state relationship is explained and amplified with regard to the semi-periphery and the role of state personnel. Secondly, the article analyzes the development of social relations and the transformation of the institutional terrain in Mexico while recognizing the importance of the international context. It focuses primarily on the intensification of extra- and intra-institutional conflicts and the rise of the neoliberal state project within the Mexican state. Thirdly, some key features of the internationalized competition state that had emerged in Mexico by the mid 1980s are examined. In particular, the overall orientation of state policies towards international competition and the institutional reconfiguration of the Mexican state are discussed. Finally, some repercussions of this transformation on the balance of forces in Mexico are studied.
The Internationalization of the Semi-Peripheral State in a Strategic-Relational Perspective In debates on the development of peripheral regions under the conditions of (neoliberal) globalization the state has gained attention as an object of investigation. This is also true for the Mexican state. In this discussion we find research focused either on the institutional terrain—that is, the initiatives and activities of the whole state—or on single state apparatuses. The social conflicts between different social alliances and between different state apparatuses underlying these institutional actions are often not taken into account (Centeno 1994; Centeno and Maxfield 1992; Soederberg 2005). However, research has been conducted which C
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refers to the role of social forces inside and/or outside the state while the institutional dynamic is rarely recognized (Brachet-Marquez 1994; Davis 1993; Maxfield 1990; Morton 2003; Teichman 1988). These approaches pay little attention to the complex interaction of international conditions, institutional developments and social forces that results in the emergence of historically specific state forms. In this section, the strategic-relational approach is discussed as a suitable theoretical background for the analysis of the evolution of specific state forms. According to Jessop—who draws on Antonio Gramsci and Nicos Poulantzas—the state is a social relation. Therefore, the state neither constitutes a subject nor a neutral terrain. It is provided with a structurally inscribed strategic selectivity: the state as a social ensemble “has a specific, differential impact on the ability of various political forces to pursue particular interests and strategies” (Jessop 2005:40). This selectivity reflects, stabilizes and eventually modifies the balance of forces in a given society (Jessop 1990:256). Capitalist societies are characterized by social conflict as different social agents pursue all sorts of political and accumulation strategies which, for instance, refer to specific forms of representation or to different modes of economic state intervention (Jessop 1990:346; Jessop 2005:42ff). Social agents intervene in the state matrix with the goal of articulating their interests in the institutional terrain and thereby generalize their strategies. Those interests are not rooted in a material substratum but only take shape in a given context (Jessop 1990:341–344, 366; 244f). Different state institutions represent different interests; as a consequence, there are always conflicts between different apparatuses in the institutional terrain. A fragile and temporary unity of the institutional ensemble can only be achieved by the establishment of widely accepted state projects. State projects define the character and content of state action and non-action in specific historical periods. They seek to impose an always relative unity on the activities of different branches and levels of the state system. Often specific aspects of the state surface correspond to different, competing state projects (Jessop 1990:339– 369; Jessop 2005:42f). A facet not explicitly mentioned by Jessop is that different apparatuses adopt different and varying positions within a specific institutional ensemble, which are due to their historically variable institutional weight (Hirsch 2005:145). In addition to these general statements about the state, Jessop offers a historical analysis of states in specific spheres of the world system. His studies essentially refer to the transformation of states in the Atlantic sphere during the passage from Fordism to Postfordism. Two aspects are of particular importance in this context: the rescaling of statehood and the overall orientation of state action towards competitiveness (Jessop 2005:193–204). C
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The rescaling of states comprises various tendencies classified by Jessop as destatization, denationalization and internationalization of policy regimes (Jessop 2005:193–204). With regard to the destatization of the political system—which involves the redrawing of the public– private divide (Jessop 2005:199f)—no fundamental difference between states in the semi-periphery and in the center of the capitalist world system can be observed. In both cases, various arrangements such as privatization policies have led to the increasing participation of private (commercial or non-governmental) agents, institutional arrangements or regimes in former public policies areas. However, with regard to the denationalization of statehood and the internationalization of policy regimes, differences become apparent between states in the Atlantic sphere and in the semi-periphery: denationalization describes the tendency towards “the ‘hollowing out’ of the national state apparatus with old and new state capacities being reorganized territorially and functionally on supranational, national, subnational and translocal levels” (Jessop 2005:195). One aspect of this tendency is the delegation of powers to supranational bodies—in particular to international organizations—which constitute a specific condensation of social power relations. Within these organizations the delegates from the Atlantic sphere are in general—though not necessarily—dominant (Brand 2005). Therefore, the increased denationalization of semi-peripheral states leads to the rising influence of governments and envoys from the Atlantic sphere. The internationalization of policy regimes describes the expansion of the international context of domestic state action to include a widening range of extraterritorial or transnational factors and processes and their increasing significance for domestic policy. Moreover, it points to the fact that the key players in policy regimes have expanded to include foreign agents and institutions as sources of policy ideas, policy design and implementation (Jessop 2005:200). In the semi-periphery the increasing importance of agents and institutions from the Atlantic sphere can be detected in the decline of more nationalist policies such as import-substitution industrialization in the 1980s. These agents and institutions actively influence policies in the semi-periphery via policy diffusion or via coercive means. Aside from their internationalization, states in the semi-periphery as well as in the Atlantic sphere have been transformed into competition states, meaning that their overall aim is to become internationally competitive. Jessop defines the competition state as a state that “aims to secure growth within its borders and/or to secure competitive advantages for capitals based in its borders, even when they operate abroad. . .” (Jessop 2005:96). This definition seems, however, specific to the competition states in the Atlantic sphere. With regard to states in Latin America, Oliver Costilla (2005:58, 67) argues that they generate C
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only a precarious and ephemeral competition that does not aim at the development of internal value chains. In fact, the form of competitiveness chosen by many Latin American states strongly resembles a Ricardian account. Competition in this case depends, according to Jessop, on “exploiting the most abundant and cheapest factors of production in a given economy . . . and exchanging products embodying these factors for products from other spaces with different factor endowments” (Jessop 2005:121). The emergence of internationalized competition states in the semiperiphery following a Ricardian paradigm is intricately related to the overall conditions of reproduction of these states. Those are significantly determined by the international division of labor. As the international division of labor is of subordinate importance in the strategic-relational approach, reference should be made to the regulation school which has pointed to the structural and strategic components of this division. As a basic principle, the capitalist world system is based on the hierarchical relationship between different national modes of development (Aglietta 1982). This is an essential condition for accumulation at the global level and produces relations of dependency that are continuously reproduced by the accumulation regimes and the modes of regulation of all nations forming part of the world market. Within this structural frame a strategic dimension exists, however, because the orientation of the relevant internal capitalist classes plays an important role for the concrete positioning of a specific nation in the world market. This means that it makes a difference whether these classes are oriented towards the domestic market or towards world-market integration (Hirsch 2005:101–108; Lipietz 1984). With regard to the application of the strategic-relational approach to the particular case of Mexico, the role played by state personnel has to be further specified as Jessop pays little attention to it. This is necessary, as many studies on the Mexican turn towards neoliberalism consider the technocratic state personnel to be a decisive force in this process (Centeno and Silva 1998; Harberger 1993; Kahler 1990:59). Poulantzas’ remarks on the role played by state personnel are helpful here. He argued that the state personnel come from different social backgrounds. By entering the civil service, their sense of social affiliation changes and they assume the role of putting the state into effect (Poulantzas 1976:15). However, no independent social class emerges as the state personnel continue to participate in social struggles (Poulantzas 2002:185f). This implies that a change in the form of the state is always partly due to a change in the ideological orientation of large parts of the state personnel. The education of state personnel plays an important role in this context. At the same time, state personnel are rooted in the different social strata within a given society. Therefore, a changed orientation of state personnel results largely from a highly conflictive shift within society C
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and the institutional terrain and is thus itself always partly an effect of the transformation of the form of the state. The following sections analyze the developments within Mexico while taking into account the international configuration. In the process the historical conditions and displacements which contributed to the transformation of the Mexican state are traced back to their origins.
Conflicting Social Relations and State Projects in Mexico The Mexican developmental state had its high period from the 1930s to the 1970s and was characterized, as were many of its Latin American counterparts, by massive economic state intervention. The state was engaged in a multitude of economic sectors such as communications, transportation and electricity which were either not (yet) interesting for private investors or highly politicized. During the presidency of L´azaro C´ardenas (1934–1940) the oil industry and land owned by foreigners were expropriated in order to develop national industries and increase domestic demand to become less dependent on the world market. This approach became known as import-substitution industrialization and Mexico became one of the first to adopt it in the region (Bulmer-Thomas 2003; Villarreal 1990). During this period, two opposing social alliances consolidated—one with a nationalist, the other with a liberal orientation which was later to become neoliberal. The nationalist alliance had already developed into a relevant social force during the Mexican revolution (1910–1917). Its members favored a nationalist approach towards development, based on workers, peasants and parts of the newly emerging middle classes which benefited from the pro-labor policies and the land reform especially under C´ardenas. Small and medium-sized manufacturers also formed part of this coalition as they profited from industrial protection and subsidies (Hamilton 1982:67f; Imbusch 1988:15; Maxfield 1990:34ff, 50–58). Under the more conservative governments from 1955 to 1970 the nationalist alliance suffered political repression and economic losses (Hansen 1971:71–95; Zerme˜no 1978). Opposed to this nationalist alliance was a coalition formed by Mexican conglomerates, parts of the middle classes and foreign capitalists (mainly from the United States). Even after the revolution these foreign capitalists controlled important sectors of the Mexican economy such as mining and the railways (Hamilton 1982:73). The Mexican conglomerates which were active in finance and trade had developed under the dictatorship of Porfirio D´ıaz (1876–1910/11) and were mainly based in the northern metropolis of Monterrey. In the context of an emerging new international division of labor during the 1960s1 these conglomerates expanded and developed their own regional and global accumulation strategies (Fern´andez 2000:99–101). At the C
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same time they started to favor a world-market oriented accumulation strategy and turned away from the predominant development model aimed at extensive and diversified industrialization (Fern´andez 2000; Osorio 2003:23–25; Salas-Porras 2002). In the 1960s indications of a crisis in the Mexican approach towards development surfaced and the tensions between the nationalist and the neoliberal alliances intensified. The traditional corporatist structures created during the 1930s and 1940s could no longer represent the claims of the newly emerged middle classes which started to articulate their demands for political representation openly and outside the traditional channels. This conflict intensified and culminated in the massacres of students in 1968 and 1971. At the same time, the crisis of accumulation became apparent as the countryside experienced serious problems and the production of intermediate and capital goods—which should have risen significantly after 1955—only increased from 46.8% of the total production in 1950 to 53.1% in 1970 (Aboˆıtes 1989; Soria 2000:86–88). Moreover Mexico—like other countries in the region—was not able to lower the unit costs of production and to improve the worsening income distribution which weakened the domestic market (Bruton 1998:913; Bulmer-Thomas 2003:274). In this context, social tensions soared and political instability increased. With the presidencies of Luis Echeverr´ıa (1970–1976) and Jos´e Lopez Portillo (1976–1982) economic policies were adopted that aimed to maintain the high rates of economic growth which had been achieved during the 1960s, to reduce social inequalities and to intensify importsubstitution industrialization in order to counteract the crisis tendencies. Therefore, economic state intervention was further increased: public expenditures rose from 23.6% of the gross domestic product in 1970 to 36.6% in 1975 and the proportion of government investment grew from 35.5% of all investment in 1970 to 46.2% in 1975 (Teichman 1988:47; 1995:37). These economic reforms were carried out by a new political elite in a changed institutional context: while Mexico had followed restrictive financial policies from 1955 to 1970 and the Ministry of Finance had held an important institutional position, both Echeverr´ıa and Portillo and their closest advisors tried to cut back the institutional power of the dominant Ministry of Finance. Their aim was to implement a loose financial regime to finance the additional expenses for increased state intervention without additional taxation of the wealthier parts of society. Hence under Echeverr´ıa the competences of the Ministry of Finance were reduced and the closest advisors to the presidents were entrusted with economic and financial policy issues (Centeno 1994:82f; Maxfield 1990:120). Alongside this reduction of the institutional weight of financial apparatuses, particular of the Ministry of Finance, an institutional C
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counter-balance was created as the Ministry of National Patrimony, which favored loose financial policies, was charged with the supervision and control of the parastate entities and their public procurement. With the massive increase of the parastate sector under Echeverr´ıa, the Ministry accordingly gained in institutional weight (Centeno 1994:79f, 182). During the first half of Portillo’s term, the efforts to weaken the institutional weight of the Ministry of Finance were further intensified: in 1976 the Ministry of Budget and Planning was founded, which took over the supervision of public expenditures and the planning of the economic process from the Ministry of Finance (Centeno 1994:89; Morton 2003:638). Thus, during the 1970s serious attempts were made to change the institutional weight of important institutions of the Mexican state in order to stabilize the nationalist state project. At the same time, however, the foundations were laid for the rise of technocrats amongst the state personnel. Prior to the 1970s nationally oriented state personnel had been present in different ministries. With the radicalization of students from public universities during the protests of the 1960s, graduates—in particular those holding a degree from the public university Universidad Nacional Aut´onoma de M´exico—were no longer employed and graduates from private universities were appointed. Of particular importance in this context was the neoclassical Instituto Tecnol´ogico Aut´onomo de M´exico. The precursor of this private university had been founded in 1946 by Mexican entrepreneurs with an explicit interest in the promotion of economic theories opposed to the left-wing theories taught at the Universidad Nacional. The curriculum of the Instituto Tecnol´ogico Aut´onomo de M´exico aimed at a high compatibility with the curriculum of US–American universities. To some extent state personnel were also recruited from the Keynesian Centro de Investigaci´on y Docencia Econ´omica which had been founded by the government in 1974 with the intention of offering a special training for civil-service officials (Babb 2001:154–170; Centeno and Maxfield 1992:71; Lindau 1996:295; Smith 1979:278–298).2 Thus, the different educational backgrounds led to growing frictions amongst the state personnel. This development was closely linked to the intensified conflicts within Mexican society as the social protests of the 1960s resulted in a change in state personnel’s career paths. The internal divisions present among the state personnel were illustrated by the nomination of two secretaries with opposing views to run the ministries concerned with economic and financial policy issues: at the top of the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Carlos Tello Macias was appointed, a Keynesian who had studied at Cambridge (UK), while the Ministry of Finance was led by the monetarist Julio Moctezuma Cid. C
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Thus, during the 1970s open rivalry existed between two state projects in the institutional terrain of the Mexican state. On the one hand, a nationalist state project was promoted by the Ministry of National Patrimony and, during the early years of its existence, by the Ministry of Budget and Planning, with support from the presidents. This project aimed at the reconciliation of the nationalist sectors of Mexican society which had partly turned away from the regime because of increasing socioeconomic inequality and repression. The nationalist project emphasized the importance of economic state intervention and loose financial policies and was supported by the more nationally oriented sectors of the Mexican society. On the other hand, a neoliberal state project had developed, one which was advanced by financial apparatuses and which emphasized strict controls of expenditures and the “withdrawal” of the state from the economy. This project was promoted by neoliberal forces both within and outside Mexico. As has been shown, at the beginning of the 1970s the nationalist state project was still strong and various efforts were made to stabilize this project and to weaken the rise of the neoliberal state project. However at the same time, the first signs of the growing importance of neoliberalism became manifest in the increasing orientation of large numbers of state personnel towards this paradigm.
The Rise of the Neoliberal State Project By the mid 1970s, the expansionary economic policies promoted by the governments of Echeverr´ıa and Portillo had led to increased opposition from the Mexican conglomerates and from foreign capital. These neoliberal forces started to employ various strategies to counteract their decreasing institutional influence. Their strategies aimed primarily at an improvement of the institutional channels of articulation. One important strategic step was the foundation of a new umbrella organization, the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, in 1975, which sought to influence the policy process by advocating world-market integration, trade liberalization and a reduction of state intervention in the economy.3 Another move was the intensification of the relationship between the conglomerates and the conservative Party of National Action (Partido de Acci´on Nacional). Moreover, pressure was exerted by increased capital flight: it is estimated that during 1975 and 1976 US$4 billion were transferred outside the country. In September and October 1976 President Echeverr´ıa had to devalue the peso for the first time in 22 years (Luna, Tirado R and Vald´es 1987; Philip 1982:358; Schamis 2002:115). The diverse activities of neoliberal forces had repercussions for the institutional terrain. After intense disputes over financial and economic policies between the two ministries in charge—the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Budget and Planning—both secretaries C
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resigned and efforts to coordinate revenue and spending policies were temporarily abandoned (Bailey 1980:52). With this decision, the effort to permanently reduce the predominance of the Ministry of Finance within the institutional terrain was dismissed. In 1979 Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado—Mexico’s president at a later date—was appointed head of the Ministry of Budget and Planning. De la Madrid had started his career in the Ministry of Finance and still had close contacts within this ministry. Moreover, he was intimately connected with the Mexican banking community (Ramirez Miguel 1994:23). Under his leadership the composition of the staff in the Ministry of Budget and Planning was considerably modified as important appointments were filled with personnel from the Ministry of Finance (Bailey 1980:31; Centeno 1994:90f). The ascendancy of such technocrats—symbolized by the appointment of de la Madrid—contributed to the internationalization of the Mexican state because through them a significant transfer of economic ideas from the Atlantic sphere—and in particular the United States—towards the semi-periphery took place. With the rising importance of technocrats and of neoliberally oriented institutions, the neoliberal state project gained momentum and the policies employed by the Mexican state became more neoliberal. One example of this was the reversal of Mexican oil policy: given the discovery of huge oil reserves and the soaring oil price, the government decided to embark on an oil-led development strategy in 1977. This strategy was favored by Mexican conglomerates and foreign enterprises closely connected with the petroleum industry as well as by the leadership of the national petroleum enterprise Petr´oleos de Mexico and the US government, while the nationalist sectors of Mexican society remained critical. Older unionists who had participated in the nationalization of the oil industry in 1938 were opposed, as well as peasants in the petroleum-producing areas, parts of the academic community and small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who supported a development strategy focused on the domestic market (Centeno 1994:187; Imbusch 1988:99; Maxfield 1990:123; Teichman 1988:63– 86). These modifications in the balance of forces and in the institutional terrain were also enhanced by changes in the international context. In an international environment which favored debt-led growth— most importantly because of the low or even negative interest rates for developing countries on the international financial markets and the boom in commodity prices before 1979—the Mexican state embarked on a debt-led strategy. The main objective was to finance increasing expenditure on the oil sector. Government spending on the oil infrastructure rose from 19.4% of all state expenditure in 1977 to 26.6% in 1980 (Teichman 1988:66). With the sudden reversal in international conditions for debt-led growth—the surge in interest rates, the drop in C
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commodity prices and the election of neoliberal governments in the UK, Germany and the United States—and the concomitant internal problems of the import-substitution industrialization strategy, Mexico had to declare a debt moratorium in 1982, the first Latin American country to do so (on the debt crisis, see Boris 2001:69–79; BulmerThomas 2003:346–352; Golub 1991). The moratorium marked the peak of the crisis of import-substitution industrialization and the Mexican developmental state. However, as shown above, this crisis had developed over decades as a result of the conflict between social alliances, played out within the institutional terrain of the Mexican state. With the emerging crisis of importsubstitution industrialization within a changing international context, tensions between different social forces had increased and two rival state projects had surfaced on the institutional terrain. At the same time, and connected to modifications in the international division of labor and international regulation, the internationalization of the Mexican state began. With the moratorium and the stabilization policies subsequently implemented neoliberalism became dominant in Mexico.
The Transformation of the Mexican State into an Internationalized Competition State By the end of the 1980s neoliberalism had become the leading policy paradigm in Mexico: state expenses were cut back, the Peso was devalued, subsidies were reduced and foreign trade was liberalized. The intensity of Mexico’s commitment to the reforms frequently even exceeded the expectations of the US government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Morton 2003:638; Schirm 1994:60). The abovementioned changes inside Mexico and in the international sphere resulted in the dominance of the neoliberal state project and its transformation from a developmental state into an internationalized competition state. Two important aspects of the historically specific form of the Mexican state are discussed in this section: the overall orientation towards competition and the reconfiguration of the institutional terrain. The overall orientation towards competition has two important aspects. On the one hand, Mexico competes with other semi-peripheral nations for the favor of investors on international financial markets. On the other hand, Mexico reinserts its economy into the world market via the export of maquiladora products. Mexico has been quite successful in attracting international investment, which mainly consists of volatile short-term investment while longer-term foreign direct investment constitutes only a small part. Between 1989 and 1993 foreign direct investment rose by 57.6% and accounted for an average of US$4 billion annually, while portfolio investment soared by 8000% during the same period of time (Soederberg C
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2001:113; Teichman 1995:70). Given that for foreign investors political and macroeconomic stability is of particular importance, the ascent of financial apparatuses within the institutional terrain of the Mexican state—which had already become apparent by the end of the 1970s— was further enforced. With the dissolution of the Ministry of Budget and Planning in 1992 and its reintegration into the Ministry of Finance the latter institution became the dominant institution. Since then the Ministry of Finance has supervised the administration of revenues and all the expenses of the Mexican state. Officially the dissolution of the Ministry of Budget and Planning formed part of the effort to establish a more efficient state organization and to avoid disputes between the different ministries (Camp 2003:170f; Torres Espinosa 1999). Apart from the Ministry of Finance the institutional weight of the Central Bank was increased when its autonomy was anchored in the Mexican constitution in 1993. Up to this moment the Bank had officially been controlled by the Ministry of Finance. The new article 28 establishes the responsibility of the Central Bank for monetary stability and its independence regarding money and credit policies (Boris 1996:72; Maxfield 1997:104). Within the civil service the trend towards technocratization intensified under de la Madrid and his successors Carlos Salinas and Ernesto Zedillo, both of them technocrats. This development mirrored the implementation of the neoliberal state project as the ideological homogeneity of state personnel increased. By 1983 almost 60% of all members of government at the cabinet level had started their political career either in the Ministry of Finance or in the Ministry for Budget and Planning. Eighty per cent had gained working experience in one of these ministries (Morton 2003:638; Teichman 1995:74). Moreover, the top positions of the dominant financial apparatuses were assigned to technocrats through whom the influence of the (internal and external) neoliberal social forces was further extended. For instance, the monetarist Miguel Mancera who had strongly represented the interests of the neoliberal social forces during his time in the government before 1982 was appointed head of the Central Bank in 1982 and stayed in this position until 1998 (Maxfield 1990:146f). The growing importance of the financial apparatuses and the increasing homogeneity of orientation of their personnel supported the growing dominance of the neoliberal state project within the institutional terrain of the Mexican state. The overall orientation towards competition also became manifest in Mexico’s trade policy. During the period of import-substitution industrialization the focus had been on the development of a domestic market and on the reduction of world-market dependency. Now a strategy of increased world-market integration was adopted which aimed at the exploitation of highly favourable factors for production and export, such as the abundance of particular commodities (especially crude C
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oil) and cheap labor. An example of Mexico’s Ricardian style worldmarket integration is the maquiladora strategy, which was intensified after 1982.4 This strategy aims to deploy Mexico’s cheap, unqualified work force as a decisive factor of production in the global competition by supporting the establishment of maquiladoras (Jaime 2004:40). It leads to a division of labor in the North American region in which the completion of products takes place in Mexico, while the capitaland technology-intensive procedures are mostly carried out in industrial centers in the United States. Large parts of the Mexican maquiladora production go to the US–American market afterwards (Vidal 2004). Between 1982 and 1992 the number of Mexican maquiladoras rose exponentially from 580 to 2000, while the number of workers in this sector increased from approximately 130,000 to 500,000 (Boris 1996:42). Despite a slump between March 2001 and March 2002, 30% of all jobs in the Mexican manufacturing sector are still to be found in the maquiladora industry. This sector generates 48% of all Mexican merchandise export and receives 15% of all foreign direct investment (La Jornada 18 January 2006). It has therefore developed into and continues to be a leading sector of the Mexican economy. The promotion of the maquiladora industry in the context of a Ricardian-style competition system and the abandonment of a nationalist industrial policy had repercussions in the institutional terrain, becoming closely tied to the decline of the nationalist state apparatuses. These were either abolished or their influence was severely limited. Of particular importance was the abolition of the Ministry of National Patrimony and Industrial Development, which had traditionally carried an important institutional weight (Hogenboom 1998:170; Kaufman, Bazdresch and Heredia 1994:363; Teichman 1995:74–76). Another element of the transformation from a developmental into a competition state was the internationalization of statehood in Mexico. One aspect of this rescaling is that international factors, processes and agents are of increasing significance for domestic state action. This has been described by Jessop as the internationalization of policy regimes and was particularly obvious with regard to Mexican economic and financial policies. Even though during the 1970s some elements of this tendency already existed, it only became of major importance for Mexican politics after 1982 with the increased influence of international public and private institutions and specific international agents. Even though there had been some policy consultations with the IMF between 1976 and 1978 (Teichman 1988:59, 65f), it was only after the debt moratorium that the importance of international public institutions such as the IMF and private institutions such as rating agencies increased dramatically. This aspect of the internationalization of the Mexican competition state also reinforced the increasing dominance of financial apparatuses within the Mexican state as they became the most important C
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institutional ties with the international financial community during and after the debt negotiations. This was particularly true for the Ministry of Finance which assumed overall responsibility for the debt negotiations, the rescheduling of debt and the stabilization of public finances. An additional aspect of the internationalization of the Mexican competition state is the tendency towards denationalization. This tendency became apparent with the signing of a multitude of biand multinational free-trade agreements by Mexico. One outstanding example is the North American Free Trade Agreement. With this agreement, certain functions which before had taken place at the national level were transferred to the supranational level, in particular elements of economic and financial jurisdiction. This is exemplified by such codifications as the tax exemption for maquiladora production enshrined in the treaty (Turner Barrag´an 2004). Moreover, with the arbitration panel constituted under chapter 11 of the treaty, a new form of dispute resolution mechanism with regard to financial and economic issues was implemented which particularly favors large foreign investors and transfers legal functions to the supranational level. The tendency towards the denationalization of the Mexican state is intrinsically linked with the competition paradigm and the effort to grant stability to international investors. With the transfer of elements of the national jurisdiction to the supranational level, a clear signal is sent to investors that their property rights will be respected in all situations. Another element of the denationalization of the Mexican state is the intense consultation between the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico within the Security and Prosperity Partnership founded in March 2005. This partnership aims to develop North America into the most competitive region in the world (White House 23 March 2005). In the context of the Security and Prosperity Partnership certain functions that were previously carried out by the Mexican national state are now taken over by inter-governmental working groups. For example, in the energy working group regulatory issues are discussed and coordinated with regard to the development of a North American energy policy (Department of Energy 2006). Overall, a profound shift in the organization of the Mexican state has taken place which is linked to a transformation of its strategic selectivity. The strategic selectivity becomes manifest in the way in which the state has a decisive impact on the ability of various political forces to pursue particular interests or strategies. The modified selectivity of the Mexican state leads to increasing difficulties for the nationalist forces in articulating their interests institutionally. One example of this deterioration in institutional access is the Mexican privatization process. From 1982 until 1994 the number of parastate enterprises was dramatically reduced from 1155 to 219 (Rogozinski 1997:111). From 1985 onwards, the Ministry of Finance was charged C
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with the privatization process, which was handled almost exclusively by technocrats. In 1990, with the intensification of the privatization process, a special unit, the Unit for the Dissolution of Parastate Enterprises (Unidad de Desincorporaci´on de Entidades Paraestatales) was founded which was composed of 40 people—including experts and administrative personnel. It was also largely isolated from other branches of government such as the parliament (Rogozinski 1997:131; Uvalle Berrones 1998:106–108). This institutional re-configuration made it almost impossible for unions and other opponents of the privatization process to articulate their position institutionally. At the same time, the modified strategic selectivity of the institutional terrain allowed neoliberal social forces to improve the institutional articulation of their interests. For example, during the Mexican privatization process many Mexican buyers of public assets—belonging to one of the conglomerates—benefited from their close personal contacts with the presidents and their technical advisors. Moreover, they significantly increased their material wealth during the privatization process: Carlos Slim, who came from one of the Monterrey conglomerates and is today one of the richest people in the world, built his business empire on the privatization of Tel´efonos de M´exico in 1990 (Forbes Magazine 8 October 2007; Lewis 2005:107; MacLeod 2004:99f; Teichman 2001:145). The neoliberally oriented strategic selectivity of the Mexican state at present reflects the dramatic changes that have occurred in the balance of forces since the 1960s. At the same time it stabilizes the new balance of forces characterized by the material and institutional dominance of the neoliberal sectors of Mexican society. Furthermore, it could even be said that it modifies this balance of forces, strengthening the dominance of the neoliberal alliance, because it allows these forces privileged access to the institutional terrain. This is of pivotal importance for the definition and enforcement of collectively binding decisions in capitalist societies in general (Jessop 1990:314–344, 366) and in semi-peripheral countries in particular where hegemony is even more difficult to build as civil society is not as developed as in the Atlantic sphere (Becker 2008).
Conclusion This article has examined the transformation of the Mexican developmental state from a strategic-relational perspective into an internationalized competition state. Its central contention is that an analysis of this requires a consideration both of internal strategic and structural factors and of the international context. By adopting this focus it has been possible to reveal the protracted and conflicting extra- and intra-institutional processes that have been taking place within Mexico and their interaction with international processes, which together account for the historic shift in the form of the Mexican state. C
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I have argued that the apparently sudden disruption of the import-substitution industrialization strategy and the dismissal of the developmental state—exemplified in the debt crisis of 1982—were in fact preceded by a fundamental shift in the balance of forces and by complex processes of institutional restructuring that went along with this shift. With the debt crisis the dominance of neoliberal forces and of the neoliberal state project were enforced and the transformation of the Mexican state into an internationalized competition state intensified significantly. By tracing the various aspects which led to the transformation of the Mexican state it can be shown that in semi-peripheral regions—just as in the Atlantic sphere—internal as well as external developments are of great importance. The evolution of historically specific state forms in the semi-periphery cannot be attributed exclusively either to international or to internal factors and processes. Fundamental international conditions related to the Mexican case were the modifications to the international division of labor and the evolving system of international regulation; internally, a variety of conflicts between opposing social forces and state apparatuses were of importance. This interplay of internal and external factors is apparent, for example, in the Ricardian strategy of competitiveness adopted by Mexico. The implementation of this specific strategy was facilitated by the hierarchal structure of the world market, since it is based on the existence of Ricardian and Schumpeterian forms of competitiveness. However, this incorporation into the world market on the basis of a Ricardian strategy was also the result of the increasing dominance of neoliberal forces within Mexico and the anchorage of their interests in the institutional terrain of the Mexican state. The neoliberal alliance in Mexico— formed by capitalists from within and outside the country—promoted this strategy for ideological reasons and because of the prospect of maximizing profits. Thus a major difference between states in the semi-periphery and in the Atlantic sphere is that for the former the international context constitutes a constraint. The trend towards the internationalization of the semi-peripheral competition states is reinforced further as agents and institutions of the Atlantic sphere tend to become even more powerful
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Ulrich Brand, Markus Wissen and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on this article.
Endnotes 1
While in the context of the traditional international division of labor which had shaped the capitalist world system from approximately 1860 until the world economic crisis of 1929, the producers of manufactured and industrial goods in the North had been opposed
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to the commodity producers in the South, during the 1960s a new international division of labor emerged. The decisive factor in this was the cost of labor for different production processes in one economic sector. The typical standardization of the labor process in Fordist mass production allowed for the geographical separation of the production of different components in the world-market context (Fr¨obel, Heinrichs and Kreye 1977; Lipietz 1984:100–103). 2 During the early 1990s the Centro de Investigaci´on y Docencia Econ´omica abandoned its previously Keynesian orientation as it was taken over by economists who had been trained in the United States and were closely connected to the government of Carlos Salinas. Since then the Centro de Investigaci´on y Docencia Econ´omica has been another important institute that offers a neoclassical macroeconomic curriculum. 3 Important member organizations of the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial came from the insurance industry, the finance industry, brokerage houses and the Consejo Mexicano de Hombres de Negocios (Ortiz Rivera 2002). Representatives of foreign capital also formed part of the organization, and in particular multinational corporations and international banks played an important role (Maxfield 1990:98; Schneider 2004:59– 92). 4 Maquiladoras are foreign assembly plants located just below the Mexican border employing labor at a much cheaper rate than is possible north of the border. These factories assemble products that are then shipped north, tariff-free, back to the USA. The first maquiladoras were founded in Mexico in 1962 in connection with the attempt of the US–American and the Mexican governments to industrialize the frontier region. But it was only with the transition towards post-Fordism that the maquiladora industry became an important sector of the Mexican economy.
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Second-Order Condensations of Societal Power Relations: Environmental Politics and the Internationalization of the State from a Neo-Poulantzian Perspective1 Ulrich Brand Institute of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria;
[email protected]
Christoph G¨org Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany;
[email protected]
Markus Wissen Institute of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria;
[email protected] Abstract: This article develops an understanding of the internationalization of the state which draws on materialist state theory, regulation theory and the scale debate in radical geography. It introduces the concept of “second-order condensations of societal relationships of forces” which aims at advancing Poulantzas’ state theoretical approach and applying it to the analysis of international state apparatuses, their functions and their relationship to state apparatuses on other spatial scales. The empirical and political relevance of the theoretical considerations is elucidated with examples from international resource and environmental policy. Keywords: state theory, internationalization of the state, scale, regulation and hegemony, international environmental regulation, biodiversity politics
Introduction The current debate on climate and energy policies reveals a rather contradictory picture. On the one hand, the relationships between society and nature are still shaped by a neoliberal and neo-imperialistic version of global capitalism. Fossil-based norms of production and consumption, as well as orientations towards economic growth and wage labour, are deeply rooted in most national societies. Environmental policy initiatives up to now have only had a limited capacity to change these norms and orientations. On the other hand, however, these dominant forms along with their economic and political regulations Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 149–175 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00815.x C 2010 The Authors C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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are increasingly challenged. Conflicts about the direction of societal development have emerged among dominant actors as well as between ruling and subaltern groups, acting on different spatial scales from the local up to the global. Moreover, conflicts between different countries, and between state apparatuses responsible for environmental policy and economic development and management within countries, have made it evident that global capitalism is full of tensions and that (nation) state policies are not homogeneous. Rather, they reproduce societal conflicts in their internal structure, some of them internal to the logic of capitalism, but others not. Finally, despite the fact that international regulations have become more important the current disputes show that societal power relations and hegemonic orientations in state apparatuses are institutionally condensed on different spatial scales. What can be seen here is that conflicts over societal relationships with nature are closely interlinked with spatio-institutional transformations of the state. Taking this observation as our starting point, this article first reflects on the “internationalization of the state”, seeing it as a new form of the institutionalization of societal conflicts and power relations, and second, tests the argument in a case study on biodiversity politics. Our aim is to advance the critical debate on these issues from a Poulantzian perspective. Nicos Poulantzas has conceptualized the state as the “material condensation of societal power relation”. The question which will be addressed in the following is how this approach can be applied to a changed scalar configuration and thus improve our understanding of the internationalized state. We intend to show that a Poulantzian perspective can highlight aspects which up to now have remained underexposed in the debate on the internationalization of the state, especially the persisting importance of the national state and its relationship to the emerging “new state spaces” (Brenner 2004). Nevertheless, there are theoretical shortcomings in Poulantzas’ work which can, in turn, be overcome by combining the latter with insights from theories of hegemony, regulation and scale. We will introduce the concept of “second-order condensations” of the societal relationship of forces as a central category and analyze how it allows us to deal with multiscalar socio-economic developments, (non-)hegemonic constellations, societal power relations and struggles, as well as with the structures and modes of institutional politics. In the first part of the paper, we deal with some of the challenges posed by, and shortcomings present within, critical social science approaches to (international) political economy concerning the concept of state and state theory. In the second part, having discussed central aspects of the work of Poulantzas, we introduce our understanding of the internationalization of the state and our central category of “secondorder condensations”. In the third and last part, the political relevance of these theoretical considerations will be tested in a case study on C
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international resource and environmental politics, with special reference to biodiversity politics. We will concentrate on the question of how societal power relations and hegemonic orientations are inscribed into the structures and processes of state policies in the course of neoliberalimperial globalization and what this means for emancipatory struggles.
The State in Critical Approaches to (International) Political Economy The process of neoliberal-imperial globalization has underlined the significance of critical social science approaches. The politicistic narrowing of international relations to questions of explicit politicalinstitutional regulations (eg in regime theory or cosmopolitan orientations; cf Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger 1997; Held and Koenig-Archibugi 2005 respectively), not only falls short of addressing the inner constitution of the capitalist economy, but also suffers from a simplified state concept. In these approaches, state, international politics or global governance is conceptualized in such a way that it comes to embody a kind of world society rationality to solve cooperatively global problems caused, for instance, by the economy or by the environmental crisis. However, certain critical approaches also suffer from undertheorized concepts of the state, which we shall illustrate with reference to some prominent examples. Here, the challenge consists of coping with the reality of institutionalized domination in the form of the state, without falling into statism or overestimating the extent to which the state is the subject of societal developments.
The Neo-Gramscian Approach In recent years, neo-Gramscian approaches to international political economy, with their focus on hegemony and social forces, have become very prominent (Cox 1993; Gill 2003; overview and critique in Bieler and Morton 2006). Despite differences within these approaches, the focus on civil society processes leads scholars to privilege analytically classes vis-`a-vis states: “Subverting the neorealist paradigm, for an understanding of international relations, states are conceptually subordinated to the international processes of class formation” (Scherrer 1999:27, our translation). The interests of these classes, who are seen to be the central actors of international politics, are largely predetermined by their position in the production process and are mainly made apparent by intellectuals. Thus, we can identify a tendency towards a double functionalism concerning the state in neo-Gramscian approaches. On the one hand, the internationalization of the state is considered to complement the internationalization of production, which—especially in the work of Robert Cox—represents primarily C
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an ideological consensus and a coherent institutional form. On the other hand, despite the important focus on social forces and particularly classes, international political institutions and organizations are more or less understood as an expression of the ruling classes and their strategies (and are defined as n´ebuleuse, too; see Baker 1999:79–80). Leo Panitch (1996:89–96) correspondingly criticizes the underestimation of the state, as well as an outside-in approach, through which international processes have effects on national ones and the state becomes the victim of international developments. As a result, the active role of the national state and its internal social struggles are underestimated.
The Transnational State William Robinson, who formulated a second important theoretical approach, close to the Neo-Gramscian one, argues that a transnational capitalist class or a “new global ruling class”, respectively, has emerged as an organized minority which disposes over strong networks and enough resources to realize its projects (2004:33ff). The transnational classes are able to organize themselves and express their class power in transnational state (“TNS”) apparatuses (2004:87). The transnational state does not replace the national state but the latter is reorganized according to the world market and its related forces. The “TNS apparatus is an emerging network that comprises transformed and externally-integrated national states, together with the supranational economic and political forums and that has not yet acquired any centralized institutional form” (Robinson 2001:166). Its major function is the institutional safeguarding of the dominance of the transnational capitalist class. Robinson highlights important issues: the transnationalization of social relations, the growing importance of international political institutions and the transformation of national states through globalization. However, there are three problems with his approach. First, he refers mainly to classes as social forces and thus lacks a more comprehensive understanding of domination which also includes gender and racialized relations or societal relationships with nature. Secondly, Robinson’s concept of the state shifts between acknowledging the state’s character as a social relation and vearing towards a functionalist account. Thus, on the one hand he argues that the TNS is “a particular constellation of class forces and relations bound up with capitalist globalization” (2004:99). On the other hand, he emphasizes the state’s role as an instrument to realize transnationalized class domination. Accordingly, he sees its main function in creating and maintaining the preconditions for the valorization and accumulation of capital in the global economy (2004:101). Third, the national state in Robinson’s approach merges into the transnational capitalist state: C
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The function of the nation-state is shifting from the formulation of national policies to the administration of policies formulated through supranational institutions . . . National governments serve as transmission belts and filtering devices for the imposition of the transnational agenda (2001:166, 188).
Asymmetric power relations between different national states, which manifest themselves for example in an unequal distribution of the opportunities to influence the shape of international institutions, remain underexposed in this perspective. This is due to the centrality of the transnational in Robinson’s approach. International political institutions are understood as the institutionalization of transnational class relations but not, additionally, as the material condensations of power relations among national states. As we will argue below, the latter is crucial for an adequate understanding of the contradictory character of capitalist globalization and its societal regulation.
Empire A third approach in critical international political economy to be discussed here is the Empire thesis as elaborated by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The Empire is the (bio)political and economic regime of contemporary capitalism, as it emerged after 1989. It means the “order of capital as a whole” (Negri 2001:23, our translation), which comprises not only the political sphere as such, but also the whole political, economic, cultural and subjective constellation of domination. And this order is increasingly uncoupled from the nation state (Hardt and Negri 2000:309). According to Hardt and Negri, in the post-modern Empire national states will still exist but they will become largely insignificant for the enforcement of domination and as terrains for making social compromises. Many functions of the state and constitutional elements are transferred to other levels. Hardt and Negri argue that the autonomy of the political sphere no longer exists because state and capital have merged and state functions are integrated in the command mechanisms of transnational corporations on the global level. Thus only a few functions of the state remain important on the level of the national state, especially those concerning disciplinary and redistributive policies. The state no longer needs civil society in order to mediate antagonisms and legitimize domination. The idea of the decline of the national state, as well as the idea of power centralization, implies that competition among national states is no longer an essential element of the dynamics of (world) society. Capital is not considered to be a social relation, while competition and the internal dynamics which are central in historicalmaterialist theory are not taken into account (see also Panitch and Gindin 2002; Wissel 2002). Along with these shortcomings, Hardt and Negri have no interest in societal institutions, how they are constituted as a C
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condensation of societal power relations, how they interlink and compete with each other. Accordingly, political disputes can only be conceived of as emerging in opposition to, but not in or around, institutions. International organizations, like the World Bank, the IMF or the WTO, are, in functional terms, reduced to being the coordination instruments of the transnational corporations, which, furthermore, organize the means of imperial domination. The politically problematic conclusion of Hardt and Negri is that, in this constellation, there is no longer any basis for reformist strategies and societal compromises (2000:118ff). With their understanding of Empire, an elaborated concept of institutions might even be an obstacle to them since they would have to consider the contradictions inside and among the dominating institutions as well as the (im)possibilities of institutional politics.
The Scale Debate A much more sophisticated approach to the changes in the spatial scale of politics and economy in the course of capitalist globalization is that of the “scale” debate. It originates in Anglo-American radical geography (Smith 1984; Taylor 1982) and has been further developed by other social scientists (Brenner 2004; Jessop 2002: ch 5; for an overview of the debate see Herod and Wright 2002; Keil and Mahon 2008; Sheppard and McMaster 2004). This debate’s starting point is the critique of the “pervasive naturalization of the nation scale of social relations” (Brenner 1998:31; cf Brenner et al 2003), which has prevailed for a long time even in critical social science approaches. A central argument is that scale cannot be treated as simply given, but that it is socially produced and thus changeable. In the words of Erik Swyngedouw (1997:141), “(s)patial scales are never fixed, but are perpetually redefined, contested, and restructured in terms of their extent, content, relative importance, and interrelations”. Furthermore, one scale of political and socio-economic organization can never be understood in isolation but only as part of a multiscalar configuration. The scale approach thus is a relational concept in a double sense. First, scale is not analyzed in the singular—that is, as a certain spatial level like the national state, a city region or the European Union. Rather, the focus is on the relationship between scales, on “their changing positionalities in relation to other geographical scales and scaling processes” (Brenner 2001:603). Up to this point there are considerable similarities between the scale debate and the multi-level governance concept in political science which addresses the “dispersion of authoritative decision-making across multiple territorial levels” (Hooghe and Marks 2001:XI; see also Bache and Flinders 2004). However, whereas the multi-level governance approach is rather statecentric and analyzes mainly the interaction of various levels of decisionmaking, the scale concept addresses social struggles and the production C
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of scale. This is the second relational aspect of the concept and at the same time one of its essential contributions to an understanding of recent processes of social transformation. Scale is conceptualized as the spatial manifestation of social power relations or, as Neil Smith puts it, as “the geographic organizer and expression of collective social action” (Smith 1995:61). The focus of the analysis thus is less on scale “as such” but on the social struggles through which scale is produced (Schmid 2003:222, our translation): scale (at whatever level) is not and can never be the starting point for sociospatial theory. Therefore, the kernel of the problem is theorizing and understanding “process” . . . The ontological priority for a processbased view . . . refuses to tackle global-local interplays in terms of a dialectic, an interaction or other mode of relating a priori defined things . . . A process-based approach focuses attention on the mechanisms of scale transformation and transgression through social conflict and struggle (Swyngedouw 1997:141; see also McMaster and Sheppard 2004:16; Smith 2000:725).
The crucial merit of the scale debate is that is has introduced an important spatial dimension into materialist accounts on recent societal transformation processes. However, from a state theoretical perspective there remain two problems which have not yet been sufficiently addressed. The first is connected with the scale debate’s focus on the production of scale through social conflict. Even if this is a crucial methodological advantage which inhibits a reification of scale, it has somewhat distracted attention away from an analysis of the structuring effects of scalar configurations. To quote Neil Brenner: [a]n investigation of the contextually specific conditions under which scalar structuration . . . generates sociologically or politically significant social, spatial and scalar effects remains a crucially important, if largely neglected, research task (Brenner 2001:606).
Thus, the successful methodological struggle against spatial reifications has led to an analytical neglect of the ways scale can actually be taken for granted, or conversely, challenged by social actors. In other words, the focus on social struggles has left the role of institutions underexposed. Second, the scale debate has convincingly challenged the “ontological fixation of the national state” (Schmid 2003:233, our translation). Without contending that the national state is disappearing, it has emphasized the necessity of taking a multiscalar perspective both theoretically and empirically. However, the question remains unanswered whether the scalar shape of the capitalist state is historically more or less accidental or if the “relativization of scale” (Bob Jessop) only refers to certain state functions whithout affecting the essentially national character of the state in capitalism (see also Callinicos 2007 C
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and the contribution of Hirsch and Kannankulam in this issue). What is thus required is a clarification of the relationship between state rescaling and the role of the national state and the international system of states. To sum up, critical approaches to (international) political economy have highlighted the emergence and transformation of classes and state apparatuses beyond the national scale. Their crucial merit lies in overcoming a state-centric view in international relations as well as the assumption that the national state is the primary scale where social conflicts take place and compromises are negotiated. Nevertheless, there is a demand for further research and clarification in at least two respects. First, the focus on class alliances and social struggles has distracted attention from the role of institutions. It has left unexplored how exactly (transnational) social power relationships are translated into new state configurations and to what extent the latter are able to process social antagonisms. In short, there is a lack of a materialist understanding of (international) state institutions. Second, the relationship between international state apparatuses, on the one hand, and the national state as well as the system of national states, on the other, remains underexposed in the approaches discussed above. Even if all (perhaps with the exception of Hardt and Negri) agree with the fact that the national state still plays a significant role they still run the risk of considering it almost accidental as to which state functions are settled on which spatial scales. Thus, the task remains to work out the structural differences between state apparatuses on different spatial scales and to clarify the relationship between various state spaces. In the following section we shall address these issues from a Poulantzian perspective on the state and state transformations.
The Internationalization of the State The debate about the reconfiguration of political domination connected with ongoing capitalist globalization shows the need for an improved understanding of the state, while avoiding the pitfalls of methodological nationalism, of statism and functionalism. It is our central argument that such an understanding can be provided by referring to the work of Nicos Poulantzas, though a reformulation of his approach is required. We elaborate this, first, by outlining some major “Poulantzian” arguments. Second, we sketch somewhat schematically our understanding of the “internationalization of the state” and combine it with the concepts of hegemony and regulation. Third, we develop our central proposal, which is to understand international politics and the internationalization of the state as “second-order condensations of societal relationships of forces”. We conclude this section with some remarks on the relationship between the state and nature from our theoretical understanding. C
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The State as a Social Relation Nicos Poulantzas (1936–1979) influenced the state-theoretical debate decisively in the 1970s with his argument that the state has to be conceptualized as a social relation. Of utmost importance was, and still is, his book State, power, socialism (1980; we refer here to the German edition).2 The starting point is the theoretical statement—broadly accepted in state theory—that the state is institutionally separated from the rest of society, disposes over specific and impersonal means of power, fulfils certain functions and materializes in apparatuses. According to historical-materialist approaches, the institutional separation of the state from the rest of society is the specific form of bourgeois domination. For Poulantzas the state is part of the social division of labor and the latter constitutes the basis for the appropriation of the surplus value by some members of society ([1978] 2002:45, 92). Social forces and their strategies, political and social struggles as well as the relations of forces are constitutive of capitalist societies and therefore provide an adequate understanding of the state. Thus, the state is not simply given but must be reproduced permanently through struggles and the contested functioning of capitalist social structures and, more generally, production relations. At the same time, the state is constitutive for different social relations, especially (re-)production and class relations as well as ideology. The state as a social relation and as a specific institutional and discursive ensemble, Poulantzas argues, is the “material condensation of societal relations between different forces” ([1978] 2002:159), that is, the state condenses the various societal contradictions and conflicts—especially class relations and class conflicts—and makes them processable. Struggles and compromises of the past are inscribed in the state—that is, its apparatuses; the state gives the relations of forces a particular form and is part of the struggles. As an institutional ensemble the state is central to the exercise of political power and has a strategic meaning for societal struggles. But, again, it is important to note that the state is not pre-existent to social relations like class relations but constituted through them. The state is a processing condensation and has a “statist” (etatisierend) effect on the multitude of social relations (Demirovi´c 2007:238). In this condensation, dominant societal interests (like the securing of capital valorization or the protection of patriarchal domination) play a crucial role, although not only these interests are materialized. Thus, the state is an arena for social conflicts, in which various social forces fight for the generalization of their interests and values, as well as for the recognition of their social identities (as owners of assets, religious groups, migrants, homosexuals etc). These generalizations take place in the form of laws, jurisprudence, the ways in which resources are mobilized or through discourses. C
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Accordingly, a certain institutional permanency of state apparatuses evolves. However, as far as they represent a materialization of antagonistic societal conditions, these apparatuses—administrative, ideological, repressive—do not constitute a homogeneous block, but stand in a contentious relationship to each other (one may think of the relationship between a ministry of economics and a ministry for international development cooperation). Although state apparatuses as condensed relationships of forces develop different “state projects” (Jessop 1990:315f), from their contentious relation a hegemonic state project might emerge—as happened historically with the Keynesian project or, nowadays, with the neoliberal-imperial project—which represents a kind of common reference point.3 Despite all the differences and conflicts between apparatuses and societal forces like industrial lobby associations, trade unions and others, a certain coherence can emerge. This coherence is based on the relative autonomy of the state apparatuses vis-`a-vis societal forces. Poulantzas has shown that the state is neither a neutral and rational authority for the solution of societal problems nor the “instrument” of the ruling class(es). Rather, it is the specific and material condensation of societal power relations. In order to comprehend the internationalization of the state, however, we cannot directly draw on Poulantzas’ state theory. Poulantzas is still attached to notions of a classical Marxist critique of political economy. His premise is that the mode of production is determinant in the “last instance” and that the contradiction between capital and labour is the predominant societal contradiction. This perspective neglects other social forces and contradictions. Furthermore it does not take into account societal relationships with nature. Notwithstanding the importance of conceptualizing the state as a social relation, Poulantzas’ understanding of the state has a tendency towards a certain functionalism because the relative autonomy of the state is limited to the following functions: the organization of the dominant class(es) and the disorganization of the dominated ones ([1978] 2002:84; see also Wissel 2007). Alex Demirovi´c (2007:69) emphasizes that Poulantzas cannot explain how the diverse interests of the bourgeoisie converge to a coherent class interest and why the latter assumes a political and state character.4 Thus, understanding the internationalization of the state requires us to combine Poulantzas’ state theory with other approaches, especially those on hegemony and regulation.
State, Hegemony and Regulation On a general level, the internationalization of the state can be understood as a complex process of transforming the state and the state system which is associated with neoliberal-imperial globalization. The term C
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“internationalization of the state” was introduced in the 1980s by Robert Cox (1987) and advanced amongst others by Sol Picciotto (1990) and Joachim Hirsch (1997, 2003) as well as, from a feminist perspective, Birgit Sauer (2003).5 Sabah Alnasseri (2004) proposed using the term for a theorization of peripheral states, and Jan Drahokoupil (2008) applied it to the developments in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. The core significance of the concept lies in three dimensions. First, in the course of the globalization of the capitalist mode of production, the “integral state”—that is, state and civil society, the latter consisting of firms, media, non-profit organizations—is being internationalized, and with it also “Western” production and consumption norms, behavioural attitudes, culture and so on. This leads to stronger competition under the overall hegemony of the world-market oriented faction. These processes do not necessarily mean a global homogenization; rather, they often imply diversity or fragmentation. They go hand in hand with an internationalization of social structures, especially class structures. The capitalist class was enhanced enormously through the dynamics at play in the so-called emerging economies like China and India and it transnationalized itself (Plehwe et al 2006). Second, mediated by neoliberal-imperial globalization, a transformation of the national state takes place. More than 10 years ago, Joachim Hirsch defined such a process as a development towards the “national competition state” (Drahokoupil 2008; Hirsch 1995), and Bob Jessop outlined a transition towards a “Schumpeterian workfare regime” (Jessop 1997:73). This process deals with the “interiorization” (Poulantzas [1973] 2001:24, 27f; cf also Jessop 2004:66) of real and alleged “external constraints”. During capitalist restructuring since the 1980s, external capital repositioned itself in a dominant way in the power bloc. Therefore, neoliberal globalization is fostered by certain forces and interest groups, although overall control remains beyond their grasp. Interiorization means that the “material constraint of the world market” (Sachzwang Weltmarkt) (Altvater 1987) is recognized in the discursive and material practices of social and public-political actors as placing limits on their capacity to think and act; and these limits are materially anchored in the institutions. It is an uneven process. Especially in the South-Eastern Asian countries in the 1990s and today in China, a strong interventionist state is important. Part of the transformation of the national state is the growing inter-state competition, which is partly mediated through international political organizations, networks or informal mechanisms. Third, with the growth of transnational social processes, international political-institutional structures have become more important. Jessop (2002:195ff) has referred to this process as the “denationalization of the state”. One can refer to inter- and supranational institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the EU as international state C
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apparatuses which are emerging or whose importance is increasing. These apparatuses do not correspond to the centralized modern national state, which—at least in principle—has the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. Nevertheless, they inherit certain state functions, like the establishment of law and order, the protection of property and the political regulation of societal conflicts. In this paper, we are especially interested in the functioning of these international state apparatuses and their relationship with other spatial political-institutional scales— especially that of the national state. The internationalization of the state is a presupposition of neoliberalimperial globalization. At the same time, it is a medium through which the contradictions posed by the latter are processed (in fact, often more or less stable regulation and hegemony do not occur). It does not, however, imply the emergence of a centralized international state because the fragmentation of the world system into different spaces of reproduction is an essential condition of the global capitalist order. Social compromises and strategic alliances are formed under the conditions of territorial fragmentation shaped by global political and economic competition. In other words, the successful regulation of the structural contradictions of capitalist societalization essentially rests on the fact: that the classes which face each other in the context of global valorization and accumulation are in themselves politically separated through the existence of competing states. The capitalist class relationship is modified through the state system in such a way that the members of classes—wage earners and enterprises—who stand in competition to each other are bound together at the level of the state and thus brought into opposition with the corresponding classes beyond the state territory. It is particularly for this reason that, at the level of the single state, the possibility emerges of forming classspanning coalitions in order to secure common competitive advantages on the world market (Hirsch 1995:32, our translation, emphasis in the original; see also Alnasseri et al 2001).
Due to the specific mode of integration into the world market, the compromises and alliances which can be found in advanced capitalist countries differ from those in developing countries. The processes of regulation and hegemony—as well as the structures and power relations connected with them—take place in very different spheres of society: in everyday life relations and orientations, or, more generally, in the ways of living of both capital owners and wage earners; in the forms of internal organization of companies and competition between them. Regulation is a process without center but the strategies of different actors as well as learning processes are important. The concept of hegemonic projects—which then in a complex process aim to become C
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state projects—helps us to shed light on the fact that specific social forces might be able to universalize their world views and interests. The central task or function of the internationalized state consists of making the antagonistic societal conditions firm and permanent. Thus, the main focus of supranational and international institutions is on the minimization of risk for foreign investors by assuring them a comprehensive legal order, property protection, predictable legal rules and favorable macro-economic policies. Hence, the internationalization of the state is a project of the ruling forces—and here especially the project of classes and class alliances—through which they try to impose and to strengthen their interests. Correspondingly, international political institutions cannot only be interpreted as a result of the routinization of behavior, but also as a result of strategies and projects and as a condensation of changing societal power relations. Safeguarding the conditions of reproduction in favor of dynamic capitalist development has become a core function of international and supranational politics. This concerns the complex relationship among the patterns of regulation and accumulation, as well as the connected social structures on various spatial scales. Functional problems of reproduction become explicit as manifold phenomena of crisis or conflict, and they are transformed into the mode of political conflicts of interests and strategies for problem-solving. Nevertheless, these functions can only be theoretically determined to a certain degree, because in their concrete expression, in their historical concreteness, they evolve in the course of struggles. Accordingly, the extension of economic state functions can lead to tensions inside the hegemonic block and their withdrawal can provoke social protests. Therefore, certain functions, in their concrete expression, may not necessarily be functional in the sense of bringing about a successful societal stabilization. The contradictory character of the capitalist process of accumulation prevents this kind of functional co-ordination of society as a whole.
The Concept of “Second-Order Condensations” In order to grasp the role of international political institutions more precisely, we have proposed the notion of the “second-order condensation of societal relationships of forces” (Brand 2007; Brand and G¨org 2008; Brand et al 2008; G¨org and Wissen 2003). Herewith, we aim to provide an analytical instrument which helps to reflect the interrelation between societal power relations and the processes of institutionalization in all its complexity, while taking into account the relationship between the national state and other state spaces. While most approaches to institution theory do not develop any concept of social forces and of their relationships with each other, C
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historical-materialist approaches, as seen above, often underestimate processes of institutionalization. The concept of “second-order condensation” tries to fill this gap. A basic assumption is that the generalization of interests more and more condenses itself materially in multi-scalar institutional configurations. But this is neither functionally given, nor necessarily successful. Moreover, the concept of condensation emphasizes the fact that through their condensation societal relations and forces are themselves shaped: that is, the state structures the relationships of social forces through specific forms of materialization. Poulantzas’ argument that the state is a condensation of societal relationships of forces means that international state apparatuses also deal with manifold societal contradictions and conflicts—not exclusively but in overlapping ways. Different state apparatuses may deal with problems in contradictory ways: one apparatus may promote growth and the use of fossil energy, whereas another apparatus attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by reducing the use of fossil energy. In general, international state apparatuses: create a terrain on which to deal with conflicts; are an objective of different strategies; carry out policies and search for compromises; and seek to stabilize or shape relationships of forces. They do not just “mirror” societal relations, strategies and struggles but shape them through the process of condensation. A specific mode of international politics is the diplomatic or intergovernmental one in which the condensations of power relations are performed on the international scale and shaped by the latter. The term “second order” refers to the fact that the strategies of national states, as central actors in the international realm, are already the expression of condensed national power relations. International institutions are thus concepetualized as the condensation of the power relationship between competing “national interests” which are themselves shaped by domestic social struggles and compromises. However, this notion has to be differentiated in two respects. First, on the international level actors other than national governments play an important role, especially transnational class actors (such as those analyzed by Neo-Gramscianism: Gill 1990; Plehwe, Walpen and Neunh¨offer 2006), internationally acting NGOs and knowledge communities, the mass media as central elements of an international public sphere, and trans-local actors and coalitions (Jasanoff 2004), for example those of indigenous peoples and grass-roots movements. These actors try to influence international institutions directly, too, and not (only) through the representatives of national states. Second, the term “second order” does not stand for a linear relationship. National governments indeed have to formulate a “national interest”—that is, a compromise on the national level—in order to be able to act in bilateral as well as in multilateral negotiations. Thus, power relations, condensed in national strategies, are decisive for the character C
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of international institutions. However, international institutions, along with the configuration of compromises and hegemonic projects on the international level, affect the national relation of forces and, therefore, the formulation of “national interests”. The restrictions and incentives created by them are interiorized by actors on the national scale and become materialized in the institutions of the national state. Additionally, a “national interest” can just emerge by way of bilateral and multilateral negotiations and rules. For example, the establishment of the stability criteria for the European Economic and Monetary Union can be interpreted as a strategy of the national ministries of finance and the national central banks in order to introduce, through the back door of the EU, a monetarist austerity policy, whose introduction otherwise would have faced the resistance of other national state apparatuses and of important social actors. In this case, the formulation of the “national interest” in monetarist politics did not precede the multinational negotiations (at least not in every EU member country), but was rather promoted through the supranational institutionalization of monetary constraints. Many political processes which occur within the national state are more or less internationalized. The state is not external to these processes; indeed the state is where the different interests and strategies of societal actors may condense into hegemonic projects. They are made durable, armored with state authority. Far from referring to a necessarily linear or hierarchical relationship among different spatial scales, the concept of second-order condensations denotes a complex relationship among condensations over various spatial scales. Furthermore, it aims to overcome the rigid dichotomy between national and international processes (and also subnational ones) without running the risk of losing sight of the centrality of the national state or, more generally, the necessary fragmentation of capitalism in discrete territorial units. The relationship between the internationalization of the state and the persistent importance of the national scale can be grasped as follows. First, many internationally developed policies have to be implemented and put into practice by national states and governments. International institutions do not always possess their own financial resources. Furthermore, they lack coercive power. The “monopoly of legitimate physical violence” (Max Weber) is still substantially rooted in the national state—with a few exceptions like the tendencies towards the internationalization of law and the transfer of coercive power to the UN Security Council or to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. However, even these levels of control are fundamentally determined by national states and existing power relations. Thus, international institutions are incapable of providing continuity and stability to hegemonic projects on their own, and even less if a large number of conflicts require the use of repressive legal measures or even of violent, military measures. C
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Second, one strength of international institutions (for example the World Bank, see Goldman 2005) is based on the enforcement of hegemonic projects like that of neoliberalism. As Paul Cammack has pointed out: international organisations will be better able to address the contradictions inherent in global capitalism if they are able to adopt a system-wide perspective which is not identical to the concerns of a particular state or set of states, or particular private capitalist interests (2003:40f).
However, there seem to be structural limits to the hegemonic capacities of international institutions. The lack of liberal-democratic procedures, which in many countries balance the structural contradictions of capitalist societies by transforming them into negotiable competing interests, helps powerful national states and capital factions to pursue their interests more directly on the international scale. According to Jens Wissel (2007:130ff), the relative autonomy of international state apparatuses is weaker and the structural selectivities inscribed in them are stronger compared with state apparatuses on the national scale. Thus, the quality of international institutions as material condensations of social power relations differs from that of the national state. On the one hand, this is an advantage from the perspective of dominant social forces and national government representatives. By materializing their interests in international institutions they may strengthen their position in their respective national arenas or vis-`a-vis other national states. In this way, national social compromises may be broken up and national as well as international power relationships may be shifted. This seems to be a major reason for the increasing institutionalization of power relations on the inter- and supranational scale as opposed to the national or local scale since the crisis of Fordism. On the other hand, however, weaker actors may also try to pursue their interests by shaping international institutions. As will be shown in the case study below, this may result in competing regulations on the same subject matter, with the institutions where subaltern interests are better represented acting in the shadow of those that are dominated by powerful interests. Furthermore, strong structural selectivities prevent subaltern actors from successfully articulating their positions and negotiating compromises which reflect at least partially their interest positions so that these actors have to pursue their interests beyond the existing institutional terrains or to politicize the latter. As a result, international institutions may become dysfunctional from the perspective of the forces that have shaped them, giving rise to a search for other forums and scales of negotiation (Wissen 2009). It is in the face of this structural hegemonic deficit of international institutions that the role of the national state comes into play. The institutional shape of many national states is the result of a long history of social conflicts C
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and compromises which reflect the power not only of capital but also of social movements. Against this background, the national state remains a principal scale for processing societal contradictions.
State and Nature Societal relationships with nature are an important element in the internationalization of the state. They are not only condensed in social institutions and scalar configurations, but also in networks and technologies. As shown by actor-network theory and other poststructuralist approaches (Latour 1993; Haraway 1991), nature is shaped and government exercised not only through institutions but also through networks of human and non-human actors like technological artifacts, which are not just instruments of human intervention into nature but also significantly shape our perception and our material practices vis-`a-vis nature. In focusing on issues of scale, institutions and hegemony we thus do not deny the importance of networks and “actants” (hybrid characters which are constituted through the relationship between human and non-human actors within networks). However, we would like to emphasize the materiality which social power relations gain through their institutionalization—an issue which from our point of view has been somewhat neglected not only in the approaches discussed above but also in recent debates on networks and critiques of the scale debate (Marston et al 2005; for a combination of Marxist and post-Marxist accounts on nature see Castree 2000; early studies on the relation of state and nature are given in Lipschutz and Conca 1993). Analyzing societal relationships with nature from the perspective of a materialist state theory can provide important insights into the transformation of the state. As shown by Erik Swyngedouw (2004), this applies particularly to the scalar dimensions of the state. Swyngedouw has analyzed, from a scalar perspective, the conflict over the management of water resources in Spain. Traditionally, water resources had been managed along political-administrative boundaries. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, there was an attempt to introduce the river basin as the primary scale of water resource management. From the perspective of the driving forces of this project (a new elite of engineers), this was not just a measure to enhance the efficiency of water resource management, but also a means to weaken the position of the traditional elites which dominated institutions on the local, provincial and national scale and which opposed societal modernization. If water resources had been managed on a river basin scale, the control over them, which was crucial for socio-economic development, would have been reorganized in favor of the modernizers. This example demonstrates the close interrelation between politics of scale and the production and transformation of nature. As Swyngedouw C
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puts it (on scale and nature, see also Bulkeley 2005; K¨ohler 2008; McCarthy 2005; Smith 1984): nature and environmental transformation are also integral parts of the social and material production of scale. More importantly, scalar configurations also produce new sociophysical scales that shape in important ways who will have access to what kind of nature, and the particular trajectories of environmental change (Swyngedouw 2004:132).
The value of analyzing state transformations from the perspective of societal relationships with nature is also emphasized by Whitehead, Jones and Jones when they argue “that a careful analysis of the various historical and territorial relationships between states and nature can provide key insights into the nature of modern power and the requisite imbroglios of politics and ecology” (2006:50).6 In their own case study on the changing forms of state intervention into the natural environment of the West Midlands region (UK) they stress not only the role of institutions but also the importance of knowledge for the social production of nature (2006:56). In recent times socio-ecological interactions have been monitored in a detailed manner by means of digital knowledge which is accumulated by the state in order to be able to define the environmental problems to be dealt with and to influence socio-ecological interactions in a more immediate and pinpointed way (2006:59ff; on the role of knowledge and power in environmental politics, cf K¨utting and Lipschutz 2009). The close relationship between state transformation and the production of nature which these approaches reveal also applies to the internationalization of the state. The constitution of the environmental crisis as a problem to be dealt with politically has essentially taken place on the international scale; the UN conferences in Stockholm 1972 and Rio 1992 as well as the accumulation of knowledge on the environmental crisis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) being important examples (cf Parks, Conca and Finger 2008). This has to do with the fact that the environmental crisis is caused by social structures and constellations of social forces which are transnational or international in their character—although important conflicts through which the crisis is politicized and alternatives are developed are local. Furthermore, its effects and manifestations—climate change, for example—can be felt globally, although concrete vulnerabilities are mediated through place-specific social relations. However, it would be a functionalist mistake to explain the increasing number of environmental regulations (environmental regimes and the environmental implications of trade agreements) as well as the environmental knowledge gathered on the international scale only with reference to the global character C
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of the problems to be dealt with. Instead, one has also to take into account the changing technical and economic conditions for the valorization of capital which fostered struggles over new spatioinstitutional forms of environmental regulations. In the following case study we will thus conceptualize international environmental regulation as condensations of dominant knowledge and power relations through which the environmental crisis is defined and the conditions of access to nature are reorganized. The material and symbolic production and transformation of nature through environmental regulations are an important medium for exercising, or challenging, social power and processing the contradictions of societal relationships with nature.
State Functions Today: Neo-Imperial Globalization and the Regulation of Societal Relationships with Nature In contrast to assumptions that environmental measures, and in particular multinational environmental agreements (MEAs), are tools to protect nature against their exploitation and destruction in the process of neoliberal globalization, it is vital to note that, since the 1980s, a paradigm of neoliberal valorization of nature has been inscribed into the MEAs as well. The new paradigm has been implemented with the participation of national states, important international organizations like the World Bank, relevant international class actors, some private companies and also some NGOs. These environmental agreements as such do not contradict the economic state function of securing capital accumulation, but contribute to guaranteeing this function in a new way. Nevertheless, these agreements should not only be explained in functional terms—that is, starting from their specific function to secure the capitalist mode of production—but the contingencies and conflicts which shaped them should also be taken into account. Since the 1990s, a tendency to create and protect global markets of genetic resources can be detected in biodiversity policy, beginning in the context of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) which was signed in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Genetic resources are the hereditary characteristics of plants, microorganisms and animals and provide the input for the new so-called life sciences industries in the pharmaceuticals and seed sector. Thus, the protection of nature—that is, biodiversity—also secures and regulates biological resources important for expanding the capitalist way of production. The CBD, however, is not simply functional in this expansion, but continues to embody contradictions inherent to international regulation. On the one hand, it provides some basic conditions for the creation of global markets— for example, it raises expectations in relation to the economic value of biodiversity and genetic resources and implies provisions regarding ownership and distributional aspects. On the other hand, questions of C
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ownership and property rights are, in particular, highly controversial issues, as the regulations inscribed in the CBD are shaped by other interests—conservation concerns as well as the rights of local actors such as indigenous people or small farmers. This has led to continuing internal conflicts within the CBD regarding the regulation of ownership and distribution (see the conflicts over the regulation of access and benefit sharing, ABS, within the CBD; cf Brand et al 2008), but also to external conflicts with other MEAs where other relationships of societal forces are inscribed. In particular, the relationship with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) within the WTO, which deals with the issue of private property necessary for the capitalist mode of production in the life sciences industries, represents one of the most controversial issues in international environmental politics. Both agreements can be interpreted as specific material condensations of global power relations, while their content, as well as their relationship to each other, is an object of negotiations. International political institutions can be accepted as arenas of international regulation (they can also be rejected as such, as the critique of the TRIPS Agreement by governments of powerful southern countries like India or Brazil shows). As instances of regulation, they possess their own specific density, which, however, can itself become a matter of conflict in the course of scale-jumping or forum-shifting strategies: national states like the USA shift from the TRIPS Agreement to other forums like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in face of the politicization of the former; local actors like indigenous peoples organizations use international forums like the CBD to strengthen their positions against their national governments. Furthermore, bilateral agreements continue to be a strategy of political regulation (especially regarding the protection of intellectual property rights). From this perspective, international political institutions form part of a global constitutionalism (Gill 2003; cf Bieling 2007)—that is, the emergence of a bourgeois political and legal framework at the international scale—and shape the access to important resources and to global markets. However, subaltern claims and interests are also condensed within these institutions, for example issues of benefit sharing with respect to the profits drawn from the commercialization of genetic resources, or even fundamental resistances, for example against the patenting of genetic resources. While the first remains inside the logic of capital valorization, protests against patenting oppose the valorization of natural resources in monetary terms and, hence, the expansion of capitalist accumulation. These conflicts are increasingly fought out in the context of “new state spaces” through politics of scale: the regulation of biodiversity takes place at the local, national and global scale, and the power relations between these different political scales are themselves C
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part of the struggles. The geographical scale for solving environmental problems and, thus, the institutional condensation of social conflicts, becomes itself an element of these conflicts and the question of the relative power of specific levels of regulations against other—national against international, local against national and/or international—gains particular weight. Contrary to naturalistic interpretations, the answer to the question of whether a certain problem has a global, national or local character is by no means predetermined. Conversely, the constitution of environmental problems is as such a contested social process, which includes the precise definition of the scale of the problem at hand. This definition will also structure the corridor of its “solution” and the distribution of adaptation costs and so on. Thus, through the constitution of environmental problems societal power relations can shift. And these shifts can express themselves in the production of new spatial scales of state politics or the revaluation of existing apparatuses (see the European Commission’s Environment Directorate-General vis-`a-vis the national Ministries of Environment). Thereby the fundamental power relations underlying state politics, inscribed in specific parts of national governments, remain more or less stable. However, new conflict lines develop, for example between international state apparatuses concerned with environmental policy and powerful states like the USA, or between the former and international state apparatuses for trade policy like the WTO. All these conflicts also affect the political and social disputes on other spatial scales. The extent to which national states are actually weakened or strengthened through state-rescaling thus does not only depend on the process of rescaling as such but also on the power relations within and between national states. These relationships determine the ability of individual states to shape the process of rescaling according to their interests, to escape possible dysfunctionalities of scalar configurations or even to exploit the latter to their own advantage. A second-order condensation in new spatio-insitutional configurations changes the conditions for emancipatory struggles. Although environmental policy as such is not external to the horizon of the capitalist logic of valorization, it offers a certain space for emancipatory strategies. On the one hand, various actors and social movements continue to place their concerns (at least partially) in international political institutions and thus to improve the conditions for their resistance. Corresponding examples are the translocal networks of indigenous peoples, which, in their confrontation against the capitalist logic of valorization, can indeed register some positive results on the international level (G¨org 2005). Precisely because their practices and their existence are threatened by the politics of their respective national governments (see for example the exploitation of the Amazon area; cf Roberts and Thanos 2003), their achievements on the international C
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scale are relevant. Here the relationship between the scales is again of great importance. Nevertheless, beyond this, it is necessary to achieve what, more than three decades ago, Herbert Marcuse (1972:65) targeted as the dialectical aim of a “radical reformism”: pushing forward environmental protection to an extent that it can no longer be contained inside the framework of capitalism. Transcending the logic of capitalist production and reproduction represents a political goal which today can only be discussed in the multi-scalar frame of global societal conditions.
Outlook Understanding the internationalization of the state as the second-order condensation of societal relationships of forces opens a new theoretical perspective for the analysis of international politics. By this means, considerable differences can be detected concerning concrete political processes. The ways in which multi-scalar structures and processes are condensed in different fields of conflict, is not determined a priori and thus cannot be theoretically deduced. The reflections contained in this article should be read as proposals for a research programme and not as a conclusive theory. On the theoretical level, attention still has to be paid to the interplay of scales, especially below the national one. And the relationship between rescaling processes and the persisting importance of the national state has to be further elaborated. We are conscious of the fact that it is here, beyond the aforementioned difficulties, that the concept of second-order condensation faces further obstacles. Future debates, will have to consider how rescaling over several, not clearly predefined scales can be conceptualized theoretically without falling back behind the insights of materialist state theory. Further open questions and problems emerge concerning political diagnoses. For example, the role of the USA, as a very specific and decisive variant of condensation on the national level, has to be investigated in more detail with respect to second-order condensations. For example, to what extent does the USA continue to be the central political actor of the international order? And, if so, in which ways: as a “diving eagle” (Wallerstein 2003) or still as a central hegemonic power (Panitch and Gindin 2003)? There is much evidence that the USA will go on playing the central role in the process of second-order condensation because, more than any other actor, they are able to practise scale-jumping and forum-shifting (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000:ch 24). Still, it is far from clear how Europe, the present main political rival, and China, the possible future main rival, will influence the power relations of internationalized statehood. The relatively high degree of political institutionalization in the EU represents a particular case, which has to be specifically investigated. C
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All this implies considerable challenges for emancipatory politics, which has to be multi-scalar in order to undermine the dominant spatio-institutional configurations. With this, the question of “counterhegemonic” scales arises—that is, of political organization and alternative discourses and practices which exert pressure on the dominating institutions. This becomes partly evident—although in different terms—in sites of critique and exchange of alternative experiences, such as those found at the World Social Forum and its regional counterparts.
Acknowledgements We are very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers of Antipode and to Armin Puller for their useful comments as well as to Michael Heinrich, Bob Jessop and Daniela Tepe who have commented on a previous version of this text in a workshop organized by the International Studies Association (ISA) in March 2007 in Chicago. Furthermore, we wish to thank the participants of a conference of the Assoziation f¨ur kritische Gesellschaftsforschung (AKG) [Association for Critical Social Research] on “State theory facing new challenges” in Frankfurt-on-Main.
Endnotes 1
Translated by Mar´ıa del Carmen Garc´ıa Mareco and Stefan Armborst. Before the upheavals of May 1968 in Paris he published his book Pouvoir politique et classes sociales (published in English in 1978) which sold several thousand copies and brought him immediate fame. At this time he became a professor at the reform University Paris VIII Vincennes. He wrote about fascism in Greece, the internationalisation of capitalist production relations and the composition of classes, and developed more and more his theory of the state. Additionally, he engaged critically with the work of the intellectual star at that time, his colleague at Vincennes, Michel Foucault. Poulantzas was highly criticical of the developments in countries of “really existing socialism” and promoted cooperation between different forces on the left, for example at the end of the 1970s between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party in France. In the second half of the 1970s he was more oriented towards social movements. His books were soon translated into various languages and in the Anglo-Saxon world his debate with Ralph Miliband became well known (cf Aronowitz and Bratsis 2002; especially Barrow 2002). However, after his suicide in 1979 Poulantzas’ work was overshadowed by poststructuralism and, in general, state-theoretical debates—both Marxist and general— became less intense. 3 The “essential theoretical function [of the concept of state project] is to sensitize us to the inherent improbability of the existence of a unified state and to indicate the need to examine the structural and strategic factors which contribute to the existence of ‘state effects’” (Jessop 1990:9). Poulantzas saw this aspect but did not give the same amount of attention to it as Jessop did later. 4 Furthermore, Poulantzas’ concept of societal forces, and especially of societal class relations, which he develops from the societal division of labor, remains amorphous. It is analytically and politically important, however, to consider how to address theoretically the structured terrains of struggles. Thus, it makes sense to combine Poulantzas’ seminal understanding of the state as the materially condensed arena of social struggles with Marxist form analysis (cf Hirsch 1983; Hirsch and Kannankulam 2006). Poulantzas did not elaborate any concept of the necessary reification of societal relations—particularly of the commodity and capital relation—which represents a condition for the existence of capitalist socialization and decisively configures societal practices (Marx 1988:85ff; 2
C
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1974:822ff; Heinrich 1999:306ff). In further investigations on the internationalization of the state, such an interrelation needs to be taken into account more strongly. 5 Martin Shaw (2000) introduced the concept of the “Western-global state” which focused from a neo-Weberian perspective on the means of physical force. 6 See also McCarthy and Prudham (2004:275) who emphasize the link between neoliberalism, environment and regulation: “neoliberalism and modern environmentalism have together emerged as the most serious political and ideological foundations of post-Fordist social regulation”.
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The Antipode Graduate Student Scholarship 2010–2011 Winner
Pesticides, People and Power in Ecuador’s Banana Industry: Participatory Epidemiology and Political Ecology Approaches to Occupational Health and Safety Ben Brisbois School of Population and Public Health University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3, Canada;
[email protected]
Occupational and environmental health risks in Ecuador’s export-based banana industry – the world’s largest – demonstrate many of the contradictions inherent in the global food system, and the model of development within which it fits. Banana workers in Ecuador tend to be young, proletarianized, and vulnerable to exploitation by wealthy elites; farm-owning elites are in turn contractually engaged by multinational banana exporters to sell bananas, with financial risk being shifted downward by all parties in the supply chain (Striffler, 2002). The extremely precarious nature of banana industry employment is reinforced by disregard for Ecuador’s labour laws, meaning that workers who attempt to join unions or ask for better pay or working conditions are often summarily dismissed (Pier, 2002). Bananas are a pesticide-intensive monoculture due to their low genetic diversity and vulnerability to fungal diseases (Henriques et al., 1997); among other occupational hazards, this combination of ecological and social risk leads to exposure to several classes of hazardous pesticides, with neurotoxic, carcinogenic, reproductive and dermatological effects. Agro-industrial exports such as bananas, produced using “Green Revolution” technologies, have been key components of compulsory economic restructuring plans imposed on countries such as Ecuador by international financial institutions and development agencies. Overall, Antipode Vol. 43 No. 1 2011 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 176–179 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00870.x C 2011 The Author C 2011 Editorial Board of Antipode. Antipode
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the banana industry has transformed the landscape of much of Latin America for over a century, linking banana consumers, governments and corporate actors in high-income countries to often-inequitable processes of social and environmental change in the global South (Soluri, 2005). My research is situated in the “implementation gap” between the reality of occupational and environmental impacts of Ecuador’s banana industry, and the theoretical implications of health and social science research indicating that these impacts are unacceptable. International trends towards “evidence-based” public health practice and policy reflect the belief that knowledge should inform practice (Behague et al., 2009), though such rhetoric often contains superficial or nonexistent recognition of attendant political obstacles. Because of this lack of explicit political awareness in evidence-based health discourse, the globalized nature of the banana supply chain, and the prominence of young, precariously employed workers in banana farm work in Ecuador, I am working with Ecuadorian and Canadian youth (aged 18–30) to explore unconventional (i.e. effective) and appropriatelyscaled approaches to political and social action on health determinants in Ecuador. Together with Ecuadorian NGO and academic partners, I will be facilitating and evaluating an intervention consisting of the establishment and use of social networks linking youth across a North-South divide to engage with a health and environment problem with international roots. This intervention will employ both traditional and novel methods of critical pedagogy and transformative education (Freire, 2004), with participatory evaluation methods carried out in partnership with participating Ecuadorian and Canadian youth. The project builds on a banana industry stakeholder workshop hosted in Machala, Ecuador in December, 2009, as well as a multiyear collaboration between the University of British Columbia (in Vancouver, Canada) and four Ecuadorian universities (Universidad Andina Sim´on Bol´ıvar, Universidad Estatal de Bol´ıvar, Universidad de Cuenca, and Universidad T´ecnica de Machala) aimed at equitably managing environmental health risks in Ecuador (Parkes et al., 2009). Issues such as pesticide exposure and the health effects of agroindustry in the global South have been among the key motivators of an academic movement based on employing “ecosystem approaches to health”. Canada’s International Development Research Centre funds such participatory environmental health research through its ‘Ecohealth’ program initiative, including attempts to prevent pesticide exposure. Criticisms have emerged that Ecohealth’s focus on community-level action research, albeit sophisticated in its ‘transdisciplinarity’ and gender-equity foci, ultimately fails to engage with the upstream roots of environmental health risks (Cole et al., 2006). This is in spite C
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of “scale politics”-type arguments used by Ecohealth researchers and practitioners to translate descriptions of global environmental degradation into a need for community-level research (e.g. Lebel, 2003). My paper – “Scaling up” Ecohealth: insights from the political ecology of pesticide exposure in Ecuador’s banana industry - will explore this contradiction. I will present at the Ecohealth 2010 conference at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK). I will also participate in a panel with other young researchers dealing with participatory approaches to governance of the global food system. I am very fortunate to have Antipode’s support in adopting this critical perspective by bringing themes from radical geography – especially political ecology – into my public health research. The Antipode scholarship will enable me to attend the Ecohealth 2010 conference, and to continue working with Ecuadorian partners on creating international linkages for grassroots governance of the international commodity chains linking banana producers in the global South to consumers in the North. Prior to beginning my doctoral research, I completed a Bachelor of Science degree at McGill University in Montreal and a Masters in Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto. I have also worked as a high school teacher, in Canada’s federal health and environment departments, and in Guyana for a youth-focused Canadian NGO. My doctoral research is reflective of this interdisciplinary background and extracurricular experience, as well as of a family tradition of Latin America-focused social justice activism. I am therefore extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with my Ecuadorian academic and community partners on an issue with such relevance to environmenthealth and North-South interactions.
References Behague D, Tawiah C, Rosato M, Some T and Morrison J (2009) Evidence-based policy-making: The implications of globally-applicable research for context-specific problem-solving in developing countries. Social Science & Medicine 69:1539–1546 Cole DC, Crissman CC and Orozco AF (2006) Canada’s International Development Research Centre’s eco-health projects with Latin Americans: Origins, development and challenges. Canadian Journal of Public Health 97(6):8–14 Freire P (2004) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Henriques W, Jeffers RD, Lacher TE and Kendall RJ (1997) Agrochemical use on banana plantations in Latin America: Perspectives on ecological risk. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 16(1):91–99 Lebel J (2003) Health: An Ecosystem Approach. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre Parkes MW, Spiegel J, Breilh J, Cabarcas F, Huish R and Yassi A (2009) Promoting the health of marginalized populations in Ecuador through international collaboration and educational innovations. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 87(4):312–319 C
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Pier C (2002) Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations. New York: Human Rights Watch Soluri J (2005) Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States. Austin: University of Texas Press Striffler S (2002) In the Shadows of State and Capital: The United Fruit Company, Popular Struggle and Agrarian Restructuring in Ecuador, 1900–1995. Durham: Duke University Press
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Supporting a New Generation of Radical Geographers . . .
The Antipode Graduate Student Scholarship 2011–2012 Graduate students in radical geography are invited to apply for this yearlong award of US$2500 and a complimentary three year subscription to Antipode. These funds are intended to provide resources to: • attend an international conference; • cover additional research expenses.
The successful applicant will be a current doctoral student working in any field of radical geographical scholarship. Applications are especially encouraged from the developing world and/or from those traditionally marginalised in the academy. The competition runs every year and is announced in issues five and one of Antipode. The closing date for the 2011–2012 scholarship applications is 31 March 2011. Application forms are available from http://www.antipodeonline.net/scholarship-info.asp or by mail from Andrew Kent, School of Environment and Development, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. A decision will be made by the Antipode editorial board in April and all applicants will be notified of the result in May. The Antipode Graduate Student Scholarship 2010–2011 has been awarded to Ben Brisbois at the University of British Columbia. Congratulations! Ben will be introducing his research, “Pesticides, people and power in Ecuador’s banana industry: Participatory epidemiology and political ecology approaches to occupational health and safety”, in issue one of Antipode 43. There were 35 applications and as always all were of a very high standard, making the final decision extremely difficult. The editorial board would like to thank all the applicants.
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