Requerimientos

In 1986 Robert Cox outlined what has become an extremely influential conception of ‘states, social forces and world order’. Cox suggested that advances in communications and the glob- alisation of finance have brought about a radical change in the way production is organised across the globe. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the production of goods and services was confined to particular countries, and products were then traded between countries. However, today the production process is spread across countries. For example, the production of different car components might be spread across a number of countries, and the assembly of these various components to make a car might take place in another part of the world. This method of production has brought with it a new model of social relations based on a core–periphery structure of production, with a relatively small core of relatively permanent employees in the North, handling finance, research and development and technological organ- isation, and a periphery consisting of the dependent components of the production process. This has allowed capital to take advantage of a more precariously employed labour force seg- mented by ethnicity, gender, nationality or religion.

To some extent these groups have displaced class as the focus of social struggle, but like the ‘old’ working class they derive their force from the resentment they feel at the exploitation which they suffer. Disaffected groups must organise transnationally if they are to be an effec- tive oppositional force. However, increasingly, as the economy globalises, major economic classes become organised globally in response, in order to achieve hegemonic domination, while disadvantaged groups are fragmented along the lines of nationality, ethnicity, class and gender. In response, trade unions and other groups have attempted to organise globally in order to strengthen workers’ rights, but their efforts have been thwarted by the logic of competition. For example, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has endeavoured to develop global standards in relations to workers’ rights and conditions of employment throughout the world, but have – ironically – often faced opposition from developing countries who fear that their ‘competitive edge’ (effectively a cheap and flexible labour force) will be eroded.

been possible without the support of a hegemonic state – the USA. The USA played a number of crucial roles in establishing the BWS and making it work effectively. Perhaps most important, the USA provided vital ideological support for the new world order, arguing that free trade and mone- tary stability would allow freedom and democracy to flourish throughout the world.

As is apparent in our earlier discussion, world orders do change and alternative political, economic and social arrangements can and do emerge. Critical Theorists are concerned with the nature of such change and the ways in which social forces and social structures enter periods of transition. The existing order is not ‘fixed’, because social structures comprise institutions and the prevailing socioeconomic form of organisation and ideas.

Although social action is constrained by structures, these can be transformed by collective action involving leading or subordinate groups in society. Stephen Gill and David Law argue that there are new sources of conflict and cleavages that are working their way slowly but surely into the foun- dations of world politics. Counter-hegemonic forces are challenging prevailing institutional and political arrangements. Gill also argues that there is an urgent need for a counter-hegemony based on an alternative set of values, concepts and concerns, coming perhaps from organisations like Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace. These movements exist within states, but they have grown up in different parts of the world and are transnational in essence. Intellectuals also have a role to play in generating change by developing a ‘counter-hegemonic’ set of concepts and concerns to deal with the problems of militarism and economic and social inequalities.

Identity and community

So far, in our discussion of themes, we have concentrated on Gramscian Critical Theory. At this junc- ture, it is appropriate to consider the ways in which Habermasian ideas have been influential in International Relations. In our discussion of the state above, we tended to concentrate on the roles and functions which it fulfilled for capitalism, but suggested that to some degree the state also reflects the struggle for political influence among oppositional groups. Critical Theorists such as Andrew Linklater are interested particularly in how far the state and the state system open up or close off pos- sibilities for human emancipation.

Enlightenment thinkers believed that the modern state created the conditions in which it was poss- ible to live under the rule of law and according to principles of justice. Furthermore, people, or at least some people, enjoyed the status of active citizens, playing a role in deciding the politics of their country in the public sphere where issues of law, justice and morality were debated openly, rather than of subjects who simply obeyed the monarch. In so far as ‘emancipation’ was closely connected with a sense of autonomy and control over one’s life, this was a major step forward for human beings. The rise of nationalism as a powerful ideology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries strength- ened the claims of the state to be the sole legitimate representative of citizens, in the first place by extending citizenship rights and, secondly, by inculcating a feeling of emotional attachment to the nation-state. As we saw in chapter 2, realists continue to regard the state as the dominant form of community and the only significant expression of political identity in the world. In the twentieth century nationalist sentiment worked to challenge the authority and legitimacy of existing state boundaries. However, radical and secessionist national movements, acting under the banner of the rights of people to self-determination, only strengthened the attachment between the individual and the ‘national homeland’ and thus consolidated, rather than weakened, the state system.

In some respects, the expansion of the state system can be viewed as a positive development, because it extends the principles of self-determination and citizenship to more and more of the world’s peoples. However, at the same time, the nation-state embodies something of a moral contra- diction, because it is at once both an inclusionary and exclusionary form of political community. The

nation-state is inclusionary, because it is founded on the idea that all citizens are equal. There are certain rights which flow from citizenship and these should be enjoyed by every member of the com- munity. All citizens are, therefore, of equal moral worth. However, the nation-state is by its very nature exclusionary. It discriminates against ‘foreigners’ on the grounds that they are different. The differences between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are held to be morally relevant. The bounded com- munity of the nation-state excludes people whose ‘difference’ is deemed to threaten the state’s distinctive identity. International law sets out just what obligations states owe to non-citizens tem- porarily residing within the boundaries of the state, who, among other things, must be protected from harm; in certain cases states might extend temporary rights of asylum to foreigners who fear perse- cution in their homeland. Nevertheless, while, say, the British state has a certain obligation to ‘foreigners’, these are clearly not the same as or equal to the obligations owed to ‘nationals’. Moreover, the boundaries of the communities are constantly being policed to ensure against ‘inva- sion’ from outsiders, so much so that we regard ‘foreigners’ as a threat to the extent that we can even debate the morality of the use of nuclear weapons to deter outsiders from encroaching on our ‘space’. The emancipatory project at the heart of Critical Theory necessarily raises questions about the limits of political community, how boundaries between self and other are constructed and the moral impli- cations of this.

Critical Theorists are interested in how the boundaries of community change over time. So, his- torically, certain groups, for example, women and working-class men, have been denied citizenship on the grounds that they are ‘different’ – less rational and not up to the demands of active citizenship. Women, for example, were held to be in need of strong moral guidance from their menfolk. Of course, working-class men and women have made great strides in overcoming such prejudices and now enjoy rights of citizenship in most states around the world although, as we will see in chapter 6, significant forms of discrimination still exist.

Since the UN was established in 1945, there has been a gradual development of human-rights law which recognises the equal moral worth of every human being. The widespread commitment to respect human rights seems to suggest that there exists amongst humankind a moral conviction that all individuals belong not only to sovereign-states, but to a more inclusive community of humankind even if, in practice, this has been denied to some groups. Arguably, we might now be witnessing the eclipse of the sovereign state system in favour of more cosmopolitan forms of identity and com- munity. As is evident from our earlier discussion of world order and the increasingly globalised nature of social relations, expressions of loyalty and solidarity can be both sub-state and transna- tional. Social movements give expression to, or reflect, the plural forms of identity, loyalty and solidarity. These groups express commitment to various ‘communities’ and, increasingly, these are transnational in nature.

AUTHOR BOX

Andrew Linklater and the transformation of political