Democracy and the Global System: A Contribution to the Critique of Liberal Internationalism

Democracy and the Global System A Contribution to the Critique of Liberal Internationalism

Fabian Biancardi

Democracy and the Global System

Democracy and the Global System A Contribution to the Critique of Liberal Internationalism

Fabian Biancardi Assistant Professor of Political Science, Riverside Community College, California, USA

© Fabian Biancardi 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–1777–9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Biancardi, Fabian 1963– Democracy and the global system: a contribution to the critique of liberal internationalism / Fabian Biancardi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–1777–9 (cloth) 1. Democracy. 2. Globalization. 3. Internationalism. 4. Liberalism. I. Title. JC423.B433 2003 321.8—dc21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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To Teri and the girls

Contents

Abstract

x

Acknowledgements

xi

Preface

xii

Introduction Democracy and the global system Liberal internationalism and the spread of democracy Liberal internationalism and the end of the Cold War Conceptualising the global system Conceptualising democracy Methodology

1 4 4 7 9 15 16

1 Barrington Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System Introduction The basic argument of the text Theorising democracy The historical actors The original transition Theoretical implications Conditions favourable and unfavourable to democracy Criticisms Conclusion

20 20 21 22 23 24 26 28 36 38

2 Karl Polanyi, Democracy and the Global System Introduction The ‘double movement’ Structure and agency in the ‘double movement’ Self-regulating market utopia Domestic and international institutions of the self-regulating market Opposition to market society in England/Britain Democracy and working-class opposition to self-regulation in Britain Uneven and combined development and democracy

40 40 40 42 45

vii

46 48 50 52

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Agrarian protection in Europe Working-class protection in Europe Middle-class protection in Europe Imperialism and the double movement The international political consequences of the double movement in the nineteenth century ‘World-historical-time’, liberalism and the twentieth century Criticisms: a post-liberal order? Conclusion 3 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy and the Global System Introduction Schumpeter’s analysis of the direction of capitalism Schumpeter’s theory of democracy The consequences of democracy Democracy and the capitalist order Conditions for the success of the democratic method Criticisms Conclusion 4 Samuel Huntington, Political Order and the Global System Introduction Objectives of text Huntington’s thesis: modernity versus modernisation Aspects of modernisation: social mobilisation and economic development Social modernisation and political change in traditional polities Historic routes to political modernity: Continental, British and American The city–country gap: ‘urban breakthroughs’ and ‘Green Uprisings’ Political stability: civic and praetorian polities Huntington’s theory of the state and the political community Modernisation and revolution Reform and political change Modernisation and corruption: politically functional? The global system and the prospects for democracy Conclusion

53 55 56 60 62 64 66 67

69 69 70 73 77 78 81 92 93 95 95 95 97 99 104 106 111 114 119 122 125 128 131 134

Contents ix

5 David Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’ Introduction Democracy and the global order The rise of liberal democracy War and militarism: the first ‘macro-pattern’ The development of capitalism: the second ‘macro-pattern’ Liberal democracy and citizenship: the third ‘macro-pattern’ Globalisation and the challenges to democracy Disjuncture 1: international law Disjuncture 2: internationalisation of political decision-making Disjuncture 3: hegemonic powers and international security structures Disjuncture 4: national identity and the globalisation of culture Disjuncture 5: the world economy Disjuncture 5 (continued) Assessment of text Conclusion

136 136 137 139 142

Conclusion Introduction Liberal internationalism and the case studies Democracy and the global system: a framework for analysis Conclusion

186 186 187 193 209

Notes

211

Bibliography

242

Index

249

145 149 151 155 156 161 163 165 174 183 184

Abstract This study seeks to analyse the relationship between the global system and democratic governance. While much has been written in recent times about the impact that democratic states have on the global system, the question of whether the global system promotes, hinders or is in contingent relation to the institutionalisation of democracy has not been theorised to the same extent, especially within the discipline of International Relations (IR). The central hypothesis is that forms of state, democratic and non-democratic, are not simply a consequence of domestic processes and forces – cultural/ideological, economic, political – but also of international ones. This is not to deny the importance of domestic contexts but to place these within the larger context of the global system and to analyse their dynamic interrelations. The structure of the thesis takes the form of evaluation, critique and comparison of texts that to some extent have dealt with questions concerning international causes of socio-economic, political and cultural change in a wider social context than is usually found in mainstream IR literature. These are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies David Held, Democracy and the Global Order

Beyond the arguments of the specific authors, a critique of liberal internationalism is attempted – a potentially significant interpretation of the global system, of democracy and of their interrelations. Finally, the concluding chapter seeks to elaborate a coherent framework for analysing the complex relations and salient variables established in the five main chapters and to provide a basis upon which to conclude whether indeed the global system may be said to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy within states.

x

Acknowledgements The research and writing of a book of this nature can be a long, and at times, quite solitary endeavour. The support and encouragement of one’s colleagues, friends and family can consequently become a critical factor in its evolution and completion. I have been privileged with an abundance of such sustenance. First, I would like to extend my gratitude to Richmond, The American International University in London for their support throughout the 11 years of my tenure there. A particular debt is owed to Wolfgang Deckers, my closest Richmond colleague and dear friend, for supporting my every step from the earliest stages of my academic career – from before I even knew I was to embark upon one. I’d also like to thank John Otterpohl, former history and social science teacher at the American School in London, for nurturing my love of teaching and for providing encouragement, guidance and, occasionally, the prodding necessary for me to do the right thing. My participation in his meticulously organised study-tours to Vietnam, Cuba and South Africa gave me a rare opportunity to see first-hand the reality of some of my earliest political ideals as well as delusions. As anyone who reads this book or who has shared any significant time with me will know, the intellectual debt I owe to London School of Economics Professor Fred Halliday, my doctoral supervisor, is immense. He has been and remains an inspirational teacher and model scholar to countless students and fellow academics and I am indeed honoured to be able to count myself among both of these. Many thanks are due also to Professors David Held and Andrew Linklater for their unanimity in diagnosing some of the central problems with an earlier draft of this work and for their clear suggestions as to how best to deal with them. The responsibility for all those that remain is mine alone. I wish also to express my eternal gratitude to my parents, Raúl and Alexia, above all for their love, friendship and sacrifices. Finally, my partner, Teri Wagner, and our children, Chantal, Celine and Michelle, have endured the highs and the lows of this project more intimately than anyone should have had to. I would like to thank them for making these past eight years the best of my life. FABIAN BIANCARDI xi

Preface This book has a number of objectives. It seeks to probe the relationship between the liberal democratic model of government and the wider global system by asking whether this system may be said to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of the liberal democratic form of state – or, indeed, whether the relationship may be said to be a contingent one in which case it seeks to explore the features of this contingency. It is also an attempt to engage critically with the social scientific and philosophical paradigm of liberal internationalism – a diffuse ideological position which has historically, as well as currently, posited a number of optimistic presumptions about the likely global spread of liberal democracy. Finally, this book suggests an historically sensitive analysis of the interaction between the global system, social structure and state as an alternative theoretical formulation to liberal internationalism. It does so, however, from a normative commitment to the realisation of the primary liberal internationalist goal, namely, the global spread of sustainable liberal democracy, as much for its continued potential as for its past accomplishments, rather than to its negation or even, as the more hopeful would have it, to its transcendence. The Atlantic revolution is still sufficiently radical for the vast majority of societies and states in the world today not to be surpassed, at the very least in practice, by any of its numerous historical challengers.1 Because the approach adopted here is unconventional is a number of ways, this section will introduce the basic method and arguments of the text as well as attempt to anticipate at least a few of the likely objections and criticisms. The chapters sandwiched between the Introduction and Conclusion are analyses of landmark texts written by prominent, some eminent, social scientists. Rather than book reviews, however, they are focused on extracting insights, arguments and theoretical formulations germane to the evolving relationship between liberal democracy and the global system. They are not, therefore, exhaustive treatments of the entire academic output of each of these authors nor, indeed, of each single text. To keep it manageable, such a comprehensive approach would have to include only a very few authors, maybe just one. This would not have delivered the range of questions, conceptualisations and theories that I was looking for. Similarly, a purely thematic approach would not have enabled me to engage with and confront the work of others so xii

Preface xiii

directly nor would it have been of the same value, because of the limited range of views, to students interested in this important field. The ‘key texts’ approach adopted here, therefore, is a device, for better or worse, hit upon to make headway on a vast subject in need of parameters. While the introductory chapter attempts to justify the selection of authors and texts made here, suffice it to say that other academic practitioners would choose differently even if agreement on the specific criteria for making the selection was possible. Nevertheless, my hope is that there is at least broad concurrence on the importance of engagement with the chosen texts for the purpose of stimulating intellectual reflection about the relationship between liberal democracy and the global system. The basic argument of the book is that liberal internationalism’s optimistic expectation of the global spread of the liberal democratic form of state is misplaced – it is a-historical, teleological, unrealistic and based on a deficient sociology of the global system. The interaction between the global system, social structures and states continues to produce unique socio-economic, political and cultural formations that rarely crystallise into liberal democracy. Geopolitical pressures and considerations of ‘national security’, global economic processes as well as ideological reactions and movements produce highly contradictory forces that, again, rarely combine unambiguously in favour of liberal democratic breakthroughs. A central theoretical argument of the book is that the global system in interaction with domestic social systems is best characterised by ‘uneven and combined development’ even if the case is made for a non-dogmatic and highly flexible use of this originally neoMarxist concept. At the very least, this flexibility is essential if human agency is to have as meaningful a role in theoretical models of political change as it evidently does in the real world. As I’ve said, this is not to argue that the primary political goal of liberal internationalism is itself misplaced. Clearly, the advantages to countries as well as to relations between them of replicating globally the kinds of political dispensations prevalent in the Western liberal democracies would be enormous and totally unprecedented. This book is an exploration of context and of the means rather than the ends. While the book attempts to pay due consideration to socialist critiques of liberal internationalism – an entire chapter on a classic text of Marxist historical and comparative sociology (Barrington Moore Jr.), one on a classic democratic socialist critique of liberal capitalism (Karl Polanyi) and one also on a contemporary democratic socialist and feminist critique of democracy and globalisation (David Held) – the normative

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commitment to liberal democracy expressed in it is bound to displease those for whom this form of state is either unworthy of emulation because of intrinsic faults and limitations as much as those for whom it goes too far in challenging established, non-liberal democratic models of political organisation. The first category, it seems to me, is more likely to include the Left in traditional Western terms, particularly the more radical versions, while the latter is more likely to include the Right – nationalists of either persuasion are perhaps the most likely to be displeased with the normative commitment to liberal democracy implied here. Of course, one may accept or reject the normative argument while being highly critical of the methods employed and conclusions reached in this book. This is simply part of the rough and tumble of any academic enterprise and is to be welcomed as such. Nevertheless, the comments that follow are aimed specifically at those who would take issue with the normative commitment by rejecting the value of liberal democracy as a political goal. Beginning with the possible objections by the radical Left, perhaps a reasonable point of departure is the concept of democracy itself. This is not an exploration of what democracy should mean and the conceptualisation taken here is a very standard and familiar one. Although the book does deal with the intellectual and historical malleability of the meaning of democracy, it is assumed that there is little value in examining the relationship between the global system and versions or models of democratic politics on which there is no broad agreement or established institutional forms. So, for example, the notion that democracy is simply impossible in the context of capitalism does not receive the extended attention it may well deserve in a book, say, on democratic theory or on socialism for the obvious reason that the liberal democratic form of state has never actually existed in any other context but that of capitalism – of course, the relationship between global capitalism and the institutionalisation of liberal democracy is a central concern of this work. It is not that I am incurious about nor unsympathetic to all nonliberal conceptions of democracy but rather that I am trying to deal with complex realities. Furthermore, a world-historical judgement on the various ‘socialist’ and ‘peoples’ democracies has by now been made that is very unfavourable to them. Certainly, in global terms at least, they no longer constitute a powerful force of example. To push the point further, for much of the Left a state that is anticapitalist and/or ‘anti-imperialist’ has more to offer its people and potentially the world in spite of the usual lack of political liberty than

Preface xv

any number of liberal democratic ones. A common case in point is the adulation heaped on the decades-old regime in Cuba. Now, whatever one thinks of the United States’ embargo, and from the perspective of this study the question is whether it hinders or promotes the prospects for democracy there or anywhere else, to suggest that Cuba is actually sufficiently democratic just as it is betrays a blatant disregard for the importance of political liberty. A quite glaring example of such a betrayal is provided by Michael Parenti in a recent lecture on the reasons for US hostility towards Iraq. For Parenti, a neo-Marxist professor of Politics in the United States, a major reason for the war is Iraq’s unwillingness to act as a ‘compradore collaborator to Western investors’. ‘The last thing the plutocrats in Washington want in that region is independent, self-defining developing nations that wish to control their own land, labor, and natural resources … Self-defining countries like Cuba, Iraq and Yugoslavia are targeted.’2 The United States, the only liberal democracy mentioned, is run by the plutocrats while Cuba, Iraq and Yugoslavia are ‘self-defining’. What could this phrase possibly mean? Is the ‘self’ an unlikely allusion to the despots who run or used to run, in the case of Yugoslavia, these states? It seems to suggest cooperative or even unanimous decision-making but actually can only indicate political decisions that run counter to presumed US desires and interests. It doesn’t really matter how cruel and despotic the form of state, as long as it’s ‘anti-imperialist’ it must be worth defending. The lack of sound comparative political judgement evident in Parenti’s characterisations are repeated continuously in the analyses of the radical Left. It is striking how similar this kind of thinking is to the United States’ position during the Cold War of supporting anti-democratic regimes on the basis of their anti-socialism. Each considers political liberty to be less important than the supposed benefits of socialist or capitalist socio-economic orientations – both, fair weather friends of liberal democracy.3 For the radical Left, this lacuna derives principally from what it considers to be the ‘epiphenomenal’ character of political power. Since the state form is supposed to be a direct reflection of the economic form, as long as ‘social justice’ of the anti-capitalist variety is the primary intention of rulers like Castro, the precise character of the state is of lesser consequence. If liberal democracy is ‘bourgeois democracy’ and ‘the rule of corporations’, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist regimes have at least the virtue of recognising the key source of what is wrong with the world and of attempting to set the power of the state against it. For revolutionaries, furthermore, the de-legitimation of the armed struggle

xvi Preface

which is a major consequence of successful liberal democracy is also problematic – a reason for shifting theoretical focus towards the developing world and persuading others to do there what is certainly suicidal here. (Of course, attempts at revolution often prove suicidal in the developing world also and deadly not only for the revolutionaries themselves.) The final and related point is that, for the radical Left, what helps to legitimate the perpetuation of a global capitalism that is by definition highly exploitative of natural and social resources is the liberal democratic form of state itself. True, the major liberal democratic powers often support opponents of democracy if it suits them – during the Cold War or in ‘the war against terrorism’, for instance. But the rhetoric of support for the liberal democratic form of state, if not always the reality, is the legitimating mechanism or device most often relied upon by the leadership of the major liberal democratic powers. As is clear from the current military intervention in Iraq, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, the promise of liberal democracy is used to bolster the legitimacy of wars that much of the Left has interpreted as driven by narrowly defined economic interests – an imperialist internationalism.4 Domestically and internationally, the use to which the model of liberal democracy is put by Western governing elites is evidence of its shallowness. Furthermore, that global capitalism is feasibly replaceable by non-exploitative social and political relations suggests that the struggle for social justice is in part a struggle to demonstrate the vacuity of the claims made by supporters of liberal democracy. Given this reasoning why would any straight thinking individual support a state form that consciously masks grotesque inequalities of power and life-chances and is used to dupe millions of citizens whose real and objective interests lay elsewhere? Although an attempt to answer this question is made in the pages that follow, a reasonable response is that given by Bernard Crick: … [L]iberty is never a sufficient condition for social justice (unless you are an anarchist, whether of the left- or right-wing variety) yet is always and everywhere a necessary condition for social justice.5 Dispensing with political rights of the kind that have evolved in liberal democracies for the sake of social justice, national security, or any other end is to throw the baby out with the bath water. Every real political regime that has attempted to ‘transcend’ the presumed limits of liberalism or to prevent it from developing has done so at the expense of political liberty and most often with immense human suffering. Intentions have never been as important as accomplishments and one should judge harshly those that pretend otherwise.

Preface xvii

Having said all that, what the following pages demonstrate is that the relationship between global capitalism and liberal democracy is very complex and the record very mixed in part due to the way global capitalist processes interrelate with domestic systems of rule and to the fact that support for anti-democratic forms of rule often suits the liberal democracies themselves for geo-political as well as economic reasons. In addition, the reality is that only some states that support capitalist social relations are in fact liberal democracies and that institutionalising this state form is anything but straightforward and unproblematic. In other words, there is much in this book that corresponds with Leftist critiques of liberal democracy and of the prospects of its global diffusion. In anticipating a few of the likely objections and criticisms from the Right as well as from nationalists, perhaps a good starting point is the normative commitment to internationalism expressed here. While some on the Left will object to the liberal component of liberal internationalism, as with many in the anti-globalisation movement seeing it essentially as a cover for the imperialist ambitions and objectives of the United States and other powerful liberal democracies, there is a well established theoretical commitment to internationalism itself on the Left, particularly the Marxist Left, which is much more rare on the Right and among nationalists. The most common objection to internationalism on the Right has been pragmatic rather than wholly ideological.6 Common among Realists in the field of International Relations, this pragmatism is based largely upon the likelihood of a world made more chaotic and disorderly by the injection of ethical and ideological considerations in the foreign policy of states and in their wavering from the pursuit of narrowly defined national interests. The strategic dimension of the ‘democratic peace thesis’, whereby relations between liberal democracies are hypothesised to be permanently pacified, is not sufficiently powerful or necessarily proven to risk the likely negative commercial and geopolitical consequences of a full-blooded commitment to the institutionalisation of liberal democracy globally. The major liberal democracies have too many important undemocratic allies and commercial partners for this course of action. The can of worms that this would open in the global political system should not, under normal circumstances, be risked. As I write these words, the Bush administration in Washington and the Blair government in London have in fact made the institutionalisation of democracy in Baghdad a central pledge of the military campaign to ostensibly disarm Iraq of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD). What has been risked in terms of divisions among the major states in

xviii Preface

the United Nations’ Security Council, among NATO allies, among EU members as well as of divisions between Arab states and Western states and their own societies is potentially immense. These evident divisions are just the kind of consequences the Right has warned against historically and what much of the Left has warned against in the run up to the invasion.7 Clearly, such a gamble as this would not have been possible if not for the context created by the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. Here we have an example of what I call in the text a Realist route to Kantianism, namely, security concerns and fears, however one judges their salience, driving policy ultimately towards liberal internationalist ends with even the force of example of a democratic Iraq touted as a catalyst for further democratic change in the wider region. Among other things, it is an example of the hegemony of the liberal democratic model of politics – when all else fails, the promise of liberal democracy may just about legitimise military intervention, if not in the halls of the United Nations, at least in the minds of those for whom US led ‘pre-emptive’ military action is a lesser danger than tyranny.8 If this military operation in Iraq goes according to the plans and wishes of the current leadership of the United States and Britain, hardly likely simply given the unintended consequences of war, liberal internationalism will have been delivered an historic victory – if not, the likelihood of states promising to install or even endeavouring to promote liberal democracy elsewhere will have been seriously diminished. Not that war itself is necessarily detrimental to the prospects of institutionalising or even deepening liberal democracy. As is argued in the text, war has been associated with both of these developments in the past.9 Beyond the pragmatic objection on the Right to the global spread of liberal democracy is the historic ideological objection perhaps most famously made by Joseph de Maistre, the fierce eighteenth-century critic of the Enlightenment, who wrote of ‘the profound imbecility of those poor men who imagine that nations can be constituted with ink’.10 In the modern and secular version of this account, the major reason to doubt the universal applicability of the liberal democratic form of state derives from the uniqueness of each country’s political and social practices, cultures, traditions and historical trajectory. Liberal democracy is not like the wheel – a technical innovation that needs only to be successfully demonstrated to convince all of its utility. It is in most cases hundreds of years in the making, culturally, socially and politically the product of Western European development and thought, institutionalised nowhere properly until the twentieth century, in many cases after the first half of that century, and vulnerable everywhere to

Preface xix

counter-attack, usurpation and manipulation. To the extent that it is institutionalised and stabilised in the extra-European world, it is invariably badly disfigured – perhaps most commonly with such rampant corruption that one can hardly speak of rule by law never mind rule of law. Better, as Samuel Huntington has argued, to commit political efforts and resources to (non-communist) authoritarian forms of state that have good prospects of delivering order and stability with pro-Western policy orientations than to liberal democracy that has few prospects of either.11 At least part of the critique from the Right fits well with the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ employed here, namely, that countries are indeed unique products of history. Nevertheless, because countries are determined jointly as parts of a global system rather than hermetically sealed off from one another, the reality of political learning, of pressures to emulate developments elsewhere and even of replication and homogenisation are insufficiently accounted for by the Right – this is true also of more orthodox Leftist uses of ‘uneven and combined development’. Furthermore, ethically, the universalism implied by commitment to liberal internationalist goals is not diminished by the realisation that progress towards it is extraordinarily difficult and bound to be full of setbacks – modesty is certainly required rather than stridency, but defeatism offers no rewards. Turning to the objections of nationalists more directly, it is important to register the fact that the modern global political system is predicated upon national sovereignty and the rule of non-intervention (thus, in part, the deep concern expressed by so many with the Bush administration’s foreign policy doctrine of ‘pre-emption’). The various liberal internationalist innovations of the latter half of the twentieth century such as the development of humanitarian international law and the universal jurisdiction implied by the United Nations’ Human Rights conventions are seen by many nationalists, of both Right and Left, as the thin edge of a very dangerous wedge both for practical and ideological reasons. It is also important to register the fact that we live in an historical period that is ideologically profoundly anti-colonialist.12 One does not have to accept the typical radical Leftist version of ‘imperialism’ – essentially Leninist rather than Marxist, whereby the prosperity of the developed world is largely attributed to its expropriation of the wealth of the developing world – to acknowledge that the United States in particular, but also the other major liberal democracies, do indeed have global interests as well as historically unprecedented levels of power to attempt to secure them. Furthermore, given the combination of globalisation

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Preface

and deepening interdependence, of threats from anti-modernist terrorists, of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of failing economies and states and of disgruntled dictatorships, the option for the major liberal democracies of disengagement with global politics, if it ever existed, has all but disappeared. The opposite is true, namely, that the strategic necessity of increased engagement with even the most peripheral of societies and polities has been demonstrated, even if the means of greater engagement by the major states in the context of the post-Cold War world have yet to be agreed upon and may prove to be permanently elusive. It is in the context of modern world politics that many nationalists in the developing world (and their Western supporters), especially in countries and regions where economic development has been particularly slow in relation to the needs of the vast majority and certainly in comparison with the developed liberal democracies, come to resent the very example of liberal democracy never mind Western pressures to alter domestic political arrangements in this direction. (Of course, as the attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001 proved beyond doubt, political Islamism is not simply a malady of material poverty.) While the sensitivity to Western political manipulation, learned often through bitter experience, is itself often manipulated by governing elites with everything to lose from political change, it can also take the form of a genuinely popular and visceral exculpation of the most cruel and vicious dictatorships. Perhaps any Arab should not be seen as a more legitimate ruler of Iraq than any foreigner, that is, regardless of how they rule, but this is certainly the logic of nationalism – foreign rule, even for a limited duration, is by definition the antithesis of liberty in this continuing age of nationalism. A Western military intervention aimed in part at removing one of the most reprehensible regimes in the world – one directly responsible for the torture and death of hundreds of thousands of fellow Muslims and Arabs – risks encouraging support for that regime rather than joy at its removal, particularly from those not immediately on the receiving end of the regime’s coercive power.13 The promise of a liberal democracy imposed militarily by foreigners, even if it was widely believed, will have a very difficult time competing with the emotional power of an anticolonialism based in part on nationalist attachments and mythologies. While many of these and other arguments are engaged with in this book, there is no doubt that there are indeed salient objections to the main liberal internationalist goal of the global spread of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, seen particularly in the light of the objections by the Right and by nationalists, it is important to understand just how radical this goal continues to be.

Introduction

When Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, went before the General Assembly of the United Nations in late 1988 and declared: ‘Our ideal is a world community of states with political systems and foreign policies based on law’, he signalled the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the return to liberal internationalist principles.14 Since then, the floodgates have opened for the debate on democracy and international relations.15 While it is certainly true that the various post-Cold War conflicts have diminished the original optimism of many writers, the growing visibility of popular struggles for democratic reform and the increase in the number of democratic states continues to generate intellectual excitement and theoretical speculation in the social sciences as a whole.16 This is not, of course, a new theme in international relations. In particular, the suggestion that the more democratic a state the less likely it is to engage in warfare – at least against other similarly organised states – has a well established pedigree reaching as far back as the eighteenth century in the writings of Immanuel Kant, Montesquieu and Tom Paine.17 In the following century, this view was commended by Alexis de Tocqueville and Richard Cobden among others.18 Finally and perhaps most famously, in the second decade of the twentieth century the belief in a democratic basis to peace was put forward not just by an interested observer or theorist but by someone with a great deal of political power, namely, the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson.19 Nevertheless, despite this impressive heritage, the renewed interest in the relationship between democracy and international relations is a product of the end of the Cold War. As James Mayall,

1

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Democracy and the Global System

commenting on the idea of progress in relation to international society, states: Only with the transfer of sovereignty from the princes to the people after 1918, was the idea of salvation – now in secular form – reintroduced [since the Thirty Years War] as a central preoccupation of international relations. Since then, it has been reinforced twice – after 1945 by the introduction of the idea that people everywhere have a right to economic welfare and after 1989 by the renewed emphasis on fundamental human rights generally and the right to democratic governance in particular.20 There are, however, a number of reasons why the discipline of International Relations (IR) is not particularly well equipped to comment on the relationship between democracy and the global system. First, the dominant paradigm in the discipline, Realism, has long assumed that states, which it sees as the central actors in the global system, are in no position to pass judgements on the internal ordering of other states. This argument is itself based on a number of important if varying reasons perhaps the most common being the dictates of pragmatism. History in general but also as reflected by international law has apparently taught that orderly and mutually beneficial relations between states are threatened by subversions of sovereignty, along with its correlative of nonintervention, the most exalted of international principles.21 A further related argument is based on cultural relativism whereby domestic political arrangements are deemed to be fundamentally a product of endogenous culture and, because one cannot judge these in any straightforward hierarchical way without being accused of imperialism, domestic arrangements should not be the concern of outsiders.22 Second, there is the Realist proposition that concerns with domestic matters are in fact irrelevant to the discipline on the basis that the anarchic structure of the international political system, with self-help as its primary organising principle, sufficiently determines, albeit indirectly, the external behaviour of states.23 The broad thrust of foreign policy, it is argued, is determined by international configurations of state power – essentially, military power with emphasis on the ‘laws’ of strategic rivalry – regardless of domestic socio-economic and political arrangements.24 Of course, Realism has not gone unchallenged and any balanced survey of the contemporary literature within IR would surely indicate a quite vast array of anti-Realist and/or post-Realist arguments that set out to refute its basic assumptions and premises.25 In addition, unless

Introduction 3

one takes the concern with promoting democracy by states as purely rhetorical or even disingenuous, the very aim seems to contradict Realist insights and assumptions. In any case, an important final reason for the neglect of international and domestic interaction is due to the relative isolation of IR from the rest of the social sciences.26 The fact is that until very recently both Sociology and Political Science had been working harder at coming to terms with the global system than IR had been at theorising the interactions with domestic structures or indeed building on the work of social scientists generally.27 While the main objective of this thesis is not to provide yet another rebuttal of Realism in its various forms, it is at least possible to register that, from the perspective of its own specific domain, it appears exceedingly conspicuous that the roots of many of the conflicts that have shaped the contemporary world – colonialism, international wars, the Cold War – were not simply related to variations in states’ military power and its constituent sources, nor simply to the lack of an effective world government, but also to differences in domestic socio-economic arrangements and to the form of states. If it has been clear for some considerable time that the global system interacts with domestic structures and in very complicated ways shapes those structures and is itself shaped in the process, it is still probably true that this theoretical orientation remains peripheral to mainstream IR theory.28 However, if the roots of modern conflict in the heterogeneity of socio-economic and political arrangements is just one fairly obvious and standard reason for the discipline of International Relations to take seriously the ways in which international forces and processes interact with domestic ones, it rests on the argument that these heterogeneous arrangements are themselves a consequence, at least in part, of international/domestic interaction – not, one would think, a particularly difficult proposition to sustain, but, actually, a very complex matter indeed which this thesis will need to pay particular attention to. Apart from the general points already made about Realism, perhaps because of the weight allocated to international political conflict within the IR discipline, there has been much more reflection here on the causes and reasons for the ‘democratic’ or ‘liberal peace’, as well as on testing and refuting the correlation between democracy and peace than on the international dimensions of the causes of the spread, or obstacles to the spread, of democratic regimes in the first place.29 For its part, political theory, with a few exceptions, is often either silent or implicit about the international dimensions of democracy and its historical development.30 Certainly, in terms of the interaction between the

4

Democracy and the Global System

domestic and international realms there still seems to be considerable scope for theoretical innovation here – retrospective in terms of canonical political thought and analytical in terms of current theory and practice.

Democracy and the global system Before outlining the particular conceptions of democracy, of the global system and, indeed, of the methodology employed here, it is important first to state the key question of the thesis and how this was derived at. The central preoccupation of the thesis is the extent to which the workings of the global system may be said to promote the domestic institutionalisation of democratic forms of government internationally. In simple terms, there are three possible interrelationships here: (a) That the relationship is one where the modern global system promotes the diffusion and institutionalisation of democracy; (b) that the global system inhibits the spread and institutionalisation of democracy, or; (c) that the relationship is one of contingency: in terms of what may be said to determine the forms of state; the historical epoch, or in terms of both. While the concern here is not whether or how democracy may affect foreign policy, the sometimes strident and invariably hopeful claims of the internationally pacifying effects of democracy associated with various liberal internationalists has certainly helped to raise broader questions. These involve the relationship between democracy and the global system including the one that drives this thesis, namely, the question of how the global system specifically affects the prospects of institutionalising and consolidating democracy domestically.31

Liberal internationalism and the spread of democracy If, as Michael Doyle, the leading exponent of the ‘liberal peace’ puts it, ‘liberal states are different’ and (pace Kant) that a ‘separate peace’ of these states is today a reality, announcing ‘the possibility of a world peace this side of the grave or of world conquest’, then the question of what factors are responsible for the spread of this form of state is indeed a pressing matter.32 According to Doyle, there are two principle legacies of liberalism for international relations, namely, the pacification of foreign relations among liberal states and their simultaneous international

Introduction 5

‘imprudence’ that is, the notion that these states are particularly aggressive, more than they rationally need be, towards non-liberal states.33 Furthermore, according to Doyle, only Kant’s theory of liberal internationalism can help us understand these two legacies because at the heart of his analytical theory of international politics is a conception of the ‘interactive nature of international relations’.34 ‘Kant tries to teach us methodologically that we can study neither the systemic relations of states nor the varieties of state behaviour in isolation from each other.’35 So far, so good, but how does Kant’s methodology help to explain his belief in an ‘ever-widening pacific federation’? His answer, in the Second Definitive Article of Perpetual Peace, seems to be firmly based on what could reasonably be termed ‘the force of example’. It can be shown that this idea of federalism, extending gradually to encompass all states and thus leading to perpetual peace, is practicable and has objective reality. For if by good fortune one powerful and enlightened nation can form a republic (which is by nature inclined to seek peace), this will provide a focal point for federal association among other states. These will join up with the first one, thus securing the freedom of each state in accordance with the idea of international right, and the whole will gradually spread further and further by a series of alliances of this kind.36 While Kant accepts the likelihood of ‘backsliding and destructive wars’, these are expected also to convince societies of the importance of peace and of the necessity of joining the ranks of the republican federation.37 Is this force strong enough to overcome those – domestic and international – arrayed against ‘republicanism’ or, as the theory today would have it, democracy? Surely, liberal internationalists (including Kant) have other mechanisms in mind that help explain the expansion of the democratic form of state necessary for their continued optimism? And what about the good fortune of the original transition to republicanism/democracy? What explains the development of democracy in any one state? In other words, does liberal internationalism have a coherent historical sociology of the development of democracy? While, as one would expect, there is no single liberal answer to these questions there are strands within liberalism that point at least in two other directions, apart from the force of example, that can help explain the international spread of the democratic form of state. The first of these is the universal applicability of the institutional framework of liberal

6

Democracy and the Global System

democracy based on the principle of the natural rights of all individuals.38 Once its properties are clearly understood the universal interest in (and general demand for) recognition of moral equality, security and welfare can at last be secured through this form of state – one predicated on its duty to protect life, liberty and property. Peace is produced by the replacement in authority of those who have vested interests in war, or are innately war-prone – monarchs, autocrats – with those whose interests are overwhelmingly directed towards peace – the people. Note that this is not a theory of the transnational spread of democracy. Wherever societies exist and whatever their relations, they will tend to evolve in the direction of liberal democracy because of the nature of their inhabitants (rational, self-seeking, potentially moral) and of politics (consensual, legitimate authority as superior to coercive and illegitimate rule). Once a few of these liberal states emerge, the spread of their norms to other states and the possibility and desirability of the development of effective international institutions and laws also emerge to become increasingly salient features of international relations.39 The second and related explanation for the global spread of liberal democracy is its intimate connections with the development of capitalism. Although often related to human nature also, this strand of liberalism, associated with Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter among others, argues that the interests in maximising wealth and security for both individuals and states as well as the individual and collective will to moral equality are best met through the rational innovation and conscious political construction of market societies which then produce, as a by-product, both the possibility of democracy as well as an added and abiding interest in avoiding war.40 Not only is capitalism conceived as universally applicable but its international and transnational spread is sought as an ideal – the wider the division of labour and the freer the mobility of the factors of production from political constraint, the greater its efficiency and wealth generating capacities. The liberal capitalist prescriptions of free trade and specialisation are by definition international in scope – maximising wealth and security entail opening the economy up to capitalist forces, domestic and international. Does this add up to a theory of the transnational spread of democracy? Potentially yes, if the actual spread and development of capitalism is itself seen as a transnational phenomenon and if this in turn is seen as a necessary and perhaps sufficient condition for the emergence of democracy. But is this explanation, along with the previous two, convincing?

Introduction 7

Liberal internationalism and the end of the Cold War If the claim that we are living in a democratic era stretches back to the late eighteenth century, in the contemporary period the end of the Cold War and the defeat of communism in Europe again raised the hope throughout much of the world that liberal democracy, previously the preserve of a few mostly very rich countries, could more easily be institutionalised elsewhere. The link between this optimism and the vanquishing of communism relates to a number of considerations and assumptions. The first is that the communist states would themselves be transformed into liberal democracies as the superiority of the latter was a major cause of the collapse of the former, that is, Kant’s force of example. The second is that because communism seemed to represent a viable alternative social and political model to capitalism and liberal democracy, its routing would finally remove this illusion along with its proven mobilising potential and once again return ‘capitalist democracy’ to its rightful place as the only model worthy of universal replication. Since the existence of communist regimes was seen as the most crucial material and ideological source of support for the various ‘fifth-columnist’ challengers, their collapse would evaporate these challenges. The third is that if the communist threat was at least partly responsible for legitimating authoritarian state responses, its defeat would pull the rug from under anti-communist dictatorships as well as dissolve the rationale and excuses made by their international supporters, including, of course, some of the major liberal democracies themselves. Finally, with fascism already defeated in the Second World War and military regimes in Latin America in clear retreat by the mid-1980s, the omens against authoritarianism in general and for the spread of liberal democracy seemed distinctly positive. It was in this context, of course, that Francis Fukuyama’s article and then book, The End of History and the Last Man appeared.41 The controversies and debates which this text inspired covered a great deal of ground but, again, what seemed to be especially in need of investigation and theorisation was the extent to which the workings of the global system taken as a whole – the nature of its inhabitants, of its societies and states, of their relations – could be said to promote the institutionalisation of democratic forms of government internationally. Two claims above all seemed particularly questionable about Fukuyama’s thesis as well as that of liberal internationalism more broadly. The first was the assertion of a positive and reinforcing synergy

8

Democracy and the Global System

between economic liberalism with its stress on market solutions, technological dynamism, competition, strong linkages to a world capitalist economy and a minimal role for the state on the one hand and the spread of democratic political structures bringing freedom and dignity to formerly oppressed people on the other. My scepticism, however, was not based on the common proposition of the radical Left that any meaningful conception of democracy is simply not possible in the context of capitalism. (This view may be taken as highly disparaging of the various social movements struggling to achieve the kinds of political settlements that are taken for granted in established democracies, as well as of the social struggles which were responsible for their achievement in the first place. Furthermore, it seems to betray extraordinary callousness if not ignorance of the brutality and savagery which characterises so many of the world’s past and current authoritarian regimes.) Nor was it based on an underestimation of the potential benefits, national and international, of the diffusion of prosperity and democracy; clearly, they would be vast. Rather, my scepticism was based on the view that the relationship between capitalism and democracy is much more complex and problematic than liberal internationalism frequently asserts. That, in other words, as Paul Cammack has argued, ‘liberal democracy is a conjunctural historical phenomenon’, of very recent origins that is evidently extremely difficult to reproduce and sustain despite the existence of capitalism for several centuries.42 The second and very much related problem with liberal internationalist optimism seemed to be the conception of the global system itself. If the relationship between capitalism and democracy was more complex than many assumed this was partly due to the fact that capitalism has never been exactly synonymous with the global system – even if it is a crucial element of it that is often ignored by standard Realist conceptions. The global system is itself an extremely complex and dynamic social formation with a variety of actors, institutions, forces and processes – ideological/cultural, economic, political – whose impact on the direction of social change is anything but straightforward. This is particularly so because of the complex ways in which the international and domestic realms interact. As Anthony Brewer has noted in the context of methodological debates related to Marxist theories of imperialism, the ‘question of the appropriate level of analysis – world-system, nation state, unit of production or whatever … is a non-problem. There can be no question of choosing to analyse at one of these levels, and ignoring the others; any adequate account of the world system must incorporate all of them, and their interrelations’.43

Introduction 9

Taken together, the various strands of liberal internationalism suggest that the causes of the expansion of the democratic form of state are based on the nature of human beings and of politics, the development of capitalism and the force of example from other liberal states. The central weaknesses of these explanations are the lack of a coherent historical sociology of the development of democracy and a consequent underestimation of the historically contingent nature of its development, the inadequacy of its conception of the global system, and the lack of integration between the international context and domestic socio-economic, political and ideological change. In seeking to answer the question of whether the global system promotes or hinders the institutionalisation and consolidation of democracy, this thesis is partly driven by the judgement that these weaknesses need to be demonstrated more fully and that theoretical alternatives to them are in need of development.

Conceptualising the global system If the initial formulation of the question of whether the global system promotes or hinders the spread of liberal democracy arose in the context of debates around the ‘liberal peace’, the end of the Cold War and the new possibilities which this heralded, the conceptualisation of the global system itself may be informed by, amongst other things, scholarly efforts to understand the international dimensions of the causes and consequences of social revolutions.44 As already mentioned, the two particularly striking features here were how far sociologists, political scientists, social psychologists and comparative historians were trying to come to terms with matters ostensibly germane to the discipline of IR and what little mainstream IR seemed to offer in return.45 There are a number of insights and theoretical formulations developed in the comparative study of revolutions which offer excellent possibilities for analysis in IR – for analysing the interaction between the global system on the one hand and state/society relations on the other. Of primary importance is the placing of social and political change in the context of what may be seen as, often too optimistically, the transition to modernity – in the spread of the modern form/s of state, of political legitimation and of capitalism or more narrowly of industrialism. Equally important, of course, is the placing of this historical transition in an international context. As Theda Skocpol has argued: ‘Right from the European beginnings … modernization has always meant national developments only within the contexts of historically developing transnational structures, both economic and military.’46 Following her

10 Democracy and the Global System

lead, I take the key contextual variables of the global system to be the structure of the world capitalist economy, the international political system, and the changes and transmissions in ‘world-historical-time’.47 If the first two lay particular emphasis on historically determined and ever changing socio-economic and political conditions, the third also includes ideological features ‘which affect both the overall world context within which [political and social changes] occur and the particular models and options for action that can be borrowed from abroad by [those who seek to further or oppose change]’.48 The particular virtue of ‘world-historical-time’ is that it takes into account the political salience of models of change, of struggle, and of ends that influence the behaviour of individuals and groups in particular historical periods. In this sense, its virtue lies also in its consideration of political agency – accepting as a central premise that politics arise out of the ‘partial judgements’ of individuals and groups.49 ‘World-historical-time’ is closely related to the ‘force of example’ mentioned above with the difference that untested ideological models of change and of ends which clearly have political purchase on the behaviour of individuals and groups are also to be assessed for effect or impact. For example, in 1917 the model of change (proletarian revolution) and of ends (communism) which motivated Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks could not have had political purchase in, say, 1789 for a number of obvious reasons (no Marx, no proletariat). Yet, the fact that no communist regime existed anywhere in the world by 1917 did not diminish their apparent enthusiasm for the model. Furthermore, the power of this model was tremendous precisely because of its potentially universal applicability. The point is that ‘world-historical-time’ at once limits the range of possibilities open to those seeking change and provides potentially coherent strategies and models for them. In the current context, the common judgement suggests that democratic capitalism has few serious global rivals even if the methods employed in achieving it may vary widely. That ‘for the first time in human history, there is a single clearly dominant state form, the modern constitutional representative democratic republic, distributed across the globe’ is a hugely important feature of the current global system.50 Of course, and this is another virtue of ‘world-historical-time’, there are no inherently stable grounds for believing that, even if it is historically unprecedented, this dominance of one political form is anything but a contingent feature of the current period. The liberal democratic form of state is the dominant model to a very large extent because the wealth and political stability of the richest countries in the world have

Introduction 11

demonstrated its efficacy, particularly in comparison with historical alternatives. But the fact of its dominance, particularly for those countries (or those in power in these countries) that have had extremely different historical trajectories and continue to have very different social structures, political and ideological traditions, can be seen as a serious problem – as, for example, in the demands for democratic reform in China. The world-historical-timing of socio-economic and political change is therefore critical to the prospects of any modern political model. The importance of ‘world-historical-time’ is that it prompts us to make assessments of the impact of the global ideological context within which change occurs. While Skocpol stresses, in Realist fashion, the competitive nature of the ‘interstate’ system and particularly its military dimension (defeat in wars, threats of invasion, struggles over colonial control, defensive modernisation) one needs to be aware of the fact that there are forms of political competition not expressed in military terms (diplomacy within or outside of international institutions, pressures for improved human rights or more expansively for homogeneity in socio-political frameworks) and indeed that there are, perhaps increasingly, co-operative features as well.51 Likewise, it is crucial to move away from entirely state-centric approaches to international politics. A good way to conceive of this is to see the international political system in terms of global governance or, as Fred Halliday has argued, ‘a system of multi-layered authority and policymaking’. … today, more than ever, we can see the system of global governance as based on four distinct levels. At the top lie international organizations, such as the UN and the EU. Below them lie the traditional repositories of political power and democratic legitimacy, states. Below these lie civil society in its broadest sense, within countries and between them: this comprises NGOs and social movements, but also the press, religious groups and all who seek, without assuming the authority of state, to influence its activities. Finally, and too easily forgotten in an age of structures, communities, global trends and so on, there is the basis of the whole story, the individual, all six billion of us.52 The interdependence of this system of global governance with the world economy again evinces both competitive and co-operative features as with efforts to manage financial crises or strengthen regulatory regimes of various types internationally. Nevertheless, perhaps the most salient feature of these contextual variables – the international political system,

12 Democracy and the Global System

the world economy and ‘world-historical-time’, collectively, the global system – is their uneven impact on states and societies. Here we may introduce a concept initially associated with Marxism but liable to much broader application, namely, the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’. This brings together these elements of the global system and offers important insights. While Skocpol develops this to a considerable degree, it is Leon Trotsky who earlier employed it, if with ‘politically incorrect’ language, in The History of the Russian Revolution.53 Its basic axiom is the rejection of unilinear historical development. The laws of history have nothing in common with a pedantic schematism. Unevenness, the most general law of the historic process, reveals itself most sharply and complexly in the destiny of the backward countries. Under the whip of external necessity their backward culture is compelled to make leaps. From the universal law of unevenness thus derives another law which, for the lack of a better name, we may call the law of combined development – by which we mean a drawing together of the different stages of the journey, a combining of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic with the more contemporary forms.54 The virtues of this conception, as long as it’s not ‘fetishised’ (i.e. as determining the impossibility of democratic rule or the absolute necessity of socialism – note that I avoid using the name law of ‘uneven and combined development’) are that it deals exceptionally well with the contingency and complexity of politics and change within an international framework, orients analysis towards the domestic/international interaction and helps explain the continuing problems of inequality between states and societies. As the extract above suggests, the ‘combined’ element refers to the fact that domestic development or change occurs in an international context and that this context is critical in structuring the opportunities, constraints and choices available to individuals and groups, including states, seeking change. It also refers to the way in which international forces and processes interact with domestic ones to produce unique outcomes or conjunctures – social, economic, political, ideological/cultural. (The distinction between these realms, the domestic and international, being often more temporal than spatial in that what may begin as an international process or force is eventually domesticated as with religion or culture more generally.) In short, ‘uneven and combined development’ contains within it the conception of ‘world-historical-time’, the changing structure of the capitalist world economy and the international political system.

Introduction 13

In the context of the development of Russia, ‘uneven and combined development’ is employed by Trotsky to explain the ‘peculiarities’ of its historical trajectory compared with, and under pressure from, richer European countries: the delay in ‘the process of social differentiation’, the state’s greater share of national income and the consequent ‘double impoverishment’ of its people and weakening of ‘the foundations of the possessing classes’, the servile role of the church, the development of ‘Slavophilism’ (‘the messianism of backwardness’), the economic insignificance of Russian cities and the nobility’s attempts ‘to take the place of the lacking Third Estate’ (‘the solution of the problems of one class by another is one of those combined methods natural to backward countries’), the structure and ownership patterns (largely foreign) of its industry and of its social structure as a whole with advanced and concentrated industrial sectors alongside a massive peasantry, the ‘incapacity of the bourgeoisie for political action’, the very despotism of its state, and so on.55 If the endlessly unique social, political and cultural formations that arise from these complex historical combinations help explain the ‘heterogeneous’ quality of modernity – from our perspective, why it may be that liberal democracy and capitalist prosperity are not easily replicated – then it also raises the question of how it is that ‘homogeneity’ is possible at all never mind such a stark feature of the current epoch. For Trotsky, as for many in the classical Marxist tradition as well as for liberal internationalists, the possibility of replicating social and political forms lay in the universalising tendency inherent in capitalism – ‘it prepares and in a certain sense realizes the universality and permanence of man’s development’ – and in what he terms ‘the privilege of historic backwardness’. Although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country does not take things in the same order. The privilege of historic backwardness – and such a privilege exists – permits, or rather compels, the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages. Savages throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between those two weapons in the past. The European colonists in America did not begin history all over again from the beginning. The fact that Germany and the United States have now economically outstripped England was made possible by the very backwardness of their capitalist development.56 If in the long run, according to Trotsky, the degree to which a country is capable of skipping over intermediate steps is determined by its

14 Democracy and the Global System

‘economic and cultural capacities’ (something he does not go on to theorise) the thrust of ‘uneven and combined development’, in drawing attention to the way domestic and/or domesticated legacies interact with transnational forces and processes, seeks to explain differences and contradictions not similarities and continuities – demonstrating, for instance, how the introduction of western techniques and training in military and industrial concerns under Peter I led to a strengthening of serfdom and tsarism, ‘which delayed in its turn the development of the country’.57 It is, of course, precisely through such contradictions that Trotsky seeks to explain the advent of ‘socialist’ revolution in the context of a ‘backward’ Russia thus rescuing historical materialism from its unilinear modernisation straightjacket. Modernisation persists but there are many possible combinations and routes, perhaps even some culdesacs, if still one general direction of play. There are, however, two necessary critical correctives to this conceptualisation. The first relates to the role of agency in social and political change. The idea that there is one predestined culmination of the historic process, be it socialism, liberal democracy or anything else, even when inextricably linked to mechanisms of collective or individual struggle – of class or for ‘recognition’ – by moving beyond the normative to the determinist loses any possible analytical and, almost certainly, emancipatory usefulness. The providing of comfort with certainty is not the task of the scholar, at least not in the social sciences. Recognising that liberal democracy has been achieved only through intense social and political struggle, agency must nevertheless be seen within the limits and constraints, possibilities and opportunities provided by socioeconomic, political and ideological contexts. Neither determinism nor open-ended voluntarism will do. If the global system does play a key role in hindering or promoting the institutionalisation of democracy, it does so in ways that reflect the interests, resources, organisation and decisions, ultimately, of people in varying relation to one another and is therefore open, indeed, bound to change. The second modification relates to the privileging of the socioeconomic realm. While there may well be historical circumstances where such an interpretation is indeed appropriate, there are clearly others where it is not. For example, the civil rights movements in the United States or Ireland had their crucial socio-economic dimensions, but to exclude discrimination on the basis of race and religion respectively from analyses would be to ignore salient features of these struggles. Likewise, the continuing struggles for gender equality throughout the world cannot simply be understood in terms of class relations,

Introduction 15

however significant these clearly are. Assessing the interaction of various levels of analysis does not warrant a priori privileging of any one of them.58

Conceptualising democracy It is common today to speak of democratic political systems without qualifying the various criteria used in distinguishing them from nondemocratic or authoritarian ones. After all, the differences between the political systems of Saudi Arabia and Australia or between Burma and Germany seem patently obvious. However, the question of what constitutes a democratic political system is far from settled. One of the most important and enduring distinctions made in the theory of democracy and in the various debates around this subject pertains to what has been characterised as that between procedural versus substantive definitions of democracy itself.59 The argument is between those that see procedural considerations and constitutional arrangements – universal franchise, electoral system, separation of powers, ‘free’ press, the rule of law and so on – as sufficient and those that consider such a definition as excessively limiting given that the inspiration for democracy, its essential ideal, is its promise, not only of legal but of substantive equality in the determination of public policy, something which has not been delivered by any existing or historical political system. And yet, though an enduring feature of human society, especially but not exclusively modern society, has been inequality, it may be argued that these two positions, rather than being diametrically opposed, are in dialectical relation to each other. After all, procedural questions do not arise in a vacuum but are inextricably interwoven with questions of ideals or ends. Of course, the ends pursued through procedural innovation or reform are not always related to achieving greater substantive equality – electoral reform, for instance, may be aimed at achieving political stability by denying small minority parties proportional representation. However, the direction of institutional political reform in what are considered democracies in the modern period has tended to be towards inclusion and political equality. This is particularly clear when democracy is viewed historically as what was considered democratic in the past, the achievement of universal male suffrage, for example, is now seen as unduly restrictive. ‘Really existing democracy’ is both an institutional framework and an ethical aspiration. Nevertheless, trying to determine whether the global system may be said to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy requires first a clear exposition and understanding of its procedural content.

16 Democracy and the Global System

Here, liberal, representative or ‘actually existing’ democracy is taken to be, first and foremost, a political regime with six essential criteria: ‘equal and universal adult suffrage; civic rights which assure the free expression of opinion and the free organization of currents of opinion; decisions taken by a [mostly] numerical majority; and guarantees of the rights of minorities against any abuses on the part of majorities.’60 If civic and political rights at the level of the individual are critical so too is a representative assembly at the level of the political community, however defined, and, underlying all these features, the rule of law. This focus on the institutions and procedures of a political regime should not, however, exclude or obscure analyses of the social structures that lay beneath it. The question of the socio-economic and cultural/ ideological conditions or even preconditions for the establishment and sustainability of liberal democracy is crucial to our examination. As so much of the literature on the emergence of social revolutionary crises, processes and outcomes makes clear, transnational relations are salient precisely because they have helped to shape both state and social structures. Analyses of the relation between the global system, state and social formation as well as the role of ideology are all, therefore, necessarily important.

Methodology To sum up, this thesis seeks to shed light on the relationship between democracy and the global system and to demonstrate the weakness of liberal internationalism’s optimistic expectation of the spread of democracy by suggesting that domestic/international interactions produce countervailing tendencies away from the institutionalisation and consolidation of this form of state. A secondary motivation is to offer an alternative conceptualisation of the global system and of its interaction with domestic systems of rule that provides for a more convincing basis upon which to assess the relationship between the global system and democracy – an application of ‘uneven and combined development’. A final if still important motivation is to demonstrate the importance of analyses that are sensitive to these interactions for international relations and for the IR discipline. If the task ahead appears exceedingly ambitious, the method of its execution is calculated to restrain its potential for becoming too unwieldy. The chapters collected here are centred on case studies of texts by individual authors with the specific intention of extrapolating insights from them into the relationship between the global system and

Introduction 17

democracy and to demonstrate the weaknesses of liberal internationalist optimism with regard to the worldwide spread of this form of state. While conceptions of the latter may differ in some details, the primary focus is on how the global system is itself conceptualised and on how it is seen to relate to social and political change at the domestic level, specifically, to the prospects of political democracy. The authors and texts that are taken up on a chapter by chapter basis are as follows: 1. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World 2. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time 3. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 4. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies 5. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Democracy So, what criteria were used in the selection of these texts and authors? The choice was made first on the basis that sufficient consideration was allotted to one or more of two criteria deemed necessary in probing and/or countering the optimistic prognosis of the international spread of democracy associated with liberal internationalism – developed from suggestions that democracy arises out of human nature and the nature of politics, from its relationship to capitalism and from the force of example of other democratic states. The first criterion was the requirement of sustained engagement with the formation of states and political systems. The specific work of Barrington Moore Jr. and David Held seemed most promising in helping us judge how far liberal internationalism’s view of the sources of democratisation made sense and what role if any the global system itself could be taken to play in their development. The work of Joseph Schumpeter and Samuel Huntington also seemed particularly appropriate here – the former because of the classic status of his work on capitalism and democracy and of his association with liberal internationalism, the latter because of his extremely cogent views on the challenges posed by political modernisation. Furthermore, critical appraisals of all these texts could potentially lead us to more convincing accounts of the prospects of democracy and perhaps suggest what needs attending to if the hope of the spread of the liberal democratic form of state is to be realised. The second criterion was more obvious and direct engagement with the relationship between domestic socio-economic, political and

18 Democracy and the Global System

ideological change and the workings of the global system, however conceived. Again, David Held’s text seemed particularly promising here but so too did that of Karl Polanyi because of his highly respected if often overlooked views of the impact of liberalism on politics, domestic and international. It is not difficult, of course, to suggest alternative sources for the task at hand and indeed others have been suggested and considered seriously – for example, Immanuel Wallerstein’s volumes on The Modern World-System, Seymour Lipset’s Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics, Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man. In the end, however, the five texts chosen have more than enough to offer the student interested in making headway on this as well as many other topics. The major challenge is actually to do them the justice they deserve. Though this method may appear to be a form of intellectual history rather than an empirical and question-driven thesis, this is not the intention. First, it does not seek to trace the theme of the relationship between democracy and the global system across time in the work of successive thinkers as with the approach associated with Isaiah Berlin – no attempt is even made to arrange the works of the chosen thinkers chronologically.61 It is also not a study of ‘discourses’ as with the approach associated with Quentin Skinner. Although some examination of the ideological and political context in which the books themselves were written is provided – in the introduction to the chapter on Huntington’s work and the conclusions to those of Polanyi’s and Schumpeter’s, for example – this thesis is much more concerned with assessing the actual arguments and conceptualisations laid out by the authors and their relevance for understanding the current relationship between democracy and the global system.62 Beyond this, a further purpose may be said to be closer to the historical method associated with Perry Anderson in that it seeks to ‘re-construct’ some highly influential contributions to the understanding of modernity, albeit from a much narrower angle than was intended by each of the authors.63 These authors and texts, in their varying ways, attempt to grapple with some of the central political concerns of modern times. While the relationship between democratic government and the global system is not always or even mainly their explicit focus, this is the analytical lens through which the argument here is focused. If this collection may be seen as essentially eclectic, all the authors at least posit theories that, explicitly or implicitly, help us probe and even suggest alternative

Introduction 19

conceptions of the global system, of democracy and of their complex relations to that of liberal internationalism. In addition, they do so from varying points of the political spectrum as well as from different academic disciplines. Furthermore, particularly in relation to the growing literature on globalisation, some of these earlier thinkers are again being referred to frequently. An assessment of their main work is, therefore, to some extent timely.64 Nevertheless, though they are all considered to have made significant contributions to social scientific debates and understanding, as William Connolly has argued convincingly, there are clear dangers in pursuing a topic such as ours through interrogation of key texts. If we sink each into its specific historical context, much of what’s most important about it as an exemplar of modern discourse becomes submerged. If we treat these texts together as participating in a universal conversation in which each party provides different answers to the same timeless questions, we will miss distinctive features which might constitute the modern epoch. If we examine them, consciously or unconsciously, solely from the perspective of current debates and beliefs, we will surely end by congratulating ourselves for having advanced so far beyond them.65 Others will ultimately judge how far these and other dangers have been avoided but the modest expectation is that the insights generated by these authors – supplemented with ‘external’ readings from within as well as from outside of the IR literature – will help to formulate a systematic and coherent framework for thinking about the relationship between democracy and the global system. The more immodest expectation is that this framework will then provide a sounder basis upon which to conclude whether indeed the global system may be currently said to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy. Of course, the point of providing such a framework is not simply to promote better understanding of the relevant relationships and issues involved but to provide a useful platform from which to promote the diffusion and consolidation of democracy itself. In this sense, I am very much in agreement with Amartya Sen’s contention that support for democracy should stem from ethical considerations at least as much as from instrumentalist ones.66

1 Barrington Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System

Introduction The main purpose of this chapter on Barrington Moore is to generate insights from a classic text in the field of comparative historical sociology that point to the impact of the global system on the prospects for democratic governance worldwide. It is designed also to probe the assumptions that sustain liberal internationalism’s optimistic prognosis with regard to the spread of this form of state. The argument suggests that the relationship between democratic government and the global system is much more problematic than liberal internationalism tends generally to assume and that the political outcomes that result, in part from domestic/international interactions, leave far less room for its optimism. However, just as domestic obstacles to the institutionalisation of democracy are often overplayed, it is important not to make the same mistake with respect to international ones.67 It would be equally wrong, for instance, to suggest that the global system is always determinant of social and political change as to suggest that the international context does not play a role at all. While the impact of the global system on the prospects of democratic governance is significant, one needs to be equally concerned with finding the limits of the explanatory power of the global system on social and political transformation. In addition, the chapter also suggests that Moore’s account of the social origins of democracy, fascism and communism clearly implies a theory of ‘uneven and combined development’ – and within this the usefulness of ‘world-historical-time’ as a category of social scientific understanding. What accounts for the particular form of state for Moore is the impact of capitalist modernisation on pre-existing socio-economic 20

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 21

and political structures and their relationship to other states in the global system at a particular historical conjuncture. It is argued that a more explicit formulation of this framework would have provided his analysis with even more coherence and, perhaps, contemporary relevance and purchase. Nevertheless, Barrington Moore’s classic account of the historical preconditions of democracy and dictatorship, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, hereafter referred to simply as Social Origins, raises crucial questions for the analysis of the prospects for democratic governance.68 In particular, those students of Politics and International Relations for whom the Kantian hope of ‘liberal enlargement’ increasingly tempts affiliation but whose engagement with comparative historical sociology may be lacking, would benefit greatly from studying this text.69

The basic argument of the text Social Origins is a powerful counter to any simple liberal view of the evolution of democracy, as much in its examination of the role of violence as in its discussion of the pre-conditions for democratisation. Its main focus is on the crucial role played by the agrarian classes – landlords and peasants – in the transition to modernity (essentially defined as the spread of commercialisation of social relations beginning with agriculture and leading to industrialism) and their impact on subsequent political development. Stated simply, its thesis is that the institutional complexes designated as dictatorship and democracy are rooted in the transitions to capitalist society and in particular to the ways in which the landed upper classes and the peasants reacted to the challenges of commercial agriculture. As Moore puts it, ‘… we seek to understand the role of the landed upper classes and the peasants in the bourgeois revolutions leading to capitalist democracy, the abortive bourgeois revolutions leading to fascism, and the peasant revolutions leading to communism’.70 While at first this may not appear to be fertile ground for students of International Relations, on closer examination it is clear that the global system itself was of major importance for all three routes to modernity. An indication of its importance comes early in the text. ‘The fact that the smaller countries depend economically and politically on big and powerful ones means that the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their own boundaries.’71 Such a thought would indeed warm the hearts of nationalists and conspiracy theorists all over the Third World but Moore’s exaggeration is at least partly a justification for the inevitably

22 Democracy and the Global System

limited scope of his study to the ‘big’ states. In any case, his analysis does not and cannot escape the decisive role of the global system in the development of democracy or dictatorship in any single state.

Theorising democracy A few words about the meaning of democracy for Moore are necessary. Clearly, democratic governance is not simply or mainly the consequence of an ideal pursued by devoted followers. While ideological support for such values as liberty and equality, and for accountable and representative institutions is a necessary ingredient in the evolution of any particular democratic polity, by itself it tells us little about the historical development of such a polity. As Ernest Gellner has suggested: ‘Theorists of democracy who operate in the abstract, without reference to concrete social conditions, end up with a vindication of democracy as a general ideal, but are then obliged to concede that in many societies the ideal is not realisable.’72 Cognisant of such pitfalls, Moore speaks mainly of democracy in terms of its development or a process of social demands rather than a given assemblage of institutions and practices. Although these too come across in sporadic bursts, he attempts to sidestep the ‘trivial quibbling’ characteristic of most debates around definitions by arguing the following: ‘The author sees the development of a democracy as a long and certainly incomplete struggle to do three closely related things: 1) to check arbitrary rulers, 2) to replace arbitrary rules with just and rational ones, and 3) to obtain a share for the underlying population in the making of rules.’73 Now, why there should be social demand for such a direction of change and whether or not it is universal in scope is never addressed by Moore. The questions are surely partly answered by reference to ideological movements acting (and writing) in adherence with political principles. Defining the scope of political change (constitutional, institutional) and its desirability, would also lead us partly towards an examination of ideology. There is, however, very little in Social Origins about the various theoretical conceptions of democratic government and there are no serious references to the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Tom Paine or any of the other Enlightenment authors so replete in the works of mainstream democratic theorists.74 Rather, Moore’s account is an explicitly materialist one. He is concerned with demonstrating that the direction of political change is best analysed by reference both to self-interest as defined by social classes and the state in the process of dynamic structural change (modernisation),

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 23

and to the opportunities for acting upon these by reference to the resources and capabilities of social classes and the state in a changing ideological, economic, military and political environment. Moore does, however, distinguish between what might be called ‘developed’ democratic government (Britain, the United States and France) from ‘semi-parliamentary’ or ‘unstable’ democracies (the Weimar Republic, Japan in the 1920s, Italy under Giolitti). These are essentially authoritarian governments which acquire one basic democratic feature – a parliament with limited powers.75 While the theoretical implications of authoritarian semi-parliamentary government will be taken up later, it is important here to understand that the forms of states according to Moore are not simply either democracies or dictatorships but that gradations between these positions are in fact much more common. Nevertheless, there are for Moore, three general types of states that fall under the category of dictatorship and democracy – fascist and communist for the former and bourgeois or liberal democratic for the latter.

The historical actors Moore posits three main historical routes (four, including India) from agricultural to industrial society which determine the nature of political systems left in their wake. There are four explicit actors in this drama and one implicit one. Social classes are explicit, namely, the landed upper class/es, the bourgeoisie (often referred to as an ‘impetus’ and thus revealing Moore’s major dynamic actor) and the peasantry. Again, he is concerned above all with demonstrating the decisive role played by the two social classes ultimately vanquished in the West by capitalist development in determining the nature of modern political systems.76 It is their historical configuration in relation to the bourgeoisie and the state (the fourth explicit actor) which determines ‘the political outcome’. My contention is that this can only be properly understood in the wider context of the global system (the implicit actor). The state for Moore is not simply the functional arm of the economically dominant class, at least not for all the empirical cases he covers. Although it is not explicitly theorised in terms of the debate on ‘autonomy’, it is clear from his analysis that the spread of capitalism, in a dialectical manner, greatly strengthened, indeed transformed the state and made it one of the most important objects of class struggle.77 The state is variously treated as dependent on economic surpluses largely extracted from society and, therefore, under precarious hegemonic control of the dominant economic class (particularly so where

24 Democracy and the Global System

the bourgeois impulse is strong) and as an autonomous entity seeking to mediate between social classes and other states in order to preserve or increase its power (particularly for later developing countries).78 While its interests may be defined at different moments according to its own rationale, it ignores the social bases of its resources at its peril. The state is crucially caught in the same contradictory pressures brought about by commercialisation and modernisation as the social classes it attempts to govern. Its autonomy or freedom of action has limits that are most dramatically revealed by the social revolutions outlined by Moore. The role of the global system in aiding, sponsoring or causing structural social and political change is never systematically analysed by Moore. While he is unable to sustain an exclusively intra-societal approach, it is clear that his intention is precisely to downplay ‘foreign’ influences.79 The role of the international sphere is always peripheral to the unfolding dramas and its impact on the explicit actors or major variables is never theorised in a sustained fashion. Nevertheless, as we shall see, what is implied by the global system is much more than the existence of other competing states, even if these are particularly crucial in the context of modernisation.

The original transition Rather than go over each transition set out in detail by Moore, we will outline briefly the English example and proceed to the theoretical implications of the analysis as a whole. The reason for choosing the English example is that, being the original transition to democracy for Moore and the so-called ‘model’ for later modernisations, its actual uniqueness will help stress the role of the global system as well as temper unilinear models of social development, arguably the central weakness of both liberal and socialist internationalism. Let’s begin by asking what factors explain the development of Parliamentary democracy in England? The most important factor according to Moore is the development of commerce in both the countryside and towns. Was this a purely endogenous development? No, it was due to the interaction between the state, the social structure and the global system at a particular historical conjuncture. All four elements are crucial. The Tudor state sought first to consolidate and then to increase its power vis à vis the landed classes partly as a consequence of international conflict (The Hundred Years War 1337–1453) and partly as a consequence of internal conflict (Wars of the Roses 1455–85). As the lords lost their political role to the centralising state so they sought to

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 25

increase the economic power of their land via international trade. ‘Since English markets for wool were on the continent, particularly in Italy and the Low countries, it is to the growth of trading towns there that one would have to turn in order to find the beginnings of the strong commercial impulse that was eventually to rule English society.’80 The commercialisation of land had many far reaching consequences not least of which was the development of economic individualism as a new social creed. ‘… [L]ong before Adam Smith, scattered groups of Englishmen living in the countryside began to accept self-interest and economic freedom as the natural basis of human society.’81 Of equal importance was the fact that a numerous tenantry became less important for the landlords while a high pecuniary return from the soil became more so. According to R.H. Tawney, ‘… [This change …] marks the transition from the medieval conception of land as the basis of political functions and obligations to the modern view of it as an income-yielding investment.’82 With these shifts, the question of social order, which had been the obligation of the landed classes, was raised with dramatic urgency. The casting adrift of copious numbers of peasants, in large part due to the violent enclosures, led to intermittent revolts that the state was left to deal with. The state, however, was not up to the task. ‘Unlike the French monarchy, the English crown had not been able to build up an effective administrative and legal machinery of its own that could force its will upon the countryside.’83 The attempts by the Stuart state to restore order led to a coherent opposition to the crown by the ‘commercially minded elements in town and countryside’ and precipitated the Civil War which ultimately resulted in Parliamentary sovereignty. The sovereignty of Parliament dominated by commercial landlords and their capitalist allies allowed for a reinvigorated enclosure movement and the final destruction of the English peasantry, ‘… eliminating them as a factor from British political life’.84 This not only foreclosed the possibility of peasant revolution but, ‘… [i]t meant that modernisation could proceed without the huge reservoir of conservative and reactionary forces that existed at certain points in Germany and Japan not to mention India’.85 Inter-state competition, state centralisation, international market opportunities and domestic pacification in the context of early modern England led to the commercialisation of land, radically altering the social structure and establishing some of the original preconditions for democracy – one in which ‘suffrages were not counted, but weighed’86 – over three centuries. These preconditions according to Moore were: (1) a relatively strong and independent Parliament; (2) a commercial and

26 Democracy and the Global System

industrial interest with its own economic base; and (3) no serious peasant problem. No other country could possibly encounter the same historical and social conditions. All other social transitions would have to face international conditions in part created by this original transition. This was particularly so because England was now powerful and modern enough to ‘convert a large part of the entire globe into [its] trading area’.87

Theoretical implications The most important overarching theoretical implication arising from Moore’s account is an implicit theory of ‘uneven and combined development’,88 which suggests a useful orientation to the relationship between democratic governance and the global system. It is implicit because, as he does not treat the impact of the global system on state formation and social transformation in a systematic way, Moore’s analysis only implies this theory rather than develops it or brings it to the fore. It is worth quoting at some length here to flesh out this point. To a very limited extent these three types – bourgeois revolutions culminating in the Western form of democracy, conservative revolutions from above ending in fascism, and peasant revolutions leading to communism – may constitute alternative routes and choices. They are much more clearly successive historical stages. As such, they display a limited determinate relation to each other. The methods of modernisation chosen in one country change the dimensions of the problem for the next countries who take the step, as Veblen recognized when he coined the now fashionable term, ‘the advantages of backwardness’. Without the prior democratic modernisation of England, the reactionary methods adopted in Germany and Japan would scarcely have been possible. Without both the capitalist and reactionary experiences, the communist method would have been something entirely different; if it had come into existence at all. … Although there have been certain common problems in the construction of industrial societies, the task remains a continually changing one. The historical preconditions of each major species differ sharply from the others.89 As this extract suggests, the historical preconditions differ sharply precisely because of the existence of other states in the global system which have already made the transition to modernity. What changes are the dimensions of the global system itself. As it becomes dominated by

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 27

more advanced industrial states, the development trajectory for all other countries in the global system is irrevocably altered – as Realist theory would seem to predict via defensive modernisation. But unlike Realism, the point for Moore is that the form of state – democratic, fascist and communist, the very forms of state arguably most associated with modern geopolitical conflict – is the key political consequence of modernisation. What accounts for their particular form is the impact of modernisation on pre-existing social and political structures, and their relationship to other states in the global system at a particular historical conjuncture. Speaking specifically about the development of democracy in England, Moore makes the following point; ‘… [T]he English bourgeoisie from the seventeenth through much of the nineteenth century had a maximum material stake in human freedom because it was the first bourgeoisie and had not yet brought its foreign and domestic rivals to their full powers.’90 The implication here is that while international and domestic diffusion of economic power under capitalism is real enough, it is thoroughly uneven and when combined with pre-existing (agrarian) social structures creates entirely new forms of ‘political outcomes’. These new forms, however, are clustered around three distinct political ‘species’ according to Moore – democracy, fascism and communism. At work is a single historical process leading to various historical experiences, that is, modernisation characterised by uneven and combined development.91 Uneven and combined development contextualises all social transformations. The imperatives driving inter-state competition as well as the search for ‘order’ in world politics would be immeasurably altered without this added dynamic. Rather than ‘balance of power’ calculations, uneven and combined development may be the key to understanding attempts at modernisation and their consequences for international relations.92 For example, considering Japan’s modernisation Moore writes: … differences in internal social structure constitute only one major variable … [t]here were also differences in timing and in the external circumstances under which premodern institutions broke down and adapted themselves to the modern era … [t]he superiority of Western arms and technology became evident to many Japanese leaders very rapidly. The question of national survival and the need to take appropriate steps to defend it pushed their way to the forefront with dramatic speed.93

28 Democracy and the Global System

To the extent that Moore analyses the interaction of domestic social and political structures with international ones at particular historical periods, his account eschews parsimony and delivers a complexity that clearly reflects the messiness of actual history. Now, to see whether the historical preconditions for states today augur well or otherwise for democratic transitions, and to further assess the efficacy of the theory of uneven and combined development, we may turn to Moore’s account of the conditions favourable and unfavourable to democratic government.

Conditions favourable and unfavourable to democracy Despite tremendous progress towards industrialisation in many countries while being integrated in the international capitalist system, the vast majority of states have so far avoided or rejected the liberal democratic form of state. Moore’s model suggests that, perhaps, the dynamics of uneven and combined development, as with Germany, Japan, Russia and China, may be promoting dictatorships rather than democratic polities.94 Although Moore suggests that the first decisive precondition for democratic government is ‘… the development of a balance to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristocracy’,95 when focusing on Third World states it would be more meaningful, first, to suggest the consolidation of state power itself as a precondition. If the establishment of democracy was to have any chance at all, it would have to be in the context of independent statehood. The protracted wars of independence fought against colonial empires as well as the postindependence struggles over borders partly explains the more prominent role of military leaders in the politics of the Third World;96 from the start, the prospects for democracy in the Third World were poor. Now, substituting state for ‘crown’ and landed élite for ‘aristocracy’ we may suggest, along with Moore, that the development of a certain amount of pluralism at the apex of the political system is an essential ingredient in the growth of democracy. In other words, the ‘institutionalisation of contestation’ first requires roughly evenly matched powers. Unfortunately, uneven and combined development has made it possible for states to acquire such enormous levels of despotic power relative to civil society groups, through both market mechanisms and geopolitical alliances, that those who challenge it need to have a very strong economic base indeed. In this sense ‘the advantages of backwardness’ may be distinctly disadvantageous for democracy. As we have seen with regard to England, the relative economic independence acquired by the landed classes had been achieved historically

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 29

via international market opportunities. There is, of course, every indication that the landed élite in the Third World have exploited international market opportunities. Indeed, the Third World as a whole was largely integrated into the international capitalist system via colonialism as exporters of primary products.97 In a sense, the incorporation of primary product producers into the international economy resembles the transition to commercial agriculture characteristic of ‘revolutions from above’, the classic route culminating in fascism.98 What is extraordinary, given Moore’s model, is that any former colonial country has made a successful transition to democracy. Nevertheless, Moore is quick to point out that the ways in which the independence of the landed élite has been hammered out are equally important.99 What is crucial for the development of democracy is that the economic independence for the landed élite must be achieved with the support of and in alliance with ‘… a numerous and politically vigorous class of town dwellers’ that is, the bourgeoisie.100 In other words, ‘no bourgeois, no democracy’.101 The economic and political growth of the bourgeoisie is one of the main sources of the decisive connection between socio-economic factors such as wealth per capita (with its links to education and urbanisation) and democracy so prevalent in the literature on democratisation.102 While it is clear that in most parts of the Third World the percentage of the population in urban areas is rising sharply (now constituting a majority of the world’s inhabitants);103 the extent to which the landed élite and the bourgeoisie – very often a declining class in terms of numbers relative to the urban poor – have corporate interests in allying themselves against the state is considerably less so.104 According to Moore, the probability of a landed élite/bourgeois alliance depends on whether the form of commercial agriculture prevalent in the countryside includes and necessitates both the co-operation and integration of the urban bourgeoisie in realising their profits and the extent to which it is labour repressive/intensive.105 That is, whether the form of commercial agriculture creates ‘a considerable community of interests with the towns’, and enables the landed class to curb its dependence on the state by freeing itself of the state powers needed to keep peasant labour cheap but plentiful. England’s wool trade is compared favourably to Germany’s grain trade in that the former necessitated minimum labour and strong ties with the urban marketers while the latter needed maximum exploitation of labour and little marketing from the urban bourgeoisie.106 The point about labour intensity is very important. Put simply, the greater the supply of cheap labour needed, the more important restrictions

30 Democracy and the Global System

such as on labour mobility and unionisation imposed and enforced by the state were for landlords and, consequently, the more damaging would be the loss of influence on the state through the inclusion of other corporate interests. In a study of the development of democracy in Latin America the authors suggest that immediately after independence ‘[p]rogress towards democracy only occurred under the crucial precondition of absence of labor intensive agriculture. In fact, in no case where (1) labor intensive agriculture predominated, and (2) agriculture was the crucial export sector, was unrestricted democracy established in South America’.107 Any democratic opening would have to await further diffusion of economic power to other sectors, that is, economic diversification. If the commercial and industrial element is so weak that it is not worth the landed classes being allied to it, then peasant revolution leading to communism has been the danger. This happened in China and Russia, Moore reminds us, after unsuccessful efforts to establish such a coalition. Where a coalition between a strong landed élite with a weak bourgeoisie succeeds, according to Moore’s analysis, this has been the social origins of rightist authoritarian regimes and movements.108 Part of the explanation again falls on the theory of uneven and combined development. As Moore puts it: ‘[S]ooner or later systems of laborrepressive agriculture are liable to run into difficulties produced by competition from more technically advanced ones in other countries.’109 As the landed classes lose their economic base, this competition, in turn, intensifies their authoritarian and reactionary trends. If the political systems established at first fall short of fascism, eventually the door to fascism may be opened by their inability to carry out fundamental structural changes or to cope with severe problems. These are the authoritarian semiparliamentary regimes characteristic of many European countries during the inter-war years and, arguably, of many contemporary states in the Third World. Now, to what extent do commercial landowners in the Third World realise profits by selling their products to the national bourgeoisie who in turn sell them on to international and domestic markets or consume a large portion of them themselves? A good negative example, if an extreme one, is provided by the oil producing states of the Middle East whose profits are realised almost entirely from overseas sales.110 Given the minimal backward linkages of oil production with domestic labour, capital or agricultural goods, the bourgeoisie in these states do not as yet have the leverage required for either an independent assault on the state or for an alliance with private landowners against the state. Indeed, the most important landowners are often royal family members. Due to

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 31

the availability of foreign labour, extraction and production technology, transportation, marketing and consumer markets, the bourgeoisie in these societies has been left to live off the considerable crumbs that fall from the tables of the landowners and the state. For Third World states that are not endowed with massive oil reserves, a frequently asserted concern refers to their combination of power and fragility.111 Their considerable despotic power is combined with an economic fragility that is in part due to their dependence on externally generated revenues, another legacy of colonial history. The lack of middle-class incomes together with low infrastructural power means that domestic tax revenues account for a relatively small proportion of total state revenues.112 According to a recent report, for example, less than one percent of the population of Pakistan, from a population of 140 million, pay any income tax.113 Tariffs on exports and imports being at a premium, the landed élite and the state have little incentive, without the intervention of revolts from below or from external factors, to disrupt the social structure. This also means that the historic link between demands for representation and taxation is weak. With these domestic and international circumstances, Moore’s model suggests major obstacles to the establishment and working of democracy. The next historical preconditions for democratic government are ‘the weakening of the landed aristocracy and the prevention of an aristocratic–bourgeois coalition against the peasantry and workers’.114 For most countries in the process of industrialisation, the weakening of the landed aristocracy would seem natural enough. However, as we have seen, for countries which had been integrated into the international capitalist economy as primary product producers, the weakening of the landed aristocracy was anything but natural. The political dominance of the coffee plantation owners in Brazil, for instance, was not finally broken until well into the twentieth century.115 With British capital available for financing the limited infrastructure required by a primary product exporting country, British merchants controlling the import– export trade and ships under the British flag, financed and insured in London, transporting the goods, the Brazilian landed aristocracy had very little interest in industrialisation. Nor was coffee, typical of primary products with such limited linkage effects for the Brazilian economy, its price volatility and labour intensity, an appropriate product for the stimulation of industrial development. This was not, of course, unique to Brazil but characteristic of many Latin American countries. When the weakening of the landed classes was apparent, it was due in large measure to changing international circumstances, particularly to

32 Democracy and the Global System

the First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War. The commensurate growth in the political and economic weight of the commercial-industrial bourgeoisie due to the added stimulation of industrial and commercial expansion by the loss of export markets, the pressure of nationalist or anti-imperialist sentiment widely held across class lines, and the new dominance of American capital with an interest in branch plants which had a direct effect on the industrialisation process, all combined to break the political dominance of the landed classes and to encourage the Brazilian state to adopt new industrialisation policies. These policies, known collectively as ‘import substitution industrialisation’ (ISI) had many far-reaching consequences. For our purposes, what is of interest is that ISI greatly increased the power and role of the state, the national capitalists and foreign Multinational Corporations (MNCs). It also greatly increased demand for foreign earnings because of its high capital intensity and ‘… if anything, Brazil’s ties with the world market became stronger and more crucial as the operation proceeded’.116 According to Paul Cammack, the most significant characteristics of the form of politics associated with ISI in Latin America, generally described as ‘populist’ were ‘… its conjunctural success as a “second-best” option for dominant classes bereft of options of their own, and workers hitherto used to neglect or repression; its tendency to lose over time the ability upon which this success depended both to control its working-class clientele and to keep the dominant classes at arm’s length; and its fundamental antipathy to democracy, dependent as it was upon the use of state power to deny free political association to opposition and supporters alike’.117 Whether the spread of military regimes in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s was due to an aristocratic–bourgeois coalition or to a new bourgeois–military coalition against the peasants and workers, even when many of the workers’ movements were originally the creation of states,118 the fact remains that the increased repression was often directed against the threat of upheaval by these classes who bear the brunt of the costs of modernisation and their leadership.119 Any consideration of this process must include the role of the global system as an integral part of it. Besides those already considered, three other main international considerations in the repression in Latin America stand out. One is the force of example or demonstration effect of successful revolutionary socialist regimes such as Cuba and after 1979, Nicaragua, as well as the so-called ‘lessons of Chile’ (i.e. the experience of the Allende government between 1970 and 1973). It is indeed difficult to overestimate the

Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 33

impact of these revolutionary victories and radical defeats in the context of the Cold War on most regimes in Latin America, on their military establishments, on the perceptions of the middle classes, on the leaderships of radical social movements, and on the small but determined ‘voluntarist’ revolutionary groups.120 Second, the military assistance provided to the repressive states by the United States and other major arms exporters was considerable and often accepted as tacit support for the policies being carried out.121 Finally, the prospect of dwindling foreign direct investment due to the threat of social instability and the economic and diplomatic pressures, both overt and covert, to ensure the protection of property rights, often meant that democracy would have to be sacrificed for the sake of a sound business environment.122 Nevertheless, there has been a pronounced increase in the economic and political power of the middle classes in many if not most of the countries in this region since 1945 and the more recent return to democratic government in most of them may be an indication of the relative importance of this increase as well as the decline in radical challenges to capitalist development. This last point may also relate to uneven and combined development in that many revolutionary challenges to Third World states were/are based on theoretical formulations developed in the context of earlier European settings or, as with Maoist parties, European theory ‘adapted to Chinese conditions’. If, for example, Stalinism was essentially ‘the amalgam of Marxism with Russia’s primordial and savage backwardness’ then the challenges to states in the developing world based on European revolutionary thought were bound to end, if successful, in authoritarian forms of state.123 The consequences of ideological ‘advantages of backwardness’ have been extraordinarily varied, whether in the form of nationalism and its impact on independence movements throughout the Third World, of republicanism and its impact or of the impact of revolutionary socialism on Third World states. What is certain is that alternative theoretical as well as existing models of rule, as of struggle, do need to be taken on board as part of the impact of the global system on the prospects for democratic governance. The final historical precondition for democratic government according to Moore is ‘… a revolutionary break with the past’.124 Given the number of recent transitions to democracy without full-blown social revolutions, this final precondition would seem rather austere. The lack of bourgeois revolutions in countries that have made transitions to democracy suggests the possibility of ‘waves of democratisation’ (not necessarily unilinear and most certainly not ‘peaceful’) and of democratic reversals rather than the necessity of one single revolutionary

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rupture.125 As we have seen, Moore’s analysis of the development of democracy and dictatorship suggests to him a single historical process at work, namely, modernisation. It makes sense, he says, ‘… to regard the English Civil War, the French Revolution and the American Civil War as stages in the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.’126 Modernisation, according to Moore, creates the conditions for each country to carry the process a certain distance within the framework of its own situation and institutions. As the historical conjuncture changes, the interaction between the state, the social structure and the global system produces new opportunities for further democratisation or for new forms of dictatorship. But if this is so, why can we detect democratic innovations spreading transnationally? Examples would include the enfranchisement of workers and of women, the development of civil rights and even the development of welfare states. Should not limitations in social structures and institutions be reached beyond which certain states cannot proceed without a major social and political rupture? Uneven and combined development must leave room at the very least for the possibility of broad political convergence without the necessity of revolution. Otherwise, the historical record will prove it false. Inspired by the force of example, developments in the direction of democracy in a single country may feed into demands for democratic inclusion occurring elsewhere. Even the form of struggle itself is often replicated across national borders. Moore’s handling of the Indian case is instructive because here too there was no social revolution.127 Without going into the details of this very complicated historical account his argument is that by not having a revolution India has prolonged its ‘backwardness’ and retains a highly precarious political system.128 Essentially, India’s small Westerneducated élite remains faithful to democracy because it ‘… provide[s] a rationalization for refusing to overhaul on any massive scale a social structure that maintains their privileges’.129 Uneven and combined development has helped produce a uniquely balanced democracy where the vast majority of the population struggles to achieve subsistence. An unlikely social formation which reminds us of the unpredictability both of the ‘real world’ and of models in the social sciences. With regard to the most recent transformations which have resulted in the nominal institutionalisation of democracy, if still precariously, namely, the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, we have witnessed a new route to democracy completely unanticipated by Moore’s analysis.130 Clearly, however, the final collapse of the Soviet bloc had important international dimensions.131 The first point to make is that

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the failure of European communism was not simply the result of either its economic weakness nor its innate inability to reform politically. On both fronts the final collapse corresponded with considerable successes relative to its past performance.132 Over and above the factors which have come to be subsumed under the rubric of ‘stagnation’, the impact of the global system on European communism at this particular historical conjuncture was decisive. According to Fred Halliday, ‘[w]hat was determinant, and what put stagnation into a wholly different light, was the global context, and in particular the relative record of “communism” compared with its competitor, advanced capitalism.’133 The central legitimating claims of communist parties in power were from the beginning explicitly framed within the context of the global system. That is, the inevitability of capitalism’s collapse as well as the ability to sustain an alternative, superior, non-capitalist economic and political system were communism’s main theoretical assumptions. Both were demonstrably proven false after many decades by changes within the capitalist system itself, in part, of course, due to the existence of communist states. If some states sporadically retreated from democratic inclusion due to the ‘menace of radicalism’, as indeed England did during the more radical phase of the French Revolution or as ‘McCarthyism’ in the United States would suggest, the more common direction of change for advanced capitalism was one of inclusion – for example, the expansion of social democracy through ‘Keynesianism’ including the Marshall Plan, de-colonisation, the civil rights movement, the gains of women’s movements and so on. In no small measure, of course, many of these changes were brought about through social struggle within the context of liberal constitutional frameworks.134 Other significant legitimating changes which had tremendous international repercussions but are perhaps more germane to the development of capitalism itself are associated with the increasing role and relative importance of communications and consumer culture. One important element here was the explosion in youth culture or, if one prefers, the exploitation by the emergent music, fashion, telecommunications and all manner of consumer industries of the recently acquired disposable income of the youth and its ironic legitimating effect. Ironic because this youth culture was often irreverent towards older generations – this, indeed, is one of its greatest appeals – whose earnings were mostly being spent and in ‘revolt’ against corporate and state power. The inability of the Soviet bloc to insulate itself from these developments and others including Western military and economic technological advances, meant that the belief in its ability to overtake capitalism was destroyed. ‘It was this

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comparative, rather than absolute, failure that provided the basis for the collapse of the late 1980’s[.]’135

Criticisms Before attempting to assess the insights that Moore’s account provides us, we must first attend to the problems of that account itself. As we have seen, the basic difficulty has arisen from Moore’s lack of systematic engagement with the impact of the global system on social and political change, that is, on ‘political outcomes’. To the extent that a theoretical explanation of this relationship was implicit, I have suggested that uneven and combined development may be the appropriate model for it. It is, however, regrettable that an investigation focused on the political consequences of the spread of modernisation did not seek to place it more squarely within the context of the global system. The next criticism arising from Moore’s account is in many ways much more damaging. His insistence that the political mould of democracies, like dictatorships, was already set after the commercialisation of agriculture – in some cases hundreds of years before the establishment of what we today would recognise as democratic states – is unconvincing. In other words, the designation of England in the seventeenth century, France in the eighteenth century or even the United States after the Civil War as ‘en route’ to democracy is surely problematic. Not one of these states at these times was under the illusion that they were constructing democracies. Constitutional Monarchy and Republics yes, but not democracies. Clearly, Moore’s analysis of agrarian class relations demonstrates their importance for understanding political outcomes, but just what type of outcomes are actually demonstrated? In place of democracy I would suggest ‘liberal or constitutional oligarchy’. Moore gives much too much credit to the bourgeoisie for providing the major impetus towards democracy, for being the protagonist of democracy. It seems much more likely that the institutionalisation of democratic government, at least of the kind we would today recognise as democratic, was the result of much more recent struggles for political incorporation, in particular, those arising from the demands of subordinate classes in the new capitalist order – working-class demands – but also of civil rights and women’s movement in the context of industrialism that could easily have resulted in less democratic outcomes. Did not the bourgeoisie in most countries and their ideological defenders resist the extension of the franchise for workers, not to mention women and minorities? However, the connection to the bourgeoisie may still be

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valid in as much as its size and strength may well be positively correlated to the size and strength of the working class. Furthermore, the logic of the principled justifications for extending political rights to the bourgeoisie could not easily be frozen philosophically or politically. The question that arises is whether the liberal or constitutional oligarchic regimes established before the middle of the twentieth century were destined or essentially designed to continue their evolution in a democratic direction. Moore’s answer is obviously yes. My contention is that if this were to be demonstrated, one would have to look at how subordinate classes as well as other groups, such as political parties representing them, were actually incorporated as legitimate and formally equal contestants into the political arena. My suspicion is that this would add to Moore’s list of preconditions at least one other requirement, namely, a developed or ‘dense’ civil society.136 The reasons for this are fairly straightforward. First, a civil society creates favourable conditions for the classes previously excluded from formal politics to organise for collective action, allowing them the possibility of obtaining ‘a share for the underlying population in the making of rules’. This was historically the case at least in Europe for the creation of working-class representation in trades unions and often through them into political parties.137 Second, a civil society more easily allows for the growth and development of a ‘counter-hegemony’ of subordinate classes. Through participation in trades unions, civil rights or women’s movements, for example, and with the dissemination of oppositional ideas through various media the hegemonic influence of dominant classes may be countered and challenged. This may also allow the development of serious public debate and the possibility of replacing ‘arbitrary rules with just and rational ones’.138 Finally, as most Enlightenment thinkers have suggested, the semi-autonomous organisations and associations of civil society establish a counterweight to state power itself – a ‘check on arbitrary rulers’ – a further condition which may favour the extension of democracy. As Michael Ignatieff has suggested in the context of the transitions from communism, ‘[w]ithout civil society, democracy remains an empty shell; without civil society, the market becomes a jungle’.139 As regards dictatorships of the right, Moore’s suggestion that the route to modernity taken by Germany and Japan in some way culminated in fascism is also problematic. On the one hand, the problem that arises is how to decide what in fact is an historical culmination.140 On the other hand, if fascism is the result of social change which is centuries in the making then why did democratic transitions occur after defeat in war? This either casts doubt on the depth and efficacy of historical social

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processes and forces or makes war an extraordinary revolutionary agent. The second proposition may well be the correct one. Despite the role of war in all the transformations detailed by Moore, the lack of sustained theorising with its transforming qualities leaves a considerable gap in his analysis. Actually recognising this weakness, Moore first characterises the crucial role of the Second World War in the success of the Chinese revolution as ‘fortuitous circumstances’ and later adds: From the standpoint of Chinese society and politics, the war was an accident. From the standpoint of the interplay of political and economic forces in the world as a whole, it was scarcely an accident. Just as the case of the Bolshevik victory in Russia, which some historians see as the accidental outcome of the First World War, the inevitable analytical necessity of isolating certain manageable areas of history can lead to partial truths that are misleading and even false unless and until one subsequently puts them back into their proper context.141 Unfortunately, Moore does not heed his own warning and fails to place the role of war in its proper theoretical context. The fact that the bulk of communist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe were also the result of war makes the same point. Again, these factors point to the lack of engagement with the global system in general and with the relationship between war and social/political change in particular.

Conclusion Despite the weaknesses referred to above, it is important to understand the extraordinary merits of Moore’s account both for the development of insights into the relationship between the global system and democratic governance and as a critique of liberal internationalist models of the spread of democracy. Moore’s suggestion that the transformation of the world due to the spread of capitalism is the rightful ‘meta-context’ in which to consider the development of modern political systems is crucial. This alone raises the global system to a key level of analysis when considering the prospects for democratic governance as well as challenging notions of the immutability of the system itself.142 However, unlike liberal internationalism, his analysis of capitalist modernisation suggests that the political consequences of this historical process are far from straightforward and actually likely to be unfavourable to the institutionalisation and consolidation of the democratic form of state.

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Overall, Moore’s model suggests that the interaction between the state, the social structure and the global system at a particular historical conjuncture produces the immediate context in which political change occurs. His greatest moral insight should also be included here, namely, that whatever the route to modernity, revolutionary or otherwise, the cost in human lives and dignity has always been extraordinarily high, including as it has in different periods the violent (how could it be otherwise?) expropriation of common land, slavery, judicial and extrajudicial murder, colonialism, civil and international war.143 To begin to understand the complex relationship between the global system and democratic governance and to develop alternative conceptions of the prospects of the spread of democracy to those offered by liberal internationalism means to incorporate these analytical and moral insights.

2 Karl Polanyi, Democracy and the Global System

Introduction This chapter seeks to shed light on the relationship between the global system and democratic governance through an assessment of the contributions made by Karl Polanyi in his classic account of the historical origins of modernity.144 In particular, his analytical emphasis on the role of ideology in the forging of modernity serves to counter the assumption of rationality – individual, social and international – associated with liberal internationalist views of the emergence of democracy and its worldwide spread. This chapter suggests that the concept of ‘world-historical-time’, which is designed to incorporate the salience of the global ideological dimension for socio-economic and political change is an important tool of analysis even if Polanyi does not employ the specific term. Similarly, the overarching analytical concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ is suggested here as an addition to Polanyi’s theoretical structure though, again, his cogent arguments on the tensions and contradictions of capitalism and the contingency of its international and domestic consequences serves to highlight the weakness of unilinear models of socio-economic and political development quite brilliantly.

The ‘double movement’ Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, contains, in fact, three interrelated historical transformations. The first involves the transition to capitalism culminating in the nineteenth century with what he terms a ‘specific civilisation’ – by which the author means a distinct social system encompassing both domestic and international dimensions; the 40

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second, the breakdown of this system culminating in the Second World War; and the third, the transcendence of this system with the rise of a post-liberal order. Polanyi’s framework of analysis is simple but elegant. Modern politics are defined and contextualised by reference to what the author calls the ‘double movement’: the conflict between the extension of market organisation on the one hand and the elementary requirements of an organised social life on the other.145 Polanyi’s contention is that capitalist society marks a sharp break with all previously known social systems in that it alone subordinates social relations to the requirements of the economic system.146 Rather than being a mere function of social organisation as, for example, with feudalism,147 the economic system under market society attempts to shape and direct all aspects of social organisation through the authoritative allocation of market prices. To accomplish this remarkable transition, what economists call the ‘factors of production’, namely, labour, land and capital have to be treated as pure commodities. It is with the help of the commodity concept that the mechanism of the market is geared to the various elements of industrial life. Commodities are here empirically defined as objects produced for sale on the market; markets, again, are empirically defined as actual contacts between buyers and sellers. Accordingly, every element of industry is regarded as having been produced for sale, as then and then only will it be subject to the supply-and-demand mechanism interacting with price. In practice this means that there must be markets for every element of industry; that in these markets each of these elements is organized into a supply and a demand group; and that each element has a price which interacts with demand and supply. These markets – and they are numberless – are interconnected and form One Big Market.148 It is this move, the commodification of labour, land and money, above all, which distinguishes capitalism from all other social systems and places market society in conflict with organised and sustainable social life. The reason for this, in the first instance, is that these elements are not, in fact, commodities at all. Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be

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stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance. None of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious.149 More importantly, the treatment of labour, land and money as actual commodities, if completely realised, would destroy the very possibility of social existence. It would degrade humanity beyond recognition, despoil nature beyond sustainable levels and destroy the productive system which gave rise to the commodity fiction in the first place.150 To counteract these disastrous potentialities and thereby to protect society, defences are generated aimed at ‘checking the expansion [of the market] in definite directions’.151 Polanyi’s thesis is that not only was market organisation incompatible with social existence in the long term but that the measures taken to protect society from the extension of market organisation to labour, land and money, were themselves incompatible with the market system. The protection of society, in other words, necessarily entails the transcendence of capitalism.152 This, then, is the ‘double movement’ – expansion of and protection from the market – and its consequences, intended and unintended, govern the dynamics of modern politics.153

Structure and agency in the ‘double movement’ If the extension of market organisation is in conflict with the elementary requirements of an organised social life then what or whom is behind this extension? The answer given by Polanyi is that the extension is due to four interrelated causes, namely, the international political system, the modern state, class interests and the ideology of economic liberalism. Let us take each of these in turn. Inter-state competition and the rise of the modern state It is no accident that The Great Transformation begins with an analysis of the global system. The basic reason for this is the author’s contention that the social changes in society which were heralded by the Commercial and Industrial Revolutions were ultimately reflected at the most universal level. It is also Polanyi’s argument, however, that the territorial division of political authority is at the root of the development and spread of market society. Contrary to liberal theory which suggests

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that the rise of market organisation is a ‘natural’ phenomenon adhering to fundamental motivations of human nature, it was in fact the modern state whose basic features were not only determined by the Commercial Revolution but whose intervention was absolutely necessary for the transition first to mercantilism and then to capitalism. Politically, the centralized state was a new creation called forth by the Commercial Revolution which had shifted the center of gravity of the Western world from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic seaboard and thus compelled the backward peoples of larger agrarian countries to organize for commerce and trade. In external politics, the setting up of sovereign power was the need of the day; accordingly, mercantilist statecraft involved the marshaling of the resources of the whole national territory to the purposes of power in foreign affairs. In internal politics, unification of the countries fragmented by feudal and municipal particularism was the necessary by-product of such an endeavor. Economically, the instrument of unification was capital, i.e., private resources available in form of money hoards and thus peculiarly suitable for the development of commerce. Finally the administrative technique underlying the economic policy of the central government was supplied by the extension of the traditional municipal system to the larger territory of the state.154 Inter-state competition resulting from the territorial and political division of Europe was, in the first instance, the well-spring from which both the rise of the modern state and the extension of market society began.155 The subordination of social relations to the economic system, however, was not the result of mercantilism. Markets under mercantilism were still ‘merely an accessory feature of an institutional setting controlled and regulated more than ever by social authority’.156 A further step was needed for the transition to capitalism and that for Polanyi was given by the rising costs and financial insecurities associated with the use of machines. That is to say, with the rise of industrialism. Although the new productive organization was introduced by the merchant – a fact which determined the whole course of the transformation – the use of elaborate machinery and plant involved the development of the factory system and therewith a decisive shift in the relative importance of commerce and industry in favor of the latter. Industrial production ceased to be an accessory of commerce organized by the merchant as a buying and selling proposition; it

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now involved long-term investment with corresponding risks. Unless the continuance of production was reasonably assured, such risk was not bearable.157 The introduction of costly machines into the process of production meant that the elements of industry, namely, land, labour and money had to be on sale. Class and ideology in the ‘double movement’ The vigour with which the British state (the first commercialised and industrialised country) pursued market principles, especially in the nineteenth century, is explained by the adherence of the ‘middle classes’ to the liberal utopia of self-regulating markets. Polanyi’s use of class is evidently quite distinct from Marx’s. Although the development of capitalism is at the root of the rise of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and the decline of the landed classes and the peasantry, class conflict according to the author was rarely if ever characterised as head-on collision between two opposing classes with diametrically opposed interests.158 Rather, because of the fluidity and dynamism of class formation and decline under capitalism,159 and, crucially, because of the functional services to society performed by each class, they always represent larger sections of society than themselves. … [I]t is the relation of a class to society as a whole which maps out its part in the drama; and its success is determined by the breadth and variety of the interests, other than its own, which it is able to serve. Indeed, no policy of narrow class interest can safeguard even that interest well – a rule which allows of but few exceptions.160 Because the middle classes’ business interests ran parallel to society’s general interest in regard to production and employment, and because this, in turn, ran parallel to the state’s own distinctive geopolitical interests, they were in a key position to influence the direction of government policy. However, without the coherence, and indeed, the hegemony of economic liberalism as an ideology by the nineteenth century, the task of gearing society towards their ends would not have met with the evident successes they achieved. Economic Liberalism was the organizing principle of a society engaged in creating a market system. Born as a mere penchant for

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non-bureaucratic methods, it evolved into a veritable faith in man’s secular salvation through the self-regulating market. Such fanaticism was the result of the sudden aggravation of the task it found itself committed to: the magnitude of the sufferings that were to be inflicted on innocent persons as well as the vast scope of the interlocking changes involved in the establishment of the new order.161 It was, in fact, the interaction of ideology with class interest which gave the ‘double movement’ its potentially catastrophic dynamism. For if economic liberalism, sectional middle-class business interests and the state’s own geopolitical interests were behind the extension of market organisation, then at various times and depending on specific social formations, the task of protecting society from the ill effects of the market fell to the landed classes, the peasantry and the working class, all of whom would need the power of the state in order to secure their ends. Thus, modern politics was born. Before we get into this crucial set of configurations, however, let us first examine the liberal utopia of selfregulating markets more closely.

Self-regulating market utopia The fundamental premise of economic liberalism is that, if left to its own devices, the market will produce economically and therefore socially optimal outcomes. The central problem for liberals, then, is ensuring that markets are indeed allowed to function without interference, in particular, without political intervention. The reason for this is that state intervention introduces non-economic variables (especially short-term political imperatives) into essentially economic processes, thus inhibiting their proper functioning and distorting their outcomes. To safeguard non-intervention by social authority, liberalism prescribes the separation of the economic from the political sphere, an innovation wholly at odds with human history. Ultimately, this institutional separation is nothing less than blanket political approval for the subordination of social relations to the requirements of an economic system based on individual gain. The ideology of economic liberalism is clearly utopian on many levels. First, as we have seen, it is utopian in its insistence on the treatment of labour, land and money as pure commodities. Second, it is historically utopian in that the role of the state in fostering the social conditions on which markets depend is denied – for example, in fostering the commodity fiction from the ‘enclosure’ movement in Britain to the near

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universal legal sanctioning of private contracts. Third, it is utopian in its belief that economic optimality is necessarily socially or politically optimal, domestically and internationally – that society is best served by the overall impact of individuals seeking maximum economic gain in a context of ‘free markets’.162 The disastrous consequences of the Industrial Revolution on the great majority in society further strengthened this utopian strain. The reason for this is that the fault for the obvious human degradation resultant upon the Industrial Revolution was wrongly placed at the foot of the protectionist policies innovated by the squires of Speenhamland.163 Finally, and because markets are said to be self-correcting and self-regulating, it is utopian in believing that political authority can ever be separated from the economic basis of society – much less that it should relinquish that authority. In other words, it is utopian in assuming that the political responses to the social effects of markets could and should be restrained.

Domestic and international institutions of the self-regulating market Despite the utopian nature of the project, economic liberalism combined with middle-class business interests and state interests164 to produce social institutions based upon these fictions. The domestic institutions of ‘free markets’ in labour, land and money were buttressed by their equivalents in the international sphere. Given the international character of commerce and Britain’s predominant international economic position by the nineteenth century, the transition to capitalism was accompanied by the internationalisation of self-regulating mechanisms. Two institutions were key here, namely, free trade and the gold standard. As long as trade remained protected by mercantilist state policies, the self-regulation of markets remained impaired. The competitive nature of both the international political system as well as economic organisation under capitalism, stimulated political and economic pressures to keep the costs of production as low as politically feasible. These costs could not find their real market values, it was argued, unless and until trade was ‘freed’ internationally from ‘artificial’ state restrictions. While the most immediate concern at the turn of the nineteenth century was that of trade in grain, the price of which was closely correlated to wages, the rule applied to all potential production inputs and therefore to all commodities. Likewise, unless money was freed from political

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interference by tying its value permanently to a real commodity, such as gold, self-regulation could not proceed on an international basis. The utopian springs of the dogma of laissez-faire are but incompletely understood as long as they are viewed separately. The three tenets – competitive labor market, automatic gold standard, and international free trade – formed one whole. The sacrifices involved in achieving any one of them were useless, if not worse, unless the other two were equally secured. It was everything or nothing.165 The internationalisation of self-regulating market mechanisms through free trade and the gold standard ran counter to international political developments since at least the seventeenth century. Rather than strengthen the basis of national political authority, it called for a dramatic removal of state sovereignty in the crucial areas of trade and exchange with the attendant loss of control over the value of the currency. State policy was to be concerned first and foremost with the maintenance of stable exchange rates through the self-correcting mechanism of the gold standard thus ensuring free trade on an equal footing internationally. If a country ran a trade deficit, then, in time, the value of its currency would decline and its goods would become more competitive thus enabling it to close the trade gap. The self-correcting mechanism of the gold standard was nothing less than the international corollary of the separation of the economic from the political sphere in the context of the competitive state system. Following the prescriptions of economic liberalism internationally would entail, as in the domestic sphere, the surrender of social authority in regard to the economic affairs of society. As we would expect from the ‘double movement’, however, what these institutions actually stimulated, along with the growth of international trade, was the increasingly national organisation of production, distribution and exchange – including centrally organised banking systems – precisely to avoid or at least to better manage the social dislocations associated with externally generated economic adjustments.166 In truth, the new nationalism was the corollary of the new internationalism. The international gold standard could not be borne by the nations whom it was supposed to serve, unless they were secured against the dangers with which it threatened the communities adhering to it. Completely monetarized communities could not have stood the ruinous effects of abrupt changes in the price level

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necessitated by the maintenance of stable exchanges unless the shock was cushioned by the means of an independent central banking policy. The national token currency was the certain safeguard of this security since it allowed the central bank to act as a buffer between the internal and the external economy.167 The extent to which the rules of the game, despite their apparent dangers, were actually followed – domestically by Britain and internationally by the major states – is only partially explained by the blind faith in progress at the heart of liberalism. It is, to a much greater extent, a testament to the extraordinary success of industrial capitalism in revolutionising the wealth creating power of society and its applications for geopolitical competition. As with the Commercial Revolution and mercantilism, once the decisive steps were taken by one or more states, alternative paths of development were eventually foreclosed. The fact that very few, if any, other states were able to replicate these developments with any precision says more about the conditions they faced, domestically and internationally, than their lack of effort and desire to do so. In other words, the uneven and combined development of capitalism is a contextual variable capable of elucidating the reasons for this lack of homogenous development.

Opposition to market society in England/Britain The social dislocations brought about by the extension of market society, then, created tremendous political and economic opposition both domestically and internationally. While on the one hand markets spread all over the face of the globe and the amounts of goods involved grew to unbelievable proportions, on the other hand a network of measures and policies was integrated into powerful institutions designed to check the action of the market relative to labor, land, and money. While the organization of world commodity markets, world capital markets, and world currency markets under the aegis of the gold standard gave an unparalleled momentum to the mechanism of the market, a deep-seated movement sprang into being to resist the pernicious effects of a marketcontrolled economy. Society protected itself against the perils inherent in a self-regulating market system – this was the one comprehensive feature in the history of the age.168 Beginning with Britain, initial opposition was attempted by the landed classes whose power and political patronage was threatened by the

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creation of, first, a regional and, finally, a national labour market. The Speenhamland Law of 1795 prevented the commodification of labour by introducing, in effect, ‘the right to live’ for labourers, decisively checking the free flow of demand and supply in the allocation of the wage-price for labour.169 While the unintended consequences of the Law included a dramatic fall in the productivity of labour, the pauperisation of labour and the fall of wages below the subsistence level due to the guarantee of wage subsidies, the overall impact on labour, according to the author, was to ease its transition to a full blown market economy and therefore to delay the birth of the industrial working class. Just as the Tudors and early Stuarts had delayed the Commercial Revolution by their opposition to enclosures, so the squires of Speenhamland had provided the labouring masses with some time to adjust to the new realities.170 This is not, however, how the eminent thinkers of the day or the middle classes interpreted the consequences of the Law. For them, the basic lesson of Speenhamland was seen to be that interference with the workings of the market led to even worse conditions for labourers than its immediate institutionalisation.171 To the bewilderment of thinking minds, unheard-of wealth turned out to be inseparable from unheard-of poverty. Scholars proclaimed in unison that a science had been discovered which put the laws governing man’s world beyond any doubt. It was at the behest of these laws that compassion was removed from the hearts, and a stoic determination to renounce human solidarity in the name of the greatest happiness of the greatest number gained the dignity of secular religion. … Reactionary paternalism had in vain tried to resist this necessity. Out of the horrors of Speenhamland men rushed blindly for the shelter of a utopian market economy.172 To overturn the Speenhamland Law and therefore to create a market society, the middle classes pushed for political power. This, according to the author, was achieved with the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 which disenfranchised the rotten boroughs and finally secured political power for the House of Commons.173 Once in power, the representatives of middle-class business interests introduced the legislation which marks both the birth of industrial capitalism and that of the industrial working-class, namely, the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.174 Far from ushering in a period of non-intervention or de-regulation, however, the development of industrial capitalism and with it the working-class movement, generated further demands for factory laws,175 social legislation and for the extension of political representation, all of which flew in the face of the self-regulating market.

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Democracy and working-class opposition to self-regulation in Britain176 Up to this point, one might be forgiven for wondering what all this has to do with democracy. In fact, it is only in the context of the ‘double movement’, according to the author, that modern democracy may be clearly understood. Following the logic of the text, we will deal first with the British experience. Britain’s transition to capitalism was carried out under extremely fortuitous international and domestic conditions. Not only was Britain the most successful commercial and trading nation by the nineteenth century, but as Barrington Moore has indicated, the transitional problem of what to do about the peasantry had been decisively dealt with by its earlier abolition.177 While we will come back to this question later, for now we may simply note that for the vast majority of countries, the peasantry’s demand for protection against market driven social dislocation created unforeseen political dynamics. If the British middle classes found economic liberalism to be an indispensable ally, then the emergent working classes found their ideological ally in socialism, initially, in particular, in Owenism. Owenism was a religion of industry the bearer of which was the working class. Its wealth of forms and initiatives was unrivalled. Practically, it was the beginning of the modern trade union movement.178 These ‘forms and initiatives’ included Villages of Co-operation, Union Shops, Labour Exchanges and the Builders’ Union or Guild from which the modern trade unions developed despite the state’s attempts to prevent them through successive Combination Acts. However, perhaps the historically unique characteristic among working-class movements internationally, Owenism, while refusing to accept the division of society into an economic and political sphere, nevertheless rejected political action as a means of securing lasting protection for workers.179 The task of extending political representation for workers fell to the Chartists who attempted to put pressure on the government through various means including the traditional lines of the Reform Movement which had secured the vote for the middle classes.180 Collecting millions of signatures, publicly demonstrating, organising strikes, even armed insurrection at the very margins of the movement, the cause of workingclass representation was denied by the liberals in power for whom popular democracy was anathema.

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The uncompromising rigidity with which such an extension of the vote was rejected by the Reformed Parliament for a third of a century, the use of force in view of the mass support that was manifest for the Charter, the abhorrence in which the liberals of the 1840’s held the idea of popular government all prove that the concept of democracy was foreign to the English middle classes.181 While working-class organisation and opposition was itself created by industrial capitalism and greatly assisted by associated developments in communications, by the end of the 1840s three major factors worked against Chartism. One was the palpable fear of revolution which the social upheavals on the Continent in 1848 spread throughout London and the major cities of Britain. As during the radical phase of the French Revolution, the ruling classes of Britain were in no mood to compromise with the unofficial opposition and again they were able to count on widespread support for their defence of ‘law and order’.182 The second factor that worked against Chartism was the liberals’ understanding that political representation for workers would potentially derail their project for the institutionalisation of the self-regulating market. The protectionism of the landed class in the form of the Corn Laws was difficult enough to deal with in the context of a very limited franchise. Clearly, the demand for the extension of the vote represented a demand for greater political leverage so as to protect labour and its allies from the social dislocations associated with market led change. According to Michael Mann: Most people preferred to avoid the state. But when states began to exploit and so politically cage them, they became politicized. Chartists wanted the vote to free themselves from novel social and economic exploitation. They urged lower, progressive taxation, reform of the Poor Law, fewer local government and police powers, a ‘ten hours’ act, and mutualist protections against ‘wage slavery,’ including union organizing rights. ‘The Charter and something more’ was their most popular slogan.183 Finally, by the end of the 1840s, with greater working-class sectionalism and economic prosperity, capitalism ‘began to deliver the goods’. Rising trade boosted employment, taxes were lower due to the ending of the debt cycle incurred in the Napoleonic Wars, and the appeal of political representation, given steadfast and united opposition, was temporarily dissipated. The crucial point is this: the extension of the franchise was

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only achieved when the possibility of radical transcendence of market organisation was itself rejected by the bulk of the working class. The separation of the economic from the political sphere, in other words, necessitated moderate economic demands. Only when this condition applied was the vote conceded. Arguably, of course, the great majority of the British working class had never embraced the kind of radicalism which was to surface later on the Continent and elsewhere under the influence of Marxism or Anarchosyndicalism. Nevertheless, if we leave to one side the enfranchisement of women which was not achieved in full until 1928, then perhaps 1885 has greatest claim to the year when the majority of working men achieved the vote in Britain.184 By that time, wages had more than doubled since the ‘Hungry Forties’, nearly 80 per cent of the population was urbanised, birth rates of both the propertied classes and working classes had begun to fall and the pattern of social stratification was increasingly complex due to the growing sectionalism between those with marketable skills and those without – such that one may see the emergence of a ‘lower middle class’.185 Under these conditions and given continued pressures to reform, the British ruling class was confident that capitalism would not be transcended through electoral means.186 Not before the working class had passed through the Hungry Forties and a docile generation had emerged to reap the benefits of the Golden Age of capitalism; not before an upper layer of skilled workers had developed their unions and parted company with the dark mass of poverty-stricken labourers; not before the workers had acquiesced in the system which the New Poor Law was meant to enforce upon them was their better-paid stratum allowed to participate in the nation’s councils. The Chartists had fought for the right to stop the mill of the market which ground the lives of the people. But the people were granted rights only when the awful adjustment had been made. Inside and outside England, from Macaulay to Mises, from Spencer to Sumner, there was not a militant liberal who did not express his conviction that popular democracy was a danger to capitalism.187

Uneven and combined development and democracy If Marx and Engels had been right in their analysis of the transnational spread of capitalism so powerfully expressed in the Communist Manifesto, then one might expect to see the liberal form of state

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replicated universally. After all, if capitalism was creating ‘a world after its own image’, then why shouldn’t all other states, clearly eager to revolutionise their own power capabilities, follow the socio-economic and political model set by the British experience?188 On the one hand, many states did seek to emulate the British experience under the compulsion of ‘defensive modernisation’ by choosing to industrialise. On the other hand, however, only very exceptionally were they able to do so without forgoing the liberal institutional framework set by the British experience. The reasons for this are in large part given by Polanyi’s assessment of the varied impact of the ‘double movement’ in the rest of the world. However, as we will see, although Polanyi’s framework takes us a very long way towards understanding the socio-economic, political and geopolitical processes at work in the spread of capitalism and its effects, as with Barrington Moore’s analysis, the lack of explicit and sustained engagement with the interaction between the international and domestic realms – as suggested by the theory of ‘combined and uneven’ development – diminishes the explanatory power of this aspect of his work. Underlining the lack of framework which would engage with the differential impact of capitalism worldwide in a coherent and systematic fashion, Polanyi’s analysis of this is diffused throughout the various chapters dealing with the impact of the ‘double movement’ as it pertains to labour, land and the productive system. In an attempt to pull these strands together, the following sections will highlight Polanyi’s assessment of the impact of the ‘double movement’ on the European Continent and the colonies by grouping them geographically and according to class and state interests, ideologies and overall political consequences.

Agrarian protection in Europe According to Polanyi, the transition to industrial capitalism on the Continent, which is said to have occurred some 50 years later, was not accompanied by the same degree of moral and cultural debasement so striking in the British experience – the evacuation of the countryside being achieved, to the extent that it was, by the lure of higher wages available in the towns rather than through the coercion of an enclosure movement. Furthermore, statute law and administrative action saved the tenant, the peasant and the agricultural labourer from the most pernicious effects of urbanisation. The political sway of Prussian conservatives, for example, like the squires of Speenhamland, sought to protect the land (the basis of their political authority) and its inhabitants from the worst effects of market mobilisation which had indeed shocked

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Continental observers. Unlike their English counterparts, however, free trade and technological developments in transportation meant that they faced an ‘avalanche of imported grain’, cheaper than their own produce and therefore more attractive to manufacturers and urban workers alike. Faced with the utter destruction of its rural society, Central Europe was forced to protect its peasantry by introducing corn laws. ‘In effect, the great influence wielded by landed interests in Western Europe and the survival of feudal forms of life in Central and Eastern Europe during the nineteenth century are readily explained by the vital protective function of these forces in retarding the mobilization of land.’189 The landed interests were not alone in challenging the self-regulating market in land. Besides the peasantry, the vast majority of whom were simply not able to join the steady stream of urban migrants, both the military and the higher clergy were available as allies against any immediate transformation to market society. The very different social structures which the spread of capitalism encountered in Europe meant that emulation of the British experience was not possible. The liberal state which became the corollary of economic liberalism in Britain, found no sustenance in the European context. Even in France, where liberalism as well as more radical ideologies were most deeply ingrained, social conditions produced a very short-lived ‘Bourgeois Republic’ and the most contorted political anti-liberalism in the form of Napoleon Bonaparte and later unstable regimes.190 … [E]conomic liberalism was wedded to the liberal state, while landed interests were not – this was the source of their permanent political significance on the Continent, which produced the cross-currents of Prussian politics under Bismarck, fed clerical and militarist revanche in France, ensured court influence for the feudal aristocracy in the Hapsburg empire, made Church and Army the guardians of crumbling thrones.191 With the challenge of industrialism thrown down by England, the Continental powers had little choice but to make the required changes to their systems of production, led not by the middle classes but by reactionary alliances with the peasantry as the last defenders of property rights and ‘law and order’. In place of liberalism, literary romanticism allied ‘Nature with the Past’ and presented the agrarian movement of the nineteenth century as ‘the guardian of man’s natural habitat, the soil’.192 Therefore, the uneven and combined development of capitalism

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helped produce anti-democratic political movements among the agrarian classes in Europe.

Working-class protection in Europe The time lag associated with the later industrialisation of Europe meant that there was no Industrial Revolution in a comparable sense because English methods of social protection were imitated before and not after the new productive techniques became available. The fact that the semifeudal aristocracies of Europe were equally distant from the middle classes as they were from the working classes meant that alliances between the latter were easier to construct and to retain. ‘Since 1830, if not since 1789, it was part of the Continental tradition that the working class would help to fight the battles of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, if only – as the saying ran – to be cheated by the middle class of the fruits of victory.’193 These experiences, combined with ‘Marxian ideologies’, served to politicise the working classes to a much higher degree than their English counterparts. The shared material interest with capitalists in cheap imported grain could not, in itself, overcome other contrasting interests. Also, in most of the Continent, the process of ‘nation-state building’ gave labouring classes, whose allegiance was sought by those for and against imperial authority, extra leverage in attaining sectional protection.194 This protection was achieved largely through legislation thanks in part to the formation of socialist political parties rather than through the power of trade unions to monopolise labour. While economically the difference between compulsory and voluntary methods of protection – legislation versus unionism – can be easily overrated, politically its consequences were great. On the Continent trade unions were a creation of the political party of the working class; in England the political party was the creation of the trade unions. While on the Continent unionism became more or less socialist, in England even political socialism remained essentially trade unionist.195 In so far as democracy is concerned, these differences added up to one great divergence, namely, that universal suffrage, rather than fostering national unity as in Britain, resulted very often in the exact opposite effect. Along with the uneven and combined development of capitalism, differences in timing offered new possibilities in dealing with the dislocations associated with economic transformation and novel political consequences were the result.

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Middle-class protection in Europe One of Polanyi’s central theses is that protection from the ravages of unrestricted markets extended to capitalist business itself.196 The major reason for this was on account of the way in which the supply of money was organised under a market system. Because profits in market society are determined by prices, the monetary system upon which prices depend is vital to the functioning of the market. As we have seen, England introduced the international gold standard during the Napoleonic Wars in order to facilitate free trade and ensure self-regulating exchanges. Theoretically, given world demand for manufactured goods, the predominant trading and manufacturing nation would stand to benefit no more from such arrangements than any other country. After all, why should others further disrupt their social structures to industrialise if these goods could simply be bought from England in exchange for primary products? Classical liberalism’s prescription of ‘comparative advantage’ could thus come into play and everyone would benefit. The liberal utopia of keeping political imperatives out of economics, however, could not stand the weight of either the social dislocations associated with the Commercial Revolution and mercantilism nor the pre-capitalist competitive state system. Given England’s demonstration of the potential power of industrialism, Continental states were in no position to risk their systems of production for the sake of liberal theory. In any case, liberal theory was woefully inadequate in narrow economic terms. Assuming stable gold reserves and no state-sponsored increases in the money supply, expansion of production and trade eventually leads to falling prices. Scarcity of money was a permanent, grave complaint with seventeenth century merchant communities. Token money was developed at an early date to shelter trade from the enforced deflations that accompanied the use of specie when the volume of business swelled. No market economy was possible without the medium of such artificial money.197 As a result, the system of international commodity money, the gold standard, stimulated the introduction of central banking systems throughout Europe. ‘Modern central banking, in effect, was essentially a device developed for the purpose of offering protection without which the market would have destroyed its own children, the business enterprises of all kinds.’198

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The economic conflict between politically controlled ‘token’ money and the self-regulating international gold standard created the basic dilemma for capitalist systems of production by the nineteenth century. Through the use of short-term loans, manipulation of interest rates and open-market operations, centrally organised banking systems alleviated the worst effects of gold withdrawals and helped spread the pain of adjustment more equally throughout society. They acted as buffers between the domestic and international economy. In the long term, however, the overall impact of this form of protection was unable to save capitalism from its contradictions. That in spite of these devices to mitigate the effects of deflation, the outcome was, nevertheless, again and again a complete disorganization of business and consequent mass unemployment, is the most powerful of all the indictments of the gold standard.199 The all or nothing nature of the market system, as with the lessons drawn from the consequences of Speenhamland, meant that the international gold standard could be made self-regulating only if countries relinquished central banking. The opposite, namely, the increasing politicisation of monetary policy actually occurred. Stable exchanges and sound credit conditions being the sin qua non of profitable business, bankers were the ‘born leaders’ of the middle classes. While government policy largely followed their demands until the twentieth century, middle-class participation in the councils of Europe rarely amounted to the political sovereignty achieved in Britain. Rather, their influence was weighed against the demands of the landed classes and peasantry, the working class and the state’s own bid for power and national unity in a potentially lethal balance. As Bismarck put it: Germany is not looking to Prussia’s liberalism but to her power … The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and majority decisions – that was the mistake of 1848–1849 – but by iron and blood.200 The protectionism which the middle classes sponsored, however, was so clearly aligned to the power of the state and aimed at the disruptive potential of the international environment that ‘nation’ and ‘currency’ fused as one.201 The integrating power of monetary policy surpassed by far that of the other kinds of protectionism, with their slow and cumbersome

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apparatus, for the influence of monetary protection was ever active and ever changing. What the businessman, the organized worker, the housewife pondered, what the farmer who was planning his crop, the parents who were weighing their children’s chances, the lovers who were waiting to get married, resolved in their minds when considering the favor of the times, was more directly determined by the monetary policy of the central bank than any other single factor. And if this was true even with a stable currency, it became incomparably truer when the currency was unstable, and the fatal decision to inflate or deflate had to be taken. Politically, the nation’s identity was established by the government; economically it was vested in the central bank.202 The influence of uneven and combined development was most conspicuous in the fields of production and investments. While this aspect of Polanyi’s analysis is the least well developed, we may glean some of the major points from his work. First, earlier industrialised countries developed more banks and more effective and integrated banking systems capable of providing credit to manufacturers and states alike. However, the preponderance of the City of London meant that international credit was dependent upon ‘good behaviour’ defined in terms of the liberal shibboleths of balanced budgets and sound currencies. Domestic pressures for protection together with underdeveloped productive systems made these very difficult to attain. The one common feature of late industrialisers was the heavy state involvement in the process compared with Britain. Not only was government protection more systematic in terms of coping with social dislocations but direct state investment in the productive process, often through military spending, the sponsoring of ‘trade institutes’ and technical education and state investment in infrastructure, for example, was also deemed necessary to ‘catch up’ with earlier industrialisers. Under the gold standard, the impact on currencies was delayed and mitigated thanks to central banking systems, but, ultimately, the pressures were clearly visible. Ricardian trade and currency theory vainly ignored the differences in status existing between the various countries owing to their different wealth-producing capacity, exporting facilities, trading, shipping, and banking experience. In the liberal theory, Great Britain was merely another atom in the universe of trade and ranked precisely on the same footing as Denmark and Guatemala. Actually, the world counted a limited number of countries, divided into lending

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countries and borrowing countries, exporting countries and practically self-sufficient ones, countries with varied exports and such as depended for their imports and foreign borrowing on the sale of a single commodity like wheat or coffee. Such differences could be ignored by theory, but their consequences could not be equally disregarded in practice.203 One possible way to deal with both of the problems of underdeveloped systems of production and lack of investment capital in the context of the gold standard and free trade was to invite foreign direct investment. In this way, Britain succeeded not only in finding profitable avenues for ‘loose capital’ but also in stimulating further demand for its capital goods internationally. If the danger for Britain was the possible loss of domestic investments, for the host country the dangers were more serious. One was the distorted or ‘mal-development’ associated with investments geared towards foreign interests. The other was the potential dependence forged through reliance on foreign capital. Frequently overseas countries found themselves unable to discharge their foreign debts, or their currencies depreciated, endangering their solvency; sometimes they decided to right the balance by political means and interfered with the property of foreign investors. But this would have required that the countries concerned should be more or less equal participants in a system of world division of labor, which was emphatically not the case.204. … The Pax Britannica held its sway sometimes by the ominous poise of heavy ship’s cannon, but more frequently it prevailed by the timely pull of a thread in the international monetary network.205 While Germany and France were often able to avoid these dangers, most of Europe, including Russia, was not.206 Before we move to the rest of the world, perhaps a few words on the position of the United States is now fitting. The reason that the United States is largely excluded from Polanyi’s analysis is that the conditions which it faced saved it from the workings of the ‘double movement’ until the mid-nineteenth century. The commodifying of land, for instance, was only problematic for the wretched indigenous people who had lived there for millennia, not for the settlers. Social protection for Indians was never an important political consideration for the government whose unrelenting aim was further territorial expansion. In terms of labour, the free flow from Europe together with the available land ensured its survival without the

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need for much government intervention. Finally, as for money, the expanding US market meant that trade was essentially domestic and, in any case, until the turn of the century, it was not committed to keeping foreign exchanges stable.207 Nevertheless, unlike any other country in the world, its commitment to capitalism is enshrined in its very constitution. When, in due course, the ‘double movement’ did catch up with it, the first industrial war – the American Civil War – was the result.208 As to its early extension of the vote to working-class (white) males compared with other states, again, the lack of ‘disruptive strains’ due to its unique conditions combined with a near total lack of anti-capitalist ideologies to produce a relatively ‘safe’ environment for democracy. In other words, because the spoils of politics did not include the whole of the economic system, opening it to relatively popular participation was not dangerous to private property.209 If labour and land accounted for social legislation and corn duties or tariffs respectively, then central banking very nearly rounded off the social protection in Europe called into being by the extension of market organisation. One final form of protection of great significance, however, needs to be addressed, namely, imperialism.

Imperialism and the double movement The imperialist movement of the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century which incorporated the rest of the world into the international capitalist system was due neither to the inherent nature of modern states nor of modern capitalism to expand. Polanyi’s claim is that Adam Smith, by unlocking the mysteries of wealth creation under capitalism, initiated anti-imperialism. If mercantilism represented the fusion of state power and trading interests, modern capitalism, in the guise of liberalism, belittled such notions and resolutely maintained the separation of the economic from the political sphere. It denounced war and conquest as dynastic machinations and considered colonies expensive luxuries geared for imports not exports where the ‘smart’ money gathered. Free traders and protectionists, liberals and ardent Tories joined in the popular conviction that colonies were a wasting asset destined to become a political and financial liability. Anybody who talked colonies in the century between 1780 and 1880 was looked upon as an adherent of the ancien régime.210 The reversal came suddenly and with no time-lag between Britain and the Continent. The Great Depression of 1873–86 and the concomitant

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collapse of agricultural prices brought home more than anything else thus far, the interdependent nature of the international capitalist system and the perils therein to individual countries of its failure. Protection for European landlords and rural workers including peasants could no longer be upheld given the volume and pace of world trade as well as ‘the universal mobilization of land implied in the mass transportation of grain and agricultural raw materials from one part of the planet to another, at a fractional cost’.211 The only remedy evident to all Western powers was physical acquisition of overseas markets. If one could control the cheap agricultural imports at the point of origin then social dislocation at the centre could be more effectively managed, politically and economically. Neither ‘Realist’ nor Marxist theories of imperialism are suggested, the balance between the economic and political processes at work being fairly equal.212 The international gold standard and free trade, state policies designed to maintain stable exchanges, increased volume of trade, technological developments in transportation affecting both the cost and speed of long distance trade, delicate social and political balances in the metropolitan countries and the competitive state system, all combined to overturn a deep seated ideological conviction that conquest did not pay. That the costs to the people affected was the shattering of their social and cultural systems did not seem to diminish the appetite of imperialists. According to D. K. Fieldhouse: In the thirty-six years after 1878 Europe and the United States acquired about 17.4 per cent of the world’s land surface at an average rate of some 240,000 square miles a year. By 1914 there were very few countries which were not under European rule or onetime colonies which had seized their independence.213 While European racism added to the potency of the ideological justifications for the imperialist project, in many ways that project resembled the earlier rise of capitalism in Europe itself. Social Darwinism here was already entrenched and used assiduously as a justification for social inequality before the rest of the world was incorporated into the international division of labour completed by imperialism. The mobilisation and commodification of land and labour for the sake of profit, had also destroyed earlier social and cultural formations. While in Europe social protection was sought from other classes and the state, in the colonies the only recourse was collusion with foreign administrators, political independence and, eventually, mobilisation of the state and economic structures inherited from imperialism.

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The international political consequences of the double movement in the nineteenth century For all the atrocities which accompanied its rise, market society created by the end of the nineteenth century, for the first time in human history, a worldwide interdependent social system. One of the most extraordinary aspects of this transformation is the absence of major international war from 1815 to 1914, precisely the years of capitalist transformation. ‘The Hundred Year’s Peace’, as it is commonly referred to, is the starting point of Polanyi’s work and at first glance seems entirely counter-intuitive to the arguments of the book since these point to innumerable causes for conflict. The author’s contention is that peace was ensured by four interrelated social institutions, namely, the balance of power, the gold standard, capitalism and the liberal state. Let us take each of these in turn. Until the nineteenth century and since the treaties of Westphalia (1648) and Utrecht (1713), the principle and system of the balance of power respectively, have played an important role in the maintenance of the independent sovereignty of European states.214 War being fundamental to the functioning of this system, recourse to it was necessary and common. After 1815, however, the balance of power resulted in peace. The backwash of the French Revolution reinforced the rising tide of the Industrial Revolution in establishing peaceful business as a universal interest … Church and throne started out on the denationalization of Europe. Their arguments found support both in the ferocity of the recent popular forms of warfare and in the tremendously enhanced value of peace under the nascent economies.215 For the first third of the century, reacting against the ideals and arms of revolutionary republicanism – even if led, in the end, by an emperor – the conservative forces of the Holy Alliance under Metternich combined with new economic imperatives to enforce an active peace policy. At the disposal of this ‘international of kinship’, besides coercive power, was the ‘voluntary civil service’ of the Roman Church.216 With a short period of conflict in between, which included the Franco-Prussian War, the next balance of power system to ensure peace was the Concert of Europe (1871–1914). Lacking the ‘feudal as well as the clerical tentacles’ of the Holy Alliance, the Concert accomplished the same results with fewer joint military actions on a much wider geographical scale. At its disposal was haute finance.217

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[It] functioned as the main link between the political and the economic organization of the world in this period. It supplied the instruments for an international peace system, which was worked with the help of the Powers, but which the powers themselves could neither have established nor maintained. While the Concert of Europe acted only at intervals, haute finance functioned as a permanent agency of the most elastic kind. Independent of single governments, even of the most powerful, it was in touch with all; independent of central banks, even the bank of England, it was closely connected with them. There was intimate contact between finance and diplomacy; neither would consider any long-range plan, whether peaceful or warlike, without making sure of the other’s good will.218 The ‘position, organisation, and techniques’ of international finance created so dense a web of economic interdependence among and between states and civil societies that peace became the overriding strategic interest among the major powers. As Norman Angell would have it, to even contemplate that war could be profitable in these circumstances was a ‘great illusion’.219 As for the gold standard and capitalism, these were prerequisites for the growth of haute finance and, as we have seen, served to deepen the interdependent nature of the global system by the twentieth century. The role of the liberal state as an institution of nineteenth-century civilisation, however, is less straightforward. If what is meant by this is the observation that states in this period, despite the protectionist policies innovated to cope with markets in land, labour and money, followed policies broadly in line with economic liberalism, then clearly this was the case until the end of the century. If, however, the liberal state is taken to mean the liberal democratic state, then it is surely not the case that it was an institution until after the First World War, and then for a tiny minority of states internationally. The intimate association of political liberalism with the rise of capitalism in Britain, the United States and France definitely had a tremendous demonstration effect throughout the century, as the liberal internationalism of Immanuel Kant would predict. Furthermore, the rise and decline of classes under capitalism and their demands for social protection universalised its appeal precisely because it demonstrated potential strategies for securing sectional interests politically, especially for middle classes but also for others. However, as Bolshevism was feared by ruling classes for the strategy it represented to working classes facing similar social conditions, so the liberal state was feared in those

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countries where extending the vote to workers would mean the almost certain derailment of capitalism. In other words, by the late nineteenth century, the ‘uneven and combined development’ of capitalism worldwide meant that the potential of democracy, in capitalist countries with social structures very differently balanced to those of the United States and Britain, included the transcendence of capitalism. For this reason, political liberalism or liberal democracy was not a central institution of nineteenth-century civilisation. The demand for democracy and its eventual if temporary victory, did play, however, a decisive role in the collapse of the global system.

‘World-historical-time’, liberalism and the twentieth century If one of the major objectives of liberalism was the de-politicisation of the economic sphere, then its failure by the twentieth century was colossal. The abandonment of economic liberalism and return to autarchy exemplified by the new imperialism set a chain reaction in process which ultimately resulted in the First World War. The ‘worldhistorical-time’ of liberal dominance appeared now to have been seriously diminished and alternative models of domestic and international development surfaced with renewed and invigorated mobilising potential.220 One by one, from 1900 onwards, the institutions of the global system began to crumble and with them the ‘peace interest’. The world returned to the pre-capitalist ‘zero-sum’ order. World trade contracted sharply as tariffs rose to cushion the effects of interdependence. World prices plummeted if unevenly and raised further social demands for protection. The Concert of Europe was replaced by two hostile camps and colonial rivalry became acute. While the gold standard limped on, under the circumstances, it was a sham. The ‘war to end all wars’ that engulfed Europe and beyond was itself still only a symptom of a deeper malaise. The conflict of 1914–18 merely precipitated and immeasurably aggravated a crisis that it did not create. But the roots of the dilemma could not be discerned at the time; and the horrors and devastations of the Great War seemed to the survivors the obvious source of the obstacles to international organization that had so unexpectedly emerged. For suddenly neither the economic nor the political system of the world would function, and the terrible injuries inflicted on the substance of the race by World War I appeared to offer an explanation. In reality, the postwar obstacles to peace and stability derived from the same

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sources from which the Great War itself had sprung. The dissolution of the system of world economy which had been in progress since 1900 was responsible for the political tension that exploded in 1914.221 Attempts to restore the global system to its pre-1914 foundations failed for a variety of reasons but among the most important according to Polanyi was the establishing of liberal democratic states throughout Europe under circumstances wholly at odds with their possible survival. One of the key conclusions of liberalism drawn from the First World War, as with the Second World War and the Cold War, was that authoritarianism was the critical cause of the conflict. Unfortunately, the liberal regimes which arose from the ashes of defeat in war – this rather than a ‘clean’ victory for democratic forces was the cause of their temporary success – now faced economic conditions worse than immediately preceded the conflagration. Far from attempting to aid these states through international mobilisation and redistribution of resources, however, the states held responsible for the war were either punished through war reparations or if new states carved out of dissolved empires, given, at most, moral support. The social devastation associated with the war and the crisis of returning soldiers combined with new democratic channels of opposition to create a decisive shift to the Left in the politics of European countries. When, in Central Europe, the social structure broke down under the strain of war and defeat, the working class alone was available for the task of keeping things going. Everywhere power was thrust upon the trade unions and Social Democratic parties: Austria, Hungary, even Germany, were declared republics although no active republican party had ever been known to exist in any of these countries before.222 Under the restored gold standard, the new democratically legitimated commitment to social protection including high levels of public spending and tariffs, helped stoke inflation and weaken exports. The Wall Street crash of 1929 dealt another serious blow to a world economy which was yet to recover from the First World War. Two years later the country which innovated the gold standard abandoned it and signalled the end of the liberal global system. Added to this was the fear of Bolshevism which represented a radically novel way of organising society such that it would not be subordinated to the requirements of market economy but rather to the ostensible needs of the working class.

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Born of similar conditions which existed in many parts of Europe – backward industrial economy, weak middle class, massive peasant population, foreign financial dependence, autocratic monarchical state, weakened state due to war, socialist led working class – the Bolshevik Revolution was a threat to market society. Middle classes everywhere lent their support to reactionaries ostensibly committed to the restoration of law and order and a return to ‘normality’. By the 1930s few liberal regimes survived the fascist onslaught which the impasse of market society had helped to create.

Criticisms: a post-liberal order? For Polanyi and many others of his generation, the defeat of fascism represented much more than the possibility of a return to a functioning capitalist system. Again, Europe experienced a decisive political shift to the Left perhaps best exemplified by the changes in the heartland of economic liberalism, namely, the Labour Party’s comfortable defeat of the Tories led by Churchill in the 1945 elections. Clearly a democratic socialist, Polanyi believed that out of the horrors of the Second World War the dangers inherent in capitalism, and therefore the follies of economic liberalism, would finally be universally recognised and a postliberal world order inaugurated. Has this been accomplished? Certainly the world created by the Bretton Woods system was essentially liberal if, thanks in part to Stalinism, more understanding of the difficulties involved in gearing societies to the demands of markets and therefore more tolerant of interventionism. The lead taken in this field by the United States also carried with it some important compensatory elements, including an energetic civil society capable of producing, among other things, radical political reform movements and powerful cultural styles and forms. Other changes which have taken place since the end of the Second World War are obviously too innumerable to list but many like the extension of the Welfare State, the end of formal imperialism, the growing recognition of international environmental imperatives, the emergence of the EU, the end of superpower confrontation, the infrequency of international war between the major powers and so on seem to point in the direction which Polanyi had in mind. However, what gives greatest pause in agreeing with him that indeed we have transcended the worst of the ‘disruptive strains’ inherent in capitalism, is the contemporary salience of the ‘double movement’. For every step taken towards domestic protection and international economic and political co-ordination, there seems to be at least

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one step taken in the direction of market extension. This is more than the jaundiced view from the geographical core of current neoliberalism. Everywhere we look the ‘double movement’ is still at work. Whether in the degradation of the ‘underclass’ amid the extraordinary wealth of advanced capitalist countries, the starving millions in the developing world, the ecological threat to the Earth’s lakes and forests, the military and authoritarian regimes which defy their populations or the policies of the world’s economic giants (public and private), the extension of market society and with it the demands for social protection, has not been and may never be completed. In the former communist world, unlike in the nineteenth century, the extension of liberal democracy has been roughly concurrent with the reextension of the market in land, labour and money. The frightening similarities to the inter-war period have not been lost on many Western observers although, as only one of many reasons, the social transformations carried out by successive Stalinist regimes alters the resemblance radically. Meanwhile, the remaining communist countries with only a very few exceptions are busy extending the market organisation without any concessions to demands for liberal democracy.223 The collapse of a socialist alternative seems complete. The working classes whose condition under capitalism gave rise to it are in decline in the developed world and rising in the developing world. It is here where the struggle for democratic government is most evident.

Conclusion Despite Polanyi’s over-optimistic predictions that the transcendence of capitalism was at hand by the middle of the last century, his analytical framework and our additions of ‘uneven and combined development’ and ‘world-historical-time’ to his conception of the global system certainly calls into question unilinear models of development including, of course, that of liberal internationalism. Also, his suggestion that the development of democracy is the result of struggles against capitalist transformation is another blow to this theoretical orientation. Furthermore, his analysis suggests that global ideological support for democracy is not in itself sufficient to overcome the many contradictions produced by the ‘double movement’ which make this form of state exceedingly difficult to institutionalise in many, perhaps most, countries of the world. We have seen that the main elements of the ‘double movement’ include social structure (classes and their interests vis à vis the market), the state’s interests in the context of both a market society and

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a competitive state system and the role of ideologies. The uneven and combined development of capitalism has added to the complexity of Polanyi’s model but is indispensable to it. The failure of socialism as a radical alternative to capitalism has literally made the world ‘safer for democracy’ – its dominance in terms of ‘world-historical-time’ has fewer rivals and therefore fewer excuses for its denial – but the notion that ‘free markets’ and ‘free societies’ are synonymous relies on too static a view of both. The separation of the economic from the political sphere demands continued successful economic performance for the many. Faith in capitalism’s ability to deliver may in broad terms be high and its post-war transformations are certainly impressive. As the demand for protection of land, labour and money, however, continue to press on the political and economic processes responsible for their endangerment, so, as Polanyi hoped for, the unintended consequences may radicalise democracy itself and extend its use beyond its traditional support of capitalism.

3 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy and the Global System

Introduction On the rare occasions when Joseph Schumpeter’s work is invoked by International Relations scholars, they are invariably related to what may be termed his ‘twin-theses’ of world politics, namely, that the phenomenon of modern imperialism is a pathology of pre-capitalist origins and that modern and ‘fully’ capitalist states are essentially pacifist by nature.224 These writings on explicit ‘international’ themes are usually separated from discussions of his general theory of capitalism and liberal development. What drives this chapter, given the central concern with liberal internationalism, is an assessment of Schumpeter’s analysis of capitalism and of its direction; his analysis of democracy and its relationship to capitalism; and, his analysis of the likelihood of the adoption of this form of state by countries other than those few established democracies at the time of writing. It argues, ironically given his stature within liberal internationalism, that his failure to theorise the interactions between capitalism and democracy even within the major liberal capitalist states led him to a much more pessimistic prognosis of capitalism’s historical durability than was justified. It argues further that this itself is symptomatic of a larger failing, namely, to theorise socio-economic, political and ideological change in the context of the interactions between the international and domestic domains. The central problem is that his socio-psychological analytical model is unconvincing as an historically grounded sociology of development and it is this, ultimately, which is responsible for weakening his major theoretical claims and conclusions. 69

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Schumpeter’s analysis of the direction of capitalism It is probably best to be very clear from the start about the shortcomings of Schumpeter’s work for the purpose of this analysis. The unproblematic spread of capitalist social relations across the globe which is precisely the main fault of liberal internationalism is for the most part replicated faithfully by Schumpeter. One searches the text in vain for any sustained theorising of capitalism generating international dynamics which complicate and divert political as well as socio-economic consequences. The creation of novel social structures at variance with those in the metropolitan countries through the specialisation of primary products for export, for example, is never properly considered. As Michael Doyle puts it: Just as ideal domestic politics are homogenized, so world politics too is homogenized. Materially monistic and democratically capitalist, all states evolve toward free trade and liberty together. Countries differently constituted seem to disappear from Schumpeter’s analysis. ‘Civilized nations’ govern ‘culturally backward regions’.225 While, as we will see, this overstates the case substantially, Schumpeter does not develop the international dimension of the tensions and contradictions which he does see as inherent in capitalism. This said, however, Schumpeter’s analysis of the direction and dynamics of capitalism, even if stripped of its international moorings, as well as his analysis of democracy do yield some valuable insights. For all the disagreements Schumpeter has with Marx and his followers, the central thesis developed in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is that ‘[t]he capitalist order tends to destroy itself and centralist socialism is a likely heir apparent’.226 (The respect he has for Marx’s scholarship is in fact plainly evident and contrasts sharply with his views on those who would call themselves loyal Marxists.) Unlike much of Marxism, however, he rejects the view that an economic breakdown will be responsible for the decomposition and argues against what he calls the ‘theory of vanishing investment opportunity’ – the notion that there is a long-run tendency in capitalism to economic stagnation as a result of the declining rate of profit and lack of new opportunities for profitable investment and enterprise.227 He rejects too the ‘immiserization thesis’ and argues not only that the poor do not get poorer in absolute terms but that the masses gain from mass consumption relatively more than the rich.228

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Finally, he argues against the thesis of a growing ‘reserve army’ of the unemployed and suggests that capitalism will be destroyed by its economic achievements rather than failures because these create an ‘atmosphere of almost universal hostility to its own social order’. As this conclusion suggests, Schumpeter’s approach is essentially a sociopsychological one with the cognitive state of the various social strata playing a critical role in his analysis. There are essentially three processes which generate the anti-capitalist outlook from within itself according to Schumpeter. The first is the undermining of the entrepreneurial or innovative function, which Schumpeter regards as the essential feature of capitalism, by its tendency to increase rationalisation and centralisation through competition. Not that monopoly itself would destroy the vigour of capitalism. In fact, in earlier work Schumpeter defends monopoly against its detractors. Free from the threat of imitation and competition, the monopolist entrepreneur was most likely to fulfil his or her function, namely, to innovate. The competitive market could be creatively sterile by contrast.229 Very reminiscent of Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucratisation, Schumpeter believed that the growth of large-scale enterprises in both the private and public sectors of the economy increased central control over what had been hitherto subject to direct market regulation.230 And this increased centralisation favours the possibility of vesting the economic affairs of society to the public rather than the private sphere, a decisive step towards socialism according to the author.231 The second related process is the destruction by the competitive mechanism of capitalism’s ‘protective’ strata. These include the aristocracy (the upper stratum) as well as the small producers and traders (the lower stratum). The thesis here, in what may be characterised as a use of ‘uneven and combined development’, is that capitalism has depended on pre-capitalist social formations, specifically feudal classes, for its success and that capitalist policies ‘wrought destruction much beyond what was unavoidable’.232 As for the aristocracy, capitalism has depended on their willingness and ability to ‘manage the state, to govern’. The examples provided of bourgeois misrule are the French revolution and Germany’s Weimar Republic. The basic reason is psychological. The aristocracy’s ‘ability and habit to command and to be obeyed’ carried enormous prestige with all classes. ‘That prestige was so great and that [lordly] attitude so useful that the class position outlived the social and technological conditions which had given rise to it and proved adaptable, by means of a transformation of the class function, to quite different social and economic conditions.’233

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By contrast, the industrialists and merchants were devoid of such prestige. In most cases, however, this did not matter as this division of labour suited the bourgeoisie as long as their interests were generally furthered. As to the lower strata, capitalism first attacked the artisan and the peasant and then moved inexorably to the small producers and traders of capitalist industry. Even if the economic consequences were positive from the point of view of consumers and capital alike, the political consequences of the disappearance of small- and medium-sized firms are what concern Schumpeter. … [T]he very foundation of private property and free contracting wears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types disappear from the moral horizon of the people … this evaporation of what we may term the material substance of property – its visible and touchable reality – affects not only the attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and the public in general. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownership does not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form of property did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares to stand for it – nobody within and nobody without the precincts of the big concerns.234 The final process relates to capitalism’s encouragement of a rational and critical attitude which is eventually turned against its own social system. ‘… T]he bourgeois finds to his amazement that the rationalist attitude does not stop at the credentials of kings and popes but goes on to attack private property and the whole scheme of bourgeois values.’235 Here the author argues, in fact, that while the criticisms against the capitalist order proceed from an attitude which spurns allegiance to extra-rational values, they cannot be refuted simply through rational argument because the criticisms also contain extra-rational power. ‘… C]apitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets.’236 The reasons offered are mostly related to the mistaken, if perfectly understandable, perceptions of the masses. Capitalism’s positive performance is only clear in the long-run while in the short-run the inefficiencies, insecurities and frustrations of ordinary life seem overwhelming. ‘In order to accept his lot, the leveller or the chartist of old would have to comfort himself with hopes for his great-grand children.’237 Even the secular improvements which do take place in the short term, Schumpeter argues, are largely taken for granted. (In the context of the contemporary developed world one might include here

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the near ubiquity of consumer durables like televisions, videos and stereos.) The other important misperception for the author involves the perceived injustice of the distribution of wealth and power under capitalism. ‘The long-run interests of society are so entirely lodged with the upper-strata of bourgeois society that it is perfectly natural for people to look upon them as the interests of that class only.’238 Unable to produce an emotional attachment to its social order capitalism is doomed to ultimate extinction by one further piece of the puzzle, namely, the vested interest which intellectuals – created, educated and subsidised by capitalism – have in social unrest. So low is Schumpeter’s estimation of ordinary people that the previous indictments are insufficient to result in the overthrow of capitalism. … [T]he mass of people never develops definite opinions on its own initiative. Still less is it able to articulate them and to turn them into consistent attitudes and actions. All it can do is to follow or refuse to follow such group leadership as may offer itself.239 Intellectuals under modern capitalist conditions come to the aid of the masses because their basic function is to criticise the existing social order. The bourgeoisie for its part is unable and unwilling to silence them because the freedoms of which they approve are inextricably linked to those of which they may disapprove. Only a government of non-bourgeois nature and non-bourgeois creed – under modern circumstances only a socialist or fascist one – is strong enough to discipline them. In order to do that it would have to change typically bourgeois institutions and drastically reduce the individual freedom of all strata of the nation. And such a government is not likely – it would not even be able – to stop short of private enterprise.240 This enticing connection between capitalism and democracy will be developed below after we first examine Schumpeter’s conception and analysis of democracy itself.

Schumpeter’s theory of democracy If the preceding analysis, with the benefit of hindsight, falls incredibly short of the historical record thus far, Schumpeter’s critique of the ‘Classical Doctrine’ and elaboration of his own theory of democracy is

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more successful. First there is the demolition of the concepts of ‘The General Will’ and ‘The Common Good’ with regard both to their sociological absurdity and, given a clumsy fusion of romanticist and utilitarian philosophies, their ideological inconsistency.241 Next, the assumptions of the Classical Doctrine concerning individual and group rationality as well as equality, necessary for ‘rule by the people’, are systematically destroyed. Anyone involved in the assessment of commonly held political ideas whether at the university level or otherwise must surely feel that Schumpeter is on solid ground when he argues that it is above all in the field of national and international affairs that assumptions of rationality are most stretched. Whether this is due ultimately to the distance between politics and the responsibilities of every day life as the author argues or perhaps because, despite political rhetoric to the contrary, there has never existed the political will to educate ‘the people’ as thoroughly or intensively as the élites have consistently thought necessary for themselves, there is little doubt that were ‘the people’ really in direct political control democracy would be a different system to what it currently is. Schumpeter paints a fairly horrid picture of what we could expect if the prescriptions of the Classical Doctrine were actually adhered to. Irrational prejudices and impulses leading inexorably to lower moral standards and giving vent to unrestrained dark urges; with the dangers of demagoguery, given the ability of groups to ‘manufacture the will of the people’, much enhanced under these conditions.242 In short, all the classical arguments against democratic government are marshalled in defence of his own theory of democracy, what David Held has aptly called the ‘competitive elitism’ model.243 So what does Schumpeter propose to replace the Classical Doctrine given its spurious and mystical claims? ‘Really existing democracy’ is seen by the author to constitute a method for selecting political élites, ‘… an institutional arrangement for arriving at political – legislative and administrative – decisions by vesting in certain individuals the power to decide on all matters as a consequence of their successful pursuit of the peoples vote.’244 The roles of the two key but problematic elements of the Classical Doctrine, ‘the people’ (with ‘definite and rational’ opinions about everything) and the ‘representatives’ (‘who see to it that their opinions are carried out’) are reversed so that the deciding of issues by the electorate becomes ‘secondary to the election of the men who are to do the deciding’. The role of the people is to produce a government.245 Democratic life for Schumpeter then is the struggle between rival political leaders, arrayed in parties, for the mandate to rule. In a characteristic display of the force of his argument which must strike anyone

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living in a democratic polity as unmercifully accurate, Schumpeter strips away the mystique of party politics thus: A party is a group whose members propose to act in concert in the competitive struggle for political power. If that were not so it would be impossible for different parties to adopt exactly or almost exactly the same program. Yet this happens as everyone knows. Party and machine politicians are simply the response to the fact that the electorate mass is incapable of action other than a stampede … . The psycho-technics of party management and party advertising, slogans and marching tunes, are not accessories. They are the essence of politics. So is the political boss.246 The self-proclaimed strengths of his ‘realist’ theory in comparison to the Classical Doctrine are numerous. First, he argues that since ‘the will and the good of the people’ may be better served by dictatorship at any given time, his theory at least provides ‘a reasonably efficient criterion by which to distinguish democratic governments from others’, that is, rather than by its absolute ability to deliver the ‘will and good of the people’.247 Second, his theory accounts for the vital role of political leadership rather than attribute all initiative to ‘the people’. ‘ “Manufactured Will” is no longer outside the theory … it enters on the ground floor as it should.’248 Third, sectional interests (‘group-wise volitions’), the narrow pursuit of which is an infringement of the ‘common good’, are now accounted for. Fourth, inequalities of resources and organisation or ‘unfair’ competition, which plainly impact on the democratic political process, are again accounted for by Schumpeter’s theory. Completely shorn of ideals, it is not in judgement as to whether it is fair or otherwise. Fifth, the relationship between democracy and individual freedom is now ‘clarified’. ‘If, on principle at least, everyone is free to compete for political leadership (free, that is, in the same sense in which everyone is free to start another textile mill) by presenting himself to the electorate, this will in most cases though not in all mean a considerable amount of freedom of discussion for all … nevertheless’ it is all there is to that relation.’249 Sixth, the theory does not imply control of leaders by the electorate or even their eviction, just the ‘installing’ or the choice not to install them during an election. In Britain, of course, eviction during office is normally the privilege of the political party and in the United States the process of presidential impeachment is normally in the hands of the party with a majority in Congress. In both instances, however, politicians

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keep a keen eye on the opinions of electors. In any case, Schumpeter argues that the removal of a serving minister or leader is ‘contrary to the spirit of the democratic method’ and by inference so too are all forms of civil disobedience whose aim is the resignation of serving leaders.250 Finally, the author suggests the last relative virtue of his theory of democracy is that it obliterates the controversy or contradiction of the Classical Doctrine with regard to majority rule. ‘Evidently the will of the majority is the will of the majority and not the will of “the people”. The latter is a mosaic that the former completely fails to “represent”.’251 While democracy could serve a variety of ends such as the pursuit of social justice, the increased wealth of society or of strengthening security, Schumpeter argues that it is important not to confuse these ends with democracy itself. According to David Held, ‘what political decisions are taken is an independent question from the proper form of their taking: the conditions of the de facto legitimacy of decisions and decision-makers as a result of the periodic election of competing political élites’.252 … [T]he reason why there is such a thing as economic activity is of course that people want to eat, to clothe themselves and so on. To provide the means to satisfy those wants is the social end or meaning of production. Nevertheless we all agree that this proposition would make a most unrealistic starting point for a theory of economic activity in commercial society and that we shall do much better if we start from propositions about profits. Similarly, the social meaning or function of parliamentary activity is no doubt to turn out legislation and, in part, administrative measures. But in order to understand how democratic politics serve this social end, we must start from the competitive struggle for power and office and realize that the social function is fulfilled, as it were, incidentally – in the same sense as production is incidental to the making of profits.253 As we can see, the most common metaphors used in Schumpeter’s discussion of democracy are taken from economics. Just as the market is an institutional arrangement designed to produce goods and services so democracy is an institutional arrangement designed to produce governments. Just as firms and entrepreneurs compete for customers so political parties compete for political ‘consumers’. Therefore, just as capitalism is the rule of the capitalist so democracy is the rule of the politician. In each case the power of the ‘consumer’ is limited to the opportunity of accepting or refusing. The intricate and complex process

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of shaping what is ‘produced’, the workings of ‘supply and demand’ and the context in which this takes place, in other words, is almost totally jettisoned by this account not only because it is of secondary importance for Schumpeter’s theory but also because the initiative is so completely with the ‘producers’. This is one of the central points of his attack on the assumption of individual rationality.

The consequences of democracy If political power in democracy is so clearly lodged in the hands of élites, why then is it in the least bit important? Schumpeter’s reply to this question is ‘strictly relativist’: ‘Exactly as there is no case for or against socialism at all times and in all places, so there is no absolutely general case for or against the democratic method.’254 Nevertheless, there are consequences to this method which the author is keen to relate. Primary among them is that in a democracy ‘politicians have a distinct professional group-interest’ which explains in large part why they often fail to serve the interest of their class or of the groups with which they are connected. Politically speaking, the man is still in the nursery who has not absorbed, so as never to forget, the saying attributed to one of the most successful politicians that ever lived: ‘What businessmen do not understand is that exactly as they are in oil so I am dealing in votes’.255 By this formulation, the debate on the ‘relative autonomy of the state’, at least with regard to democracies, is made intelligible by the injection of the careerism of those chosen to run it. It also serves to counter his own argument about the controlling of government. As long as politicians are indeed above all careerists, then the political initiative is not theirs so completely. It would seem to be better explained in terms of interdependence, if still one characterised by inequality.256 In fact, Schumpeter is clear about this interdependence when enumerating the negative consequences of the democratic method. Because it produces legislation and administration as by-products of the competitive struggle for office, the ‘wastage of energy and lack of efficiency’ is one problem.257 A more profound difficulty is that it is responsible for the endemic short-termism of policies under democracies – ‘distorting all the pro’s and con’s’ – particularly acute with regard to foreign policy, and one of the sources of anti-democratic ‘feeling’.

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Thus the prime minister in a democracy might be likened to a horseman who is so fully engrossed in trying to keep in the saddle that he cannot plan his ride, or to a general so fully occupied with making sure that his army will accept his orders that he must leave strategy to take care of itself.258 The final negative consequence of this method of selection is the pitifully low quality of leadership it tends generally to produce. ‘… It] creates professional politicians whom it then turns into amateur administrators and “statesmen”.’259 When politicians do possess the qualities necessary for success at the polls, these are not necessarily the qualities needed in an administrator. Successful in office, they may prove ‘failures for the nation’. The one strength of the democratic method, apart from the relationship between it and freedom discussed earlier, is that, pace Churchill, ‘… the case for democracy stands to gain from a consideration of the alternatives: no system of selection whatever the social sphere – with the possible exception of competitive capitalism – tests exclusively the ability to perform and selects in the way a stable selects its Derby crack’.260

Democracy and the capitalist order So what is the relationship between democracy and capitalism according to Schumpeter and can this shed light on the international forces acting on domestic political institutional arrangements? There is little doubt in Schumpeter’s mind that modern democracy is of bourgeois origin. [H]istorically the modern democracy rose along with capitalism, and in causal connection with it … democracy in the sense of our theory of competitive leadership presided over the process of political and institutional change by which the bourgeoisie reshaped, and from its own point of view rationalized, the social and political structure that preceded its ascendancy: the democratic method was the political tool of that reconstruction … [It] is a product of the capitalist process.261 The ideal of the parsimonious state, guaranteeing bourgeois legality (above all, private property and contract) and providing the framework for ‘autonomous individual endeavor’, was perfectly suited to the social class in a position to benefit most from the separation of the economic

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from the political sphere. In other words, limiting the sphere of politics by limiting the scope of public authority was the characteristic innovation of bourgeois politics. Whereas pre-capitalist society entailed one social order with political status and economic function solidly fastened, the bourgeois order disassociated the political from the socioeconomic. Freed from militarist and protectionist impulses, bourgeois society could, in principle, whittle away at the importance of political decision ‘to almost any extent that the disabilities of the political sector may require’.262 While, as we have seen, the bourgeoisie was politically heavily reliant on feudal ‘social capital’, as long as its material interests were not threatened, it was well qualified to display ‘tolerance of political differences and respect for [different] opinions’.263 This tightly circumscribed tolerance could then spread to other classes as long as bourgeois ‘standards’ were dominant. ‘The English landed interest accepted the defeat of 1845 with relatively good grace; English labor fought for the removal of disabilities but until the beginning of the present century was slow to claim privileges.’264 Despite these close connections, for Schumpeter the direction of capitalism threatened democracy for two reasons. First, because at the time of writing, Schumpeter believed that Western nations were ‘much divided on fundamental questions of social structure’. Second, because the bourgeoisie was better at producing political leadership for parties of non-bourgeois origins than for itself. And yet, if capitalism was bound to disappear the same was not necessarily true of its quintessential political innovation. Like socialism itself, socialist democracy would also be a product of bourgeois civilisation. ‘General elections, parties, parliaments, cabinets and prime ministers may still prove to be the most convenient instruments for dealing with the agenda that the socialist order may reserve for political decision.’265 Ultimately, however, the danger of socialism lay in using democratically accountable political power directly to own, control, organise and extract economic surplus from the population. The consequence, for Schumpeter, is necessarily a dictatorship over rather than of the proletariat. ‘As a matter of practical necessity, socialist democracy may turn out to be more of a sham than capitalist democracy ever was.’266 The historical account we are given of the relationship between capitalism and democracy is one of a simultaneous democratic and capitalist transition. His references betray extrapolations from the English archetype but, in any case, the overall picture will only fit the historical record of any Western European country, however broadly, if one excludes universal suffrage as a key ingredient of democracy. Schumpeter

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does not make any distinction here. While it may well be correct, if tautological, to suggest that bourgeois democracy has only ever existed in capitalist domestic contexts, the international picture suggests no necessary correlation. Here we can see a variety of authoritarian dictatorships ruling over largely capitalist economies as in Burma or, until recently, Nigeria. Third World regimes know, as much as early nineteenth-century British liberals knew, that democracy entailing universal suffrage could and perhaps would turn their world upside down. Democracy as a method does not shed light on the reasons for denying it to so many societies. It refuses to acknowledge its potentially subversive qualities. Democracy doesn’t legitimate once and for all but dynamically. (And on the receiving end may be the Right, with too narrow a concern with wealth creation and efficiency as much as the Left, for being out of touch with majoritarian concerns.267) Democratisation is not simply for those in transition from dictatorship but for ‘democracies’ as well. Equally important is the fact that the designation of contemporary liberal democracy as ‘bourgeois’ is misleading to the point of evacuating the social movements and struggles responsible, in the Western context at least, for the eventual and historically recent extension of universal suffrage and formal political equality. The point is this, what we would agree is democratic today was considered unacceptable, inconceivable even, only a century or so ago.268 But democracy considered in part as a historically contingent process rather than simply as a method accounts for this changing condition. The process itself is shaped, given direction/s by real material and ideological forces and conflicts. This is also the stuff of democratic politics. To evacuate the ideals of democracy is to ignore one of its components, a source of change in the thing itself. Also, the Marxist claim that the morality of the bourgeois political realm is fraudulent, since its main function is to uphold the inherently immoral socio-economic one, is weak. ‘Bourgeois democracy’ is said to be bankrupt because while giving the illusion of moralising both realms it steadfastly maintains the limits of separation. But if the limits or boundaries are set by the private accumulation of capital, then historically these have been shown to be extremely elastic. More to the point, the success of the struggles associated with achieving democracy and extending its very meaning, are proof of this elasticity. Furthermore, considering the political salience of struggles around such issues as education, health care, housing, working conditions and hours, prohibitions against child labour, and so on what is striking is not the limitations provided by the separation of two distinct domains but the

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absence of any. According to Donald Sassoon: … [T]he European twentieth-century state is irreversibly interventionist. In a situation in which the state is seen to be responsible for welfare in its widest meaning, and in which democracy is either a reality or a real possibility, it would be surprising if the governing élites did not devise policies aimed at establishing norms and standards of living which could not be spontaneously arrived at by other means such as market relations, familial bonds and charitable efforts.269 Of course, the separation of the public from the private sphere has a certain instrumentalist logic: Why put up with the undemocratic nature of the private sphere if it offers nothing in return? But the ‘bourgeois’ appellation tells as much the story of the failed attempts to overcome its supposedly inherent limitations without annihilating its virtues, as of the limitations themselves. As Susan Strange put it, albeit in a different context, identifying the structural power ‘is only half the battle’, the next step is to analyse the ‘key bargains’.270 While extremely varied internationally, these key bargains have included major gains in both political and economic terms.

Conditions for the success of the democratic method Thus far, Schumpeter’s analysis of democracy suggests a not insurmountable institutional method for replication in all countries. It is only when he deals explicitly with the conditions for the success of the democratic method that this view is shattered. At last we find in this section an engagement, if not necessarily a sustained one, with the underlying social prerequisites for democracy. ‘Democracy thrives in social patterns that display certain characteristics and it might well be doubted whether there is any sense in asking how it would fare in others that lack those characteristics – or how a people in those other patterns would fare with it.’271 While the author confines himself ‘to the great industrial nations of the modern type’, the conditions outlined may usefully assist us in theorising the sources of their existence as well as the causes for the lack of such conditions in other countries. The first condition for the success of the democratic method is that ‘the human material of politics – the people who man the party machines, are elected to serve in parliament, rise to cabinet office,

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should be of sufficiently high quality’.272 This in turn requires, as ‘the only effective guarantee …, the existence of a social stratum, itself a product of a severely selective process, that takes to politics as a matter of course’.273 What Schumpeter has in mind here is the existence of a ruling class (England is the only country to fulfil this condition completely!) whose members see politics as their predestined career. It is the aristocracy of pre-capitalist origins the decline of which under capitalism, we have already seen, is in part responsible for the inevitable dissolution of the system itself. The fact that the competitive struggle of democratic politics is so wasteful and often repels ‘most of the men who can make a success at anything else’, makes the continued existence of a reserve of high quality personnel crucial. Now, assuming the continued existence of some such stratum and even accepting the appeal which ‘patrician’ politicians or parties may hold for some, this condition would seem to indicate an even greater applicability of the democratic method in the developing world where aristocratic landed interests are often more evident than in the developed world. But it is precisely in this context where democracy is most precarious. If it is true, as Schumpeter suggests, that the bourgeoisie is inherently in need of political masters from beyond its ranks, then these have come most often without democratic baggage. The fact is that the English model of a landed élite losing much of its social power (based on the unity of the private and public or economic and political spheres of feudalism) to a centralised state which continued to rely on its personnel for the running of this state; of the existence of a domestic ‘balance of power’ between these two forces at a time when technological innovation was of enough importance to allow it some space without the fear or threat of total social annihilation; and of many other factors as well, doesn’t fit many, if any European transitions to modernity, never mind extraEuropean ones. This is why England is the only country to fulfil this condition completely. Its unique history is used to define the condition itself. Furthermore, while it sometimes may be the case that in rich countries democracy repels ‘most of the men who can make a success at anything else’, in developing countries with more limited opportunities for ‘self-enrichment’, politics tends to attract these very people. One goes into politics, as it were, to make a success of everything else. This is a critical sign of the weakness of civil society and evidence of uneven and combined development. As Ernest Gellner put it: In traditional societies, he who has political power soon acquires wealth as a kind of consequence. This is not altogether unknown

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even in commercial and industrial societies, but it is incomparably less important. There, the best way to make money is to make money. It is quite possible to do this without acquiring or bothering too much with power. (This virtually defines Civil Society.) The economy is where the action is … It is possible to prosper while simply attending to one’s business. This is another way of saying that the law protects wealth, independently of whether one has formed special alliances or groups of followers for its protection.274 Of course the quality of leadership is crucial in any political system, but the quality of ‘the human material of politics’ is not in itself a fruitful avenue of inquiry as a prerequisite for democracy unless the notion of ‘quality’ is expanded considerably to include adherence to a range of democratic cultural norms, attitudes and practices. There is a considerable literature on political culture which seeks to address just what norms and values are required to sustain democracy.275 A more current approach is evident in the literature on ‘social capital’ which seeks in part to address the sources of such norms and values.276 Francis Fukuyama, in particular, has examined the economic and political dimensions of ‘the existence of a certain set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permit co-operation among them’ – his definition of social capital.277 It is a mainstay of this literature that many of the sources of social capital on which ‘modernity’ depends are pre-capitalist in origin and, as with Schumpeter’s analysis, many of the debates revolve around the question of whether capitalism is a net generator of social capital or rather depletes it, as well as what the likely socio-economic and political consequences are in either case. According to Fukuyama: The ability to cooperate socially is dependent on prior [to capitalism] habits, traditions, and norms, which themselves serve to structure the market. Hence it is more likely that a successful market economy, rather than being the cause of stable democracy, is codetermined by the prior factor of social capital. If the latter is abundant, then both market and democratic politics will thrive, and the market can in fact play a role as a school of sociability that reinforces democratic institutions. This is particularly true in newly industrializing countries with authoritarian governments, where people can learn new forms of sociability in the workplace before applying the lessons to politics.278 Although we have here a clear and not uncommon justification for authoritarian capitalism, one may agree with the point that just as the

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structures of kinship, religion, ethnicity, secular political ideology and class impact on economic development, so may they do so on political development. In view of the derivative quality of many of Schumpeter’s arguments, his exclusion of such a core Weberian conception of culture and political economy is rather surprising. This is not to suggest a static view in which a country either has some mix of attributes, including cultural ones, that enables it to become democratic while others don’t. Instead, what may be suggested is a dynamic view in which the salience of the international sphere (in its interrelations with domestic spheres), both in terms of it as a source as well as a context in which social capital is generated, is crucial. Just as religions may be said to be ‘exogenously generated’ and interpreted variously according to national and international circumstances, so too is capitalism and the ideology of liberal democracy. A more useful approach than the quality of political leadership then may well be that of asking what factors orient it towards one political system (an institutionally and ideologically pluralist/ multi-party, secular and law based one) rather than another; and what factors orient potentially contending civil society groupings towards a liberal democratic framework. In terms of the latter question, stable patron–client relations may well suit some of these better than democracy, especially if they fear loss of power and wealth consequent upon democratisation. Analyses of the type addressed above which include certain aspects of culture may or may not be the appropriate way forward, but even if they are, they need not exclude the international dimension. For example, the commitment by political élites in India to the liberal democratic framework, in stark contrast to its regional neighbours, is often related by analysts to their British educational background.279 Similarly, the democratic stimulus to the political élites of Spain, Portugal and Greece provided by the prospect of joining the European project was crucial just as it is for the ‘new’ democracies of Central and Eastern Europe today. The second condition for success is that ‘the effective range of political decision should not be extended too far’. On one level this is more of an appeal to practicality than to any formal limits to the power of governments. If all the functions of state, for example, were subject to the competitive method, paralysis would quickly result. Likewise, politicians should not be expected to exclude specialists as and when their own expertise is inadequate for the task of legislating appropriately. On another level, however, this condition speaks also to the need for separation of the powers and functions of the state – ‘… in most democratic countries a large measure of independence from political agencies is

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granted to the judges’.280 It is curious that such a crucial point as this one should receive relatively little attention from Schumpeter. Without this institutional pluralism and real limitations on the power of the executive through constitutional arrangements (codified or otherwise), democracy cannot be but a sham. As the twentieth century has taught us above all, the unrestricted power of the state is the most common threat to life and liberty. Furthermore, this condition suggests that if the competitive model is to work, rival leaders and parties must not be too divided on basic questions of political ends and means. The more the state is expected to do, the more likely the disagreements. This certainly correlates with historical experience. One of the recurring themes of economic history, if decidedly not of orthodox theory, is the increasing requirement of state intervention in the context of late development. Of course, Britain’s early protectionism should not be overlooked, including government support and protection with overseas trade, its use of tariffs and discriminatory shipping rules, not to mention the state’s sanctioning of private property.281 Nevertheless, as David Landes has argued, since catching up means not having the time nor means to grow as earlier developers, a heavier reliance on government assistance and organisation follows inexorably.282 In other words, ‘underdevelopment’ was born with Britain’s transition to capitalist modernity.283 The political consequences may be manifold. In the first place, the danger lies in the state assuming so many of the responsibilities for economic development that it either consciously/ideologically crushes any intermediary institutions (as with historical communism); unconsciously prevents them from developing to any degree (as in most traditional societies in which these actually never existed); or else co-opts them for narrow purposes (including class, ethnic, colonial, bureaucratic and geopolitical ones). This doesn’t exhaust the reasons for state involvement by any means but is simply suggestive of some obvious pitfalls. Second, as Schumpeter implies, to the extent that such intermediaries exist, the scope for disagreement is extended in proportion to the scope of state control and on the basis of losers and winners. Third, the risks of failing to ‘catch-up’, especially geopolitical ones, are such that, as with the suspension of legal dissent in times of war, opposition is less likely to be tolerated, at least until the gap has been narrowed. The earlier phases of modernisation in the context of a competitive global system put a premium on social unity and cohesion and threaten pluralism. Commenting on the shift noted by Adam Ferguson in the eighteenth century, from the values of ‘honour’ associated with pre-capitalist

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society to those of ‘interest’ associated with capitalism, and on his fear that this would lead to a new dictatorship, Ernest Gellner points out his error by saying: Even when a curious coalition of warriors and industrialists tried this on in inter-war Germany and Japan, they were eventually eliminated. Military rule characterises unsuccessful rather than successful interest-oriented nations: it is not the division of labour, but a relatively low level of it, which leads in that direction.284 The fact that there existed an international coalition of states which between them defeated fascism in most of Europe stands as the greatest international contribution to the continuation of democracy. Nevertheless, this pathology of the semi-periphery is indeed notable – from Spain, Portugal and Italy to Latin America and the Middle East. Especially in the context of ideologically and socially divided societies, it seems to be the ‘one more push’ syndrome of underdevelopment. Fourth, if greater state involvement is not to be paid entirely by international capital flows, the proportion of surplus extracted by the state will have to rise and with it the risks of social unrest. As the history of revolutions has demonstrated again and again, it has been the most marginalised groups that have paid a disproportionate part of this surplus. Finally, if states are to make up their investment requirements by attracting foreign loans and direct investment, the conditions most conducive to this may also involve considerable state repression, particularly when society is deeply divided in socio-economic and ideological terms.285 The ‘public’ despotism of the state not only serves as an alternative to the ‘private’ despotism of the market but is integral to it. This said, it would clearly be absurd to suggest that late developers are condemned to undemocratic forms of rule. History teaches us otherwise. Still, as with Schumpeter’s concern with the fate of socialist democracy, giving the state too much direct control over ‘the economic affairs of society’ is in tension with making it accountable. In a depressing but important conclusion to a book on third world politics, Christopher Clapham makes the following remarks: In any society, one of the functions of the state is to divert resources (perhaps entirely laudably) from producers to consumers, and from those with less to those with more political influence. Where third world states are in some degree distinctive is the small and selfperpetuating nature of the group of beneficiaries. Inefficiency and

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exploitation are both expressed through a neo-patrimonial pattern of social relationships, and most evidently through corruption, which simultaneously benefits those with political influence and distorts the application of any universalist criteria for running an organisation or allocating its benefits. While the external economy and especially the multinational corporation are often treated as the villain of the piece, their role is often just to act as the mechanism through which domestic élites extract a surplus from their own economy, and establish a clientelist relationship with the external world. The role of the corporation ceases to be a ‘problem’ once the state becomes efficient and accountable.286 The third condition is the existence of a ‘well-trained bureaucracy of good standing and tradition, endowed with a strong sense of duty and a no less strong espirit de corps’.287 A civil service which meets these criteria actually makes possible the existence of ‘amateur’ government in the first place. It also serves to limit the range of political decisions presumably by reminding ministers of what is and is not politically and/or practically feasible. In this context, it is important that the bureaucracy be sufficiently independent from politicians, ‘a power in its own right’. Finally, the existence of such a civil service is what makes the advent of successful socialism a real possibility. ‘Potentially it is the only answer to the question … democratic politics has proved itself unable to produce decent city government; how can we expect the nation to fare if everything, eventually including the whole of the productive process, is to be handed over to it?’288 Schumpeter is clear that an official class with the necessary qualities of personnel and of traditions such as is required cannot ‘be created in a hurry’ nor be ‘hired with money’. What is needed to secure it is the existence of a ‘social stratum’ with the requisite prestige and quality to supply recruits. The bureaucracies of Europe … exemplify very well what I am trying to convey. They are the product of a long development that started with the ministeriales of medieval magnates (originally serfs selected for administrative and military purposes who thereby acquired the status of petty nobles) and went on through the centuries until the powerful engine emerged which we behold today.289 While the detail of this quotation seems to imply the reliance on yet another pre-capitalist ‘social stratum’, it is probably the same one referred to earlier in the context of the first condition of success.

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After all, both strata had to be ‘not too rich’, ‘not too poor’, ‘not too exclusive’, and ‘not too accessible’. How many of these can there be? Assuming therefore that Schumpeter is talking about one stratum the social origins of whose members vary historically, we are still left with the proposition that modern democracy, like modern capitalism, has lived on the resources of its feudal past. (This can be argued to be a kind of combined and uneven theory of development whereby certain precapitalist social forms are responsible for the success of capitalism and democracy – a feudal legacy that is deemed necessary for their attainment just as the Absolutist ‘phase’ is deemed functional for the rise of the modern capitalist state by Perry Anderson.290) Presumably, very few can deny either the importance of this condition nor the difficulties involved in securing it. Also, one does not have to accept Schumpeter’s insistence on feudal origins to acknowledge the fact that the personnel have been overwhelmingly drawn from the highest social ranks of society. As with the first condition, we are dealing here with the requirement of ‘quality’ and the same points apply. However, there is a considerable literature on the role of civil services in sponsoring, promoting and sustaining coups d’état in the developing world. Unless the ‘strong sense of duty’ is to the democratic system itself, their independence is potentially a major problem. According to Christopher Clapham: In countries where the state is itself by far the dominant source of organised power, control of the state by any agency external to it becomes extremely difficult, and a military coup represents the ultimate refinement of the process by which the state is taken over by its own servants. Sometimes indeed a coup can be seen as the result of actions by the incumbent government which threaten the interests and self-image of the bureaucracy.291 The final condition necessary for the success of democracy is characterised by Schumpeter as ‘democratic self-control’. On the negative side, this entails broad agreement about the undesirability of voters and politicians confusing their respective roles (a Burkeian conception of representative government which again spells the abandonment of the Classical Doctrine); the undesirability of excessive criticism of governments on all issues; and the undesirability of unpredictable and violent behaviour. On the positive, ‘democratic self-control’ requires ‘a large measure of tolerance for difference of opinion’.292 Unfortunately, this tolerance itself requires a ‘national character’ and ‘national habits’

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which the democratic method cannot be relied upon to produce. Again, we are partly in the realm of attitudes, norms and culture, without very specific sources. At least Weber, Fukuyama and others make a more concerted attempt at specificity; religion, ethnicity, the family, the state. The question of what produces stable social co-operation in the context of modernity is, of course, coterminous with the entire field of sociology. Perhaps then we should forgive Schumpeter on this score. The fact that each potential source of social stability can be associated with any political system makes matters extremely difficult. Furthermore, what he says is true. Tolerance for different opinions is a precondition of democracy. It also relies heavily on individuals changing their opinions on issues and on the way they vote. And yet, we are right to be impatient with glib assertions about ‘national character’ because, on the one hand, even if agreement were possible as to what constitutes such a thing, as with ‘culture’, these are not written in stone but are changeable, even if not as easily or purposefully as the Enlightenment tradition often implies. Here, Barrington Moore’s injunction against taking culture as a given is indispensable. To explain behaviour in terms of cultural values is to engage in circular reasoning … If culture has an empirical meaning, it is as a tendency implanted in the human mind to behave in certain specific ways ‘acquired by man as a member of society’ … The assumption of inertia, that cultural and social continuity do not require explanation, obliterates the fact that both have to be recreated anew in each generation, often with great pain and suffering. To maintain and transmit a value system, human beings are punched, bullied, sent to jail, thrown into concentration camps, cajoled, bribed, made into heroes, encouraged to read newspapers, stood up against a wall and shot, and sometimes even taught sociology. To speak of cultural inertia is to overlook the concrete interests and privileges that are served by indoctrination, education, and the entire complicated process of transmitting culture from one generation to the next.293 On the other hand, as this quotation suggests, the conditions that can be specified are too important to be overshadowed by those that can’t. Summing up by reiterating his original point of departure, Schumpeter returns to more stable ground: … [T]he reader need only review our conditions in order to satisfy himself that democratic government will work to full advantage only

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if all the interests that matter are practically unanimous not only in their allegiance to the country but also in their allegiance to the structural principles of the existing society. Whenever these principles are called in question and issues arise that rend a nation into two hostile camps, democracy works at a disadvantage. And it may cease to work at all as soon as interests and ideals are involved on which people refuse to compromise.294 What Schumpeter means by ‘allegiance to structural principles’ is legitimacy, and therefore stability, of social structure. His socio-psychological approach is tailored to deal with this matter of legitimacy. Whatever the bases of it – and we have seen that for him these have been largely precapitalist – in the most advanced countries, according to Schumpeter, they are being systematically undermined by the development of capitalism itself. What about the legitimacy of the social structure for developing countries? Now, one of the reasons for the instability, if not total absence of democratic regimes in the developing world as well as for the previous intensity of the Cold War, is that the political and ideological alternatives thrown up by great social inequalities are huge. While Schumpeter explicitly excludes any of these from his analysis, his treatment of what we might call European ‘late-developers’ is revealing. Writing on Russia, Schumpeter states the following: Even writers most hostile to the regime that followed upon the tsars invariably make haste to assure their readers that they are duly horrified at the monstrosity of tsarism. Thus the simple truth has been entirely lost in a maze of cant phrases. As a matter of fact, that form of government was no less appropriate to the social pattern that had produced it than was the parliamentary monarchy in England and the democratic republic in the United States. The performance of the bureaucracy … ; its social reforms, agrarian and other, and its halting steps toward a diluted type of constitutionalism were all that could have been expected in the circumstances. It was the imported radicalism and the group interest of the intellectuals that clashed with the spirit of the nation and not the tsarist monarchy which on the contrary had a strong hold upon the vast majority of all classes.295 Here we have a product of ‘uneven and combined development’, a country in transition to capitalist modernity with all kinds of precapitalist social formations, relying to a large extent on foreign capital

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for its modernisation of industry, at a ‘world-historical time’ when a good portion of its intellectuals were pushing for various alternatives including liberal democracy and socialism.296 If not for the First World War and poor political leadership, according to Schumpeter, these conditions would not have led to revolution. Moreover, so secure was the social structure of tsarism that after the failed uprising of 1905, intellectuals became increasingly militant and criminal, thus spawning a cycle of violence and repression that is largely responsible for modern ‘misunderstandings’ of tsarism.297 Undoubtedly, this assessment is far from complete but even if we disagree with the actual details, the circumstances Russia found itself in at the start of the twentieth century are not unlike the context many developing countries have faced and continue to face. One obvious similarity is that since the Russian Revolution of 1917, until 1989, all the social revolutions that have taken place have done so in the developing world. While some of these have been associated with national liberation struggles, many have not. The least that can be said about the impact of capitalism on social structure is that over time it can be relied upon to transform it. What’s more, political authority is one of the key components of this transformation, at least in mediating it intentionally or otherwise and even in purposefully channelling it. That is why conservatives, revolutionaries as well as reformers of all hues have sought state power and, of course, a good reason why democracy matters. If society is to be constantly changing, then individuals and groups should at the very least attempt to ensure that it doesn’t necessarily change against them. Democracy, with formal political equality and civil rights, offers a more generous context than does dictatorship for the political agency required to even attempt such action. This also accounts for democracy’s potentially subversive character. This raises what is surely a precondition for stable democracy, namely, overall economic growth. Endemic structural change without economic growth, at least in the long term, is quite simply a recipe for political instability, not to say disaster. The certainty of life-long unemployment and falling living standards, unless confined to a small minority, cannot provide the basis for political legitimacy of any description; least of all can it provide a stable context for a politics based on some measure of choice and tolerance. The collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism in Europe as a consequence of international economic depression and of the political factors which worsened this depression provides a standard example for this precondition. The major difficulty is that economic growth may also be able to sustain non-democracies as well. In this context, it may

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be argued that sharp reversals of economic conditions may lead to pressures for political inclusion for various reasons including ‘outside’ sectional interests being particularly exposed by these downturns, and democracy being seen as the most appropriate, if not the only alternative. Also, the positive correlation between democracy and economic development as demonstrated by the major liberal democratic countries acts as a considerable force of example for those struggling against dictatorship – a key feature of the Kantian strand of liberal internationalism.298 Now, what is required for sustained economic growth in the first place is itself a huge question which all states and not a few social scientists have been pondering for some considerable time. At a minimum, in the context of endemic structural change dictated in large part by technological innovation, economic pluralism would seem necessary. Placing all the eggs in one basket is far too risky given market volatility. Even when the commodities are so central to industry as is oil, their eventual obsolescence makes economic systems that depend on just a few products for their aggregate growth, unfertile ground for democratic political stability.

Criticisms Schumpeter’s ‘reading’ of the direction of capitalism with the stress on increasing centralisation and bureaucratisation through the process of ‘creative destruction’ led him, as with Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, into a teleological hole.299 Both, of course, were very much a product of their time and, to be fair, these were teleologies with some qualifications or escape routes. Still, like some paranoid American conservatives that date the institutionalisation of socialism in the United States from Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’, they misjudge badly the staying power and flexibility of capitalism. All the more surprising in the case of Schumpeter is the lack of connection made between the consequences of democracy and the sustainability of capitalism. In a democratic context, the dilemma which faced socialists in forcing capitalism to reform itself and thereby stabilising and legitimating it, doesn’t appear that agonising. As long as they seek sustained political power, ideological or even longterm strategy takes second place to practicality. Moreover, if the appetite for social reform is widespread, all the significant parties may well join the move, as Donald Sassoon’s following example illustrates. It is certain that a British Conservative government would have introduced some welfare measures between 1945 and 1950. The British Conservatives had committed themselves to social reforms

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ever since the Second World War, when, stung by the success of the Beveridge Report and convinced by a run of by-election defeats, Churchill told the nation (21 March 1943) that, after the war, unemployment would be abolished, state ownership should be extended, compulsory national insurance introduced ‘for all purposes from cradle to grave’, and that ‘there was no finer investment … than putting milk into babies’.300 However, if in the immediate post-war period the strongly interventionist lines favoured by the Left were in the ascendant, by the 1950s these had given way to widely held pro-market views associated with the consumer society which had spread from the United States. This shift was due to many complex factors including the ideological and material impact of the Cold War, the development of free trade actively encouraged by the United States, the increasing power of mainly US multinational corporations (both in terms of direct investment/production and advertising), government policies that promoted domestic demand (welfare spending) and held down inflation (in large part made possible by labour migration) and the transformation of rural workers into proletarians.301 While the countries of the Soviet bloc also grew rapidly, political legitimacy lagged well behind in part because growth there did not result in consumer societies. ‘People do not want to double steel output and treble iron production; they want comfortable houses and washing machines, and rightly so: the ideology of growth for growth’s sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.’302 In the West, political parties that eschewed the new consumer society (the result supposedly of ‘Fordism’) were increasingly marginalised. Thus democracy and international capitalism reinforced each other at least for this ‘Golden Age’.

Conclusion In reviewing Schumpeter’s work here we have seen that the lack of sustained engagement with the international dimensions of capitalism, socialism and democracy was a major source of weakness. Because of this lack of engagement there was little cause to push for the particular virtues of the conception of the global system employed throughout this work. Nevertheless, it is clear that despite Schumpeter’s acute view of democracy and capitalism, his failings in this text are in serious danger of overshadowing his accomplishments. Not only has socialism failed to replace capitalism in the most advanced countries of the world – a misdiagnosis which he shares with all too many, if for different

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reasons – but democracy has been institutionalised in countries which his theory suggests would be very unlikely to do so. What kind of liberal internationalist representative is this? The answer in part is that much of his influence on liberal internationalism is based on earlier writings and that this text represents something akin to apostasy.303 And, indeed, this betrayal demonstrates the fragility of the grounds for liberal internationalism’s optimistic account of the sources of democratisation. While Schumpeter’s socio-psychological framework is not a convincing alternative to this model, his analysis does serve to remind one of the difficulty of institutionalising the democratic form of state in most countries of the world. More fundamentally, perhaps, this text serves to illustrate, as with Polanyi’s work, the enormous impact that the Second World War had, not only on the ground of politics as it were, but on the thinking of intellectuals who witnessed it – just as his work on imperialism was a product of the First World War and an answer to Lenin’s explanation of imperialism. The idea that democratic capitalism would eventually revert to a hegemonic position globally was simply too far a stretch of the imagination.

4 Samuel Huntington, Political Order and the Global System

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to assess a specific work of Samuel Huntington that points to the fundamental difficulties involved in institutionalising and consolidating the democratic form of state for countries in the developing world. In challenging the unilinear model of development associated with modernisation theory, Huntington’s text also serves to question seriously the basic optimism of liberal internationalism’s view of the prospects for democracy worldwide – at the very least in the foreseeable future. This chapter argues, however, that while it does in fact produce a convincing and relevant set of arguments, including an implicit if clear deployment of ‘uneven and combined development’ and of ‘worldhistorical-time’, that serves to counter the major expectations of liberal internationalism, Huntington’s highly sophisticated sociology of development is deficient in a number of important ways – in not engaging more directly with the contradictory impact of the specifically capitalist features of modernisation or with the contradictory impact of the international political system and their interrelations, and in not questioning more thoroughly the meaning and value of political legitimacy and consequently in assuming the inappropriateness of the democratic form of state rather than its unlikely institutionalisation in developing countries.

Objectives of text Political Order in Changing Societies304 is nothing if not ambitious; in it Huntington sets out explicitly to examine the conditions under which political order and stability may be achieved for developing countries in 95

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the context of the seismic changes initiated by Western modernisation. There are not a few loaded terms here. ‘Order’? ‘Stability’? From what perspective one might ask. The answer he gives is, essentially, from an ‘objective’ social scientific perspective. The indices of political order or its absence in terms of violence, coups, insurrections, and other forms of instability are … reasonably clear and even quantifiable. Just as it is possible for economists to analyze and to debate, as economists, the conditions and policies which promote economic development, it should be possible for political scientists to analyze and to debate in scholarly fashion the ways and means of promoting political order, whatever their differences concerning the legitimacy and desirability of that goal.305 This attempt to eschew ideological and normative judgements as to what type of order is best in terms of, say, promoting human dignity, and his failure to even hint at the potential cost of political stability in similar terms puts Huntington’s work firmly in the Machiavellian camp, a portrayal, no doubt, with which he would happily approve.306 There are several problems with this approach including the charge of being disingenuous and, given the inevitable ethical dimension in human affairs, of obliterating the fact/value distinction.307 The disingenuousness stems from the point that for Huntington social scientific ‘truth’ is not necessarily sought for either its intrinsic value or its value to humanity but rather for the service it might provide the ‘national interests’ of the United States. That these ‘values’ may coincide is never argued by the author and we are, in fact, left with a thesis which is clearly ideologically motivated in the political context of the Cold War. Huntington’s ‘scholarly debate’ is organised around the following key questions: Why is political order so difficult to attain in the developing world? Why is revolutionary communist power peculiarly able to achieve political order and stability? How should modernising states attempt to promote non-communist political order and stability? What, if anything, can liberal democratic states do to promote non-communist political development? The dimension of legitimacy, of course, is inescapable; it cannot be separated from the discussion. One could argue that another serious problem that flows from this approach relates to the policy implications of the analysis. In a characteristic statement, Huntington here captures the problem exactly: ‘For the government interested in the maintenance of political stability, the appropriate response to middle-class radicalism is repression, not reform. Measures which reduce the numbers, strength, and coherence of

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the radical elements of this class contribute significantly to the maintenance of political order.’308 Obviously, the various post-1945 dictators in the developing world did not have to read this to come to their own conclusions. Nevertheless, in the context of the late 1960s and the Cold War, such pronouncements by a very learned Harvard professor could hardly fail to enter the foreign policy debates of the time. Indeed, a major and explicit aim of the text in question was to inject ‘realism’ into those very debates and to argue against those who sought to fight the appeal of communism in the Third World with improved economic and social conditions as, for example, with the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. In most instances, the author argues, success on these fronts hasten rather than reduce political instability. The real problem, however, is not so much the possibility that social science may be used for ‘reactionary’ purposes. This has always been the case and will continue to be so. One need only see how useful the work of sociologists and psychologists is to those in the business of ‘marketing’ all manner of consumer products, including lethal ones. The problem is rather that what Huntington attempts to pass-off as ‘truth’ is nothing of the sort. The idea that states interested in political stability should repress middle-class radicalism is not simply provocative and reactionary, it is absurd. This is not to deny that repression in some historical and political contexts sometimes works to diminish or even eradicate revolutionary threats to states. The point, however, is that every case will differ in detail. One is not dealing in absolutes here and concern for accuracy necessitates qualification not dogma. Furthermore, as suggested already, normative considerations cannot but raise necessary if sometimes awkward questions. For all this, Huntington’s book is absolutely packed with extraordinarily intelligent and insightful analysis.

Huntington’s thesis: modernity versus modernisation Maintaining that political violence, disorder and instability (frequent unconstitutional change in political leadership) increased in the two decades following the end of the Second World War, Huntington’s ‘primary thesis of the book is that it was in large part the product of rapid social change and the rapid mobilization of new groups into politics coupled with the slow development of political institutions’.309 The overarching and international context of the malaise is the transition from a myriad of pre-modern or traditional socio-economic and political forms to ‘modernity’ – a concept used in various ways and usually

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broken down into distinct if interrelated subgroups such as cultural, social, economic and political modernity. If ‘modernisation’ is the name given to transitional processes in aggregate, modernity itself is the set of conditions, involving all the subgroups, prevalent in the most ‘advanced’ countries of the world, namely, the ‘communist totalitarian’ states and ‘Western liberal’ states. Using the examples of the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, Huntington outlines the salient features of political modernity as follows: Each country is a political community with an overwhelming consensus among the people on the legitimacy of the political system. In each country the citizens and their leaders share a vision of the public interest of the society and of the traditions and principles upon which the political community is based. All three countries have strong, adaptable, coherent political institutions: effective bureaucracies, well-organized political parties, a high degree of popular participation in public affairs, working systems of civilian control over the military, extensive activity by the government in the economy, and reasonably effective procedures for regulating succession and controlling political conflict. These governments command the loyalties of their citizens and thus have the capacity to tax resources, to conscript manpower, and to innovate and to execute policy. If the Politburo, the Cabinet, or the President makes a decision, the probability is high it will be implemented through the government machinery.310 Although the inclusion here of the Soviet Union and ‘communist states’ seems distinctly perverse today, it is a clear indication of the thoroughness of the discrediting of ‘historical communism’ as a viable alternative to capitalist modernity in the decades following its publication. It is also a reminder of the tenacity of the communist model as an alternative modernity to both believers and opponents at that time. More importantly, however, this inclusion reveals the ease with which Huntington equates political stability with legitimacy. Political order as a precondition for other ‘values’ (pace Hobbes and the liberal tradition of political theory) may well make it a privileged one – though it would have to be argued explicitly – but it does not define political legitimacy.311 Obviously, from the perspective of one interested in democracy’s relationship to the global system, this matter is of crucial importance and one that will be looked at in greater detail below. For the time being, suffice it to say that considering political order as the most important and pressing challenge facing the developing and developed world is a form

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of conservatism if not totally at odds with the twists and turns of actual history then at least with plenty of counter-arguments. Although ultimately there is in Huntington’s thesis a unilinear conception of political modernisation, to his great credit, and unlike some that have expressed more optimistically naive conceptions, the author sees this complex phenomenon as the major cause of political decay in the post-war period.312 Rather than lead to modernity, both the modernising forces unleashed on developing countries via the global system as well as their own modernising efforts in response to the more advanced states lead to political violence and disorder. It is not the absence of modernity but the efforts to achieve it which produce political disorder. If poor countries appear to be unstable, it is not because they are poor, but because they are trying to become rich. A purely traditional society would be ignorant, poor, and stable. By the mid-twentieth century, however, all traditional societies were also transitional or modernizing societies. It is precisely the devolution of modernization throughout the world which increased the prevalence of violence about the world.313 The basic fault displayed here and generally reproduced throughout the text is the notion of ‘traditional’ societies as essentially identical or homogenous – ‘ignorant, poor, and stable’. Though he deploys the distinction between ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘feudal’ polities, there is very little on the extraordinary variety of pre-modern social and political formations.314 Nevertheless, the highly problematic nature of modernisation is strongly conveyed here. It is a kind of ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ modernisation thesis – once traditional societies are dismembered by the combination of modernising forces, they cannot be put together again and almost certainly not in the image of the Western liberal democracies. Again, the argument here is that, at the time of writing, the communist model had a higher probability of institutionalisation than the liberal democratic one, thus the significance of the study in the context of the Cold War. The reasons lay in the impact of international modernising forces on domestic systems of rule.

Aspects of modernisation: social mobilisation and economic development Huntington speaks of ‘aspects’ of modernisation – the principal ones being urbanisation, industrialisation, secularisation, democratisation,

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education (increased literacy) and mass media exposure.315 The causes of these ‘aspects’, the precise mechanisms by which they are transmitted internationally and the relations as well as the structures of power which they may be said to involve internationally are all severely undertheorised. On one side we have modern countries and on the other we have modernising ones. For all the emphasis on the spread or ‘devolution’ of modernisation throughout the world and with the important exceptions of geopolitical competition and the defensive pressures which this gives rise to, the spread of ideas, and colonialism, it is actually the juxtaposition between modern and modernising rather than their interrelations which receives most attention from Huntington. Not that there is no merit in this approach. After all, the mere juxtaposition is a hugely influential factor in motivating and unleashing social change, as the ‘power of example’ has demonstrated in countless situations. If today these ‘aspects’ of modernisation are more commonly theorised under the rubric of ‘globalisation’, it is because the international dimensions of socio-economic, political and cultural change are much more clearly acknowledged.316 While Huntington seeks to maintain a distinction between ‘idealistic’ versions of political modernisation which focus on the differences between traditional and modern polities and proceed to define the phenomenon as the unproblematic movement from one to the other and his own ‘realist’ view of it as the political ‘aspects’ and ‘effects’ of social, economic and cultural modernisation, slippage between these two forms is evident at key points of the argument. This is especially so when he comes to analyse both the political problems of so-called ‘traditional’ polities and the earlier political modernisations of Continental Europe, England and the United States.317 Nevertheless, taking the distinction at face value for the time being, the ‘idealistic’ method is said to yield the following broad categories of expected change: 1. The rationalisation of authority: a single, secular, national political authority replaces a large number of traditional, religious, familial and ethnic authorities. 2. The differentiation of new political functions/development of specialised structures: areas of competence such as legal, military, administrative and scientific are separated from the political realm and new, autonomous, specialised but subordinate organs are created to discharge tasks. Office and power are distributed more through achievement and less by ascription and administrative hierarchies become more elaborate, complex and disciplined.

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3. Mass participation and mobilisation in politics: predominantly urban social groups with broadened loyalties and identities, with greatly expanded reflexive knowledge about society and the world, with increased reliance on universalistic values, engaged in massively diversified economic activities, with changed attitudes and expectations, become involved in and affected by governmental affairs.318 Huntington’s focus on the political consequences of socio-economic and cultural modernisation yields a picture of considerable political disintegration. The two categories of modernisation that the author considers most relevant to politics are ‘social mobilisation’ and ‘economic development’.319 The former is a consequence of literacy, education, increased communications, mass media exposure and urbanisation and relates fundamentally to changes from traditional values, attitudes, and expectations to those associated with modern ones.320 It is most closely associated with the development of modern political consciousness. Economic development, however it is measured, refers basically to the growth in economic activity and output. ‘Social mobilization involves changes in the aspirations of individuals, groups, and societies; economic development involves changes in their capabilities. Modernization requires both.’321 Huntington’s argument is that positive movement in the major areas of social development, which is empirically demonstrable, does not necessarily entail equivalence in political terms. In other words, despite rapid urbanisation, increasing rates of literacy, higher levels of industrialisation, per capita income and mass media circulation, politically, much of the developing world was moving away from the idealist version of modern politics. Instead of a trend towards competitiveness and democracy, there was an ‘erosion of democracy’ and a tendency to autocratic military regimes and one-party regimes. Instead of stability, there were repeated coups and revolts. Instead of a unifying nationalism and nation-building, there were repeated ethnic conflicts and civil wars. Instead of institutional rationalisation and differentiation, there was frequently a decay of the administrative organisations inherited from the colonial era and a weakening and disruption of the political organisations developed during the struggle for independence.322 The only concept of political modernisation which, according to Huntington, appeared to be generally applicable to the developing world was that of ‘mass mobilisation and participation’. The argument here is made up of two parts, the socially and politically disintegrative force of modernisation and the integrative one. First, social and economic changes disrupt traditional political and social groupings and undermine

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loyalty to traditional authority and institutions. In the countryside, for example, a new élite of civil servants and schoolteachers who represent the authority of the central government challenges secular and religious village leaders. Similarly, the erosion of the traditional extended family, under the impact of modernisation, with its political, economic, welfare, security, religious and other social functions leaves a narrower form of social organisation, the nuclear family, too much to do with insufficient means of doing it. The result, according to Huntington, is a strengthened tendency towards distrust and hostility as ‘new values undermine the old bases of association and of authority before new skills, motivations, and resources can be brought into existence to create new groupings’.323 In terms of an integrative effect, the social and psychological anomie which is the consequence of modernisation also creates the need for new loyalties and identifications which may take all kinds of forms including re-identification with traditional groups and ideologies as well as the mobilisation of new ones. The rise of religious fundamentalist movements, political tribalism and ethnic chauvinism, for instance, fit neatly into this argument. Modernization means that all groups, old as well as new, traditional as well as modern, become increasingly aware of themselves as groups and of their interests and claims in relation to other groups. One of the most striking phenomena of modernization, indeed, is the increased consciousness, coherence, organization, and action which it produces in many social forces which existed on a much lower level of conscious identity and organization in traditional society.324 Putting together these two sides of the argument, the disintegrating effect of modernisation and the novel forms of integration, Huntington theorises that the result is generally increased conflict and often violence ‘among traditional groups, between traditional groups and modern ones, and among modern groups’.325 Huntington’s theory of modernisation clearly runs counter to those that argue the best way to promote political stability is to promote economic and social development for the closer a country gets to modernity without actually achieving it, the more unstable and violent it tends to be. The author denies a direct correlation between poverty and political instability and suggests that within developing countries, ‘violence’, ‘unrest’ and ‘extremism’ are more common in the wealthier sections than in the poorest.326 The rate of modernisation is also crucially important – the higher the rate, the greater the degree of instability. If political instability was

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prevalent in the developing world during the twentieth century, it was in large part, according to the author, because the rate of modernisation was faster there than it had been for earlier transitional countries. In what is a clear version of the theory of ‘combined and uneven’ development, Huntington puts the matter succinctly. The modernization of Europe and of North America was spread over several centuries; in general, one issue or one crisis was dealt with at a time. In the modernization of the non-Western parts of the world, however, the problems of the centralization of authority, national integration, social mobilization, economic development, political participation, social welfare have not arisen sequentially but simultaneously. The ‘demonstration effect’ which the early modernizers have on the later modernizers first intensifies aspirations and then exacerbates frustrations.327 Frustrated aspirations are indeed fundamental to Huntington’s theory, providing the major impetus towards the politicisation and mobilisation of social groups. Take the question of the relationship between increasing literacy and political stability. Huntington marshals considerable empirical evidence to suggest that those countries with levels of education and literacy comparable to developed ones but in the context of low levels of economic development experience very unstable politics.328 The reasons for this are not difficult to surmise. The frustration is felt not simply for the lack of opportunities that match educational attainment but also in solidarity for the impoverished. To be educated when all around are miserably poor, especially when ideological cures abound, is to court the politicisation and radicalisation of more well-todo sections of society. Indeed, the middle-class social origins of revolutionaries like ‘Che’ Guevara demonstrates this point well. So, too, with regard to economic development. Rather than provide the opportunities to satisfy aspirations, rapid economic growth has itself been correlated with increased frustration and political instability.329 Some of the possible reasons for this relationship include the concentration of gains in the hands of a few groups while losses are diffused among the many; the prevalence of inflation and its consequent tendencies towards further inequalities of wealth; and, the exacerbation of traditional inequalities due to the impact of Western legal systems encouraging the replacement of communal land ownership with private ownership.330 ‘Economic development increases economic inequality at the same time that social mobilization decreases the legitimacy of that inequality. Both aspects of modernization combine to produce political instability.’331

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Huntington hypothesises, however, that social mobilisation is more destabilising politically than economic development because attitudes, demands and desires change faster than economies’ ability to satisfy them. The ‘gap’ which is said to open up between these two forms of change under modernisation is a major source of political instability. Hostile to socio-economic mobility in terms of values (entrepreneurial roles often left to ethnic minorities) and interests (a high proportion of society is engaged in agriculture in the context of very unequal land ownership), modernising traditional societies experience developmental bottlenecks which leave substantial portions of society no alternative but to demand action from the state. As will be reiterated later, the state in developing countries is too often itself unambiguously commanded by those with economic power, in part because of the absence of a critical mass of middle-class reformers, and ‘[h]ence social mobilization turns the traditional economic inequality into a stimulus to rebellion’.332 So, while the forces of modernisation ‘extend political consciousness, multiply political demands, broaden political participation’ – especially since late modernising countries cohabit the world with established liberal democracies – modernisation undermines traditional sources of political authority and traditional political institutions. This greatly complicates the problems of creating new bases of political association and new political institutions that combine legitimacy and effectiveness. Without sufficient opportunities for social and economic mobility and adaptable political institutions, social frustration leads inexorably to political instability.333 Overall, the impact of modernisation on developing countries involves the following relationships according to the author: (1) Social mobilisation ⫽ Social frustration Economic development (2) Social frustration ⫽ Political participation Mobility opportunities (3) Political participation ⫽ Political instability334 Political institutionalisation

Social modernisation and political change in traditional polities A major argument of the text is that traditional societies are usually not simply passive in their relation to modernisation but that at a certain point and for varying reasons, unless executive political power attempts consciously to modernise society itself it will be pushed aside by social forces that will (the international forces will be dealt with in a later

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section). In social terms modernisation involves the sequential emergence of an intelligentsia, commercial and entrepreneurial groups, professional and managerial ones, an urban working class and a politicised peasantry.335 The political instability associated with the transition to modernity can be explained not simply by the rise of such groups and their values but by the consequent resistance of at least some traditional sectors with entrenched privileges. Principally, these are the church, the land-owning aristocracy, the army and, if the polity is highly bureaucratised, the civil officials.336 The executive power, typically either a monarch or emperor, will have the responsibility of maintaining stability while securing the integrity and longevity of the state by implementing reforms thought to be congruent with modernity. Following an established typology of traditional political systems, Huntington divides the most prevalent ones into two groups, namely, the ‘bureaucratic’ and the ‘feudal’ polity.337 Their characteristics are given in Table 4.1. The reason for making this distinction is that, for Huntington, overcoming social and political resistance to modernisation necessarily entails the concentration and centralisation of power to facilitate policy innovation, the institutional differentiation of the state in terms of functional specialisation and the ability to assimilate and socialise the social forces produced by modernisation; the three criteria of political modernity in the ‘idealist’ version. By comparing these requirements to the actual historical institutional arrangements of traditional polities, the author is able to theorise the types of changes needed for each type of system. A further distinction is then made between three phases or stages of modernisation, the early, the middle and the

Table 4.1 Characteristics of the bureaucratic and the feudal polity Bureaucratic

Feudal

Concentrated power Monarch appoints officials High social and political mobility Separation of functions and concentration of power Land owned by monarch

Dispersed power Offices are hereditary within aristocracy Highly stratified state Fusion of functions and division of powers Land ownership dispersed and hereditary Legitimacy shared with nobility Monarch and nobility have independent sources of authority Essence is two-way system of reciprocal rights and obligations338

King/emperor sole source of legitimacy King/emperor sole source of authority Essence is one-way flow of authority from superior to subordinate

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third, suggesting the strengths and weaknesses of each type of traditional polity in coping with each phase of modernisation. Typically, the first challenge of modernization to a dispersed, weakly articulated and organized, feudalistic traditional system is to concentrate power necessary to produce changes in the traditional society and economy. The second problem is then to expand the power of the system to assimilate the newly mobilized and politically participant groups, thus creating a modern system. This challenge is the predominant one in the modernizing world today. At a later stage the system is confronted with the demands of the participant groups for a greater dispersion of power and for the establishment of reciprocal checks and controls among groups and institutions.339 Even though the main challenge facing the executive authority of the bureaucratic state in the early phase of modernisation is said to be the conversion of the civil officials to the cause of sweeping reforms, what is most striking about Huntington’s schema is that while pluralistic political systems are suggested as the end-point of political evolution – clear evidence of his unilinear conception – they are necessarily anathema to the first phase of modernisation for late modernising countries and highly problematic in the second. To understand how this compares to the situation faced by early modernisers and therefore to see how the global system may be implicated, we need to look more deeply into Huntington’s conceptualisation of how these actually achieved the transition to modernity in the first place.

Historic routes to political modernity: Continental, British and American The author suggests three distinct patterns of early Western political modernisation, the Continental European, the British and the American. All three involved the rationalisation of authority, the differentiation of structure and, the expansion of political participation, but in varying sequence. During the seventeenth century, the major states of the continent of Europe were centralising power, ‘nationalising’ commerce, bringing dynasties and the church to heel, suppressing medieval estates, expanding public services and state bureaucracies, originating and expanding standing armies, extending and improving taxation. Absolutism, in other words, was the result of the rationalisation of authority and

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the differentiation of political structures. ‘At the beginning of the seventeenth century, every country of western Christendom, from Portugal to Finland, and from Ireland to Hungary, had its assemblies of estates … . By 1700 the traditional diffusion of powers had been virtually eliminated from continental Europe. The modernizers and state-builders had triumphed.’340 Why the urgency? The answer given is that continental states faced intense international rivalry combined with high levels of social conflict compared to other areas. With only three years of peace on the continent in the whole of the seventeenth century, war promoted the centralisation of authority because military strength required national unity, the suppression of regional, religious and political dissidents, the expansion of armies and bureaucracies and major increases in state revenues. The broadening of political participation would await till well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Stuart pattern of centralisation and institutional differentiation in Britain followed very similar ‘absolutist’ lines but for the constitutional struggle it provoked. The result, according to the author, was an omnipotent legislature rather than an absolute monarch. Not that this legislature was in the least bit representative in the modern sense but, as with the Continental model, the broadening of political participation would be achieved in stages beginning in earnest in the third decade of nineteenth century. While civil strife contributed to this process, particularly the reemergence of religion as a source of conflict in the seventeenth century as well as that of ideology and class, the major reasons for the attempt to rationalise and centralise authority as well as the failure to achieve it to quite the same degree as on the continent are put down to geopolitical competition and the accidental quirks of geography. Largely because of its insular position, Great Britain was a partial exception to this pattern of war and insecurity. Even so, one major impetus to the centralization of authority in English government came from the efforts of the Stuart kings to get more taxes to build more ships to compete with the French and other continental powers. If it were not for the English Channel, the Stuart centralization probably would have succeeded.341 The American pattern is strikingly different. Here the principal elements of the English Tudor constitution are said to have taken root and given new life at the same time as they were being abandoned in England. Although these included the Tudor innovations of ‘the supremacy of the state over the church’, the ‘heightened sense of national identity and consciousness’ and a ‘significant increase in the power of the Crown and

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the executive establishment’, it also meant that the medieval pluralism crushed by the rationalisation and centralisation of authority in the other two patterns of modernisation was much more fully retained in this one.342 Where Europe replaced ‘fundamental law’ as the source of political authority with that of the state, the United States continued to adhere to it in the form of a written and codified constitution; where Europe innovated the concepts of ‘state sovereignty’ and ‘divine right’ – ‘giving the sanction of the Almighty to the purposes of the mighty’ – the United States dispersed authority.343 As Bagehot argued patronisingly, ‘[t]he English constitution, in a word, is framed on the principle of choosing a single sovereign authority, and making it good: the American, upon the principle of having many sovereign authorities, and hoping that their multitude may atone for their inferiority’.344 In military terms also, the United States lagged behind Britain, which lagged behind the Continental powers in developing military professionalism. Only in the achievement of widespread political participation, excluding women and African-Americans, did the United States lead the way.345 The comparative reasons for this are said to be as follows: On the electoral level, the expansion of participation in Europe meant the gradual extension of the suffrage for the assembly from aristocracy to upper bourgeoisie, lower bourgeoisie, peasants, and urban workers. This process is clearly seen in the English reform acts of 1832, 1867, 1884, and 1918. Where no assembly existed, the creation of a popular assembly was also at times accompanied by the introduction of universal male suffrage which, in turn, directly encouraged political stability. In both cases, control of the assembly determined control of the government, and hence struggles over who should vote for the assembly were often intense and sometimes violent. In America, on the other hand, no class differences existed as in Europe, and hence the social basis for the conflict over suffrage extensions was less than in Europe. In addition, the continuation of the pluralistic institutions of medieval constitutionalism reduced the apparent significance of suffrage extensions. In a system of checks and balances with many institutions competing for power, it seemed natural enough that at least one of these institutions (usually the lower house of the assembly) should be elected by popular suffrage. Once this was granted, however, the competition between social forces and between governmental institutions produced the gradual democratization of the other institutions.346 The basic security threats being domestic in character – those from indigenous Indians – the dispersed nature of settlements meant that

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defence forces could be made up of settlers themselves organised into militia, hardly the stuff from which Absolutism is made. Furthermore, if the political institutions were essentially feudal, the social institutions were decidedly not so. Without an established church, a powerful land owning aristocracy, a professional army, a bureaucracy or a peasantry, the obstacles to the rise of new social classes engaged in new economic activities were minimal and seen principally as foreign in origin. The United States and the new economy of Adam Smith were born twins in 1776. If government intervention was not needed in the United States to change social customs and structures because of the absence of feudal social institutions, the relative abundance of land and other resources combined with the crystallisation of federalism to militate against state intervention on the part of one ‘national’ class against another.347 So much for the general outline of the three historic paths to modernity but what can they tell us about contemporary transitions? The lessons drawn from them are crucial to Huntington’s theory of ‘late’ modernisation and the major one is that current modernising countries require the twentieth century equivalent of Royal Absolutism to bring about the fundamental changes essential to achieving modernity. This is why. The historic situation faced by the United States was ‘exceptional’ in most ways and attempts to reproduce its form of government in different contexts, as with the nineteenth-century Latin American republics, were bound to lead to failure. As in early modern Europe so also for contemporary modernising countries; the rationalisation and centralisation of state power is a necessary precondition not simply for the purposes of providing unity in the context of geopolitical insecurity and deep social divisions but for socio-economic and political ‘progress’. ‘An antique polity is compatible with a modern society but it is not compatible with the modernization of a traditional society.’348 For the same reason, adopting modern Western European political systems is highly problematic because with still largely powerful feudal social institutions, ‘new states’ are incapable of pushing through the changes required by ‘old societies’. ‘Liberal, pluralistic, democratic governments serve to perpetuate antiquated social structure.’349 In this way, Huntington points out, the political goals of the United States to spread and enhance liberal democratic constitutional forms are in direct conflict with its social goals of modernisation, ‘reform’, ‘social welfare’, ‘more equitable distribution of wealth’ and the ‘development of a middle class’.350 The great problem for late modernisers is that, largely because of the existence and example of modern polities, they face the needs to rationalise and centralise authority, to differentiate governmental

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structures and to broaden political participation simultaneously rather than sequentially. For Huntington, the one political system that at the time of writing seemed best able to accomplish these contradictory goals was the communist one. If Versailles set the standard for one century and Westminster for another, the Kremlin may well be the most relevant model for many modernizing countries in this century. Just as the heads of minor German principalities aped Louis XIV, so also the heads of equally small and fragile African states will ape Lenin and Mao. The primary need their countries face is the accumulation and concentration of power, not its dispersion, and it is in Moscow and Peking and not in Washington that this lesson is to be learned.351 As one can see, Huntington here and elsewhere throughout the text employs a clear, if not always very sensitively expressed, theory of ‘combined and uneven’ development coupled with a notion of the importance of ‘world-historical-time’. While we will come back to an assessment of the totality of this work in due course, it is important first to make some preliminary comments about the above versions of history. First, the problem of determining when modernity was in fact achieved is a serious one. If, for example, one accepts the three criteria of political modernity outlined by the author, then none of the three historical patterns was complete until well into the twentieth century with the advent of universal suffrage, this being when political participation was fully broadened. Second, it is rather extraordinary given the importance of the event to the development of the United States that the Civil War does not feature as a critical period and process of its modernisation. The United States’ transition to modernity is wrongly characterised as peaceful and stable in relation not only to earlier European ones (revolutionary and non-revolutionary) but also to those countries currently undergoing rapid change in the developing world and in particular to those faced with the prospect of revolutionary transformation. This is not to suggest that revolutionary transitions are themselves necessarily more or less violent than non-revolutionary ones but simply to emphasise, as Barrington Moore Jr. did in relation to political ‘evolution’ in England, that American modernisation did actually have an extremely high cost in human lives, even excluding the extermination of indigenous peoples.352 It would be more truthful to save the designation of ‘exceptional’ to those who were/are able to achieve modernity without much loss of blood.

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While historical interpretations will vary, the work of comparing earlier international political, socio-economic and cultural contexts is important because these have played critical roles in shaping the development and trajectories of countries and will continue to do so. Before assessing Huntington’s specific view of the global system as it relates to the prospect of democracy, let us return to his theory of modernisation as presented in his analysis of the causes of political instability in the developing world.

The city–country gap: ‘urban breakthroughs’ and ‘Green Uprisings’ While cities obviously long predate the modern period, overwhelmingly urbanised societies are just as obviously a product of modernity. According to the author, the gap between the city and the countryside that opens up as a result of social and economic modernisation is the primary source of political instability for developing countries and a ‘principal obstacle to national integration’.353 Not wishing to devalue the appalling struggles involved in securing a dignified life for the urbanising masses in the developing world, the advantages of urban life often include higher overall living standards, more educational and economic opportunities, as well as much more dynamic forms of culture.354 What is most modern is to be found in the city and what is most traditional, in the countryside. Huntington refers to an ‘urban breakthrough’ to signify the political shift from traditional rural forms of rule to the domination of middleclass, urban rule at the national level. If the first shift towards instability is the appearance of new social classes with new values engaged in new forms of economic activity carried out in new ways, then the ‘urban breakthrough’ is significant because it signals a critical step away from traditional politics and the deepening of instability. The disunity of the middle class in its struggle against the traditional oligarchy and the absence of effective and legitimate political institutions combine to produce various forms of unstable urban politics. In addition, the inauguration of the rural masses into national politics, the so-called ‘Green Uprising’ offers a counterpoint to urban instability which will influence subsequent political development decisively. There are, according to Huntington, four major forms the ‘Green Uprising’ may take. The first is that which occurs in the context of a colonial society. Here, rural society is mobilised by nationalist intellectuals in support of political independence. Failure to sustain this support after national liberation is achieved may result in all kinds of new social

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and political struggles. The second form occurs within a competitive party system where one segment of the urban élite develops appeals for the rural vote to overcome the established urban-based parties. Third, a rural oriented military regime may seek to outmanoeuvre its urban rivals by developing its own power base in the countryside. Finally, if no alliance is successfully constructed between urban élites and the rural masses from within the political system, the likelihood of rural mobilisation against the system, namely, in the form of revolutionary upheaval, rises dramatically. The crucial differences involve the target of the uprising and framework in which it occurs. In the nationalist case, the target is the imperial power and the mobilization takes place within the framework of a nationalist movement which replaces the imperial power as the source of legitimacy in the political system. In the competitive case, the target is the ruling party and the mobilisation takes place within the framework of the political system but not within the framework of the ruling party. In the military case, the target is usually the former ruling oligarchy and the mobilisation is part of the effort by the military leaders to construct a new political framework. In the revolutionary case, the target is the existing political system and its leadership and the mobilization takes place through an opposition political party whose leadership is dedicated to replacing the existing political system.355 While urban instability is a ‘minor but universal’ characteristic of modernisation, its rural counterpart is ‘major but avoidable’, according to Huntington. Three out of the four types of ‘Green Uprisings’ lead to the non-revolutionary bridging of the gap between country and city. There is a price to be paid for rural support, however, and that is the strengthening of the traditional over the modern. ‘Thus, paradoxically, the Green Uprising has either a highly traditionalizing impact on the political system or a profoundly revolutionary one.’356 If the latter is avoided and modernisation proceeds, the appearance of the working class (‘too weak’ and/or ‘too conservative’ to challenge the middle class) helps to shift the political balance towards the city again and the danger comes from a renewed rural assault on urban domination. Huntington labels this a ‘fundamentalist reaction’ and its containment or defeat signals the advent of political modernity. ‘The society which was once unified by a rural traditional culture is now unified by a modern urban one.’357

Huntington, Political Order and the Global System 113 Table 4.2 Changes to urban–rural power relations initiated by modernisation and their effects Phase

City

Countryside

Comments

1. Traditional stability

Stable Subordinate

Stable Dominant

Rural élite rule; middle class absent; peasants dormant.

2. Modernisation: (take-off)

Unstable Subordinate

Stable Dominant

Urban middle class appears and begins struggle against rural élite.

3. Urban breakthrough

Unstable Dominant

Stable Subordinate

Urban middle class displaces rural élite; peasants still dormant.

Unstable Subordinate

Stable Dominant

Peasant mobilisaion within system re-establishes stability and rural dominance.

A 5. Fundamentalist Stable reaction Dominant

Unstable Subordinate

Middle class grows and becomes more conservative; working class appears; shift of dominance to city produces rural fundamentalist reaction.

B 4. Green Uprising (revolution)

Unstable Subordinate

Unstable Dominant

Peasant mobilisation against system overthrows old structures.

B 5. Modernising (consolidation)

Stable Dominant

Unstable Subordinate

Revolutionaries in power impose modernising reforms on peasantry.

Stable Dominant

Stable Subordinate

Countryside accepts modern values and city rule.358

A 4. Green Uprising (containment)

6. Modern stability

Table 4.2 illustrates the types of changes to urban–rural power relations initiated by modernisation and their effects on the stability of the city and the countryside. As with all other aspects of modernisation according to Huntington, the only stable polities and societies are the thoroughly traditional and thoroughly modern ones; those in between are in unstable flux. Having destroyed traditional stability modernisation creates the possibility, if not necessarily the immediate certainty, of future stability under new rules, values, social, political and economic institutions.

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Political stability: civic and praetorian polities Huntington distinguishes current political systems generally by their levels of institutionalisation and political participation. With regard to the former dimension he proposes two possible divisions, ‘high’ and ‘low’ levels of institutionalisation. Dividing participation into three possibilities, ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’, he provides a neat range of categories of political systems, namely, ‘praetorian’ and ‘civic’.359 ‘Praetorian’ political systems are those where participation is high relative to institutionalisation and are typically ‘unclassifiable in terms of any particular governmental form because their distinguishing characteristic is the fragility and fleetingness of all forms of authority’.360 They can oscillate wildly between charismatic ruler, military junta and parliamentary regime because their essential problem, according to the author, is a society that lacks political community and the institutions needed to socialise participation. ‘Civic’ polities, in contrast, are those where, at all levels of participation, political institutions are sufficiently durable to provide the basis of a legitimate order and a political community. ‘In a civic polity, the price of authority involves limitations on the resources that may be employed in politics, the procedures through which power may be acquired, and the attitudes that power wielders hold.’361 So what is the relationship between modernisation and these two categories of political systems? Huntington answers this question by reminding the reader that the attainment of a stable civic polity is not directly dependent on the achievement of a modern society. For example, in terms of literacy, per capita income and urbanisation, Argentina was economically and socially a highly developed country by the 1950s, yet politically it remained underdeveloped. ‘So long as a country like Argentina retained a politics of coup and counter-coup and a feeble state surrounded by massive social forces, it remained politically underdeveloped no matter how urbane, prosperous, and educated its citizenry.’362 On the other hand, India remained socially underdeveloped by the 1950s but was already politically modern and stable. The crucial point is that political institutionalisation must keep pace with social change (‘urban breakthroughs’, ‘green uprisings’, ‘fundamentalist reactions’ etc . … ) and this is possible only with the development of political institutions capable of structuring, organising and socialising the mass of the population. Furthermore, the only institution with this potential capacity, whether in the context of revolutionary development or otherwise, is the political party.

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The political party is the distinctive organization of modern politics … The function of the party is to organize participation, to aggregate interests, to serve as the link between social forces and the government. In performing these functions, the party necessarily reflects the logic of politics … [and] operates on patronage, influence, and compromise. Consequently, the promoters of modernization, like the defenders of tradition, often reject and denigrate political parties. They attempt to modernize their society politically without establishing the institution that will make their society politically stable. They pursue modernity at the expense of politics and in the process fail to achieve the one because of their neglect of the other.363 ‘Praetorian’ societies then are those with political parties, if they have them, which are incapable of fulfilling their functions so that the social forces created by modernisation or reacting to it become directly engaged in general politics rather than mediated and socialised by legitimate institutions. As Huntington says, they typically have ‘political armies’, ‘political clergies’, ‘political universities’, ‘political bureaucracies’, ‘political labor unions’ and ‘political corporations’.364 Under these circumstances, it is little wonder that political stability is so difficult to achieve. As expansion of political participation proceeds ‘oligarchical’ praetorianism (e.g. nineteenth-century Latin American countries with major landowners, leading clergy and armed forces as the dominant social forces) is transformed into ‘radical’ praetorianism by the emergence of a middle class. The author suggests that a major source of this radical praetorianism in the developing world is Western colonialism because by weakening or destroying indigenous political institutions in Africa, the Middle East and southern Asia and stimulating independence movements led by the ‘offspring of the native elite or sub-elite groups’, the results were often very weak state organisations.365 [I]ndependence frequently left a small, modernized, intellectual elite confronting a large, amorphous, unmobilized, still highly traditional society. Africa in the 1960’s was not too dissimilar from Latin America in the 1820’s. In the latter case creoles attempted to impose republican institutions inappropriate for their society; in the former case the elite attempted to impose mass institutions also inappropriate for the society. In each instance, political authority decayed and the institutions withered: the Latin American constitutions became pieces of

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paper; the African one-party state became a no-party state. The institutional void was filled by violence and military rule.366 As Basil Davidson has also argued in the context of Africa, while Europe required two centuries and more to accommodate the model of the nation-state, many developing countries have had only a matter of decades.367 The dislodging of the nationalist intelligentsia by the military in the case of many African states has its parallels in Latin America. The distinctive quality of ‘radical’ praetorianism is the emergence of middle-class political participation in the guise of a military takeover, what Huntington labels a ‘breakthrough coup’. ‘The participation of the military or of military groups as collectivities in politics comes only with that differentiation of the officer corps as a semi-autonomous institution which goes with the rise of the middle class.’368 The examples given of such ‘breakthrough coups’ from the Middle East include Iraq in 1958, Syria in 1949 and Egypt in 1952; from Latin America they include Chile and Brazil in the 1920s, Bolivia, Guatemala, Venezuela, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador during and after the Second World War; and from Asia they include Thailand in 1932 and 1933, Pakistan and Burma in 1958. By challenging the oligarchy and promoting social and economic reforms, national integration and the extension of political participation, Huntington suggests that military officers ‘play a highly modernizing and progressive role’, especially in the early stages of political modernisation.369 Two interesting connections between the pattern of ‘anticipatory’, ‘breakthrough’, and ‘consolidating’ coups (characteristic of the shift from oligarchic to middle-class praetorian regimes) and the global system are suggested by the recurring examples of foreign trained officers being involved in all three stages of coup making (usually Latin American officers trained in the United States) and defeat in war finally pushing officers into political action. With regard to the former, the cases of Guatemala and El Salvador are given and for the latter the cases of Syria’s incompetent conduct of the Palestinian war and Bolivia’s defeat in the Chaco War.370 However, the basic social roots of radical praetorianism lie in the gap between city and countryside referred to earlier. The extent of the instability depends upon the extent to which the government is able and willing to use the countryside to contain and to pacify the city. If the government can build a bridge to the countryside, if it can mobilize support from the rural areas, it can contain and ride out the instabilities of the city. If the countryside is passive and indifferent, if rural elite and rural masses are both excluded from

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politics, then the government is caught in an urban prison of instability and functions at the whim of the city mob, the capital garrison, and the central university’s students. If, however, the countryside turns against the political system, if the rural masses are mobilized against the existing order, then the government faces not instability but revolution and fundamental change. The distinctive characteristic of radical praetotianism is urban instability. The stability of that instability depends upon the exclusion of the countryside from politics.371 Each new political participant brings new resources and techniques to the struggle. The university students with their legacy of corporate autonomy bring the demonstration and the military brings the coup. As society moves from the first phase of radical praetorianism to its second phase with the emergence of the urban working class into politics, the strike is used to bring pressure upon authority. Avoidance of ‘radical’ praetorianism for late modernisers is very difficult and usually involves some combination of the early existence of highly developed political parties, a ruling oligarchy open to middleclass penetration and/or a highly professional army. The examples given by the author of such avoidance are the 1916 electoral victory of the Unión Cívica Radical in Argentina and the limited and ‘supplementary’ role of the 1924 military intervention in Chile.372 Finally, ‘mass’ praetorianism emerges with the political debut of the lower classes into politics and, according to Huntington, the ‘progressive’ role of the military is frequently transformed by this shift into a conservative one with the characteristic ‘veto’ or ‘guardian’ coup.373 If … a society moves into the phase of mass participation without developing effective political institutions, the military become engaged in a conservative effort to protect the existing system against the incursions of the lower classes, particularly the urban lower classes. They become the guardians of the existing middle-class order … their historic role is to open the door to the middle class and to close it on the lower class.374 These ‘veto’ coups usually occur when groups which the military oppose win an election (or are certain to) or when a government in power moves in a radical direction or begins to court groups which the military opposes.375 This ‘guardianship’ ideology of the military, its function explicitly or implicitly recognised in many Latin American constitutions, is probably as universal an outlook as is possible to find among praetorian societies.

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If avoidance of radical praetorianism is extremely difficult, the move out of radical praetorianism and to a civic order is fraught with even greater obstacles. Going through various scenarios in meticulous detail, from the possibility of students building effective political institutions to that of the clergy doing so, Huntington concludes controversially that given very special circumstances, the military may be the only social force with the requisite qualities and capacities to build the political institutions needed for long-term stability. ‘ … [M]ilitary intervention, which many people consider to be the source of the evil in a praetorian society, may also be the source of the cure.’376 The most important examples of successful transitions to a civic order under military tutelage, according to the author, are the institutionalisation of the revolution in Mexico by Calles and the other military leaders at the end of the 1920s, Ayub Khan’s innovation of the ‘Basic Democracies’ in Pakistan after 1958, the creation of an effective party organisation in Turkey by Mustafa Kemal and Ismet Inönü from the early 1920s and Generals Pak and Kim’s constitutional innovations in South Korea in the early 1960s.377 The critical social precondition for these successes is the low level of articulation of the social forces in existence – the more complex and variegated the society, the more difficult the construction of effective political institutions under middle-class military leadership. At the oligarchical level of praetorianism, a viable, expansible party system depends upon the action of the aristocrats or oligarchs. If they take the initiative in the search for votes and the development of party organisation, a country may well move out of its praetorian condition in that phase. If it does not … the opportunity passes to the military. … If the military fail to seize that opportunity, the broadening of participation transforms the society into a mass praetorian system. In such a system the opportunity to create political institutions passes from the military, the apostles of order, to those other middle-class leaders who are the apostles of revolution.378 Huntington’s analysis of military intervention in the politics of transitional societies, while profoundly acute (his analysis of praetorianism, like his schema generally explains the riddle of the propensity of semi-peripheral countries towards political violence and disorder quite brilliantly), is too sanguine. From a more contemporary perspective, the conceptualisation of the military as being able to play the historic role of the middle class, or the belief in developmental prospects under military rule suggests a quite anachronistic view. Of course, this is with the benefit of hindsight after the ignominious jettisoning of numerous

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military regimes from Africa and Latin America. Still, by refusing to engage explicitly with the ethical dimension of politics, Huntington leaves himself open to greater criticism than that of just getting his prognosis wrong. Before we come to outline Huntington’s understanding and theorisation of the role of revolution in modernisation and in order to better understand why the purposeful construction of political parties necessary for long-term stability lags behind the mobilisation of new social forces into politics, we need to know how Huntington conceives of these institutions and their relationship to society.

Huntington’s theory of the state and the political community Political institutions generally become necessary, according to the author, when social forces – territorial, ethnic, religious, economic or status groups – conflict. ‘In the total absence of social conflict, political institutions are unnecessary; in the total absence of social harmony, they are impossible.’379 So, some form of community, however rudimentary, must exist prior to political institutions but once created they become primarily responsible for maintaining and indeed promoting that community. Taking a distinctly Durkheimean view, Huntington suggests that while for a simple society community is found in ‘the immediate relation of one person to another’, in more complex societies community involves three interrelated elements: (a) [S]ome compatibility of interests among the groups that compose society; (b) some definition in terms of general principle or ethical obligation of the bond which holds the groups together and which distinguishes its community from others; and, (c) the creation of political institutions involving and reflecting the moral consensus [b] and mutual interest [a].380 Only with the development of political institutions can linkages between individual interests and common interests be deepened and sustained over time as well as provide the basis for regenerating a sense of common purpose. Since, according to Huntington and in contrast to orthodox Marxist analyses, one of the basic consequences of modernisation is the multiplication of social forces rather than their reduction into two opposing classes, the more complex and variegated society becomes the more dependent it is on effective political institutionalisation.381

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The historical trajectory of modern polities outlined by the author suggests the movement from the rule of a small homogenous ruling class through social diversification over several centuries to the development of complex political institutions that assuage the demands of new social groups through varied forms of political socialisation. Because the building of political institutions takes considerable time and effort, as long as social change is slow, these can be created without too much risk of political decay. Besides the timing of this evolutionary process, another critical factor in the unfolding of a modern legitimate state able to fulfil its tasks of maintaining order, resolving conflict, selecting authoritative leaders and promoting community is the necessity of its institutions becoming increasingly independent of the social forces which created them in the first place. Only then can they ‘temper, moderate and redirect the power of each group so as to render the dominance of one social force compatible with the community of many’.382 Again, in his discussion of the state’s independence from social forces Huntington reveals a quite troubling view of political legitimacy. Given the moral role of political institutions in his theory, the author proposes a definition of ‘public interest’ in terms of the ‘concrete interests’ of the governing institutions. A society with highly institutionalized governing organizations and procedures is more able to articulate and achieve its public interests. The public interest, in this sense, is not something which exists a priori in natural law or the will of the people. Nor is it simply whatever results from the political process. Rather it is whatever strengthens governmental institutions. The public interest is the interest of public institutions.383 While one may or may not agree that the public interest is something created and brought into existence by the institutionalisation of governmental organisations in the first place, it surely does not necessarily follow that what is in the interest of a public institution must coincide with the interests of society. What is troubling here is the conception of legitimacy with which one is being asked to judge the matter. In contrast to the theory of representative government, under this concept governmental institutions derive their legitimacy and authority not from the extent to which they represent the interests of the people or any other group, but to the extent to which they have distinct interests of their own apart from all other groups.384 As we have seen, for Huntington, the quintessentially modern form of political organisation, the only form that transcends the interests of

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individuals and of social groups yet organises group interests with effective authority is the political party. Why do group interests organised by a political party diverge from what one might have called the ‘objective’ interests of social groups? Because the political party has its own distinct institutional interests different from class, ethnic, gender or status groups. However, one of the basic points of democratic legitimacy is to make it more likely than otherwise that the ‘unique’ interests of public offices, like the institutional interests of political parties, actually coincide with social interests. Why else bother with accountability, representation, checks and balances and so on? If, as Huntington suggests, ‘the moral basis of political institutions is rooted in the needs of men in complex societies’, then the increasing demands for these to be democratic must also be accounted for. The historical trajectory of most developing countries, according to the author, allowed for few if any of the developments referred to above. When social and economic change did come as a result of Western intervention, pressure and/or emulation, it was much too quick for stable and non-violent reform of political institutions. New as well as old social groups are mobilised without being politically socialised. Political institutions are themselves typically simple expressions of the interests of particular social groups and, what’s more, rudimentary political communities can hardly be said to exist in very many cases. Following Bertrand de Jouvenel, Huntington suggests that community means ‘the institutionalisation of trust’ and that ‘the essential function of public authorities’ is to ‘increase the mutual trust prevailing at the heart of the social whole’.385 If there is a lack of trust in the culture of a society then creating and sustaining public institutions becomes very much more difficult. According to Huntington, the Arab world, Latin America, Ethiopia, Iran, Burma and many other developing areas and countries as well as some developed ones may be characterised as ‘low-trust’ and therefore limiting individual loyalties to groups that are intimate and familiar.386 The undermining of traditional bases of association by social and economic forces in the context of such ‘low-trust’ cultures make creating ‘effective, adaptive, complex and rationalised organisations’ on which modern politics depend extremely problematic. ‘High-trust’ cultures we are told, on the other hand, develop new forms of association with much greater ease and are therefore less prone to ‘confused and chaotic’ politics. The ease with which traditional societies have adapted their political systems to the demands of modernity depends almost directly on the organizational skills and capacities of their people. Only those rare peoples possessed in large measure of such skills, such as the

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Japanese, have been able to make a relatively easy transition to a developed economy and a modern polity387 Given Japan’s history, it is indeed surprising, not to say incredible, to suggest that its transition to modernity was ‘relatively easy’. Japan’s modernisation, in fact, should serve as an excellent antidote to the conceptualisation of ‘domestic’ culture as somehow permanent and socially and politically determinant.388 For all its apparent cultural homogeneity and ‘high-trust’ status, seen from the broader perspective of its interaction with the global system, Japan’s transition to modernity was excruciating not only for the Japanese themselves but for their near and distant neighbours as well. For many developing countries, however, especially perhaps those of more recent historical construction, mistrust in the political culture due to ethnic heterogeneity or any number of other reasons can quite legitimately be added to such phenomena as the interaction between very unequal social structures with the rapid pace and unequal nature of social and economic change, the force of example of modern polities and the lack of broadly based representative state institutions to name but a few, as part of the explanation for incoherent and vulnerable political institutions. What is less than helpful is the conceptualisation of political community, clearly an important dimension of stable politics, in purely cultural terms – remembering Barrington Moore’s dismantling of such a conception – just as it is inappropriate to view it solely in class or ideological terms. As Huntington himself argues with rather more pessimism or paranoia than is justified, societies can actually overcome all kinds of historical legacies to construct modern organisations. The ultimate test of development is the capacity of a people to establish and maintain large, complex, but flexible organizational forms. The capacity to create such institutions, however, is in short supply in the world today. It is precisely the ability to meet this moral need and to create a legitimate public order which, above all else, communists offer modernizing countries.389 This brings us to the author’s theory of the ‘totalitarian’ path to political modernity and to the role of revolution in achieving it.

Modernisation and revolution The rarity of revolutionary transformation should in no way weaken the conclusion that in terms of causes it is characteristic of modernisation

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and, as with other forms of violence and political instability, Huntington suggests that it is most likely to occur in societies which have experienced some socio-economic development and where political institutionalisation has lagged well behind this development.390 Having occurred in either highly centralised traditional monarchies (France, Russia, China), narrowly based military dictatorships (Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, Cuba), or colonial regimes (Vietnam and Algeria), they represent the ‘extreme case of the explosion of political participation’ for the author.391 (He obviously could not count Nicaragua or Iran amongst the group and, from a contemporary perspective, it is interesting to note that the communist regimes were considered by the author to be pretty much invulnerable to revolution themselves because of their capacity to expand their power and to broaden participation within their system.) Of the most likely groups to be revolutionary, the lumpen proletariat, industrial workers, middle-class intelligentsia and peasantry, only an alliance between the last two could and had achieved this type of transition to modernity, itself a reasonable explanation for its relative rarity.392 The peasantry has been associated with revolution for a number of crucial reasons. First, being generally the most numerous members of society, for a revolution to be popular, the peasantry must be involved. When one considers that in a modern society the proportion of the population engaged in agriculture is almost insignificant, one begins to imagine the cost borne by the majority in a transitional society through the road to modernity, especially with the strengthening of the forces of modernisation since the early European transitions. The impact of Western concepts of individual land ownership on communal peasant organisation may play a part in worsening the conditions for many. The replacing of the extended family by the nuclear one may increase risks further and reduce the viability of plots. As traditional customs to land give way to commercial considerations, inequalities multiply. If the goal of private ownership is to create a system of individual proprietors, its effect is often ‘to hasten the reduction of the peasant to peonage.’393 Furthermore, while the industrial worker can gain along with the capitalist through economic growth, the peasant works on a factor of production that is much more limited by nature. In terms of land ownership, what the landlord gains, the peasant loses. Finally, as with the position of industrial workers in the first half of the nineteenth century in Europe and America, there are few recognised and accepted means through which peasants can advance their claims on political systems. Quoting Celso Futardo on the campesino movement in Brazil, the author drives this point home.

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Ours is an open society for the industrial worker, but not for the peasant. In effect, our political system permits the urban groups to organize in order to press their claims within the rules of the democratic game. The situation of the campesino is totally different. Since they have no rights whatsoever, they cannot have legal claims or bargaining power. If they organize, it is assumed that they do so with subversive ends in mind.394 Despite rhetoric or belief to the contrary, ideologically speaking, the bridging of the gap between peasantry and intelligentsia usually means that social and economic improvements for the peasantry and nationalism, as a response to either military threats or foreign investment, must be major components of the revolutionary appeal. ‘The common cause which produces the revolutionary alliance … is usually nationalism and the catalyst is usually a foreign enemy. … It is impossible to have a social revolution which is not also a nationalist revolution.’395 Being most often, in part, also a revolt against the dominant global system, Huntington recognises foreign intervention as a common consequence and thereby deepening of revolution as well. As for the most critical domestic political consequences of revolution they are seen as the destruction of the old political institutions and patterns of legitimacy; the mobilisation of new groups into politics; the redefinition of the political community; the acceptance of new political values and concepts of legitimacy; the conquest of power by a new and more dynamic political élite; and the creation of new and more resilient political institutions.396 In short, social revolutions achieve political modernity. For the ‘oligarchic’, ‘radical’ and ‘mass’ praetorian societies of the developing world caught in the tensions and contradictions of transition from traditional stability, successful revolution, according to Huntington, is the ally of stable order and ‘the truly helpless society is not one threatened by revolution but one incapable of it’.397 Far from being a ‘realistic’ account, from the perspective of the beginning of the twenty-first century, this view of the revolutionary path to modernity is surely too ‘idealist’. In relation to the possibilities of constructing political and socio-economic modernity, revolutions have lost most, if not all of their shine. Fundamentally, this is a problem arising from the fact that modernity itself is a moving target – a major reason for questioning Huntington’s inclusion of the Soviet Union as an example of a modern polity at all. In this sense, the author’s optimistic assessment of the long-term developmental prospects, especially of ‘Leninist’ revolution, seems, again, distinctly anachronistic. With regard to the

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legitimacy of revolutionary states, as has been argued previously, Huntington seems to conflate this matter with political and institutional stability generally, as the following extract suggests: ‘The 99 per cent turnouts in communist states are testimony to the strength of the political parties in those states; the 80 per cent turnouts in western Europe are a function of the highly developed organization of parties there; the 60 per cent turnouts produced by American parties reflect their looser and less highly articulated organization.’398 It may well be the case, of course, that revolution does in fact continue to offer some developing countries a quite legitimate way of resolving acute problems such as oppression from anti-democratic, authoritarian and dictatorial states of various kinds or of unjust and contradictory social systems.399 The point is that the historical record raises serious doubts about the ability of revolutionary states in the twentieth century to sustain that legitimacy over time – or, what may actually amount to the same thing, to sustain the social and political ‘progress’ which is rightly associated with many revolutions. If the ‘historical communist’ states (like their current survivors) were really legitimate in the commonly understood sense of that term, one has to question why so much effort was expended on domestic coercion, control and the denial of pluralism. Without much real possibility of expressing disapproval of the direction and detail of government policy, why should the claims of revolutionary states to legitimacy be believed?400 Nevertheless, Huntington’s assessment of the broad causes and consequences of revolution, even if the international dimension is considerably under-theorised, as well as the contextualisation of the phenomena within the specific boundaries of transitional societies is certainly correct.401

Reform and political change Defining reform as ‘a change in the direction of greater social, economic, or political equality, a broadening of participation in society and polity’, Huntington suggests that the task of a reformer may be even more difficult than that of a revolutionary.402 Given the preceding analysis, it is not difficult to see why. The reformer faces opposition from conservatives and from revolutionaries, has to balance socioeconomic change and political change – ‘the basic dilemma facing all transitional societies’ – has to be adept at manipulating social forces and sophisticated in the control of social change. Dangers lurk everywhere for the reformer. If at certain periods of time and under certain conditions, reform seems quite able to avert more radical demands, at other

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times it may serve to precipitate revolution. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, the extension of suffrage, factory legislation, recognition of unions, wages and hours laws, social security and unemployment insurance are widely believed to have defused revolutionary demands. On the other hand, as Mikhail Gorbachev found to his cost, limited mobilisations necessary for reform can lead to runaway mobilisation of the kind associated with revolution. Huntington argues that for modernising countries a basic tension exists between the achievement of social and economic equality, on the one hand, and political equality on the other. Giving more power to opposition groups through greater political equality, for instance, can slow change on the socio-economic front. Kemalist Turkey is cited as an example of the progress in carrying out fundamental social and economic changes achieved through a highly concentrated one-party political system. ‘The shift to a competitive party system after World War II … expanded political participation, made politics more democratic, but also slowed down and in some areas even reversed the process of social-economic reform.’403 For the oligarchic regimes of Latin America, the problem was the exact opposite – to achieve socio-economic reform, the power of the ruling class needed to be curbed by expanding participation to opposition groups. Because of this, the reformer in Latin America seemed more revolutionary due to the need to support change on all fronts while the conservative seemed more reactionary because of the opposition to both socio-economic and political reform. This polarisation contributed to the violence of Latin American politics during the twentieth century and, indeed, the author argues that violence or the imminent likelihood of it is a characteristic element of reform politics generally. It is not violence per se but rather the shock and the novelty involved in the employment of an unfamiliar or unusual political technique that serves to promote reform. It is the demonstrated willingness of a social group to go beyond the accepted patterns of action which gives impetus to its demands. In effect, such action involves the diversification of political techniques and a threat to existing political organization and procedures.404 Whether reform is to serve as catalyst or substitute for revolution depends upon how agriculture is reformed, according to Huntington. Urban intellectuals being consistently against public policies of any description, it is the response of the peasantry that is most crucial to

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the success of land reforms in transitional countries. Because of their potentially revolutionary role, their material condition must be of prime concern to reformers. Also, given the zero-sum nature of the landlord/ peasant conflict, the former must be dispossessed if the latter is to benefit from land reforms. However, for this to occur it is necessary for there to be a concentration of power in a non-land-owning élite plus the mobilisation of the peasants in support of the reforms. Not surprisingly, the most effective means of achieving such a conjunction is through revolution. More surprisingly perhaps, ‘the second most effective means of bringing about land reform is by foreign occupation’.405 While colonialism has played a massive role in altering how land is organised in the developing world, the fundamental redistribution of land carried out by the United States while militarily occupying Japan and to a lesser extent Korea serves as an interesting reminder that ‘[p]aradoxically, the most comprehensive land reforms after WWII were produced either by communist revolution or by American military occupation’.406 As a dominant force in the global system, the role of the United States in pushing countries towards reform generally and land reform in particular carries the danger of stimulating nationalist resentment in transitional countries and therefore of backfiring against domestic reform efforts – the former, a major danger of the current war in Iraq, the latter, a major danger in the rest of the Middle East. In any case, as we have already seen, Huntington warns against the presumption that socio-economic change correlates with political stability and the author calls attention to the contrast between this American presumption in the domestic sphere with that in the international sphere. ‘Have-not classes are assuaged, have-not governments only aroused. Domestic concessions are good; they are called reforms. International concessions are bad; they are called appeasement.’407 Because of the coalition of social forces needed to carry out land reform, unless a parliamentary system has a non-land-owning dominant political party, democracy is often incompatible with it. The low level of political institutionalisation characteristic of transitional countries coupled with the concentration of wealth and social status in the hands of traditional élites means that when countries do have parliaments they are often dominated by these groups with a vested interest in blocking reforms. ‘Democratic governments are able to enact land reforms where there are vigorous and popular executive leadership and strong party organizations with a corporate interest in winning the peasant vote.’408 However, even in the case of India, a modern polity for Huntington, once the first stages of land reforms associated with British

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rule were completed, the process slowed right down due to the influence and wealth of major landowners.409 If peasants are in a substantial majority, democracy is so threatening to the position of landlords that the only alternative for them within the system is their complete control of it. Unless organisational links between government and peasants are created and landlords are bypassed through coalitions of social forces committed to the enactment of land reforms, they are most unlikely to occur. Until effective political parties are created which can accomplish this, democracy serves the interests of traditional élites too easily. For modernising countries, the central imperative is the concentration of power in the political system not the pluralisation of it. The only reason why democracy is on the political agenda at all is because of the unequal nature of global development and the character of ‘world-historicaltime’ that raises the prospect for social groups within transitional societies of political modernity through emulation.

Modernisation and corruption: politically functional? One last important and extremely relevant political consequence of social and economic modernisation is that of corruption (the use of public office for private gain). Huntington provides three answers to the question of why modernisation breeds corruption. The first involves changes in the values and norms of modernising societies. In particular it means the gradual acceptance by groups within society of universalistic and achievement-based norms, the emergence of loyalties and identifications of individuals and groups with the nation-state, and the spread of the assumption that citizens have equal rights against the state and equal obligations to the state.410 The groups to accept these new norms first, according to the author, are those who have been exposed to foreign influences including students and military officers. What were previously accepted as traditional patterns of behaviour come to be seen as corrupt in light of modern norms and as new standards of right and wrong battle old ones, the danger is that the legitimacy of all standards is progressively undermined. In this way, the distinctions between public welfare and private interest, between public expenditure and the private purse and between obligation to the state and to the family, become accepted only very partially and unevenly resulting in chaotic relations between state and society.411 The second connection between modernisation and corruption is in the building of bridges between social groups and the state – it is

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a function of the lag between the expansion of political consciousness and participation on the one hand and the construction of effective political institutions on the other. Those with new sources of wealth buy political influence and are politically assimilated in the process while at the other end of the social structure political support may be traded for jobs and favours. Either way, the very fluidity and vagueness of the norms and rules governing relations between state and society may lead to a functional form of corruption in that it acts as a crucial source of social and political mobility and partial socialisation. Like machine politics or clientalistic politics in general, corruption provides immediate, specific, and concrete benefits to groups which might otherwise be thoroughly alienated from society … . Corruption serves to reduce group pressures for policy changes, just as reform serves to reduce class pressures for structural changes.412 Modernisation may also be said to breed corruption by greatly multiplying the opportunities for it. As governmental activities and functions such as regulation and legislation expand so too do the opportunities for corrupt practices. This is especially so when laws have little public support, when detection and/or enforcement are difficult due to fiscal or many other pressures and when the profits from corruption are vast. Even though its extensiveness seems a reasonable measure of the absence of effective political institutionalisation, there is another link between corruption and political instability according to the author. This is due to the political reaction of the modernising elements in society for whom the elimination of corrupt practices is the highest goal of public action. Corruption and fanatical anti-corruption both have similar and ultimately destabilising effects. Both challenge the autonomy of politics: one substituting private goals for public ones and the other replacing political values with technical ones. The escalation of standards in a modernizing society and the concomitant devaluation and rejection of politics represent the victory of the values of modernity over the needs of society.413 If the processes of modernisation encourage corruption, differences in the extent and scope of its entrenchment are best explained by the nature of the changing traditional societies themselves, according to the author. The key variables suggesting lower prevalence of corruption include cultural homogeneity, highly articulated class or caste structure and consequently modernising ‘feudal’ societies rather than ‘centralised

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bureaucratic’ ones are apt to be less vulnerable to endemic corruption.414 The argument here is that the more ‘value systems’ there are in one society the more confusing the rules and the looser the social stratification the less effective the norms. However, if for no other reason than the impossibility of accurate measurement, this approach seems rather less than reliable, especially when ‘mulatto’ countries are contrasted with ‘Indian’ and ‘mestizo’ ones.415 Huntington is on stronger ground when elucidating more general patterns of causation such as the lack of multiple opportunities for private wealth accumulation in developing countries, the obstacles to such opportunities raised by unchecked political and economic power, the force of example set by corrupt élites, the dominance of foreign capital and a general disregard for the rule of law.416 All in all, the prevalence of corruption would seem to indicate serious developmental problems. Huntington, however, argues for a more optimistic view. First, as already indicated, corruption may contribute to political stability if it serves as a source of vertical mobility and political socialisation. Second, if its prevalence is limited to the lower levels of the political and bureaucratic hierarchy, it may enhance the stability of the system by substituting wealth for ambition. Third, although transaction costs may well be raised in the process, corruption that subverts the expansion of governmental regulation may actually stimulate economic development. As the author puts it, ‘[i]n terms of economic growth, the only thing worse than a society with a rigid, over-centralized, dishonest bureaucracy is one with a rigid, over-centralized, honest bureaucracy’.417 Finally, political development may itself be assisted if governmental bureaucracy is corrupted in the interests of political parties, rather than strictly for private gain. The use of public funds for the purpose of creating and sustaining political parties is in the long-term interest of political stability, according to Huntington, because these are the principal institutions of modern politics whose basic function is to organise and structure political participation; their effective institutionalisation ultimately undermines the conditions that breed corruption.418 While not denying the importance of such a process in the national histories of many countries, if this proposition was absolutely true one would expect the former Soviet Union, for instance, to have become impervious to corruption given the state’s complete subordination to the purposes of the ruling party. This is another clear example of Huntington’s overestimation of the political virtues of communist power.419 As with the experience of ‘historical communism’ in Europe so too with current practice in China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba; relative to the population as a whole,

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quite extraordinary private privileges accrue to the party nomenclature and the higher one is in the pecking order the greater the privileges. Furthermore, examples of rival political parties in the developing world retaining intimate links with thugs – of the para-military variety or otherwise – recruited, trained and armed with the proceeds of corruption are legion, for example, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, Zimbabwe and so on. If Huntington has in mind the relatively mild type of corruption associated with Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats in Germany, it is rare indeed for it not to advance to the much more insidious variety in most countries. Generally, despite the ingenuity of Huntington’s arguments that corruption can be politically, socially and economically functional in particular periods for particular countries, it is much more likely that its ubiquity corrodes public morale and political legitimacy by convincing citizens that the entire domain of the state is purely parasitic. In addition, the astonishing profits of the world drugs trade which have wholly transformed the context faced by public officials in all countries since the late 1960s is a reminder of the international dimensions of corruption and should give one great pause in agreeing with Huntington’s positive views of it.420 The blatant flouting of laws and norms by public officials for private or party gain can only serve society generally by reminding ordinary people of the illegitimacy of the state that tolerates or engages in corruption and therefore by stimulating change. The major dilemma is that change may thus be stimulated in a democratic direction or in an authoritarian one.421

The global system and the prospects for democracy For our purposes, the critical lines of Huntington’s argument are clear; modernisation is driven by the interplay between the international sphere and domestic socio-economic, cultural and political systems of rule and its predominant political consequence for developing countries is political instability. The role of the global system is crucial. It is the major contextual variable in that the differences between modern, traditional and transitional or modernising societies arise only in the context of the globally uneven character of development. The fact of modern and traditional features within countries attests to the ‘combined’ character of this development.422 The global system is also the source and conduit of modernisation. In this regard, Huntington clearly points to the force of example in the transmission of ideas and practices – political ideologies and

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consciousness, political techniques, institutional innovations, organisational modes – which forms a crucial part of the processes of transformation. The role of geopolitical competition and the imperatives associated with the maintenance of domestic security in stimulating modernising efforts is also well developed by the author. The role of the Cold War dynamic is particularly evident, forming the backdrop to the entire analysis, when discussing the strengths of communism over those of the western liberal model of political, institutional organisation. The historic role of colonialism in shaping many of the contradictions and fissures within transitional societies, the effect of war and the varied political significance and impact of nationalist reaction against all types of foreign intrusion also play an important part in the analysis. Finally, the changing configurations of the interplay between international context and domestic socio-economic and political systems in terms of ‘world-historical-time’ is fundamentally important to Huntington’s scheme.423 Perhaps more than anything else, the fact that transitional societies in the current period face simultaneous demands (international and domestic) for increased political participation and democratisation, centralisation of authority, national integration, social mobilisation, economic development and increased social welfare to name but a few, while earlier modernisers faced only a fraction of these and most often sequentially, attests to the importance of ‘worldhistorical-time’ as a category of social scientific understanding. Its changing nature is that of modernity itself. While there is nothing mentioned of the possibility of international institutions impacting on modernising societies, one can perhaps suggest that the ‘conditionality’ associated with the International Monetary Fund was a few years off yet. Nevertheless, the role of the United Nations either in promulgating specific forms of modernity or acting primarily as a forum where states in the developing world could justify their regimes on the basis of common difficulties and historical legacies could have formed part of the analysis. That the example of and ‘conditionality’ associated with supra-national organisations like the EU did not feature is also understandable, especially given that the extraordinary cases of political transformations related to its development, that of Spain, Portugal and Greece, were again in the future. Nevertheless, if Huntington’s use of the category of ‘traditional’ may be criticised on the basis of its residual character, the same is also true of his conception of the global system. Even with regard to the contextual backdrop of the text, the lack of theory and discussion on the imperialist tendencies which the Cold War itself may be said to have generated beyond the apparent attractiveness to developing countries of the

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communist model is surprising. This was, after all, a quite unique version of geopolitical competition – one based on a bifurcated view of modernity, arrayed globally. The fact, for example, that many of the twentieth-century national liberation struggles actually occurred during the Cold War meant that pre- and post-independence instability was often reinforced by international pressures associated with this rivalry and, in many cases, military intervention. Equally important, the lack of theorisation of the international political economy – of capitalism and the myriad permutations of constraints, opportunities and structurations that result from the interface between the domestic and international spheres – is a major problem. There is, for example, no conception of the economic relationship between early and late developers consequent upon the export of primary products as a major historical legacy of colonialism and the ‘expansion of Europe’.424 The analysis is also very weak on the impact of the First World War, the Great Depression and the Second World War on developing countries – especially Latin American ones – and the challenge to liberalism (political and economic) posed by economic nationalists, populists and socialists. There is, furthermore, no engagement with the structural dependency critique which prescribed economic self-sufficiency to combat the political and economic dominance of some states and economies over others namely, imperialism and give substance to political independence.425 One reason why Lenin is so clearly and explicitly preferred to Marx, it may be suggested, is because the critique of capitalism gets second billing to the political threat of communist party mobilisation. As for the relationship between the global system and democracy in all this, the message of the text is clear: the political instability and disorder consequent upon modernisation makes liberal democracy a most inappropriate form of politics rather than simply an unlikely one for countries in the developing world. The fundamental problem with democracy for transitional societies is that it tends to fragment and diffuse power rather than concentrate it. If it doesn’t disperse power, it is often because traditional élites have a stranglehold on the system that militates against modernising reforms; if it does, the authority needed to modernise society is dissipated and disorder ensues. Quoting Madison approvingly, Huntington believes the lack of authority to be the most pressing problem for developing countries. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.426

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This lack of authority gives communism a distinct advantage over the West precisely because of its rejection of democracy and pluralism. ‘The real challenge which the communists pose to modernizing countries is not that they are so good at overthrowing governments (which is easy), but that they are so good at making governments (which is a far more difficult task).’427 Closing this ‘political gap’ was much more important than closing the ‘economic gap’, according to Huntington, the wrongheaded priority of American policy-makers. If democracy was ever to be as successful as communism for transitional societies in the context of the latter half of the twentieth century, the construction and institutionalisation of political parties had to be attended to first. As we have seen, political parties are the necessary instruments for mobilisation; elections and parliaments by contrast are the instruments of representation.428 The latter are quite compatible with traditional society so long as they basically serve to represent the dominant forces in the social structure. The one ray of hope given to democrats by Huntington is the suggestion that once political parties are effectively institutionalised and social and economic modernisation proceeds, the demand for political participation may extend to the demand for universal representation. ‘Organisation is the road to political power, but it is also the foundation of political stability and thus the precondition of political liberty.’429 Nonetheless, pluralism being essentially problematised, the role of working-class movements not to mention other social movements such as women’s rights and human rights groups in promoting sustainable pluralistic politics plays no role in Huntington’s analysis.

Conclusion The preceding analysis argues against the optimistic view of the prospects for democracy associated with liberal internationalism, at least in the foreseeable future, due to the consequences of modernisation for transitional societies. This view has much to commend it, not least the fact that so few developing countries have actually managed to sustain democratic polities despite many attempts to do so or that the struggle between modernisers and their opponents is so evident in regions of the developing world like the Middle East. Furthermore, the central thesis that it is transitional societies – neither ‘fully industrialised’ nor ‘pastoral or hunter-gatherer’ – that are politically problematic, both domestically and internationally, is shared by many who have thought long and hard on this subject.430

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Ultimately, however, the problem with assigning legitimacy to authoritarian regimes on the basis of their ostensibly greater ability to deliver political stability, as Huntington clearly does, is not so much that attention is directed away from political agency, sectional interests and resources as crucial dimensions of political hegemony as one might expect. Huntington is actually very thorough on these counts. The problem is rather that political legitimacy can never be assumed and must be tested rigorously through the very processes most often rejected by authoritarian regimes. The fact that so many of the non-communist as well as communist dictatorships proved to be unstable in the longer run suggests, as liberal internationalism argues, that the concentration of political power, certainly a pre-condition of modern politics, is not the only key to the problems of ‘changing societies’ but that political legitimacy is also necessary for long-term stability. To be fair to its author, much of his intellectual energy since its publication in 1968 has been expended on trying to explain why the number of democracies in the world has actually increased. In his last major contribution to this issue-area he suggested that the most significant factor correlating with democratic transitions was that of increased prosperity associated with global economic growth since the 1960s (higher living standards, increased education and expanded middle class). Other factors included ‘the deepening legitimacy problems of authoritarian regimes’, the actions and policies of institutions and governments ‘external to that country’ (specifically, the EU, the Vatican, the United States and the Soviet Union) and the demonstration effect of other successful democratic transitions.431 Clearly, the international dimension cannot be ignored when assessing the prospects for democracy but the pessimism of the conclusions of Political Order in Changing Societies in this regard should serve to remind us of the profound changes that have taken place since its publication and of the obscurity of the imminent in human history.

5 David Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’432

Introduction The purpose of this chapter on David Held is to generate insights into the relationship between democracy and the global system from a text that is explicitly concerned with the interactions between the domestic and international domains, the historical origins and development of liberal democracy and the prospects of its survival in the context of globalisation. The author argues that the liberal democratic form of state is the product of several interrelated factors including the development of social struggles associated with demands for collective and individual autonomy, the development of capitalism and the development of liberalism in the context of the interaction between the international and domestic domains. While it is evident that much of this can be made to fit liberal internationalist thought – democracy arising out of the nature of man, of domestic politics and capitalism, and of the interstate system – the chapter argues that Held’s analytical framework offers some important advances on this thought. The major advance arises precisely from the contextualising of domestic socio-economic and political change within the global system and from the complexities that result from domestic/ international interactions. This suggests, for example, that the liberal democratic form of state is, as with Barrington Moore’s analysis, as much the result of inter-state rivalry and competition, including the preparation for and prosecution of war, as it is of the force of example from a successful transition to democracy in any one state – a Realist route to Kantianism. Despite there being a lack of sustained interest in the question of why some states failed to result in the liberal democratic form, the chapter 136

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nevertheless argues that Held’s analytical framework is highly judicious and allows for more convincing explanations for this than does liberal internationalism. Nevertheless, to make up for this shortfall in the cumulative development of the argument against liberal internationalist optimism with regard to the diffusion of democracy worldwide, it also critically assesses two other frameworks – ‘dependency theory’ and the theory of ‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ – which attempt in part to explain the lack of democracy in the developing world. This chapter argues that the contingency at the heart of ‘uneven and combined development’, including as it does the concept of ‘world-historicaltime’, makes it a more appropriate theoretical framework for understanding dynamic changes at the domestic and international level than the determinism of these approaches. Finally, this chapter offers a number of points that while not necessarily contradictory of Held’s major arguments nevertheless represent attempts to make them more relevant to the limited purposes of this thesis. These include the suggestion that definitions of the state must distinguish more robustly between its ideologically loaded ideal and its historically contingent reality, both of which are necessary for an understanding of politics, and the suggestion that many of the global processes and forces associated with limiting the efficacy of the liberal democratic form of state may also be seen as actually promoting its international diffusion. Ultimately, it is argued here that the domestic institutionalisation and consolidation of liberal democracy is itself a precondition to the establishment of a cosmopolitan democracy which Held’s analysis is designed to promote.

Democracy and the global order David Held’s book Democracy and the Global Order is an extremely ambitious work. In it, among a great many other things, the author offers an account of the historical development of the modern nationstate and of the international states-system, an assessment of historical models of democracy, a critique of the limits of the dominant form of state – the liberal democratic state – and a detailed prescription for overcoming many of these limitations in the form of a cosmopolitan institutional order. From the perspective of this study, what is perhaps most appealing about it, besides its evident scholarship, is its consistent contextualisation of democracy, in both theory and practice, ‘within the system of nation-states, international legal regulation and world political economy’, namely, the global system.433 As the title makes plain, this is

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fundamentally a study of the relationship between democracy and the global order. As with the previous chapters, it is perhaps best to be clear from the start about the divergence between Held’s ‘problematique’ and the overarching thesis question of this study. While the author is primarily concerned with reformulating democratic theory and practice in light of the forces of globalisation, this thesis is primarily concerned with the international/transnational forces that may be said to promote or hinder the spread of liberal democracy to polities across the globe. Perhaps this is an ‘old’ paradigm approach stuck as it is with a conception of democracy anchored in functional terms within domestic institutional complexes – even if constituted by the interaction between domestic and international/transnational forces and processes – rather than above and across polities. My view is that these are complementary approaches rather than contradictory ones. After all, Held’s project for cosmopolitan democracy is clearly more appropriate for the politics of advanced liberal democracies such as those of the current European Union (EU) than for the majority of states, which do not have functioning democratic regimes domestically. In this sense, the differences in our respective inquiries may appear contradictory as when, for example, a point which seems to suggest the diminution of state authority in light of globalised forces may actually bode well for democratisation, if not for the democratic state’s ability to absolutely determine its fate. As Held suggests, ‘there is a striking paradox to note about the contemporary era: from Africa to Eastern Europe, Asia to Latin America, more and more nations and groups are championing the idea of “the rule of the people”; but they are doing so at just that moment when the very efficacy of democracy as a national form of political organization appears open to question.’434 And yet, precisely because so many of the world’s states are undemocratic, the reduction in their room for manoeuvre stemming from international and transnational pressures may in fact herald new possibilities for political openings to oppositional forces. The two sides of the paradox, in other words, may have common causes. Either way, there is much in Held’s approach that relates specifically to the thesis question investigated here. Essentially, the virtue of contextualising democracy within the global system is that it shifts the focus on social forces and processes away from an exclusively endogenous or exogenous orientation to one concerned with the interrelations between the two. If the global system does play a crucial role in social and political change then the interaction between the international and domestic spheres must be centre stage. Held’s major lines of argument

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with regard to the interrelated nature of the historical development of the modern nation-state and of the international states-system, his account of the international dimensions of the development of the liberal democratic state – how liberal democracies have ‘crystallized at the intersection of national and international forces’435 – as well as his views of the dynamics of the current global system and its various effects on societies and polities are all extremely relevant sources of insight for this study.

The rise of liberal democracy Before embarking on an assessment of the so-called ‘challenges’ to democracy posed by the global system currently – thereby giving us a good idea of how the author conceives of the international and transnational forces acting upon polities and, crucially, how they interact with each other – it is important to understand how and why one variant of democracy, the liberal democratic one, came about and, indeed, came to achieve hegemonic prominence internationally. As one might expect, the answers to these questions are extremely complicated and, apart from a careful theoretical and practical (historical) consideration of three models of democracy, namely, the republican, liberal and Marxist models, Held takes the reader from ancient Athens through dozens of centuries of European political theory and practice – from early feudalism to the emergence of sovereignty, Absolutism, constitutional Monarchies and Republics, to the rise of the modern nation-state and its various forms including the liberal democratic nation-state – in three extremely compact and trenchant chapters.436 For our purposes, however, we can begin with Held’s understanding of what constitutes the modern state – its fundamental features – before assessing the causal explanations as to the determination of the liberal democratic variant. Noting the inevitable controversy of definitions in political analysis, Held defines the modern state as follows: ‘Modern states developed as nation-states – political apparatuses, distinct from both ruler and ruled, with supreme jurisdiction over a demarcated territorial area, backed by a claim to a monopoly of coercive power, and enjoying legitimacy as a result of a minimum level of support or loyalty from their citizens.’437 The most salient conceptual and institutional innovations approximated by the modern state, namely, territoriality, control of the means of violence, impersonal structure of power and claims to legitimacy are included in this definition.438 Yet the matter of political community – what the term ‘nation’ presumably refers to – is treated solely as an administrative and territorial category rather than a social one.

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(Of course, if ‘nation’ is to refer to people or even to ‘the people’ rather than to the ‘unification of an administrative apparatus over precisely defined territorial boundaries’ then it would be impossible to avoid the endless controversies associated with theories of nationalism.439 ) The reason given for this avoidance is that there are numerous types of nation-states, some of which approximate the ‘ideal-type’ of a ‘nation’ constituted by a people who share ‘a strong linguistic, religious, and symbolic identity’ which is coextensive with a state and some that do not have these features.440 However, one need not accept ‘primordial’ conceptions of the ‘nation’ to suggest at least one distinction of relevance to the historical study of democracy, namely, that between ethnic and civic conceptions of the ‘nation’. The contention is that given the sociological reality of ethnic heterogeneity for the vast majority of countries, those in which the latter form of nationalism is most prominent, with attachments to institutions as more important than to ethnicity – and all nationalisms tend to have combinations of each – often have at least one less obstacle to the eventual establishment of an inclusive liberal democracy.441 This may well amount to putting the cart before the horse, however, in that the understanding of the nation as a community of citizens rather than as a historical and ethnic community probably owes as much to the triumph of liberalism within specific states as to anything else.442 Nevertheless, the various historical and contemporaneous forms of the modern state are said by the author to testify to the main institutional and conceptual features outlined above. Here, Held distinguishes between four forms, namely, the constitutional, the liberal, the liberal/representative democratic and the single-party state.443 The constitutional state ‘refers to implicit and/or explicit limits on political or state decision-making, limits which can be either procedural or substantive’.444 Over time, constitutionalism came to represent a key feature of European liberalism, namely, that the state should be limited in scope and constrained in practice. The liberal state came to be defined ‘by the attempt to create a private sphere independent of the state, and by a concern to reshape the state itself, that is, by freeing civil society – personal, family, religious and business life – from unnecessary political interference, and simultaneously delimiting the state’s authority’.445 Its fundamental institutions included constitutionalism, private property, the competitive market economy and the patriarchal family.446 After extensive social struggle for the broadening of the franchise to the working classes, women and ethnic minorities, the liberal state was transformed into the liberal or representative democratic state. The rules

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and institutions without which, according to Held, liberal democracy cannot be said to exist are as follows: (a) The constitutional entrenchment of control over governmental policy in elected officials; (b) the establishment of mechanisms for the choice and peaceful removal of elected officials in frequent, fair and free elections; (c) the right to vote for all adults in such elections (unless legitimately disbarred due to severe mental illness or criminal conviction); (d) the right to run for public office; (e) an effective right for each citizen to freedom of expression, including the freedom to criticize the conduct of government and the socio-economic system in which it is embedded; (f) accessible sources of information other than those controlled by government or by any other single body or group; and, (g) an established right to form and join independent associations, whether they be political, social or cultural, that could shape public life through legitimate, peaceful means.447 Finally, the single-party state, on the basis that a single party can be the legitimate expression of the overall will of the community, is considered. So, how do these examples stand up to the definition of the modern state provided by the author? Considering the four features outlined above, namely, territoriality, control of the means of violence, impersonal structure of power and legitimacy it is indeed quite difficult to suggest that many existing or historical states fit these criteria with much precision or at least without major qualification. For example, if control of the means of violence suggests the full and stable pacification (demilitarisation) of social groups, then many contemporary states do not qualify on these grounds including the United Kingdom, Spain and, of course, the United States, if for different historical differences. Equally, if impersonal structure of power is at the very least to mean that the ‘rule of law’ (whether or not this entails private property and contract law) rather than the ‘rule by law’ is not in question then, again, very many countries, including but not exclusively single-party states, do not qualify. Furthermore, the problem with smuggling legitimacy into the very definition of the modern state is that one needs to differentiate between different types of legitimacy – something which the author has been particularly good at in other work448 – and, of course, that as a key concept, legitimacy directs attention away from political

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agency, sectional interests and resources as crucial dimensions of political hegemony. Finally, the criterion of territoriality, like the others, is more of a claim than a reality for many states. These difficulties indicate not only that the given definition of the modern state seems to be ideologically loaded with liberal aspirations – which one can subscribe to quite legitimately as it were – but that very many states in the world, perhaps even a substantial majority, have simply not developed along the lines implied by this definition. It seems then that at best only successful, stable liberal democratic states are truly modern – a misconception that demonstrates the importance of distinguishing, in definitions of the state, between its ideal and its historically contingent reality. That its ideal is in part the product of contentious ideological conviction needs also to be made explicit. For all this, a crucial theoretical conclusion is reached – which can help us understand why modern states do not, in fact, fit easily with any homogenous definition – in response to the questions earlier, namely, that three ‘macro-patterns’ can be seen as causally related to the rise of the modern liberal democratic nation-state and its international hegemony; these are, war and militarism, the emergence of capitalism and the struggle for citizenship.449 All three patterns, which will be considered in turn, clearly involve domestic and international interactions with distinct dynamics in terms of the institutionalisation of liberal democracy or otherwise. Quite rightly, Held first warns against simplistic unilinear determinations. These macro-patterns all involve deeply structured processes of change taking place over long periods; they cannot be collapsed into a single historical narrative, because they all developed according to different historical time scales, the intersection of which helped generate the rise of the modern liberal democratic state.450 It will be argued that they also helped generate other non-democratic forms of state as well.

War and militarism: the first ‘macro-pattern’ According to Held, the ‘nature’ and ‘form’ of the modern states system as well as the ‘shape’ of the state, in terms of its ‘size’, ‘external configuration’, ‘organizational structure’, ‘ethnic composition’, ‘material infrastructure’ and so on, were largely determined at the intersection of the international and national spheres.451

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At the heart of the processes involved was the ability of states to secure and strengthen their power bases and, thereby, to order their affairs, internally and externally. What was at issue, in short, was the capacity of states to organize the means of coercion (armies, navies and other forms of military might) and to deploy them when necessary.452 That the military functions of the state were of principal importance in its development is demonstrated by analyses of state finances over many centuries. Taking the case of the development of the English state, the figures indicate that ‘from about the twelfth to the nineteenth century, between 70 and 90 per cent’ of its financial resources were devoted to these functions, especially to the preparation and prosecution of foreign wars.453 Despite the character of the state in question, whether it was ‘absolutist’ or ‘constitutional’, the very high proportion of expenditure devoted to the military was apparently quite uniform. Given the structure of states (their dependence on resources extracted from society, the contested basis of power and authority etc.), and of the states-system (political units in a competitive and adversarial, ‘self-help’ framework), ‘the development and maintenance of a coercive capability were central to the development of the state’ and to their chances of survival.454 By this account, then, the institutional development of the modern state in terms of its administration, bureaucracy and coercive capability can be traced back to the interaction between increasingly territorially bound and limited systems of rule and an international sphere characterised by potentially deadly rivalry. To compete successfully internationally meant to organise effectively domestically and vice versa. The process of state-making, and the formation of the modern states system, was to a large degree the result, as Poggi has observed, ‘of the strenuous efforts made by rulers, each by means of his/her apparatus of rule, to widen and secure their power base and to increase their own effectiveness and discretion in managing and mobilizing societal resources.’455 This escalating need to co-ordinate and control subject populations, given the increasing scale of war, can also be related to the emergence of a more consensual state. As Göran Therborn probably overestimates, the democratisation of the modern nation-state was largely a ‘martial accomplishment’.456 The logic of this dynamic is that the more the state required of society in terms of men, food, all manner of supplies, and, of course, of finance, the more potential leverage did social groups have in

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relation to the state. Held quotes the following passage from Robert Dahl to great effect. … to see oneself as a member of a nation, a privilege for which one was expected to make sacrifices, could also justify one in making a more expansive claim, including a right to a fair share in governing … or at any rate [as] entitled to the franchise. Countries with mass armies … ushered in the Age of Democratic Revolutions. It was under these historical conditions in which military organisation and technology were more favourable to democratisation than they had been for many centuries that … the institutions of polyarchy [liberal democracy as defined by Held on p. 51] took root in one country after another.457 The allusion here to membership of a political community (the nation) is also vital to the argument. There is every indication that war itself was/is instrumental to the development of national consciousness and that a heightened sense of national belonging – obviously useful for states – has in many circumstances coincided with demands for political and even social equality to bring about quite radical change.458 We have already commented on the socially transforming power of war especially with regard to the extension of the franchise and the development of welfare states in previous chapters. This is frequently related not simply to the organised demand for changes on the part of distinct social strata or groups, nor solely to the institutional and organisational requirements of states, but also to related broad attitudinal shifts in society at large. According to Amartya Sen: The expansion of programs of support for nutrition, health care and so on in Britain was not uniformly fast over the decades. There were two periods of remarkably fast expansion of support-oriented policies in [the 20th] century; they occurred during the two world wars. During the First World War, there were remarkable developments in social attitudes about ‘sharing’ and public policies aimed at achieving that sharing … During the Second World War also, unusually supportive and shared social arrangements developed, related to the psychology of sharing in beleaguered Britain, which made these radical public arrangements for the distribution of food and health care acceptable and effective.459 Despite all these possible connections between war/militarism and the eventual development of liberal democracy, Held rightly reminds the

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reader of the variety of historical trajectories leading to this outcome. States such as Austria, Germany, Italy and Japan institutionalised democracy ultimately not through the stimulus provided by mass mobilisation warfare but through defeat or imposition. Furthermore, preparation for war and a heightened sense of nationalism were/are, as often as not, opportunities for states to deny any concessions to opposition forces and for military organisations to increase their influence on public policy. In addition, even if one accepts these historical connections as feasible for mainly Western European states, the vast majority of countries and territories from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries experienced precious little democratic practice at the hands of their domestic and foreign rulers. The extension of the franchise to working-class males in Europe more or less coincides with ‘the age of empire’.460 This brings us to a crucial point. If there is such a thing as a true prerequisite for the establishment of democratic politics it is this; state power must first be consolidated before ‘institutional contestation’ can take place.461 To the extent that the processes and dynamics explored here are related to the consolidation of modern states then they also relate to the achievement of this prerequisite. But these processes and dynamics are also implicated in the delaying and challenging of state consolidation internationally and therefore in undermining the prospects for democracy. Clearly, the logic of mass mobilisation warfare, despite its potential to ‘politicise’ large numbers of people, to provide an impetus towards greater social and political equality, and to shift the balance of power between state and civil society towards the latter, cannot be said on its own to explain the advent of liberal democracy nor its international hegemony, though it does help in shedding light on some of the broad developments associated with the emergence of modern states.

The development of capitalism: the second ‘macro-pattern’ Held begins this section with a string of characteristically cogent questions. 1. How does consideration of economic relations, and of the impact of the development of capitalism … affect the view of states as competing geopolitical entities under pressure to extend the process of representation to all those called upon to serve them?

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2. Did the modern state system shape and constrain the modern capitalist economy as it developed after AD 1500? 3. Or was the formation of the capitalist economy on a progressively more international basis a, if not the, prime determinant of the scope or limits of the modern state? 4. As state boundaries became more fixed, did the state’s formal rulers ‘rule the roost’, or was the ‘roost’ impinged upon more and more by the rising economic classes? 5. In short, what was the effect upon state organizations and representative institutions of the development of the modern economic system?462 Following Braudel and Wallerstein, Held argues that capitalism originates from the period of ‘the long sixteenth century’, namely, from 1450 to 1640, and that it was ‘from the beginning an international affair’.463 In broad terms this development is said to have ushered in a ‘fundamental change in the world order’ in that, for the first time, ‘genuinely global interconnections among states and societies’ were made possible and, as distant corners of the world were penetrated, ‘far-reaching changes to the dynamics and nature of political rule’ were brought about.464 While distinguishing between merchant and industrial capitalism, the latter signalling for the first time convergence between the activities of capitalists and the capitalist system of political economy by the mid-eighteenth century, Held argues that ‘[i]t was a combination of agricultural and navigational opportunities’ as well as ‘the continuous competition for resources, territory and trade’ which helped stimulate the European economic dynamic.465 As the intertwining of geopolitical and economic objectives became increasingly discernible the ‘state slowly became more embroiled with the interest of civil society’.466 The increased fiscal demands induced by military commitments are said to have triggered, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a growing ‘coordinating’ role on the part of the state with respect to the activities of civil society. With ‘the spread of competing claims to property rights and the demands of subaltern groups’, the developing capitalist economy also required a more general regulating role to protect the economic basis of the state itself.467 There were also dynamics working from civil society to the state. The other side of this process was, of course, the growing enmeshment of civil society with the state; for the latter’s capacity in principle to stabilize and enforce law, contracts and currencies – to provide a coordinating framework for the new, emerging, capitalist economy – made

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it a growing object of attention for the powerful groups and classes of civil society who hoped to shape state action to suit their own interests.468 Acknowledging the contingency at the heart of the relationship between state organisations, representative institutions and social classes in the era of state formation, Held nevertheless argues that certain ‘patterns’ are discernible due to the filtering of state development through the social structure of societies – ‘the particular constellation of social classes and groups, organized around different kinds of resource base, which were either cooperative with or resistant to state-makers’.469 For example, following the work of Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, Held suggests that the extension or denial of state representation to subaltern social strata can be causally explained, in part, by reference to the ‘capital-intensive’ or ‘coercion-intensive’ production methods of a region or country.470 In fact, where an economically significant class of landlords, dependent on a supply of cheap labour, had control of or a significant influence on the state apparatus (as they did in the Russian Empire, for instance), particularly fierce resistance was generated to the extension of any form of representative or democratic rights.471 By contrast, in ‘capital-intensive’ regions (‘areas of marked commerce, where market and exchange relations prevailed’), capitalists and merchants had good self-serving reasons and the necessary power to struggle for the extension of representation to include their interests.472 To the extent that this was achieved by reform rather than revolution, there appears to be reasonable grounds for accepting that in some of these ‘capital-intensive’ areas, not withstanding intense conflict within and between social strata, an alliance between state modernising élites and emerging bourgeois classes against the remnants of feudal privilege was constructed successfully ‘up to and during the first phase of the industrial revolution’.473 Nevertheless, there were limits to this alliance due partly to the capitalists’ struggle to ensure the economy’s freedom from arbitrary political interference. It is at this juncture that the emerging economic classes often became the reforming classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seeking to conjoin the struggle for an independent economic sphere with the struggle for representative government. The chief connecting

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mechanism was the attempt to establish civil and political rights … The pursuit of [which] over time reconstituted the nature of both the state and the economy – driving the former towards a liberal democratic polity and the latter towards the capitalist market system.474 That the bourgeoisie’s role in democratic reform was essential is widely accepted and most trenchantly put by Barrington Moore’s injunction of ‘no bourgeois, no democracy’. While the exact meaning of citizenship may have remained contested for decades to come the interests of capitalists in ‘setting the direction of state action’ and thus forcing ‘the institutionalisation of contestation’, increased as the state’s coordinating role expanded and ‘became more involved in determining the conditions of civil society’. Yet a major conclusion reached by Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens is that capitalist development contributes to democracy not because of the interests of capitalists in reform but rather by altering the balance of class power in favour of subordinate interests – specifically, by creating and strengthening the working class and weakening the landed upper class.475 According to these authors: The respective positions of the bourgeoisie and the working class show that capitalism creates democratic pressures in spite of capitalists, not because of them. Democracy was the outcome of the contradictory nature of capitalist development, which, of necessity, created subordinate classes, particularly the working class, with the capacity for self-organisation. Capitalism brings the subordinate class or classes together in factories and cities where members of those classes can associate and organize more easily; it improves the means of communication and transportation facilitating nationwide organization; in these and other ways it strengthens civil society and facilitates subordinate class organization. Though the working class has not proved to be the gravedigger of capitalism, it has very frequently been capable of successfully demanding its own incorporation and an accommodation of at least some of its substantive interests. No other subordinate class in history has been able to do so on anywhere near the same scale. … [D]emocratic capitalism rests on a class compromise between labor and capital in which the interests of both sides are to varying extents accommodated.476 Held’s contention, however, can be fully justified in broad terms, as his argument at this point is that the development of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie created the context in which the struggle for democracy took place over several centuries.

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Liberal democracy and citizenship: the third ‘macro-pattern’ Given the old as well as new forms of social and political stratification, the final ‘macro-pattern’ concerns the struggle on the part of groups and classes for the achievement of ‘degrees of autonomy and control over their lives’. The author sees this as a struggle for citizenship or membership of the political community, decisively shaped by the changing contours of liberalism. ‘Throughout the formative phase of the modern state, the struggle for membership in the political community has largely been synonymous with the attempt to establish a form of popular sovereignty through the entrenchment of civil and political rights.’477 The establishment of civil rights (‘liberty of the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property and to enter into contracts, and the right to be treated equally with others before the law’) in turn fostered new freedoms such as those associated with territorial mobility and release from occupational restrictions. That these rights were essential to the burgeoning capitalist economy of the eighteenth century is clear; modern contract, the basis of waged labour, factory ownership and newspaper proprietorship, for example, are hardly conceivable without individuals ‘free and equal’ under the law.478 Moreover, the attainment of civil rights was a step in the development of political rights; ‘for when the individual agent was recognized as an autonomous person – that is, as a person able to reflect upon and take decisions about the basic conditions of life – it was easier to think of that person as, in principle, capable of political responsibility.’479 No less important, a population with entrenched civil rights, however rudimentary these were in comparison to current ‘best practice’, could more easily and effectively agitate for ‘political rights’ – ‘those elements of rights which create the possibility of participation in the exercise of political power as a member of a political association, or as an elector of the members of such an association’.480 While the extension of political rights throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries owed much to the active struggles of social movements including those of the organised working class, for women’s suffrage and for equal representation of ethnic minorities, the author further suggests that the convergence of at least ‘three critical factors’ provide clues as to how citizenship crystallised in the form of civil and political rights and how it was that liberal democracy triumphed over its alternatives. The first, termed ‘reciprocity of power’, refers to the recognition that national systems of regulation increasingly depended on the cooperation of subject populations, and not simply during national emergencies.481 As Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens argue, under industrial capitalism

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certain subordinate social strata achieve new and unintended capabilities that were often transformed into socio-economic and political leverage. The resulting social interdependence combined with entrenched civil and political rights – in part the result of the interdependence – altered the social and political landscape beyond recognition, leaving a more contractual basis of political authority than traditionally constituted. The second related critical factor concerns the exhaustion of traditional forms of political legitimacy. ‘The legitimacy promised by systems of representative democracy was based on a recognition of a reciprocal relationship between governors and governed, in which, on the one hand, the latter had a duty to respect the law and the authority of the state and, on the other hand, the former had a duty to act fairly in accordance with the broad mandate of “the people”.’482 Liberalism, based as it is on individualism, may have always contained the possibility of formal political equality in latent form, but in Europe this was only achieved with the diffusion of social power contingent with industrialism and often vigorously pursued by those who desired to transcend both liberalism and capitalism. In other words, the principled arguments, which helped transform political liberalism, were themselves transformed in part by the rise of new social forces created by industrial capitalist development. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to credit industrialism with so crucial a development for liberal democracy as the secularisation of political authority and legitimacy. In this regard, longterm trends associated with the Enlightenment and the development of scientific rationalism – with which capitalism is inextricably bound – would have to figure as well as the various political ideologies of modernism that rejected theological bases of political authority. The final critical factor refers to the compatibility of liberal democracy with the capitalist economy in that as long as ‘democracy’ was not extended to the organisation of production, it could be ‘made safe’ for a market society. Only with the separation of the political from the economic sphere, in other words, could liberal democracy have been successfully institutionalised. Since liberal democracy has only ever developed under broadly capitalist conditions, the stressing of this compatibility between democracy and capitalism is often used to suggest either the hollowness of democracy or alternatively the continued desire of subaltern social strata for the continuation of capitalist development – otherwise, the latter, through their representatives, would have used their democratic rights to radically alter capitalism. Both these positions have merit but tend to underestimate the mutual transformation that actually occurred. If democracy was made safe for capitalism then capitalism has been made safe for democracy – the ‘taming’ of capitalism

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through legislation evidenced by the development of the welfare state and the success of many struggles for equal opportunities and treatment is a familiar enough story as is, on the other side, the ‘embourgoisement’ of a large proportion of advanced capitalist society. If these considerations sound somewhat too materialist in not giving sufficient regard to the role of ideas in transforming social and political affairs, Held’s ‘principle of autonomy’ rightly corrects this presumption. Struggles for citizenship and democracy have been guided by the anticipation of a political order which does not arbitrarily shape and constrain choices for individuals and groups. The urge to obtain this order is an urge towards a fuller measure of autonomy … an urge to realize what I call ‘the principle of autonomy’ – a principle that recognizes the indispensability of ‘equal autonomy’ for all citizens … The anticipation of autonomy for each and all constitutes a regulative idea – an idea which has guided conflicts over the institutionalization of democracy. It is an idea, moreover, which has provided a normative standard which could be turned against existing institutions, as it has been by working-class, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial activists, to reveal the extent to which the principles and aspirations of equal liberty and equal political participation remain unfulfilled.483 Not unlike the concept of ‘thymos’ employed by Francis Fukuyama (as with Plato or Hobbes), this ‘urge’ is itself a quite global phenomenon which, given the force of example demonstrated by the relative political and economic success of the advanced liberal democratic state, helps explain at least partly the widespread and popular calls for the emulation and replication of liberal democracy.484 Taken together the three ‘macro-patterns’ of war and militarism, the development of capitalism and the evolving conceptions of citizenship constitute a highly judicious framework for analysing not simply the development of the liberal democratic nation-state but of modern forms of state sui generis. In order to highlight further the role of the global system in this development and, more importantly, the current workings of the global system, one needs to assess Held’s views on the challenges to democracy posed by globalisation.

Globalisation and the challenges to democracy The book itself begins with an analysis of the challenges facing democratic theory and practice from a contemporary perspective – though he

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often reminds the reader of the mythic qualities of historic justifications for democracy or, to put the point rather differently, of the accommodations in practice to the fact that many such limitations, such as the frequently constraining power of international factors, were always thus. Nevertheless, Held believes that the contemporary condition heralds not simply an opportunity to clarify inherent tensions within traditional models of democracy but poses fundamental challenges that must be addressed if democracy is to ‘survive and prosper’.485 Moreover, according to the author, the dangers of failure in this regard are already visible in the ‘current revival of sectarian politics and the use of force, evidenced in the resurgence of right-wing politics in Europe, the intensification of racism and the spread of ethnic and political separatism throughout the world’.486 As we have seen, the mutual determination of the local and the international has been especially marked in the modern era. The development of the concept of globalisation, popularised in the last two decades or so but still not without conflicting interpretations, signals a deepening, widening and speeding up of the forces and processes which are its sources. David Held has been among the leading interpreters of this phenomenon.487 Positioning himself between the ‘hyperglobalists’ and the ‘sceptics’, Held argues that contemporary globalisation is distinguished by ‘unique spatio-temporal and organizational attributes; that is, the extensivity, intensity, velocity and impact of global flows, alongside distinctive patterns of institutionalization, modes of contestation, stratification and reproduction’.488 These socio-economic, political and cultural processes, it is argued, represent a unique challenge to the Westphalian principle of sovereignty by articulating ‘overlapping networks and constellations of power which cut across territorial and political boundaries’.489 As a result, the three key traditions in democratic theory namely, republicanism, liberalism and Marxism are unable to cope with many of the following developments associated with globalisation: (a) The manifold dynamics of the global capitalist economy which preclude the vast majority of states individually from exercising even a modicum of control over their effects; (b) the proliferation of new forms of collective decision-making involving states, intergovernmental institutions and international pressure groups all responding to the rapid growth of transnational links; (c) the expansion and intensification of transnational communications; (d) the proliferation of military technologies and weapons as a ‘stable’ feature of international relations, and;

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(e) the development of urgent transnational problems which do not recognise national boundaries for example, the degradation of the environment.490 So long as democracy, in both theory and practice, is exclusively embedded within the domestic sphere of nation-states, the international and transnational processes that constitute globalisation will increasingly challenge its continued salience, effectiveness and, ultimately, legitimacy. If ‘at the core of the self-image of the modern state lies its claim to be a “circumscribed impartial power”, accountable only to its citizen body’, then the realisation of the strength of transnational constraints and pressures acting upon it will eventually shatter this illusion.491 Moreover, the increasing divergence ‘between the totality of those affected by a political decision and those who participated in making it (however indirectly) within a democratic state’ is at the core of the contradiction between national/domestic models of democracy and a globalised world.492 Intellectually, the task of mounting a coherent critique against the currently limited conceptions of democracy involves transgressing the ‘old disciplinary grounds’ of political knowledge. As Held puts it: For too long the concerns of political theory, political economy, international relations and international law have been kept separate, with persistently disappointing outcomes. Significant beginnings have been made in recent times to reinstate elements of these disciplines, but a great deal of ground remains to be covered. At issue is rethinking the nature, form and content of democratic politics in the face of the complex intermeshing of local, national, regional and global relations and processes.493 Notwithstanding the importance of this task, for the purposes of this inquiry, we can move to Held’s assessment of the global system. After a careful analysis of the evolution of the global system from Westphalia to the present, the picture that emerges contains some quite traditional conceptions and quite a few novel ones, if clearly a part of an historic process. Held summarises this section with the following points: 1. The inter-state system developed in the context of two key processes: the assertion of the state to sovereignty and the spread of new economic relationships on a global basis via capitalist economic mechanisms. States faced both inwards towards their populations and outwards towards the states order created and maintained by the states themselves. The Westphalian model of

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state sovereignty granted each state an entitlement to rule in its own territories while endorsing ultimately the principle of effective power; thereafter, the ‘security dilemma’ of the state locked all states into a process of actual or potential conflict with each other. 2. The development of the United Nations system did not fundamentally alter the logic and structure of the Westphalian order. Powerful states had their authority enhanced through the granting of special powers. Nevertheless, the UN system contains within it legal and political developments (e.g., providing an international forum in which all states are in certain respects equal and a vision of a new world order based upon a meeting of governments and, under appropriate circumstances, of a supranational presence in world affairs championing human rights) which point to the possibility of a new organizational principle in world affairs. This vision, however, is in marked tension with the form and dynamics of the state system itself. 3. Globalization, a process reaching back to the earliest stages of the formation of the modern state and economy, continues to shape and reshape politics, economics and social life, albeit unevenly with differential impacts on individual countries. The stretching of social relations across space and time, via a variety of institutional dimensions (technological, organizational, legal and cultural), and their intensification within these institutional domains create new problems for and challenges to the power of the state and the inter-state system. Against this background, the effectiveness and viability of the sovereign, territorially bounded nation-state seems to be in question. [Nevertheless] … the nation-state continues to command loyalty, both as an idea and as an institution.494 As for the analysis of the varying impact of the global system on domestic polities and societies, this is usefully arranged in terms of a series of ‘external disjunctures’ ‘between the idea of the state as in principle capable of determining its own future, and the world economy, international organizations, regional and global institutions, international law and military alliances which operate to shape and constrain the options of individual nation-states’.495 These disjunctures help clarify just what constitutes the most salient features of the current global system and how they interact with domestic systems of rule. As such, they provide at least some basis of judgement as to whether the institutionalisation of democracy at the domestic level can be said to have any necessary relation to the workings of the global system.

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The issue at the heart of the ‘disjunctures’ is not whether the complex international environment shapes and constrains the options open to individual nation-states; clearly, it does. The central question for Held is whether the global system taken as a whole is shaping and constraining the state to such a degree as to fundamentally alter the ‘relevant community’ or ‘relevant constituency’ for democratic systems of rule. He answers in the affirmative and goes on to construct a cosmopolitan democratic framework or architecture that reassembles such a relevant constituency. For us, on the other hand, the question is whether the shaping and constraining is aiding and abetting the institutionalisation of democracy at the national level or otherwise.

Disjuncture 1: international law If there is one area where developments at the international level seem to be moving in the same direction as many if not all of the proponents of democracy desire, it is that of international law. The transition in the twentieth century from a conception of international law as exclusively between states – safeguarding the central Westphalian principles of state sovereignty and non-interference – to one which recognises individuals, governments and non-governmental organisation as subjects, has been remarkable. In particular, from the precedents of the International Tribunals at Nuremburg and Tokyo, the Preamble and Article 13 of the United Nations Charter, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the American Convention on Human Rights, to the Organisation of African Unity’s adoption of the Charter of Human and People’s Rights, the extraordinary growth of humanitarian international law has challenged the presumption of nation-states, both ethical and legal, to unfettered national sovereignty. As Fred Halliday has argued: The growth of international humanitarian law has set up not only a body of law, but a set of standards and criteria by which all countries in the world may be judged, in their domestic as in their international conduct. Against those who claim that all invocations of the international interest, or authority, are nebulous, it can be argued that international law is substantial and specific. It relates to such matters as the conduct of war, and the rights of individuals and communities. International humanitarian law has, since the 1940s, accumulated over ninety instruments and conventions. Negotiated by states, this body of law constitutes an authority that is superior to the

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interests, or customs, of nations. It is in clear contradistinction to the ethical principles of nationalism.496 In an era of ‘intensified social reflexivity’ and revolutionised communications, the standards by which the conduct of states are judged are increasingly accessible, not least to those who have good reasons to demand political pluralism of the sort associated with liberal democracy.497 Though controversial, international law has also driven the international community – or at least those states within it which take these matters seriously and whose leaders have calculated that they have little to lose in doing so – to increase the accountability of political leaders who breach international humanitarian standards while in office. This has begun to have an impact as the case of General Pinochet, among others, has illustrated – it is indeed unlikely that he would have been stripped of his domestic legal immunity were it not for his protracted detainment by Britain. There are also, within international legal documents, increasingly explicit references to democracy as the prime legitimate political framework. The European Convention on Human Rights, the conditions of membership to the EU as well as the declaration of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) fall into this category.498 In addition, of course, Article 21 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights stipulates the right to take part in government through free and fair elections. Because of democracy’s ideological and practical affinity with many of the most prevalent human rights issues, as well as its increasingly perceived links with security concerns (see Disjuncture 3), the marginalisation of non-democratic regimes is a key trend of humanitarian international law. While obviously not insurmountable, this marginalisation can serve as an obstacle to the further political and economic integration into the global system, the forgoing of which, particularly under globalised conditions, may be said to exact an increasing cost.

Disjuncture 2: internationalisation of political decision-making This issue-area relates to the ‘rapid expansion of transnational links, the growing interpenetration of foreign and domestic policy, and the corresponding desire by most states for some form of international governance and regulation to deal with collective policy problems’.499 The resulting proliferation of international regimes and organisations has

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led, in turn, to new forms of multilateral and multinational politics and ‘distinctive styles of collective decision-making’ whereby states interact with other institutions in an increasingly dense web of political relations. Unlike the more technical international agencies and organisations such as the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunications Union, organisations like the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the IMF, and the UN are ‘preoccupied with more central questions of the management and allocation of rules and resources’ and therefore have been ‘highly controversial and politicized’.500 This is especially so because, as Held rightly argues, the latter have ‘benefited over the years from a certain “entrenchment of authority” which has bestowed on some decisive powers of intervention’.501 Along with these institutions are the more informal ‘global networks of political co-ordination’ such as the Group of 7/8 (G7/8). Taken together, the growth of such organisations clearly demonstrates the increasing complexity of the international environment within which states now operate but is there anything in this condition of ‘complex interdependence’, which might suggest the promotion of liberal democracy? Much has been said and written about the injurious impact of the IMF’s ‘conditionality’ and ‘structural adjustment’ programmes not least of which is the charge that the living standards of the least advantaged within the countries affected have declined, primarily though not exclusively through cuts in public expenditure. We will look at these matters more closely when considering the disjuncture between the formal authority of the state and the operation of the world economy (see Disjuncture 5). For now, although it is apparent that all the ‘disjunctures’ are closely related and overlap in various ways, it is perhaps enough to register the fact that the major international governmental institutions broadly reflect the interests, values and ideas of the wealthiest and, in most respects, the most powerful countries in the world. Economically, this currently entails the promotion of neo-liberalism – the determination of prices for the factors of production (land, labour and capital), distribution and exchange by the operation of ‘free’ national and international markets and therefore for a reduced role for the state in this regard, and for the integration of national economies into the international capitalist system through ‘free trade’.502 Politically, a commitment to liberalism by the major governmental international institutions is also increasingly marked.503 The end of the Cold War has helped in raising the issue of ‘good governance’ to a central plank of development policies. Without the overriding geopolitical concern with losing client states to the ‘enemy camp’, the leading liberal

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democratic states have been much more inclined to use their considerable influence and leverage to promote political reforms in the developing world in return for assistance. The loss of assistance from the Soviet Union, its successor state’s current commitment to democratic norms – however inconsistent and partial – and the consequent evaporation of an alternative political model upheld by a major European power have added to this considerable pressure. That the restraints and conditions are being set by a ‘dominant coalition’ which ‘effectively control’ the major institutions of global governance and regulation, is without doubt.504 Nevertheless, the ‘nationalist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ response that is often generated as a result of this and other types of ‘conditionality’ would have greater moral and political purchase if the affected states were themselves more accountable to democratically organised domestic forces. After all, when the political community is itself severely restricted internally by an authoritarian political system, it is ironic that élites should complain about the infringement of self-determination by international political agents – an irony devalued by the centrality of the international rule of sovereignty/non-interference. Furthermore, the problem is not exclusively with élites as anti-imperialist/anti-foreign sentiments are not without appeal and reassurance to more popular audiences. More importantly, the loss of assistance or, in the more extreme cases, of the imposition of economic sanctions means that the costs and burdens of adjustment fall on those least able to influence the distributional policies of states. For this reason even the threat of foreign pressure can be used for popular mobilisation against it although there have been cases such as those of South Africa and Burma where oppositional leaders have themselves supported international sanctions along with sizeable proportions of their followers. Another significant factor at work in the promotion of ‘good governance’ by international institutions is the growing belief among development academics and activists in the practical benefits of democracy for the prospects of social and economic development. Perhaps the leading academic in this area is Amartya Sen whose offering, Development as Freedom, makes a convincing case for democratic government as the most effective political framework for the promotion of most aspects of development.505 Arguing against those who support various types of authoritarian– bureaucratic regimes on the basis that they can fulfil the economic needs of the masses more effectively by focussing on economic rather

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than political and civil ‘rights’, Sen calls for the ‘general pre-eminence’ of the latter due to the following considerations: 1. their direct importance in human living associated with basic capabilities (including that of political and social participation); 2. their instrumental role in enhancing the hearing that people get in expressing and supporting their claims to political attention (including the claims of economic needs); 3. their constructive role in the conceptualization of ‘needs’ (including the understanding of ‘economic needs’ in a social context).506 Beyond these considerations are a number of arguments such as that the empirical evidence suggests no correlation between economic growth and authoritarianism, as well as that the evidence of popular struggles for democratic freedoms ‘in South Korea, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma and elsewhere in Asia’ suggests the absurdity of the proposition ‘that poor people in general do not care about civil and political rights’.507 As for the proliferation and impact of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), some of the best known ones tend to be those institutions such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and so on with solidly progressive agendas which serve in a crucial respect to raise awareness of the authoritarian and indeed brutal nature of many states and of the often incredibly heroic actions of individuals and groups struggling to reform them. Though it is extremely uncommon for Western academics to speak in these terms about them, these liberal-minded INGOs can also be said to be placing pressure on the autonomy or ‘practical sovereignty’ of states through their effect on international and domestic public opinion. Beyond the issue of ideological sympathy, however, this relative silence is perfectly reasonable and understandable given the fact that the international environment is littered with INGOs whose intentions, practices and resources have at best an ambiguous relation to ‘progress’ and ‘development’ and at worst are the antithesis of these. In the former category some would place internationally organised religious and business groups – though many would not be so charitable given the centrality of issues such as birth control and, of course, capitalist exploitation – while in the latter the various Mafia would surely fit without controversy given the immeasurable social and individual costs associated with the illegal trade in drugs, guns, pornography and human beings.

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As for the INGOs concerned with environmental issues such as Greenpeace, the fact that the major polluters in the world are the developed liberal democracies – essentially the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries – means that differences between democracies and dictatorships are often obscured or do not in fact come into play in their campaigning efforts. After all, from a strictly environmental perspective, though its people may be trying to survive on grass, North Korea is destroying the world’s environment much more slowly than the United States or Brazil. Much of the radical ecological analysis focuses on the economic organisational differences between capitalism and socialism and their respective ecological outcomes while ignoring the specific political dimensions of each.508 Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence to suggest that democratic polities are more responsive to social concerns and are therefore more likely to incorporate environmentally sensitive policies more quickly than authoritarian ones, though obviously not necessarily adequately enough to avert calamity. According to John Dryzek, not only was the degree of environmental degradation in the industrial areas of much of the former Soviet bloc considerably worse than in the world’s capitalist democracies, but also in some of the latter the environmental imperative has actually had a democratising effect. In fact, as environmental regulation has grown over the past two or more decades it has been accompanied, at least in North America, by increased democracy in policy making. Far from being characterised by deals between regulators and polluters behind closed doors, environmental policy has featured a variety of process innovations designed to increase the level of informed public participation in policy making. Examples include right-to-know legislation, public hearings of various kinds, and impact assessment procedures that specify opportunities for public comments on written documents and submissions to formal hearings. The environmental movement itself constitutes not only a public interest lobby but also a channel for the participation in politics of large numbers of people motivated by something other than material self-interest.509 As with the first disjuncture, the only conclusion to be drawn is the recognition of a trend towards the explicit support of political democracy by the major international institutions. The above reasons given for this support by the more important governmental institutions and at least the more progressive non-governmental ones are in no way

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exhaustive but do point to an increasingly instrumental position and not simply an ideological or ethical one, however important the latter may be. Though the explicit support for liberal democracy is not without contradictions and countervailing tendencies – the most obvious ones being the outweighing of political imperatives by economic ones (see Disjuncture 5) and the centrality of the international rule of sovereignty/non-interference – it is nevertheless significant.

Disjuncture 3: hegemonic powers and international security structures In this section, Held is primarily interested in highlighting the constraints on the kinds of defence and foreign policies imposed by the global power hierarchy as well as by the forms of collective security associated with military alliances. The Cold War period provides clear examples of what Held refers to as the ‘internationalisation of security’ both with regard to NATO’s joint and integrated military command structure and, even more obviously, to Soviet control of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation – the sovereignty and autonomy of member states’ policies were more than ‘qualified’ in the latter group while, in part, the evident competition ‘for scarce resources, arms contracts, international prestige and other means of national enhancement’ in the former camp resulted in a process of negotiation of state sovereignty and autonomy.510 The extent to which the Warsaw Treaty Organisation in general and the ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ in particular came to be associated with ‘containing and policing’ the Soviet bloc is evident from the more or less immediate consequences of the adoption by Gorbachev of the ‘Sinatra Doctrine’ namely, the Revolutions of 1989. Apart from these considerations, of course, the sometimes tacit and sometimes open support provided by the United States and its democratic allies on the one hand and by the Soviet Union or China on the other for ruthless and anti-democratic regimes in Europe and the developing world throughout much of the Cold War amounts to a grand alliance against pluralist politics. The end of ‘bipolarity’, as Held rightly argues, has not eradicated the constraints on state security policy but rather reconfigured them. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO’s) establishment of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) as well as the Partnership for Peace suggests the continued recognition of the limits of state autonomy and sovereignty or the perceived need for pooling these attributes.511

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Underpinning all these concerns with the ‘corrosive consequences’ for state sovereignty and autonomy of the structure of international security is the ostensibly inherent ‘security dilemma’ of the inter-state system. The interconnectedness of states and societies means that one country’s national security policy has direct consequences for that of another; and the dynamics of the security system of the global order as a whole has consequences for each and every nation. In making national security decisions, a government not only governs for itself but governs for others. If a country feels threatened, it might increase its ability to threaten others, which will in turn have security implications for those beyond the immediate parties involved.512 Combined with the advent of weapons of mass destruction and their international proliferation, it is clear that what is at stake is not just the autonomy of states but also the very survival of the human species. Held also argues that the logic of statist security ‘denies democracy internationally by reinforcing the sense of the separateness of sovereign states [and] erodes democracy within nation-states by legitimating institutions which are hierarchical’.513 Furthermore, in the context of the Cold War, this statist logic locked Third World countries ‘into an arms race and security posture which mimicked the great powers, especially the United States and the Soviet Union’.514 That the resources expended in this fashion could have been better spent elsewhere is, of course, irrefutable. However, if there is one element missing from these deliberations it is that of the debates around the nature of regime types. Held’s pessimism with regard to the intractability of the ‘security dilemma’ is arguably due in part to the lack of engagement with questions arising from the relationship between regime types and international security and conflict. It is the undoubted interdependence of security, as with so much else, which has given the concern with promoting democracy its new urgency in the post-Cold War context. The break up of a number of states – most notably Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union – and the returning spectre of civil war in Europe partly as a consequence of the new fluidity in world politics, has led to resurgence in the international concern with the question of domestic political legitimacy. Despite differences in approach, strategy and policies among the dominant coalition of states, their belief in liberal democracy as the only long-term legitimate and stable political order – especially for European states as the criteria for EU membership makes clear – is significant.

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The resurgence among the hegemonic powers of what Kenneth Waltz referred to as ‘second image’ reasoning is matched by the growth of scholarly attention given to the ‘democratic peace’ thesis whereby military conflict between established liberal democratic states is argued to be exceedingly unlikely.515 Whatever side one takes on this thesis, the fact that war between the major liberal democratic states does appear to be extremely fanciful and, furthermore, that the domestic stability of these states appears reasonably secure merits serious consideration given the history of the modern world. The reduced autonomy resulting from international pressures for political reform would seem to be a very small price to pay for results as unambiguously positive as the thesis suggests namely, ‘the end of international relations as power politics’.516 Besides pressure from the hegemonic powers and the accumulation of academic arguments, as we have seen from the previous sections, the promotion of democracy is not just a matter of the dearth of alternative models. Public opinion in democracies against cutting deals with authoritarian states as much as public opinion within these states in favour of political reform suggests a coincidence of the strategic and the ethical. According to Timothy Garton Ash, dictatorships display ‘a remarkable family likeness’ with ‘endless lying in state controlled media’, ‘the violence behind the lies’, ‘the sheer intractability of countries that cut themselves off from more civilised neighbours’ and ‘the unpredictability that comes with a silenced people who one day will cry: Enough!’517 Given the renewed belief that undemocratic regimes make particularly unpredictable and violent neighbours, it seems most likely that cosmopolitan democracy is itself contingent upon the stable domestic institutionalisation of democracy.

Disjuncture 4: national identity and the globalisation of culture Beginning with an analysis of the relationship between the formation of national identities and advancing communications technologies and systems, Held argues convincingly against the simplistic thesis that the globalisation of mass culture will lead inevitably to global homogenisation. On the one hand, the argument is that ‘national cultures and identities are deeply rooted in ethno-histories and are thus quite unlikely to be stamped out by the imprint of global mass culture’.518 On the other, the argument is that the globalisation of mass culture itself generates backlashes against the dominant Western forms of culture by enhancing awareness of difference and by ‘[making] possible a denser, more intense

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interaction between members of communities who share common cultural characteristics, notably language; and this fact enables us to understand why in recent years we have been witnessing the re-emergence of submerged ethnic communities and their nationalisms’.519 So, not only may domestically hegemonic national identities be strengthened by the communications technologies and systems that are a key component of globalisation but also that of sub-national groups as well. If the challenges are from above and beyond the nation-state as well as from below it, the result, according to Held, is nevertheless ‘indeterminate’. … [W]hile a growing disjuncture can be noted between the pull of national identities and the diverse orientations of contemporary culture and communication systems, it is far from clear what the exact outcome will be. It is improbable either that a global culture will emerge or that national identities will persist unaltered by their enmeshment in wider communication structures … Certainly, the outcome itself is beyond the immediate control of individual nationstates and of their infrastructural reach. The cultural space of nationstates is being rearticulated by forces over which states have, at best, only limited leverage.520 From the perspective of the spread of democracy, the globalisation of mass communications technologies and systems can clearly be seen in a favourable light – assuming, of course, that one shares in the desire to see such a process take place. First, as previously indicated, at the broad socioeconomic and political level, despite vast cultural differences, the spread of the modern form of state (and nation) as well as the transformations of pre-capitalist economic organisation throughout the world are testament to a truly remarkable global homogenisation – the result of coercion, competition, imitation, defensive modernisation and influence.521 Second, in the context of the particular institutional and political forms associated with liberal democracy, the increasing ‘awareness of difference’ intensified by the globalisation of communications systems makes the ‘force of example’ argument more not less compelling. Very few can take ‘nationalist’ pride in their country being associated with widespread and institutionalised repression. The role of mass communications in revealing to ordinary citizens of the former Soviet bloc the gap between the reality of life in the West and that of the official version may well be indicative of the potential for political reform (and revolution) of globalised mass communications.522

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Finally, the fact that it is indeed ‘the images, artefacts and identities of Western modernity, produced by the cultural industries of Western societies (including Japan!), which dominate the global network’, may mean that, to the extent that any political model in the broadest sense is reinforced as ‘normal’ internationally, it is likely to be a democratic one.523 This is not in any way to suggest that what is considered ‘Western’ is not in fact more the product of global, transnational interpenetrations of culture than it is a product of endogenous formation but rather to invite current political and ideological comparisons. After all, what would the likely political content of global communication systems be if Saudi Arabia, Burma or China had the dominant influence? As with the previous disjunctures, the loss of the state’s ‘practical sovereignty’ due to the increased complexity and impact of international forces – in this case the forces associated with global communications systems – is not an incontrovertible loss from the point of view of the spread of democracy. Nevertheless, the push and pull are clearly not in one unambiguous direction and the next section will deal with the source of many of the evident contradictions, namely, the world capitalist economy.

Disjuncture 5: the world economy This section deals with the globalisation of economic forces and their limiting effects on ‘the competence and effectiveness of national political authorities’.524 Concentrating mainly on two aspects of international economic processes partly associated with multinational corporations (MNCs), namely, the internationalisation of production and finance, Held makes a convincing case for supposing that under globalised conditions ‘a government’s capacity to pursue independent macroeconomic strategies effectively is, at best, tightly circumscribed’.525 The major reasons for this are essentially to do with developments that suggest that states and societies increasingly depend on private sources of investment and production for the creation of wealth (employment and revenue); that thanks partly to technological developments in the fields of communications and transportation, the functions associated with private ownership are increasingly organised globally, and; that the consequences for polities and societies include the misfit between investment and production decisions on the one hand and local and national conditions on the other, the erosion of boundaries ‘which were a necessary condition for independent national economic policies’, and generally, increasing vulnerability to capitalist disinvestments, national and international, namely, to the decisions of private corporations.526

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Clearly, although this is not part of Held’s analysis in this section, for the first two conditions to apply, political support was essential. As Karl Polanyi argued, ‘[t]he road to the free market was opened and kept opened by an enormous increase in continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism’.527 The paradox of state power in pursuit of goals whose consequences serve partly to limit its future scope of action may seem stark but it is not uncommon. It clearly mirrors the submission of states, such as it is, to international law and to collective security arrangements, for instance. It is only paradoxical if one takes the primary goal of states to be the maximisation of autonomy. But states may be said to have many goals such as security, wealth, social cohesion and social justice, which may not be easily reconcilable.528 To put matters this way, however, is to risk falling into the trap of treating the state as a heuristic device.529 Furthermore, from the perspective of this study, such an approach would miss the salience of democracy precisely because it assumes that those who control the state simply reflect the interests and desires of the people as a whole. Therefore, before assessing the impact of the world capitalist economy on the prospects of democracy and on the way it may be said to affect the previous disjunctures, consideration will be given to two wellestablished theories which place particular emphasis on the role of the international economy in greatly limiting the scope of domestic politics for developing countries and yet do not assume the state to be independent of social forces, namely, ‘dependency theory’ and Guillermo O’Donnell’s theory of ‘bureaucratic-authoritarianism’.530 The challenge of dependency theory Trying to make sense of the complex interactions between the international economy and domestic political economy, which is at the heart of the globalisation debate, is not, of course, a new endeavour. Outlining some of the major criticisms to the approaches above, generated over the past several decades, may help to shed light on the limits to the threat posed to state sovereignty by globalisation or at least to highlight some of the theoretical/analytical pitfalls which abound in this area of debate. Despite the risks involved in summarising the arguments of a great many writers – such as imparting more coherence to the approach than it possesses – Bill Warren has enumerated the major contentions of ‘dependency theory’ convincingly in the following six points: 1. Dependency is ‘the conditioning structure of poverty’ (Dos Santos). 2. Poverty is the result of (or is equated with) underdevelopment.

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3. ‘Development and underdevelopment are partial, interdependent structures of one global system.’ The development of the core countries is the consequence of the underdevelopment of the periphery; the underdevelopment of the periphery is the consequence of the development of the core (Dos Santos). 4. In other words, the global system is such that the development of part of the system occurs at the expense of other parts. 5. Underdevelopment is not simply non-development, but is a unique type of socio-economic structure brought about by the integration of the society concerned into the sphere of the advanced capitalist countries (Frank). 6. Thus: ‘Dependence is a conditioning situation in which the economies of one group of countries are conditioned by the development and expansion of others. A relationship of interdependence between two or more economies or between such economies and the world trading system becomes a dependent relationship when some countries can expand through self-impulsion while others, being in a dependent position, can only expand as a reflection of the expansion of the dominant countries, which may have positive or negative effects on their immediate development.’531 With its preponderant emphasis on international economic processes one may be forgiven for concluding that ‘dependency theory’ contains a radically ‘determinist’ approach to politics. Indeed, in so far as the theory’s argument suggests the inconsequential character of formal political independence as well as the impossibility of economic and political development for ‘underdeveloped’ countries, so long as exchange relations with the world capitalist system are neither severed nor radically altered, this deterministic approach has proved to be its Achilles’ heel.532 Nevertheless, its theory of state, implied either explicitly or implicitly, is based on alliances of local, national and transnational classes – foreign capital, ‘comprador’ bourgeoisie, feudal or semi-feudal landed interests and national industrial capital all controlling the state and ensuring continued ‘underdevelopment’ in varying alliances while workers, peasants, intellectuals and sometimes a progressive industrial bourgeoisie are lined up as the ‘objective’ opponents of oligarchy who must be either repressed, bought off or both.533 Unlike previous ‘late-developers’ who actually used state power to promote development in the face of competition from abroad, current underdeveloped countries are said to face far stronger ruling-class alliances, domestic and international, which act to direct state power towards narrow oligarchic interests and to make

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the revolutionary usurpation of political power by their opponents both more likely and desirable. The major criticisms of this approach are based on the general growth of industrialisation in the developing world since the Second World War (including the quite astonishing industrial development in a number of these countries), the very unevenness of economic development – which may suggest any or all of the following: a less than monolithic structure of the world capitalist economy, complex combinations of modern and pre-modern features, as well as the availability of a wider range of policy options than expected logically – and the unimpressive economic and political record of ‘socialist’ countries.534 According to Bill Warren, one of the most damaging legacies of ‘dependency theory’ and indeed of most post-Leninist Marxism is its total abandonment of the ‘capitalism as the bridge to socialism’ thesis and within this the importance of the achievement of liberal democracy. It was not the mere existence of the working class as the principal exploited class of capitalism that made it the historic instrument of socialism, but the specific social and cultural characteristics, and political experience, that the conditions of capitalism tended to give it. Most notably, these were the increased independence of the individual workers from customary personal relationships of servitude and the collective organization encouraged by their aggregation in large factories. Furthermore, parliamentary democracy was considered the characteristic political form of bourgeois rule and, up to the Russian revolution, was regarded as both the best political environment for the functioning of the socialist movement and the necessary training ground for the working class to acquire the skills required to run a socialist society.535 For ‘dependency theory’ generally, the lack of liberal democracy in the underdeveloped world is taken as suggestive of the need for naked coercion to maintain rates of surplus extraction and to provide an appropriately ‘safe’ environment for private property, investment and accumulation of capital. The complex social alliances, international and domestic, which collude to sustain such conditions, constitute a structural bulwark against political pluralism. The actual achievement of democracy in many parts of the underdeveloped world, perhaps especially Latin America that provided the backdrop for most of these theorists, runs completely counter to theoretical expectations. Nevertheless, the institutionalisation of democracy cannot in and of itself be said to alter the structural relations of dependency unless and

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until ‘autocentric’ or ‘anti-systemic’ strategies become state policy. Although arguably such strategies did develop under the guise of import substitution industrialisation (ISI) with populist coalitions at the helm of states for some time, the fact that most developing states, democratic or otherwise, seem to be moving in the opposite direction – towards economic liberalisaton – may be taken as confirmation of the theory’s core belief that political democracy is an ‘epiphenomenon’. In any event, so the argument runs, bourgeois democracy is hardly an achievement worth sustaining because, where it exists in the underdeveloped world, it invariably (pace Barrington Moore’s analysis of Indian democracy) serves to further the interests of the oligarchy and its very existence in the metropolitan countries has been made possible only by the continued impoverishment of the Third World. True democracy, ‘humanity’s control over its own life’, the only variety worthy of political commitment and theoretical consideration cannot exist under systemic capitalist conditions but must await ‘armed revolution leading to socialist development’.536 If it seems incredible that no consistent theory of democracy was posited by the ‘dependency’ approach it should be remembered that if taken as a serious sign of political progress, democratisation undermines the basic premise of its argument. Even leaving aside the point about progress, why the particular class alliances and balance of class forces in the core countries can lead to liberal democracy while this outcome has been much less common in the periphery seems a matter worth considering, but only if the political form itself is taken to be salient. Generally speaking, both ‘dependency theory’ as well as much of post-Leninist Marxism has concluded that it is not. As Amartya Sen has argued, this is a major problem on several counts – instrumentally, constructively and ethically.537 Furthermore, by devaluing the salience of the form of state, ‘dependency theory’ obscures an important dimension of the consequences of interaction between the international and domestic systems. The analytical problems of accounting for the unevenness of economic development throughout the periphery are compounded by the lack of engagement with the variation of political systems. Bill Warren’s criticisms of ‘dependency theory’ revolve around two main points. First, its origins in Bolshevik expediency carries the cost of betrayal of classical Marxism, namely, its diagnosis, prescriptions and prognosis are badly wrong, failing to grasp even the most obvious features of the post-Second World War period such as the historically unprecedented improvements in the productive forces throughout the world or the associated consequences of population growth. Second, the popularity of its analysis derives from it being psychologically

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satisfying to nationalist (anti-foreign) sentiment and, echoing Schumpeter, to the ‘populist leftism’ of bourgeois intellectuals.538 However, just as ‘dependency theory’ suffers largely from its determinism, the same can be said of Warren’s analysis. If for the former all that is bad and unjust with the world, and this includes just about everything, is the direct fault of capitalism, for the latter, too much that is considered good and historically progressive is also the direct result of capitalism.539 In other words, the role of political ideologies and movements, institutions, policies and personalities are denied salience in shaping social reality. The key implication for current globalisation debates is not that class analysis is an inappropriate methodology for assisting our understanding of the world but that the basic framework of ‘dependency theory’ – its fundamental assumptions and propositions – is too rigid to make good use of it and fails ultimately to capture what are probably the most important features of the world capitalist political economy, namely, its complexity and dynamism. On both counts, Warren’s analysis is superior to its rival. What is clear is that deterministic approaches to the relationship between economic and political development, by excluding the importance of contingent factors such as political agency, are ultimately too simplistic to shed much light on these matters.

The challenge of bureaucratic-authoritarianism theory Seeking to explain the return of authoritarian governments, particularly in the more advanced countries of South America during the 1960s and 1970s that seemed totally at odds with modernisation theory’s major lines of argument, Guillermo O’Donnell’s theory of ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ placed great emphasis on the responses of the state and of class-based politics to the problems engendered by these countries’ dependent position in the international capitalist system.540 According to Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, the core arguments of the theory are as follows: Import substitution industrialisation (ISI) had expanded the urban middle and working classes and brought to power populist coalitions which deliberately activated popular forces, particularly through labor organisation and included them in the political process. Economic growth underwrote the costs of social welfare policies. However, the progress of ‘easy’, or ‘horizontal’, i.e. consumer goods import substitution behind high tariff walls depended on growing

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imports of capital goods, paid for by exports of primary goods. This development strategy ran into trouble when foreign exchange reserves accumulated during World War II were exhausted and both prices and demand for Latin America’s primary exports declined after the 1950’s. The severe balance of payments problems caused domestic inflation [and] [a]ttempts to impose stabilization policies hurt the popular sectors, divided the populist coalitions, and created political crises. The growth of ISI had also enlarged the number and range of technocratic roles in the public and private sectors [whose interests lay in] ‘deepening’ industrialisation i.e. creating a capital goods industry … [S]uccessful pursuit of this strategy entailed reduction of popular consumption in order to generate higher domestic investment levels (as taxation of the wealthier sectors was not even considered as a realistic alternative), and attraction of foreign capital. The crucial obstacles in this path were militant labor movements and populist politicians. This constellation led to the formation of a coup coalition among civilian and military technocrats and the big bourgeoisie. They discarded democracy as incompatible with further economic development and installed bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes. These regimes insulated economic policy makers from popular pressures and deactivated unions and left-wing political parties, by force if necessary. Thus, it was exactly in the more advanced of the Latin American countries that particularly harsh authoritarian rule was imposed in the 1960’s and 1970’s.541 Unlike ‘dependency theory’ (and reminiscent of Huntington’s analysis), the political form of state, the dynamic formation of class and the changing balance of class forces are seen as intimately interrelated to the international capitalist system and are key variables in the political outcomes. Nevertheless, the analysis seems to share with the dependency approach an expectation of similar results from countries at similar levels of development, despite differences in the timings of these authoritarian transitions. As Jeffry Frieden has suggested, the reason for this is that both approaches ‘assert a simple relationship between starting level of development and subsequent economic and political outcome’ and both ‘rely for the explanation on structural characteristics of the domestic and/or international orders’.542 Assessing the theory’s economic predictions, the expectation of ‘deepening’ import substitution industrialisation by authoritarian regimes is easily repudiated for the simple reason that military regimes such as those of Chile and Argentina – precisely the ones most closely associated

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with the ‘crisis of easy import substitution’ – were resolutely opposed to deepening ISI. What is more, extending the logic of the analysis forward a few years, rather than lead to a collapse of democracy in Mexico and Venezuela as the theory would seem to imply, the severe balance of payments crisis of the 1980s actually led to a collapse of authoritarianism in Brazil and Argentina.543 In a comparative political economy study of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela over the 20-year period from 1965 to 1985, Jeffry Frieden concludes the following: [The study] rejects structural hypotheses about democracy and authoritarianism, but does not suggest equally uncomplicated alternatives. No simple relationship existed between economic growth and political openness, between position in the international political hierarchy and domestic repression, or between economic crisis and bureaucratic authoritarianism. Where democratization took place it was largely because dissatisfaction with the economic situation – especially business dissatisfaction – was not addressed satisfactorily by military regimes, causing demands to escalate from calls for policy change to calls for regime change. Democracy did not grow out of structural conditions faced by nations or groups, but rather out of the contingent interaction of groups in a political arena in which contention over policies came to affect debates over regime types.544 There are several implications for the globalisation debate of the forgoing discussion. First, the conception of a class of owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie or even the more limited ‘technocracy’ as a unified and coherent grouping with more or less identical political and economic interests that is able to direct public policy is only very exceptionally an analytically useful one. The modern political economy approach, which stresses the importance of economic policy to economic outcomes, insists on the centrality of political pressures in the determination of these policies and argues for the crucial importance of economic interests to political behaviour, would seem to be much better served by the addition of sectoral interests based on internal cohesion and asset specificity and concentration.545 As an example of this approach and in a specific contribution to the debate over the determination of economic liberalism internationally, Frieden argues that trade liberalisation, privatisation and other marketoriented trends in the economic policies of many developing countries should be understood as neither the result of external political pressures

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nor of domestic technocratic ascendancy. Rather, the trend towards economic liberalism should be seen as the result of several interactive elements. The first is the reduction in external resources available to the public sectors of developing countries in the wake of the 1980s ‘debt crisis’. ‘In this sense the reduction of budget deficits throughout the developing world is a predictable response to the disappearance of inexpensive foreign finance.’546 The second is sectoral political demands from firms and individuals that stood to gain from more liberal policies. ‘Real currency depreciation and domestic stagnation drove many Latin American producers to search for overseas markets. The resulting exporting interests tended to exert anti-protectionist pressures on policy, in the developing world as elsewhere; the same was true of the accumulation of overseas assets by LDC nationals.’547 Finally, because in a few of the Latin American cases that Frieden looks at intense class conflict tended to reduce sectoral pressures on policy-makers in favour of demands for a hospitable investment climate more generally, this overall decline in specific sectoral demands was said to be a factor in promoting liberalisation.548 In other words, by the 1980s intense class struggle in the Southern Cone resulted in more economic liberalism not less. In addition, there must be room in any analysis of the trend towards economic liberalism for what may be termed ‘political learning’. That is, the struggles by socio-economic and political forces to change policy direction are partly informed by the shortcomings of previously tried developmental models. The specific international pressures towards economic liberalism associated with the IMF and World Bank – their research, analyses, advice and financial leverage (from their own lending to the potential capital their ‘green-light’ can mobilise in the private sector internationally as well as its opposite, the denial of these) no doubt has a critical importance. The fact that a liberal economic model supported by the dominant powers exists, must itself surely help in foreclosing policy alternatives for developing countries. Moreover, the demonstration effect of successful export-oriented industrialisations, in terms of economic growth and equity, such as those of the Asian Tigers reinforces the appropriateness of these trends.549 Turning specifically to democracy, it is clear that the level of democratic development cannot be simply read off from the level of capitalist development. The variability of social structure, of relations between dominant and subordinate classes and of these to policy-makers, of ideological commitment, of political leadership, of historical and current relations with the world economy and so on help explain what is

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plainly obvious, namely, that democracy now exists in very different developmental contexts. As already stressed, countries do not face identical international economic conditions. Even when, for example, broadly similar international financial conditions can actually be said to exist, as with the abundance of investment capital in the wake of 1970s ‘oil crisis’ and the consequent recycling of petro-dollars, the differences in countries’ exports and imports, their underlying endowments, their social structure, political systems, institutional legacies and their historically established ties with other states mean that massive differences arise in the use to which such funds are put if they are borrowed at all.550 In other words, the contingency at the heart of ‘uneven and combined development’ would seem to make it a more appropriate theoretical framework for understanding dynamic changes at the domestic and international level than the determinism of the dependency or bureaucratic authoritarianism approaches. One final point is that both approaches ignore the dynamics associated with interstate competition generally and with the Cold War specifically. The latter is a spectacular oversight given the extent of political (including military), economic and ideological mobilisation – on both sides of the divide both domestically and internationally – which this precipitated.551 Again, the privileging of the socio-economic level of analysis, even if predicated on domestic and international interaction, runs the risk of leaving too much out of the analysis.

Disjuncture 5 (continued) Held’s analysis of the impact of globalisation on the scope for political action is both sensitive to differences at the national level and insistent on the point that the internationalisation of economic forces has narrowed the options for policy-makers generally.552 The trend towards regionalisation, it is argued, is a clear indication of this diminution of autonomy at the national level.553 Of course, from Held’s perspective, as state autonomy is challenged by globalisation so democracy is what needs to be reconfigured internationally and rescued. But is there any sense in which one can reasonably argue that economic globalisation is actually promoting the institutionalisation of democracy domestically? Might it not be the case that as states increasingly open their societies up to or are opened by the various economic forces associated with globalisation their options in terms of political systems are also narrowed? This brings us back to the central paradox identified by Held that just as

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states and societies are increasingly vulnerable to international forces more of them are becoming constitutionally democratic. We have already noted two arguments that suggest strong causal correlation between capitalist development and democratic government, namely, those of Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens and Bill Warren. While there are important differences between them, both seem to take the view that capitalism diffuses power and organisational capacities to subaltern social strata, which have stronger interests in democratisation than do capitalists themselves. Held’s analysis also suggests that the struggle of capitalists to differentiate the economic from the political sphere at a particular historical conjuncture was conjoined by the struggle for political and civil rights and that this helped push modern states towards liberal democracy. Moreover, many of the civic rights associated with the transition to a capitalist economy had potentially democratic political implications that were often reinforced by technological changes and improvements such as those in the area of communications associated with capitalist development. Clearly, unless globalisation reverses these trends, it seems reasonable to suggest their continued vitality. Indeed, since globalisation has actually been caused rather than simply accompanied by the dismantling of national barriers to international economic forces by political authority, there is every reason to expect their increasing vitality. However, the many domestic contingencies that have been referred to, constituted partly by interaction with the international sphere, suggest highly complex and quite unpredictable socio-economic and political accommodations with these globalised economic forces. In addition, given the dynamism of technological and organisational change under broadly capitalist conditions, any accommodations will of necessity be temporary. John Gray’s comments on the demise of corporatist accommodations in Britain, for instance, are illustrative of this point; ‘… the triangular coordination of economic policy by government, employers and trade unions – [by 1979] had become an engine of industrial conflict and strife over the distribution of the national income rather than an instrument of wealth creation or guarantor of social cohesion.’554 As the previous century has demonstrated all too clearly, there are almost countless socio-political and economic conditions including sharp ethnic, sectarian, ideological and class rivalries that help explain and are often used to justify the lack or suspension of democracy. What’s more, the social divisions prevalent in many countries including those of class, gender and ethnicity are often generated and/or reinforced by the operation of the world capitalist economy, historically and currently.

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This is why a major international appeal of established and stable liberal democracy is its ability to politically cushion, absorb and process endemic social change through institutional means as much as, if not more so, than its ability to actually direct it. Since economic globalisation is generally construed as the strengthening and accelerating of key forces responsible for endemic social change, the international political appeal of democracy has been enhanced under such conditions. Another potential connection between democracy and economic globalisation relates to regionalisation – a growing political economic response to globalisation.555 As more states come to see their participation and membership in regional economic blocs as in the vital interests of the major sectors and groupings within their societies, the stronger the effect of the democratic political conditionality associated with many of them.556 The pooling of sovereignty entailed even in the most economically focused regional associations seems to demand high levels of political homogeneity.557 Indeed, this is an important part of the ‘level playing field’ in that competitive advantages could potentially accrue to countries whose states relied less on consensual rule and more on coercive rule – consider, for instance, how sensitive the issues of taxation, labour market regulation/flexibility and social charters have been in the EU and Mercosur. Of course, if the regional association includes labour mobility as well as that of capital the potential political refugee problems are obvious. More generally, if, as Held argues, the loss of political economic autonomy associated with globalisation is fundamentally challenging the legitimacy of the nationally constituted democratic state, it is likely that this challenge extends to authoritarian states as well. Given the ‘normality’ associated with democracy, it is much more likely to be so. Furthermore, the rather strong association of authoritarianism with policy-makers energetically (often maniacally) focused on attaining and preserving very high levels of national or even partial international autonomy (in the case of many historical communist regimes or political Islamists, for instance) from capitalist or just foreign forces should at least raise the possibility that democracy is more likely if open to these international forces. Of course, many are of the opinion that the consequences of capitalism or Western modernity are socially, politically and ethically worse than those associated with dictatorship, especially when the dictatorship in question is seen to be put to the service of human welfare, materially or spiritually. Since the only basic way to maximise human safety and welfare from market forces is through political agency, ‘enlightened despotism’ has been justified by both the radical

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Left and Right in varying historical contexts. On the other hand, if the consequences of such political regimes are considered worse than the disease they are ostensibly attempting to inoculate their people against, in raising the relative costs of highly autonomous economic development, economic globalisation may well be working against these types of political projects. Nevertheless, to the extent that the politically mobilising capacities of social and political movements espousing highly autonomous models of development are actually enhanced by the international enmeshing of societies and cultures as well as by the socio-economic dislocations associated with globalisation, the expectation must be one of oscillation between high and low levels of intensity with regard to engagement with and retreat from international economic participation. Whether or not democracy can survive in many countries under such circumstances or indeed whether it can serve as an institutional framework for changing policy orientation will be determined partly by the way international forces are articulated with domestic ones; that is, by contingent factors. This brings us to the point in the analysis where the balance must shift to doubting the contribution economic globalisation can make to the institutionalisation of democracy. Three areas of criticism in particular will be analysed, namely, economic liberalism’s very unequal distribution of wealth within and between countries, the corrupting of democratic political considerations by economic interests, and the ways in which the dynamics of the globalised capitalist economy are intertwined with other international processes and factors. Held’s analysis of inequality is highly sensitive to its multiple sources and forms, and critical of both Marxist and liberal traditions.558 In the context of a ‘democratic thought experiment’ designed to generate ‘the necessary background conditions for the pursuit of democratic politics’, he argues the following.559 Any domain of action which disrupts systematically people’s equal interest in autonomy, that is, their standing as citizens with equal entitlements to self-determination, requires critical examination. The compatibility of democratic autonomy has to be explored with respect to any organization of life-chances and participative opportunities which systematically stratifies collectivities or groups in relation to a wide array of phenomena, including: their security of personhood; physical and psychological wellbeing; opportunities to become active members of the community; security of cultural identity; ability to join civic associations; capacity to influence the

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economic agenda; ability to participate in political debate and electoral politics; and ability to act without becoming vulnerable to physical force and violence.560 The point here is that the capitalist economy is one of the main sources of stratification and ‘nautonomy’ (‘the asymmetrical production and distribution of life-chances which limit and erode the possibilities of political participation’).561 And, given that globalisation itself is said to be eroding the capacity of governments to pursue socially and politically ameliorating policies independently, its ‘nautonomic’ effects provide a major reason and justification for contemplating a cosmopolitan democratic framework. Now, from Held’s perspective, this is clearly logical. Nevertheless, if economic globalisation is indeed exacerbating inequality and inequality is unfavourable to democracy and democratisation, why is it that more states are becoming democratic? To take the first matter first, that levels of inequality are rising inexorably in the world as a whole is hotly contested. According to one authoritative account, it seems that c. 1950 was the high point of world income inequality, reaching a Gini coefficient of about 40.562 The major reason for its decline over the following decades is said to be due to the explosive economic growth experienced by east Asia including Japan which, because of the number of people involved (4 billion), has dwarfed the terrible results in Africa (1 billion) where as a whole Gross National Product (GNP) per head in real terms is probably lower now than it was in the late 1960s.563 Highlighting this enormous variation in economic performance across the globe, Paul Ormerod provides the following example. The Ivory Coast is by no means unsuccessful in African terms, but the transformation of South Korea has been stupendous. Even as late as 1970, the two countries had very similar levels of output per head, with Korea being about one-third higher. But it is now nearly nine times higher – around 1,000 per cent.564 If there is evidence of declining world income inequality, there is also evidence, as with the case above, of countries and regions of the world becoming poorer in relative and absolute terms. Both large parts of subSaharan Africa as well as parts of the former Soviet Socialist Republics and Eastern Europe fall clearly into this category.565 The future of world income inequality depends in large part on whether the former communist states of Europe achieve sustained economic growth.

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This brings us to the second point, namely, that inequality is unfavourable to democracy and democratisation. It is noteworthy, at least for the Revolutions of 1989, that the perceived inequalities between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and those of the capitalist West was a major cause of the upheavals.566 In other words, economic inequality between countries may actually call forth demands for democracy if authoritarianism is itself blamed for poor economic performance and compared unfavourably with liberal democratic economic success. As for inequality within countries, there is ample evidence to suggest a strong causal link between economic liberalism and increased inequality, at least in the short-term.567 The dismantling of corporatist arrangements, the privatisation of industries, the declining efficacy and reduction of protective measures such as subsidies and tariffs as well as very high debt repayments in much of the developing world has been a major cause of increased levels of unemployment and of rising income inequality. As The Economist put it: ‘Inequality is bound to grow when the guiding principle for sharing out resources shifts from entitlement to competition.’568 Furthermore, because states’ distributional policies under capitalist conditions are highly influenced if not necessarily dictated by the interests of property-holders, they have often dealt with the financial consequences of declining state revenues by reducing public expenditure in areas such as infrastructure investment, health care and education.569 Of course, these priorities have also been reinforced internationally by the policies and recommendations of institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. As Amartya Sen reminds us, these policies have been myopic and counterproductive because ‘the market mechanism has achieved great success under those conditions in which the opportunities offered by them could be reasonably shared’.570 Economic globalisation has all too often led to the marginalisation of regions, groups and individuals from economic participation rather than increasing their shared opportunities. Whether in the context of shrinking revenues or otherwise, global markets and policies promoting minimal state intervention in the economy are said to ‘fracture societies and weaken states’, making any kind of governing framework more and not less problematic.571 However, as we have seen from the industrialisation of the advanced capitalist countries, the consequent inequalities were a major cause of the organising efforts by subaltern classes, women and minorities for the extension of democratic rights, and the achievement of more equal economic development the consequence partly of this extension. Why, then,

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would inequality within countries of the developing world not lead to similar organisational forms and political demands? The answer is that in very many cases this is exactly what has occurred but these efforts, where they have failed, have done so for a variety of reasons. The theories which attempt to explain the causes of the failures to institutionalise or sustain democracy and which we have looked at throughout this paper vary enormously – from those who believe that democracy has been denied because for much of the post-Second World War period radical socialist leaders of subaltern groups articulated goals that went beyond ‘capitalist democracy’ and therefore brought on authoritarian responses, to those who see the relative underdevelopment of the working class as critical, to those who point to the importance of cultural factors, to those who point to the temporal and political timing of development as critical. The fact is that socioeconomic inequality itself is not a necessary or sufficient condition for the failure to achieve or to sustain democracy. If the continuation and spread of inequality is an important reason to question the salience of nationally based democratic forms under globalised conditions, it also provides the major historic and contemporary reason to institutionalise and to deepen democracy domestically. The second criticism of globalisation is the undermining of democratic political considerations by economic interests. Although we have already looked at ‘dependency theory’ and the theory of ‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ both of which locate the problems of political development in the context of countervailing economic interests, there are less misleading and dogmatic ways to demonstrate this central point. To the extent that economic growth serves to legitimate political authority, any and all economic relations with authoritarian states can be said either to undermine the aim of promoting democracy or at least to remove economic leverage from the choice of policy measures at the disposal of democracies to achieve this goal. Of course, democracies do not always have much choice in the matter as with their dependence on oil from extremely reactionary Gulf States. The point is that the operation of the world economy does not simply reinforce democratic political frameworks but generates contradictory pressures. Nor is this evident only in authoritarian states. Almost all contemporary liberal democracies have their share of corruption – US campaign finance issues; Helmet Kohl’s role in garnering finance for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); the trial of former French foreign minister, Roland Dumas; the criminal investigation of Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the late French president, accused of taking millions of pounds in commissions

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for brokering illegal arms sales to Africa; the allegations against President Jacques Chirac; the allegations against Silvio Berlusconi of Italy and so on.572 All these cases, and many more besides, demonstrate the insidious role that wealth and the personal (or party political) pursuit of it can have on any and all types of politics. A complementary point made by Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens and Jeffry Frieden is that states which are able to attain high levels of autonomy in relation to domestic social forces by relying on foreign sources of revenue, as with several of the oil-producing states, are most likely to be able to insulate themselves from democratic pressures.573 Economic globalisation may provide greater opportunities for states to circumvent domestic constituents – taxpayers – and thereby reinforce authoritarianism. A more direct way in which the economic imperative may serve to subvert democracy is through political intervention by MNCs. The economic power of these organisations can translate into political power, especially when allies are available either in the form of the state or the military (host and foreign) as well as sectoral and factoral (class) forces. The most infamous case of such involvement was that against the democratically elected government of Chile’s Salvador Allende.574 Although this case had the added dynamic of Cold War politics, it serves to illustrate an argument made by Leslie Sklair among others that MNCs are ‘indifferent to democracy in the Third World as long as the people do not elect left wing governments!’575 Another example of how the economic imperative may serve to subvert potential forces of democratisation is that of multinational media conglomerates cutting deals with authoritarian states over the limiting of politically critical content.576 While these states are probably fighting a losing battle given the proliferation of global media and their delivery systems, it is nonetheless true that international profit-seeking organisations tend only to reinforce democratic forces through unintended consequences. Again, their primary concern is that of protecting their investments. If in the Cold War era political considerations – combating communism – often overrode other imperatives including economic ones to the detriment of democracy generally, the promotion of democracy is likely also to require the overriding of economic imperatives for the simple reason that ‘free markets’ and ‘free politics’ are so often in contradiction with each other. The lessons of the Weimar Republic should not be forgotten. This brings us to the last area of criticism which is the ways the dynamics of the world economy are intertwined with other international

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processes and factors. Perhaps a good way to approach this is to suggest how some of Held’s ‘disjunctures’ often combine in ways to hinder rather than promote the development of democracy within states. The relationship between international law, the states system and the international capitalist economy, for instance, is obviously highly complex and historically dynamic. Nevertheless, that the ‘logic’ of the latter two can undermine the efficacy of the former and lead also to diminished political pressures on authoritarian states to democratise is clear. For example, the recent granting of most-favoured-trading-nation status to China by the United States is precisely designed to facilitate trade between these countries without the yearly congressional criticisms of China’s human rights violations and illegal occupation of Tibet.577 Notwithstanding arguments about reforming China from within and keeping the pressure on in more subtle ways, the contradictions are manifest. With regard to the transnational power of hegemonic states, it is evident that economic power is a major constitutive element of hegemony. While the suggestion that this may bode well for democracy has already been made it should be remembered that the democratic credentials of the dominant powers are essentially brand new.578 What’s more, the extraordinary rigidity in the membership of the club of rich states for over a century suggests that the achievement of relative wealth and power is anything but specifically correlated with full democracy.579 Just as in the past, how long élites and popular social forces will support democracy in the long run will probably depend to a large extent on whether it can deliver the goods. Also, the more international factors reinforce the possibility of states sustaining relative autonomy from domestic social forces, through external military support and economic assistance for instance, the higher the likelihood of their being able to withstand domestic challenges for political reform.580 It was only after Gorbachev repudiated the Brezhnev Doctrine that power seriously ebbed away from the communist parties of Central and Eastern Europe. If throughout the Cold War both East and West helped sustain anti-democratic regimes in just this way, its dissolution has not eradicated the phenomenon. Weapons sales to regimes such as those of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are financially rewarding and may even be necessary in the face of military threats from neighbours but they nonetheless help buttress deeply anti-democratic regimes. In short, not only do the forces that may be said to undermine sovereignty such as those suggested by Held express contradictory pressures on the prospects for democracy but so too do many of those that have traditionally been associated with actually sustaining it.

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Assessment of text While the points above in no way exhaust the arguments that the interaction between the international and domestic systems of power promote and/or hinder the prospects for democracy they do suggest the complexities and contradictions involved. David Held’s analysis and account of the historical development of the modern nation-state and of the international states-system, of historical models of democracy and of the limits of the dominant form of state, the liberal democratic state, in the context of globalisation as well as his detailed prescription for overcoming many of these limitations in the form of a cosmopolitan institutional order represents a serious contribution to several social scientific debates of critical relevance. Particularly useful is the author’s judicious framework for analysing the development of the nation-state and of the liberal democratic state assembled from the three ‘macro-patterns’ of war and militarism, the development of capitalism and the evolution of the conception of citizenship. Equally insightful is his elaboration of the disjunctures between the ideal of autonomy (individual and collective) on the one hand and various domains and manifestations of international power – law, ‘governance’, hegemony and security, culture, the world economy – on the other. It is here above all where the author’s conception of the current global system as well as its interaction with domestic systems of rule is revealed. Far from being the only important political agents, states are seen as increasingly constrained in their policy options by a complex international environment that includes international institutions, businesses, markets and cultures. In short, Held’s conception of the global system is sensitive to the various paradigmatic approaches found in the academic study of International Relations yet, quite appropriately, detached and critical of them. From the perspective of this study, the central argument that the autonomy or practical sovereignty of states is being quite radically reduced by the forces and processes of globalisation proved useful in highlighting just what these may be said to be and how they may be implicated in relation to all domestic systems of rule. Nevertheless, if the early sections point clearly to the notion that the mobilisation of domestic forces for international competition including war was an important dynamic of democratisation, as we have seen, it is also possible to argue that this dynamic was also implicated in the development of non-democratic regimes. Likewise, if the development of capitalism, especially of industrialism, in combination with some of the major

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tenets of political liberalism was critical to the development of liberal democracy then Held’s emphasis on their contingent relation to its development suggests strong obstacles in the way of its diffusion worldwide even if not in the automatic way implied by dependency theory and the theory of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism. Now, what was in retrospect historically useful for the development of liberal democracy for some states is often neither feasible nor desirable in the present – nor was it feasible in the past for those who failed to achieve democracy, of course. Given the destructive capabilities of modern weapons technology, for instance, one can hardly trumpet the possible advantages of war. Furthermore, while there is every reason to be confident of the onward march of inclusive conceptions of citizenship in established liberal democracies, the collapse of states and the resurgence of ethnic and sectarian violence in many parts of the world remind us that political power must be thoroughly consolidated and effective, indeed, potentially legitimate to withstand the alternating governments and organised opposition that are key features of democracy.581 The reasons why even this most elementary prerequisite is not universally fulfilled are themselves often related to the historical processes of state formation as well as the continuing pressures and constraints associated in the broadest sense with modernity. What this in part demonstrates is the confusion arising from the failure to distinguish clearly the ideal of the modern nation-state from its historically contingent actuality.

Conclusion As one might well expect, the balance sheet of the disjunctures provided by Held is mixed. If there are clear pressures promoting the institutionalisation of democracy then there are also manifest counter-tendencies. What was often taken by the author to signify marked reductions of autonomy or practical sovereignty – and this was one of his main focuses, of course – looked at from a different angle could potentially bode positively for the prospects of democracy in authoritarian states. As the study of revolution has demonstrated, the material and/or ideological weakening of the state are often a prelude to its transformation. The one strong conclusion is this: if the extension of moral and political community through cosmopolitan democracy is indeed necessary for the regulation of transnational forces and the amelioration of their ‘nautonomic’ effects, the prior establishment of domestic or nationally based democratic systems is required. This is a particularly obvious point but one worth formulating explicitly perhaps given the fragility of so

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many of the ‘new’ democracies and the scarcity of this political form in much of the world. It is the existence of democratic zones (pace Kant) that create new possibilities for a democratic cosmopolitanism. Certainly, in placing centre-stage the international context in which socio-economic and political change occurs, Held’s analysis takes us much closer to ascertaining the difficulties and complexities involved in the diffusion of the democratic form of state than does liberal internationalism.

Conclusion

Introduction The preceding chapters attempted to generate and highlight insights from some case study texts that were considered useful for a contemporary understanding of the relationship between democracy and the global system and for demonstrating the weaknesses of liberal internationalist optimism with regard to the worldwide diffusion of this particular form of state. As should be clear by now, the ultimate purpose of highlighting the obstacles to the international spread of democracy does not spring from conservative motivations but rather from the desire to overcome as many of these as possible. It has been suggested that the basis of liberal internationalist weakness is the failure to recognise the contradictory socio-economic and political effects that result in part from interaction between the international and domestic domains. It has also been suggested that the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’, which includes the political salience of ‘world-historical-time’, is a superior theoretical model compared with the liberal internationalist framework precisely because it incorporates the global system as the context within which socioeconomic and political change occurs as well as the importance of international/domestic interactions. This concluding chapter has a threefold purpose. It seeks, first, to pull the various threads of the book together by answering the following key questions: 1. How do the mechanisms for the worldwide diffusion of the democratic form of state associated with liberal internationalism stand up to the arguments presented here? 186

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2. Does the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ offer a convincing alternative? Does it provide for a coherent sociology of the development of the democratic form of state? Second, an effort is made to pinpoint five areas of international/ domestic interaction that allow for a further incorporation of the salient arguments and insights of the preceding chapters. Such a framework should be useful as a means of structuring further research and thought on the relationship between the global system and democratic government and for analysing the changing prospects of its worldwide diffusion. Finally, an attempt is made to answer the overarching thesis question directly, namely, whether the current global system may be said to promote or hinder the institutionalisation of democracy or whether these are in a contingent relation. Furthermore, if domestic forces, processes and structures are in part the result of international/domestic interactions, is there a case for suggesting that these interactions should be central to IR?

Liberal internationalism and the case studies As outlined in the introductory chapter, there are three interrelated strands within liberal internationalism that attempt to explain the international diffusion of the democratic form of state. In the first of these, the international diffusion of democracy is seen as the historical consequence of the universal interest in and demand for recognition, by political authority, of the moral equality of human beings and their interest in security and welfare. Predicated on its duty to protect life, liberty and property, the democratic state represents, in universally applicable institutional form, the triumph of the individual and collective will to moral equality, security and welfare over the more or less pure structures of domination which mark most earlier if varied forms of state as well as current authoritarian ones. By this account, the very nature of human beings (rational, self-seeking, potentially moral) drives political authority (also rational, self-seeking and potentially moral) through conflict, confrontation and, in a word, struggle, to adopting, over time, a consensual and legitimate institutional form, the liberal democratic state. The second strand sees in the international diffusion of capitalism the link with democracy’s worldwide spread. Here the interests in maximising wealth and security for individuals, societies and states as well as the need to cope with the individual and collective will to moral equality are all seen as best met through the rational innovation and conscious political construction of market societies. It is market society with its

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reliance on the commodification of the factors of production, the rule of law, freedom of choice and limited scope of public authority that produces the possibility of liberal democracy in the first place. Finally, once a few of these democratic states emerge, the spread of their norms to other states and the possibility and desirability of the development of effective international institutions and laws also emerge to become increasingly salient features of international relations. Through the force of example, other non-democratic states ‘will join up with the first … thus securing the freedom of each state in accordance with the idea of international right, and the whole will gradually spread further and further by a series of alliances of this kind’.582 The one common feature of these three interrelated strands of liberal internationalism, which relates fundamentally to its optimistic account of the prospects for the international diffusion of the democratic form of state is their steadfast assumption of the long-term harmony of interest between the individual and society, between society and the state and between states themselves.583 Clearly, the case studies presented in this book suggest a number of criticisms to these formulations. While Barrington Moore Jr. recognises the importance of social demands and struggles ‘to check arbitrary rulers, to replace arbitrary rules with just and rational ones, and to obtain a share for the underlying population in the making of rules’, he argues that the direction of political change is best analysed by reference to self-interest as defined by social classes and the state in the process of dynamic structural change (modernisation), and to the opportunities for acting upon these by reference to the resources and capabilities of these agents.584 Rather than resulting in the democratic form of state, these conflicting interests, which occur in an international context, are more likely to result in some form of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism of the Left or Right is much more likely because the three historical preconditions for the development of democracy according to Moore – ‘the development of a balance [in the social structure] to avoid too strong a crown or too independent a landed aristocracy, the weakening of the landed aristocracy and the prevention of an aristocratic–bourgeois coalition against the peasantry and workers, and a revolutionary break with the past’ – are the product of unusual conjunctures hundreds of years in the making.585 Furthermore, the international dimensions of capitalist modernisation in their interaction with domestic socio-economic and political arrangements, in the context of the inter-state system, are ultimately responsible for the unlikely development of these conjunctures.

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For Polanyi, the tensions and contradictions between the elementary requirements of an organised social life on the one hand, and the interaction of economic liberalism with class and state (geopolitical) interests in the context of industrialism on the other, is seen as responsible for setting the direction of political change. Again, the advent of democracy is seen as a conjunctural phenomenon – developed in reaction to the emergence of capitalism – unlikely to succeed in the medium to long term without the abandonment at least of the international dimensions of capitalism and the competitive elements in the inter-state system. This is so because it is the global system itself, in interaction with social structures, class and state interests and the ideological prescriptions of economic liberalism that is responsible for directing most societies away from this conjuncture. One might be forgiven for assuming that of the five texts that make up the case studies here Schumpeter’s would be nearer to agreeing with the liberal internationalist position outlined above. In fact, this is far from the case. Although the author does link the development of democracy with the emergence of capitalism, as do Moore and Polanyi, Schumpeter goes on to develop what he refers to as the conditions (social pre-requisites) for the success of the democratic method, which ensure that very few countries indeed are able to sustain the democratic form of state. The four conditions are as follows: 1. That ‘the human material of politics – the people who man the party machines, are elected to serve in parliament, rise to cabinet office, should be of sufficiently high quality’; 2. that ‘the effective range of political decision should not be extended too far’; 3. the existence of a ‘well-trained bureaucracy of good standing and tradition, endowed with a strong sense of duty and a no less strong espirit de corps’; and, 4. ‘democratic self-control’ or ‘a large measure of tolerance for difference of opinion’.586 The reason for doubting the ability of most countries to meet these four conditions and consequently to consolidate the democratic form of state is that, according to the author, they essentially require that ‘all the interests that matter are practically unanimous not only in their allegiance to the country but in their allegiance to the structural principles of the existing society’.587 As we have seen, Schumpeter argues that successful capitalism actually ensures that these interests are perceived as clashing even if they do not do so objectively and, therefore, that the likelihood was that capitalism itself would be replaced by socialism which was also likely to dispense with the liberty associated with liberal democracy by the requirement of dictating the harmony of interests from above.

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While the chapter on his work argued that his failure to theorise the interactions between capitalism and democracy even within the major liberal capitalist states led him to a much more pessimistic prognosis of capitalism’s historical durability than was justified and that this was symptomatic of a larger failing, namely, to theorise socio-economic, political and ideological change in the context of the interactions between the international and domestic domains, it is at least clear that Schumpeter was not at all optimistic about the prospects of the international diffusion of democracy. Huntington’s analysis attempts not only to demonstrate how unlikely is the development of democracy for societies and polities undergoing the rapid social changes associated with modernisation but also how inappropriate this form of state is for them. Democracy is inappropriate because it tends either to fragment and diffuse power rather than concentrate it, which is the central requirement for avoiding political instability in the transition from the traditional to the modern world or, if it does not disperse power, it is often because traditional élites have a stranglehold on the system and it is unlikely that the required modernising reforms will be achieved. Transitional societies are on the horn of this dilemma, facing the stark choice between a confused and chaotic pluralistic political disorder that is particularly vulnerable to communist usurpation and a non-communist authoritarianism. The latter, argues Huntington, represents the best hope of avoiding communism and creating the possibility, if distant, of attaining democratic political modernity. The force of example from existing and successful democratic states in the global system makes it less likely that the right choice – non-communist authoritarianism – will be taken. While David Held’s text in part focuses on why it is that some states attained the democratic form and not on why it is that others have not, his analytical frameworks of ‘macro-patterns’ in the development of democracy and of ‘global disjunctures’ are a major advance on liberal internationalism precisely because they contextualise domestic socioeconomic and political change within the global system and incorporate the complexities that result from domestic/international interactions. Both of these frameworks allow for the development of arguments that speak for and against liberal internationalist expectations. Finally, the two other theoretical frameworks which attempt in part to explain the lack of democracy in the developing world – ‘dependency theory’ and the theory of ‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ – also clearly point to the utopian quality of liberal internationalism’s expectation of the diffusion of this form of state worldwide even if not entirely convincingly so.

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On the whole, the case studies provide little comfort to liberal internationalist expectations of the international diffusion of the democratic form of state. While some agree with the notion that human beings do indeed long for and often demand changes in a democratic direction, they are much more concerned with demonstrating the various contexts – domestic, international and in part resulting from their interaction – that militate against the attainment of democracy. This was especially marked in the interpretations by Moore and Polanyi of the transnational impact of capitalism but also for Schumpeter (in a purely domestic setting) and certainly implied in the usage of ‘modernisation’ by Huntington. For Held, of course, capitalism’s global ‘nautonomic’ effects were deemed to bode unfavourably to the continued efficacy of the democratic form of state. Again, though capitalism was seen as creating the possibility of democracy it was just as surely seen, because of its international and transnational effects in the context of the inter-state system, as foreclosing this possibility for most countries. Clearly, the idea that the force of example is a sufficient condition for the international spread of democracy is countered by the fact that it operates in conjunction with structures, processes and forces that are pulling in other directions. Now, does the conceptual framework of ‘uneven and combined development’ represent a superior orientation to liberal internationalism? In assessing the five case study texts, the suggestion has been made that the most important disagreements with and/or advances on liberal internationalism arose from analyses that attempted to place domestic socioeconomic and political change in the context of the global system and as, in part, the result of the interaction between the international and domestic domains. Whether the specific problems associated with the transnationalism of capitalism were highlighted, or those associated with the competition of the inter-state system, or those related to the different timings of change and the global ideological and political context in which they occurred, it was this contextualisation which suggested far more complicated structures, processes and forces at work than does liberal internationalism. Furthermore, it was precisely these complexities that pointed to the contingency of the development of the liberal democratic form of state and to its unlikely consolidation in most of the countries of the world. By combining both the notion that domestic development or change occurs in a global context – which is critical in structuring the opportunities, constraints and choices available to individuals and groups, including those in political authority, seeking change – and the way in which international and transnational structures, forces and

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processes interact with domestic ones to produce unique conjunctures – social, economic, political, ideological/cultural – ‘uneven and combined development’ not only allows for the contingency and complexity in the analysis of politics and change that is lacking in liberal internationalism, it is designed to deliver them. By providing a historically grounded sociology of the development of forms of state, democratic and non-democratic, it does indeed constitute a potentially superior orientation to that of liberal internationalism. How, for example, could one account for the simultaneous existence of what Robert Cooper has called the ‘post-modern’, ‘modern’ and ‘pre-modern’ state if not with some version of ‘uneven and combined development’.588 Furthermore, the major challenges of our time such as the combination of globalisation and deepening interdependence, of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of failing economies and states, of threats from antimodernist terrorists, of rapacious dictatorships, of how to deal with these in a coordinated, multilateral and united fashion all arise from the uneven and combined character of historical development. This brings us to the major problem with the concept of ‘uneven and combined development’ itself, namely, that while it provides coherent arguments for explaining and understanding differences between countries or social formations more generally, it is very much less adept at coping with trends towards convergence. The one way in which this problem can be overcome (pace Trotsky) is to stress the so-called ‘advantages of backwardness’ whereby specific technologies or ‘stages of development’ are ‘leapfrogged’ by those trailing the more advanced through, for example, the availability of historically unprecedented levels of foreign direct investment. And, indeed, there is certainly some merit to this. However, this does not go far enough in conceding the extent to which other social and political phenomena, not necessarily directly the consequence of capitalism so much as articulated with it, are needed to retain its relevance and salience or in acknowledging the open-ended quality of the concept itself. It is quite impossible, for example, to explain the extent of socio-economic and political homogeneity in the advanced countries without reference not only to a capitalism that seems to be universalising practice more than splintering it, as Marx and Warren suggested, but also to direct political agency. In other words, dogmatic interpretations of ‘uneven and combined development’ as following an inexorable logic or iron laws rather than as a contextual framework within which extremely varied possibilities exist lessen its potential for fostering explanation and understanding.

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Nevertheless, in spite of the overwhelming disagreement with liberal internationalist expectations of the worldwide diffusion of the democratic form of state represented by the case study texts as well as the approach adopted to them here, the question which needs to be addressed is that if these expectations are so very idealistic, why is it that the world has witnessed many democratic transitions since the middle of the twentieth century? In order to further assess this matter and to incorporate more of the salient arguments and insights of the preceding chapters an effort is made to pinpoint five areas of international/ domestic interaction that should allow for this. As already mentioned, such a framework should also be useful as a means of structuring further research and thought on the relationship between the global system and democratic government and for analysing the changing prospects of its worldwide diffusion.

Democracy and the global system: a framework for analysis Along with the assessments of the case studies in this book, the study of the international causes of social revolutionary transformation has also suggested five main areas of analysis that, with some modification, lend themselves well to the explication of the relationship between the global system and democratic government.589 They do so not only because democratic government is often itself ushered in by socio-economic and political upheaval, as with the Revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe but also because the medium to long-term international trends and causes identified by the comparative study of revolutions seem to correlate with many of the non-revolutionary transitions to democracy. In other words, they serve generally to identify domains of causation with regard to social and political change that are relevant to international and domestic interactions.590 The five categories are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Socio-economic change Inter-state competition and co-operation International war Focused political action Force of example

Most of these categories, as we have seen from the case studies, represent areas of analysis that are necessary for understanding the relationship between democracy and the global system. On their own, each one lends itself to a quite partial view of the salient forces, processes and

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domestic/international interactions implicated in this relationship but if taken as essentially interrelated or intertwined, they should help to deepen understanding of this complex relationship. The specific interpretations of the framework, which follow, are informed by the arguments set out in the introduction and developed in the body of this work. These are that the form of states should be seen as conjunctural outcomes derived in part from socio-economic, political and ideological interactions between the international and domestic domains and that ‘uneven and combined development’, including as it does the notion of the importance of ‘world-historical-time’, represents an indispensable conceptual framework for understanding and explaining these outcomes.

Socio-economic change The complexity implied by the relationship between democracy and the global system can perhaps be illustrated by suggesting that this first category, which relates fundamentally to the nature of the world capitalist system, its relations to the other components of the global system, their combined effects on social structure and the state as well as to changes in the global system itself brought about by the continuous feedback of the preceding chain of causation, is almost coterminous with at the very least the fields of historical sociology, international political economy and a good deal of politics and IR.591 It is precisely for this reason that the methodological approach used here was chosen rather than a more directly empirical one. As we have seen from the analysis of the texts, a central weakness of these accounts has been the lack of integration between ostensibly transnational capitalist forces and processes and those more often associated with the other components of the global system. For example, Barrington Moore’s implicit conception of ‘uneven and combined development’ along with his explicit references to the role played by defensive modernisation in the history of specific states (pace Trotsky) comes close to integrating a Realist emphasis of the dynamics of the competitive states-system with a particular Marxist understanding of international capitalism. Schumpeter’s analysis of capitalism, on the other hand, is divorced from his earlier work on international issues and remains entirely within domestic confines and quite devoid of international political, economic or ideological pressures. Most of the texts stress the complexities involved in historical state formation in general and the development of liberal democracy in

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particular but there is wide variation as to the extent to which the world capitalist system, interacting with domestic contexts and in combination with other features of the global system, is implicated in their analyses. Here, Held’s ‘macro-patterns’ of ‘war and militarism’, ‘the development of capitalism’ and the development of ‘liberal democracy and citizenship’ as well as their interrelations are extremely relevant and useful. For his part, Huntington warns against optimistic expectations of the institutionalisation of liberal democracy in the developing world because of the destabilising political consequences of socio-economic change. His analysis clearly implies the uneven and combined character of historical development but with little explication of the transnational mechanisms at work and with no references to capitalism or imperialism, as such. Polanyi’s account of the social and political consequences of capitalist transformation is widely and rightly seen as exceptional but his analysis of the way the territorial division of political authority, the development of the modern state, class interests and ideologies interrelate to produce market societies is also crucial. All of the authors argue that while capitalism created some of the basic conditions for the eventual development of democracy – such as the re-articulation of social classes, the institutionalisation of private property, the formal equality entailed by waged-labour and capitalist contract, the development of new ideologies like liberalism, socialism and feminism – the transition to capitalism itself did not occur easily and certainly not in the same way or in the same order as it did in the original British case. Barrington Moore’s reminder of how very brutal this transition was – involving judicial murder on a massive scale, incarceration, civil war, colonialism, slavery and international war – is a critical corrective to liberal historiography generally.592 He is also very clear that the way capitalism develops transnationally makes democracy an unlikely outcome for very many states. Two out of the three major political systems, which he sees as the product of capitalist modernity, are non-democracies. Huntington is adamant that developing countries are most unlikely to develop democratic systems of government due to the speed and depth of socio-economic change relative to political institutional development. Polanyi’s ‘double movement’, like Marx’s ‘dialectical materialism’, seems to suggest a more optimistic prognosis but one at best based on development well into the future. Projecting this optimism into the contemporary scene we may suggest that the rise of democratic movements in parts of South East Asia, for example, may have much to do with rising levels of education and welfare, at least until very recently

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afforded by economic integration with the international market. Also, it is likely that the communications infrastructure that is the product of modern capitalism is highly functional for the mobilisation of opposition forces, as the upheavals in Suharto’s Indonesia seem to have showed. This example is instructive in that moves towards democracy do not necessarily correlate precisely with rising living standards but on the contrary, as with some revolutionary transformations, may be more likely in the context of sharp reversals in economic conditions.593 I do sustain the view of a link between capitalism and democracy. However, throughout I have tried to suggest some of the pitfalls of linking the development of democracy too closely with that of capitalism, especially the argument that it is the particular creation of the bourgeoisie, partly because of the need to account for capitalism’s articulation with other aspects of the global system and partly because of the importance of subordinate class, gender and minority movements in particular to the development of democratic polities. Since modern democracy is most often clearly the result of social groups demanding formal political equality and an impersonal, representative, transparent and impartial state, it should be seen primarily as the result of conscious political struggle and agency frequently by those in opposition to ‘bourgeois rule’. The role of trade union movements as instruments of mass mobilisation against authoritarian states, for example, is increasingly significant in the developing world as evidenced by South Korea or contemporary developments in Zimbabwe and earlier ones in South Africa and Zambia.594 As industrial production continues to grow in many parts of the developing world, however unevenly, so too can this trend be expected to do so. It is also important to register the fact that among those who insist that democracy can only come after economic development or that a ‘strong hand’ is needed for national development, such as Huntington, are the very leaders of states like Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia and many others who sit more or less comfortably at the top of political hierarchies. Nevertheless, Moore, Polanyi, Schumpeter, Huntington and Held all argue that at least for the British case the extension of the vote to the working classes came only after the risks to the owners of capital of sharing formal political power ceased to be excessively high – when only moderate demands were made and deemed affordable. As we have seen, due to the uneven and combined development of capitalism the wide variety of social structures within countries of the developing world has

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rarely if ever replicated this condition. Though the relationships between social structure and political institutions are clearly complex and historically contingent, it is possible to generalise by suggesting modestly that the difficulties of sustaining democracy in the developing world are often related to these complex variations. Also in this context it is possible to argue that in so far as the transnational diffusion of radical anti-capitalist models of development threatened stable capitalist social relations of production this also worked against the achievement of class compromises associated with liberal democracy. An instructive example perhaps is the abolishing of Apartheid in South Africa on the heels of the final collapse of the Soviet model and the diminished possibility that majority rule should necessarily entail radical redistributions of wealth through state ownership. This is not to suggest that the anti-Apartheid struggle – itself an international movement – was not of paramount importance in this victory but, as with the democratisation of Spain and Portugal, to place the response of the élite also in the wider global context. In some countries the development of industrialism has led to variegated and dynamic economic and social structures and dense civil societies in which concerted claims to civil and political rights by different but interdependent social groups have moved states, interested in maintaining order and maximising resources in part for international competition, towards mechanisms of rule that balance these claims and objectives in an orderly and legitimate way. Yet in many countries industrialism itself is still at best an unrealised objective. An important conclusion of this analysis is that the bias among the major capitalist powers and international institutions towards liberal market reforms may itself undermine efforts to institutionalise democracy due to the typical consequences – at best only short term – of economic liberalisation. These include the generation of high levels of unemployment, rising prices for previously subsidised goods and services, increased poverty and inequality. While these may not provoke antidemocratic sentiments so much as anti-ruling party ones, the fragility of developing states makes these reforms exceedingly difficult. On the other hand, if the legitimacy of the political system is strengthened by the advent of democracy, which depends in the short-run partly on the extent to which the previous regime was discredited, these liberalisation programmes may be more feasible politically than otherwise, as the example of the liberalising reforms carried out by the Peronist government of President Menem of Argentina demonstrates. Either way, it is a serious dilemma for the prospects of sustainable democracy.

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(As Huntington argued: ‘economic development increases economic inequality at the same time that social mobilization decreases the legitimacy of that inequality.’595) Although, with the benefit of hindsight, Schumpeter’s prognosis for democratic capitalism in the developed world was unduly pessimistic, the extent of its precariousness in the post-war period, and the austerity of the preconditions for the success of democracy as he saw them, serve to remind us also why so few countries have achieved both prosperity and democracy. To suggest that the denial of democracy and active suppression of democratic movements by many states in the developing world is due to the lack of power of social groups within civil society relative to the state as a result of economic underdevelopment may be correct. There are no guarantees – and as our texts indicated, many suggestions to the contrary – that economic development will proceed as it has in the advanced industrial states and produce political pluralism. But since the uneven and combined development of capitalism has not and cannot stop social groups in developing countries from demanding democracy – world-historical-time waits for no one – to understand the international causes of these demands and democratic transitions in the context of the developing world it is necessary to suggest other links: these would include the force of example associated with liberal internationalism, the pressures of inter-state competition and co-operation, direct political and economic pressures to democratise and/or the consequences of war and military intervention. Despite the uneven spread of capitalism and industrialism, the fact is that democratic systems of rule now exist in all the major continents of the world. As we have seen, the fragility and precariousness of democracy, like the suppression of democratic movements in many developing countries, may indeed be related to the lack of economic development and world capitalism’s difficulty, given its uneven and combined character, to provide for it. Nevertheless, as Fred Halliday has put it: Capitalism has, in the past, been charged with being ‘incapable’ of providing a number of things which it later turned out to be able to yield: universal suffrage, legal equality of men and women, decolonization, industrialization in the Third World, the end of war between developed states. It has, on the other hand, had many chances and made many fine promises, which it has not fulfilled. It remains an open question whether, five centuries on from its initial expansion, this system can achieve the potential which its advocates ascribe to it, and to diffuse its opportunities across the world: until,

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and unless, it does, then globalization will be but another word for the hegemony of a minority of rich states over the rest. This time round, capitalism has no excuses.596

Inter-state competition and co-operation Beyond the role of defensive modernisation, Schumpeter’s analysis in particular can be criticised for not paying sufficient regard to the competitive and co-operative features of the international political system and its articulation with the other dimensions of the global system. In terms of the competitive side of international politics, the dynamic most commonly associated with the Realist view of the states-system – zero-sum strategic rivalry – may be taken as detrimental to the diffusion of democracy due to the need by states to concentrate their internal power. But geopolitical pressures and their impact on state/society relations can take a variety of forms not all of which may be harmful to the prospects of democracy. As states extract resources from society for the purpose of geopolitical competition, compromises with contending power sources within society are sometimes successfully achieved in a democratic direction, a point especially well examined by Held and Barrington Moore. The former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, for instance, have developed their still very fragile democracies in the wake of the reforms launched by the Soviet Union which evidently had much to do with inter-state competition.597 Even the suggestion that the dynamics of the Cold War helped to foster a more authoritarian ‘national security state’ in the United States may be countered by reminders of the democratic gains made during this period such as those associated with the civil rights movement and feminism not to mention the social reform throughout the West during this period of challenge from communism, the alternative model of modernity.598 Nevertheless, the interests of states in assuaging the conflicting demands of domestic constituents as well as in meeting the challenges of external rivals mean that the concern for the democratic rights of individuals and groups within the societies outside of their borders is clearly less than paramount. For example, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States moved quickly to enlist the support of Pakistan by removing sanctions against it, providing its military government headed by General Pervez Musharraf with a $500 million credit line and the promise of debt forgiveness. According to an American diplomat in Islamabad: ‘This has catapulted U.S.–Pakistan relations. We are now working very closely

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with them. Doors have been opened. Programs have begun. Some of the distrust is beginning to go away.’599 Similarly, Uzbekistan’s autocratic regime led by president Islam Karimov, who has publicly declared his willingness to shoot political Islamists himself, has also benefited politically and economically by allowing US troops to station there.600 Clearly, the promotion of liberal democracy is often in conflict with other foreign policy objectives. That the most influential domestic constituents of the major capitalist powers are often those who carry the primary responsibility for providing employment and ‘creating wealth’ also makes this predicament especially intractable. Many of these organisations increasingly operate in several countries simultaneously (MNCs), and the pressure on the home states from business groups is often either to limit the meddling into the internal affairs of others or, as the Allende case demonstrated spectacularly albeit in the context of the Cold War, to place the overall business environment before demands for democratic accountability. During the Cold War, it may be argued that strategic concerns more often than not dovetailed with material ones – that as long as a regime had a pro-capitalist, pro-Western orientation, the desire on the part of the major liberal democracies for pluralist politics internationally was put aside. Indeed, a major argument of the book is that the material and ideological support given to authoritarian capitalist regimes by Western states, along with the support provided by the Soviet Union for its ‘fraternal republics’ constituted a grand alliance against the international diffusion of democracy. As Held’s analysis makes clear, the increasing costs associated with military competition led often to compromises between states and societies in democratic directions – with increased parliamentary control of state expenditures and more widespread political participation. Modern states also came to conceive, or were forced to conceive of, their economies in terms of military resources to be husbanded and nurtured rather than simply plundered. In this context, the Cold War system of patronage – the providing of resources to states to keep them onside – along with the various limitations on war in this period can be argued to have greatly weakened if not entirely suspended the democratising dynamics associated with foreign military competition described above. As long as dictators such as Mobutu of Zaire, for example, could rely on US revenues in return for co-operation in the struggle against communism in southern Africa, not only were domestic democratic compromises unnecessary to his continued rule but also he and his extended entourage could actually plunder the wealth and resources of

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the country with complete impunity. As Robert Bates has argued: Propped up by the forces unleashed by the Cold War, local elites in the developing world did not fear falling, should they become unpopular; nor, supported by transfers of aid from abroad, did they need to bargain with their citizens to secure public revenues. They therefore did not need to be responsive to their people or democratic in their politics, for want of the kind of pressures that in the past had compelled governments to become democracies. The United States may not have been attracted to dictators, then; rather, it may have created them, or at least arrested the forces of accountability that in an earlier era might have made them democratic.601 However, as indicated by Huntington’s central prescription that strengthening the bases of non-communist political order should be the primary objective of US foreign policy towards the developing world, there has been a long-standing tension within and among the major democratic states between this line and another which argues against yielding too much of a freehand to pro-Western dictatorships. Today the conflict between support for authoritarian market-friendly regimes such as China and those who oppose ‘normal’ relations with (certain) non-democracies still exists but there is a ‘new’ strategic dimension emphasised that is informed by the so-called ‘democratic peace’ thesis according to which liberal democracies do not fight wars against each other. As President Bush’s administration has made clear in its September 2002 national security strategy document, even for many traditional Realists, by raising the issue of democratic governance to the level of national security policy the debate has at least moved on to such matters as what appropriate policies for the international diffusion of democracy may entail.602 The rejection by France, Germany and Russia, of the democratic possibilities in Iraq and the wider region consequent upon the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s regime, demonstrates in part, however, the difficulties involved in fostering multilateral agreement. On this front, one of Polanyi’s important arguments is certainly instructive, namely, that despite the clearly discernible lessons of the causes of the First World War, the lack of support (and financial punishment) for the fledgling new democracies of Central Europe was a major contributing factor in the eventual outbreak of the Second World War. In other words, though we have seen that inter-state competition does not necessarily correlate with diminished prospects for democracy and in fact that even war has sometimes been responsible for creating the

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conditions for its institutionalisation, there exist, as in the past, less destructive alternative possibilities through international collaboration. Moving to this side of the argument, the historical development of co-operative features of the international political system including the conventions of diplomacy and international law, which have been pursued at least in part to strengthen international order and minimise conflict have led to re-conceptualisations of international legitimacy due to ‘top-down’ as well as ‘bottom-up’ pressures. Both Polanyi and Held in their very different ways reflect on the conditions which make co-operation possible and desirable, the former stressing the exceedingly shaky material and ideological foundations associated with nineteenthcentury economic liberalism and the prospects of an international order that transcends these limitations, the latter more current in terms of the possibilities and imperatives of international co-operation associated with globalisation. Again, both authors are clear about countervailing tendencies and pressures – from the precariousness of a global system predicated on systematically organised violence as the final arbiter of disputes to the proliferation of weapons of all descriptions due in part to the existence of a very profitable international market wherein the major liberal democracies, who account for the lion’s share, compete so aggressively. Nevertheless, that there has been a discernible shift towards de-legitimating the inviolability of sovereignty is clear even if the Bush administration’s doctrine of ‘pre-emption’ and the case of military intervention in Iraq has seriously divided the major states including the major liberal democracies. I have argued that the erosion of state impunity, however faltering, insecure and politically divisive has potentially enhanced the prospects of democracy and that cosmopolitan democracy is itself clearly predicated upon its consolidation at the domestic level.

International war As with inter-state competition but with the addition of much greater mobilisations by states of military personnel, labour and capital, as well as much greater sacrifices called upon the citizenry, war has had astonishing social, economic and political consequences. Military defeats have led to lasting democratic impositions in Germany, Italy and Japan and democratic transition in Argentina, while military intervention in Haiti and Afghanistan by the United States, and in Serbia and Kosovo by NATO have arguably also had welcomed results in terms of the prospects for democracy – the military intervention in Iraq is currently underway

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so judgement here is not yet possible even if the pledge to democratise the state in the post-war period is clear. The domestic impact of war has been related to greater participation in politics by women in the West and to deeper institutionalisations of welfare states.603 In short, that most awful of international phenomena whose understanding is the very raison d’être of International Relations will probably continue to generate social pressures, which often aim at, and sometimes achieve, changes in democratic directions. It does so by radically altering the balance of domestic and international forces. Domestically, those held responsible for defeat, from a ruling clique to an entire political system, lose credibility and legitimacy, if not at first direct power, which in turn creates much more favourable conditions for oppositions groups. Something like this is even perceivable within established liberal democracies. The defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, for instance, may be said to have had domestic democratic effects including the advent of the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ with its heightened sensitivity to the number of casualties suffered in conflict by US military personnel. Despite the complications and paradoxes arising from this such as the limitations on arguably useful and perhaps increasingly necessary humanitarian interventions, which are real and important, conflating this sensitivity with political cowardice undervalues the achievement and service that an earlier generation of anti-war demonstrators bequeathed to the following ones – as if one needed reminding, the problem historically has been too few limitations on the martial appetites of states.604 Internationally, the defeat of fascism in the Second World War was a decisive victory for liberal democracy in Western Europe as well as elsewhere and a key basis for the current standing of the liberal democratic model worldwide. The socio-economic and political reforms that followed in its wake and related to the Cold War were also crucial in this regard. Furthermore, in the period after the Second World War starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention, the awareness of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany generated pressures to create conditions that would work against the repetition of such behaviour in the future – a decent hope in the context of the current war in Iraq is for a similar process to occur there. The international resolve associated with the idea that there should be explicit limits on what a government can do in its relations with the people living within its boundaries was given a new impetus by the Second World War. While there is some evidence that this is increasingly apparent – the case of Pinochet, the military intervention

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in Kosovo, for instance – there is also clear evidence that the commercial, strategic and domestic political interests of ruling politicians and states continues to pull in the opposite direction – the case of Presidents Chirac and Putin with regard to Iraq. It is important, however, not to be too optimistic about war’s link with democracy not only because of its proven destructiveness but also because of its uncertain and unpredictable consequences. As Barrington Moore, Schumpeter and Polanyi point out, if not for the First World War, Bolshevism as well as fascism would probably not have triumphed. Also, the Second World War may have saved parts of Western Europe and Japan from dictatorship (Spain and Portugal remaining under authoritarian control until the 1970s), but it also helped to produce the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe, Vietnam, North Korea and China as well as the Cold War. For Europe then, the Revolutions of 1989–90 may be seen as the fulfilment of 1945.605 Furthermore, the war may have contributed decisively to de-colonisation in the Third World, as the First World War did to ending of the empires within Europe, but it also opened up political opportunities to new, indigenous, despots. Similarly, the leaving of Saddam Hussein in power after the ousting of his troops from Kuwait in 1991 made necessary the US bases in the Arabian peninsula which helped give rise to al-Qaeda – Hussein’s final removal, even if completed as desired by the British and American governments, may yet produce unfavourable consequences which no one has yet envisaged. For good reasons then, the humanitarian aversion to international conflict makes sense, as does the perhaps increasing need by the political leaders of the liberal democracies to justify participation in war on universalist grounds.

Focused political action This category relates to actions or policies by states, international organisations and global civil society groups in support of what are at least perceived by them to be democratic forces or practice. With the partial exception of Held’s text – some of the following arguments are discussed in the analysis of that book – and, very tangentially that of Huntington’s, this area does not figure in the arguments of the others. Though there are historical precedents especially with regard to US foreign policy, this is clearly a very current approach to the relationship between democracy and the global system. In the literature on social revolutions, quite appropriately, the concept of subversion bears the most resemblance to this category. While there

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is every indication that subversion is historically the least important cause of revolutionary transformation if not the least troubling for status quo powers, the sheer scale and number of forces ostensibly arrayed in opposition to dictatorships and their practices makes this category a crucial area of concern. The first Clinton administration, which proclaimed the promotion of democracy ‘the successor to the doctrine of containment’ and pledged to make the ‘enlargement of democracy’ a guiding principle of its foreign policy, captured perfectly the renewed liberal optimism of the postCold War era.606 Given the coherence and salience of the ‘democratic peace’ thesis, this policy orientation may be said not simply to reflect the continuation of the idealist side of US foreign policy but is arguably newly and firmly premised on Realist considerations. Either way, as with the Blair government’s ‘ethical’ foreign policy in Britain, all policies related to other countries would be assessed in terms of their possible impact on democratisation and democracy related assistance would become a significant component of foreign aid. Representing roughly a fourth of the global economy, the United States alone would seem to possess quite extraordinary leveraging potential in terms of influencing the direction of political change in other countries. Combined with the states of the EU, the UN’s human rights mandate and the depth of the global trend towards economic liberalisation – thereby increasing the political leverage entailed by possession of the largest capital and consumer markets – a conscious and co-ordinated ‘promotion’ of democratic governance would appear to stand a better chance of success today than at any other time in history. Furthermore, operating through multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, the major liberal democratic states have increasingly applied the ‘conditionality’ principle to democratic reform. Probably the greatest successes to date in this area are the democratic transitions of Portugal, Spain and Greece whose conviction, on the part of the influential sectors of these societies, that joining the European project was the best course available to them, spurred them on to institutionalise democracy. As examined in the previous chapter, the explicit democratic criteria for joining regional political and economic organisations such as the EU and Mercosur could be an increasingly significant factor in the diffusion of democracy. Paradoxically perhaps from the point of view of traditional concerns with the emancipation of the Third World, it is often those states who, partly because of their strategic control over key resources (e.g. the Gulf states), potentially lucrative

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consumer markets or geopolitical weight and positioning (e.g. China), have achieved high levels of independence from the major liberal democracies, that are often least susceptible to outside political or economic pressures to reform – clearly, the prospects of democratic reform in the Middle East consequent upon the ousting of Hussein’s regime in Iraq have been raised by the coalition partners arrayed against it. If dependency has a silver lining, the susceptibility to political pressure could be it so long as the promotion of democratic reform is backed with tangible commitments on the part of the major states. As we have already noted, however, the commercial and geopolitical pressures which run counter to such an approach are considerable and, quite rightly, expose its champions to the charge of double standards. There are, of course, a variety of other difficulties here like actually coordinating such an approach internationally given the competition and lack of consensus between democratic states;607 knowing what the effect of democratic orientated policies will be; ascertaining the limitations of their impact; the constraints of economic and political resources available for promoting democracy; preventing the commitment to democracy from allowing ‘new’ democrats to get away with murder (e.g. Moscow’s intervention in Chechnya); judging and admitting defeat of policies; knowing with any certainty whom to trust with the task of carrying out democratic reforms; accepting that the commitment needed by such a strategy is a long-term one, as the economic sanctions on South Africa demonstrated, and not particularly popular if innocent people are directly or indirectly hurt by them as also in Iraq, and finally; of knowing when a democratic system is in fact sustainable – the list of countries which have apparently institutionalised democracy at least twice being long indeed and growing all the time.608 States, however, are not the only relevant actors in this category. The role played by global civil society groups, from raising public consciousness about the plight of those suffering under dictatorship, highlighting brutal practice, to helping organise elections and applying pressure on democratic governments, especially in their dealings with states which have active but heavily repressed democratic movements, are all important.609 Again, as I argued in the previous chapter, there is every indication that such activity will continue to expand in scale and in importance. Despite the contradictions, tensions and countervailing tendencies, it is difficult not to suggest that the combined effect of the focused political action adds significantly to the ethos and underlying reality that the norm of political organisation worldwide is biased towards democracy.

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Force of example The force of example or demonstration effect is the final area of analysis that, as liberal internationalism suggests, is necessary for assessing the relationship between democracy and the global system. It is fair to say that, as defined here, this concept is not analysed explicitly or systematically by our authors with the exception of David Held for whom, as with Kant’s ‘second definitive article’ of the ‘pacific federation’ of republics, it is to be a critical effect of the successful institutionalisation of a cosmopolitan democratic framework, and Samuel Huntington for whom the existence of democratic states made it more difficult for transitional societies to achieve a stable non-communist polity while the example of communist stability raised the likelihood of its emulation by these countries.610 The force of example is closely related to the concept of ‘worldhistorical-time’ as an evolving picture of modernity, the multiple dimensions and interpreted meanings of which affect social practice transnationally. Beyond the transmission of emancipatory struggles and their particular means and methods – for example, civil rights movements, women’s suffrage, feminism, anti-war movements, antiglobalisation movements, civil disobedience, non-violent direct action, use of the internet as organising tool, guerrilla war and so on – this category also involves the international attractiveness or lure of models of ends; exemplars of socio-economic and political organisation having been successfully achieved or perceived to have been. In our terms, therefore, it takes seriously suggestions that democratic transitions in one or more countries, like ‘successful’ revolutions, generate significant demonstration effects elsewhere as arguably Latin America witnessed in the 1980s – the proximate similarity of socio-economic and political contexts is probably most relevant to the potential force and impact of the demonstration effect. However, as in many areas of the social sciences generally, there is always a real danger of oversimplification and wishful thinking here. There is every possibility that the negative power of example is just as potent as that of the positive one. The experiments with democracy in Algeria or Cambodia, for example, will not have necessarily given regional neighbours the confidence to pursue their own democratic transitions. Similarly, it is not only progressive models that are transmitted internationally by the force of example. The denial of political pluralism like the conscious fomenting of ethnic or cultural rivalries and antagonisms by political leaders also has transnational purchase.

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Finally, as we have had reason to comment throughout this work, liberal democracy is itself open to honest and just criticisms such as the massive gap between its promise of equality and the reality of endemic inequality or the corrupting role that money plays in shaping the political process at every level. Furthermore, as is often remarked in the context of the Asian Tigers or, retrospectively, in that of many former dictatorships, the perception of increased criminal activity concomitant with liberal democracy does not necessarily inspire emulation. Nevertheless, the current lack of coherent world-historical challenges to liberal democracy with potentially universal application – unlike, for instance, political models based on interpretations of particular religions – as well as the unrivalled political and economic success of the major liberal democratic states makes the force of example an important international cause of domestic demands for political reform. This does not say anything, of course, about the likelihood of its institutionalisation anywhere. As the history of revolutions has shown, not every transition to a ‘new’ form of politics and society survives. Typically, failed revolutions far outnumber those that succeed in a particular wave of revolutionary transformation and a similar type of process is probably true of those associated with democratic waves. For example, despite the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, most of the 15 former Soviet Republics’ democratic credentials are today at best seriously in doubt – these would include Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakstan as well as the Transcaucasian states.611 Similarly, the surge away from one-party regimes and towards multi-party democracy in subSaharan Africa, though arguably still advancing, has witnessed a great many ‘reversals’ through coups, civil war and ruling party manipulation – Nigeria, Gambia and Niger for the first, Rwanda, Burundi and Sierra Leone for the second, Kenya and Zimbabwe for the third. As Huntington’s analysis so clearly suggests, ‘transitional’ states, putting aside the critical question of ‘destination’, are the least politically stable of all. Finally, the role of the United States in the context of the force of example is worth particular consideration. Arguably the most multicultural and civic – as opposed to ethnic – of all nations today, the United States sees itself and is seen by many throughout the world as having demonstrated the universal applicability of liberal democracy. If AsianAmericans, African-Americans and all other hyphenated Americans can make this system work in the United States, why cannot liberal democracy be made to work in their countries of origin? While there are, of course, many answers to this question which this book has attempted to highlight, the evident optimism and tenacity of American liberal

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internationalism is perhaps best seen in light of the historically exceptional character of this country.612

Conclusion In analysing the above five categories of international/domestic interaction with the aid of the case studies, it is clear that there are currently a number of features associated with the promotion of the liberal democratic form of state and some with its hindrance – democracy is very much in contingent relation to the global system even if its current international hegemony has significantly altered this contingency.613 While the end of the Cold War has strengthened the global hegemony of liberal democracy, the perception of US ‘unilateralism’, particularly in relation to the military intervention in Iraq but also with regard to the Kyoto Treaty and the International Criminal Court, has helped call into question the coherence of the democratic ‘zone of peace’. The divisions evident in the UN Security Council, in NATO, in the EU and throughout the world has raised the spectre of global realignments that, though unlikely to develop, could indeed fracture current arrangements just when the strategic necessity of multilateral co-operation has become more evident than ever. Clearly, to strengthen the coherence of the democratic ‘zone of peace’, much greater internationally co-ordinated political effort needs to be expended in raising the benefits to societies and states which have made or are making genuinely democratic changes in terms of the distribution of economic opportunities and wealth as well as security. As the tragedy of 11 September 2001 has demonstrated, no state, however peripheral to the main economic, cultural and political processes of the global system should be left aside. As our case studies make clear, however, no one should be under any illusions that such a course of action is necessarily achievable. Besides the familiar, if periodic, feature of declining terms of trade associated with many primary product exporters, it is estimated that developed countries’ farm subsidies – in part, of course, a product of liberal democratic settlements – are worth some $30 billion more than Africa’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP).614 Meanwhile, the elimination of North American, European and Japanese barriers to imports from sub-Saharan Africa, a region facing particularly harrowing socioeconomic and political conditions, would increase its annual exports by $2.5 billion.615 Similarly, as a recent UN-sponsored comparative analysis of the Arab world makes evident, 250 million people surviving on a combined GDP equivalent to that of Spain’s is hardly fertile ground for

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liberal democracy even if the very lack of democracy is a major source of the problem.616 Nevertheless, according to Amartya Sen, asking what makes a country fit for democracy is the wrong question. ‘A country does not have to be deemed fit for democracy; rather, it has to become fit through democracy.’617 Despite the forces arrayed against the conjunctural development of the democratic form of state highlighted by this book, the fact that these are established in all the major habitable continents of the world and the apparent success achieved by the leading states, however recently, as liberal democracies, may well make him right. Being much more attentive to the multitude of ways in which the workings of the global system affect the prospects of consolidating democracy is a necessary beginning. There is little point in accepting liberal internationalist expectations of its diffusion when so many obstacles are clearly discernable. This is particularly so because of the real and potential value of democracy. To the extent that politics matter, that the collective power of the state can be used for inclusive or exclusive purposes, for progress or reaction, for individual and group empowerment or marginalisation, for war or peace, for good or bad, democracy matters. This is precisely why the interactions between the international and domestic domains that are in part implicated in the creation and development of forms of state should be central to the study of International Relations. Furthermore, if the myriad transnational forces associated with globalisation have made the extension of political community an increasingly pressing concern, the diffusion of the democratic form of state is likely the best means for its achievement. The spread of democratic principles along with the ethos of human rights, by helping to legitimate the equal worth of individuals and groups, are part of only a few elements in the modern global system eroding the superior or prior moral claims of the national community. Our analysis suggests that the relationship between democracy and the global system is much more complex and problematic than liberal internationalism assumes. In addition, while the contingency of this relationship may be moving in a positive direction, the obstacles to its worldwide diffusion arising specifically from the way the international and domestic domains interact are very considerable indeed. Nevertheless, much more could be done consciously to improve the likelihood of its international diffusion and consolidation. A genuine internationally co-ordinated commitment to democratic government would be potentially radical (revolutionary even) not only in terms of moving towards the transcendence of Westphalian principles but for human emancipation, particularly if liberal democracy is seen in terms of its own unrealised potential.

Notes Preface 1. For an opposing view see Perry Anderson ‘Force and Consent – Aspects of US Hegemony’, New Left Review 17, September–October 2002. 2. Michael Parenti, ‘To Kill Iraq: The Reasons Why?’ www.michaelparenti.org. 3. Parenti’s view of capitalism is cogently stated as follows: ‘The “global economy” is another name for imperialism, and imperialism is a transnational form of capitalism. The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead, gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.’ See, Parenti’s Against Empire (San Francisco, City Lights Books, 1995) p. 208. 4. A similar justification was present also in the military interventions in Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. 5. Bernard Crick, Political Thoughts and Polemics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990) p. 146. 6. As will be clear from the introductory chapter, the ‘liberal’ in liberal internationalism is not that used in the United States as indicating ‘left-wing’ but rather a much more heterogeneous philosophical category covering much of the centre ground of modern politics including most Republicans as well as Democrats. The same heterogeneity of liberalism is true of British politics today as well. 7. One will recall that the presidential candidate George W. Bush expressed a clear disinclination for ‘nation-building’ and global police actions that to some extent characterised the Clinton administration’s foreign policy. For the Left, the dilemma of opposing US led military action without necessarily defending the status quo in Iraq and the Middle East, as in Afghanistan, is serious if often seemingly unconscious. The most compelling voice on the Left that supports the current military intervention in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, both for the presumed affect on Western security as well as for the progressive domestic consequences for the people of these states is Christopher Hitchens. See ‘The Christopher Hitchens web’ for the dozens of his relevant articles. 8. Of course, the goal of institutionalising democracy will not be allowed to trump all other considerations as, for example, if it seems to run counter to national interests as in present day Pakistan where ‘free elections’ could well place political Islamists in power. For the Bush administration’s justification of ‘pre-emption’, see ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, September 2002. 9. For differing assessments of the prospects of democratisation in the Middle East consequent upon the current war in Iraq see the essays by

211

212 Notes

10.

11. 12. 13.

Adam Garfinkle, Fouad Ajami, Robin Banerji, Ahmad Khalidi and Kenneth Pollack in Prospect, April, 2003. See the essay by John Grey in ‘The New Statesman’ 31 March 2003. See also the essay on de Maistre by Isaiah Berlin in his The Crooked Timber of Humanity (London: John Murray, 1990). See Chapter 4 for an extended assessment of these arguments. See Michael Ignatieff’s ‘The Burden’ in The New York Times Magazine, 5 January 2003. The support of Hussein’s regime in the current crisis, throughout the Arab and, indeed, Muslim world, is a symptom of a pathological political culture formed in part at the fulcrum of international and domestic interaction.

Introduction 14. Quoted in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium (Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 53. In a joint statement 13 years later, the presidents of the United States and Russia, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, said the former adversaries now had, ‘a new relationship … founded on a commitment to the values of democracy, the free market and the rule of law. The United States and Russia have overcome the legacy of the Cold War. Neither country regards the other as an enemy or threat’. Los Angeles Times, 14 November, 2001. 15. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, perhaps the most prominent books so far include Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton University Press, 1993); Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage, 1991); John Dunn, Democracy, The Unfinished Journey 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford University Press, 1992); David Held ed., Prospects for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993); David Held Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 1992); Georg Sorensen, Democracy and Democratization (Westview Press, 1993); Geraint Parry and Michael Moran (eds) Democracy and Democratization (London: Routledge, 1994); Daid Potter, David Goldblatt, Margaret Kiloh, Paul Lewis (eds) Democratization (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997). 16. Freedom House estimates that currently ‘there are 86 Free countries (2465.2 billion people; 40.69 percent of the world population) in which a broad range of political rights are respected; 59 Partly Free countries (1442.2 billion people; 23.80 percent of the world’s population) in which there is a mixed record with more limited political rights and civil liberties often accompanied by corruption, weak rule of law and the inordinate political dominance of a ruling party in some cases characterised by ethnic or religious strife. There are 47 countries rated Not Free (2151.1 billion people; representing 35.51 percent of the globe’s population), in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied.’ The State of Freedom: 2000 (Washington: Freedom House, 2000).

Notes 213 17. See Evan Luard, Basic Texts in International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1992) pp. 417–23 for Kant and pp. 51–3 for Paine. For Kant’s analysis see also Michael Doyle ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, December 1986. For Montesquieu see Norberto Bobbio, ‘Democracy and the Global System’ in Daniele Archibugi and David Held (eds) Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995) pp. 20–1. 18. Ibid., pp. 53–6 for de Tocqueville and 57–8 for Cobden. 19. Ibid., pp. 267–70. 20. James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and its Limits (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) p. 153. 21. For a thorough, if perhaps dated, account of the role of sovereignty and nonintervention in world politics see R.J. Vincent, Non-intervention and International Order (Princeton University Press, 1974). To the extent that Realism is supposed to concentrate on threats to the security and territorial integrity of states, it has failed to theorise the reality that internal problems, civil wars or revolutions, for example, often spill over on to other states. For a discussion on the weakness of Realism in this regard see Fred Halliday, ‘ “The Sixth Great Power”: On the Study of Revolutions and International Relations’, Review of International Studies (Vol. 16, No. 3, July 1990). 22. For a recent account of the moral arguments involved here see Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 23. For an account of this thesis see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979). See also, Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1990) and Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) for excellent exegeses and critiques of this approach. 24. For a critique of Realism that is based on an understanding of socioeconomic structures see Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society (London: Verso, 1994). 25. See Margot Light and A.J.R. Groom (eds) International Relations: A Handbook of Current Theory (London: Pinter Publishers, 1985) for such a survey. 26. This situation is not static, however, and there is increasing influence in particular of historical sociology on IR. Two very recent contributions include J. Hobden and S. Hobson (eds) Historical Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), and B. Buzan and R. Little, Global Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 27. Marxist and neo-Marxist accounts are important exceptions to the lack of modern theoretical work on the relationship between international relations and socio-economic and political structures. Apart from this literature, within IR the work of Fred Halliday, Robert Cox, David Held, Andrew Linklater, Justin Rosenberg, Jan Aart Scholte among others would need to be represented as exceptions also. My own research interests have to a considerable degree been influenced by the questions raised in Fred Halliday’s ‘International Society as Homogeneity: Burke, Marx, Fukuyama’, Millennium (Vol. 21, No. 3, 1992) pp. 435–61. As to the work in Sociology

214 Notes

28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

and Political Science I am particularly thinking of Theda Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 1979); Michael Mann’s States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), The Sources of Social Power Vols I & II (Cambridge University Press, 1986 and 1993 respectively); Leslie Sklair, Sociology of the Global System (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991); and David Held ed., Prospects for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993). Most of the works cited in note 15 fall into these disciplines. That the interaction between ‘exogenous’ and ‘endogenous’ forces was primarily responsible for the collapse of communist power in Central and Eastern Europe has been argued thoroughly by a number of authors. The case of Argentina’s transition to democracy is also quite illuminating in this regard. Not only did the Falklands War precipitate the fall of the military ‘junta’, but other longer term international processes such as economic decline, indebtedness and national sentiment associated with ‘Las Malvinas’, helped define the options available to the increasingly unpopular military regime. What is more difficult to prove is that once the old order collapses, the choice of democracy as the alternative form of governance is in some way also determined by international processes and considerations. Nevertheless, opposition figures and movements inside authoritarian states such as China and Vietnam often suggest that the lack of democracy is at the root of other problems facing their societies. Therefore, democratic alternatives are envisaged well before the collapse of undemocratic regimes. That the reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union were in large measure in response to international comparisons is made by Gorbachev himself in Perestroika (London: Fontana, 1988). For assessments of studies focused on testing the hypothesis of the liberal peace as well as refuting it see Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997) pp. 284–99. For examples of the exception see David Held op. cit. as well as his Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) and Prospects for Democracy: North, South, East, West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993). For the varieties of ‘liberal peace’ arguments see Michael Doyle, op. cit. pp. 205–12. Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, op. cit. p. 1151. Ibid., pp. 1155–7. Ibid., p. 1157. Ibid., p. 1157. Ibid., p. 1158. My italics to highlight the tendentious character of this notion. Ibid., p. 1159. Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace, op. cit. pp. 213–29. Doyle terms this variety of liberalism ‘First Image’ or human nature liberalism after Kenneth Waltz’s categorisation in his Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). Included here are John Locke and Jeremy Bentham. Ibid., pp. 226–9. According to Doyle, the international institutional dimension is the particular contribution of Bentham’s insights. Ibid., pp. 230–50. Because peace is a by-product of capitalist democracy, Doyle terms this type of liberalism ‘Second Image’. Kant’s liberalism is the ‘Third Image’.

Notes 215 41. Francis Fukuyama, op. cit. 42. See Paul Cammack, ‘Democratization and citizenship in Latin America’ in Geraint Parry and Michael Moran (eds) Democracy and Democratization (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 177. 43. Quoted in Andrew Linklater, op. cit., p. 99. 44. Above all it was Fred Halliday’s MSc course on ‘Revolutions and IR’ at LSE which helped point me in these particular directions. 45. See Jack Goldstone ed., Revolutions 2nd edition (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993) for the dearth of IR specialists. 46. Theda Skocpol, op. cit., p. 22. 47. Ibid., p. 23. 48. Ibid., p. 23. The words in brackets replace revolutions and revolutionary leaderships respectively. 49. For an exquisite elaboration of the importance of ‘partial judgements’ on politics see John Dunn, The Cunning of Unreason: Making Sense of Politics (London: Harper Collins, 2001). 50. Ibid., pp. 209–10. 51. For the increasing need and existing bases of international cooperation see Michael Edwards Future Positive: International Co-operation in the 21st Century (London: Earthscan Publications, 1999). 52. Fred Halliday, The World at 2000 (London: Palgrave, 2001) p. 133. 53. Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Monad Press, 1980 first published in 1932). See especially chapter 1. He also deploys on the very first page what is in fact a major conclusion of Michael Mann’s first volume of The Sources of Social Power (ibid.) namely, that, as Perry Anderson wrote, ‘the essential precondition for the emergence of civilization and acceptance of its discontents was a “closing of escape routes” or ecological “caging” ’. See Perry Anderson, A Zone of Engagement (London: Verso, 1992) p. 77. For a similar ‘tripartite’ conception of the global system as well as an engagement with ‘uneven and combined development’ see Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1999) pp. 311–22. 54. Leon Trotsky, ibid., pp. 6–7. 55. Ibid., chapter 1. 56. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 57. Ibid., p. 5. 58. See Andrew Linklater, op. cit. for an assessment of the problems associated with such privileging by Marxist and neo-Marxist theory. 59. See Norberto Bobbio, Liberalism and Democracy (London: Verso, 1990) pp. 31–5. 60. Perry Anderson, op. cit., p. 109. 61. Ibid., pp. ix–xiv. 62. See Quentin Skinner The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) pp. ix–xv. 63. Anderson, op. cit., p. x. 64. As examples, Polanyi’s text and central thesis is used and quoted extensively by John Gray’s False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Granta Books, 1998), while some of Schumpeter’s ideas appear in the highly popular book The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 1999) by Thomas Friedman.

216 Notes 65. William E. Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993) p. 5. 66. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) pp. 146–59.

1 Barrington Moore’s ‘Social Origins’ and the Global System 67. There are, of course, good reasons for stressing domestic obstacles and poor ones. A crucial one seems to me to be the importance of secularism, summed up perhaps in the difficulty of reconciling ‘the sovereignty of the people’ with ‘the sovereignty of God’. Even here, however, one should be sceptical of arguments suggesting the eternal durability of religious authority, the purely ‘religious’ content of that authority, and, of course, the analysis of theocracies as simply the product of domestic forces. The most commonly held poor reason for stressing domestic obstacles to the institutionalisation of democracy is the arrogant and imperious one which suggests the insuperable ‘Western’ origins of democracy and the inherent cultural backwardness of the people of the Third World. A good example of this attitude is found in a book by Conor Cruise O’Brien where, pouring scorn on the US media’s reporting of ‘Operation Restore Democracy’, he suggests that ‘… most reporters and commentators have been describing and discussing the prospects for the restoration of democracy in Haiti as if democracy were a venerable Haitian institution …’ (On the Eve of the Millennium, New York: The Free Press, 1994, p. 142). Well, in fact, Haiti, as San Domingo, was one of the first independent republics in the Americas (1804) and Toussaint L’Ouverture, its leader, the first independent revolutionary leader of stature. 68. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Penguin, 1966). 69. As set out in the introductory chapter, I have in mind here the debate in Politics and IR concerning ‘liberal internationalism’ and the apparent ‘zone of peace’ established by liberal democratic states. See in particular, Michael W. Doyle, op. cit.; Wade L. Huntley, ‘Kant’s Third Image: Systemic Sources of the Liberal Peace’, International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 40, No. 1, March 1996); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton University Press, 1993); Francis Fukuyama, op. cit.; Graham E. Fuller, The Democracy Trap: Perils of the Post-Cold War World (New York: Dutton, 1991); Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage, 1991); John Dunn, Democracy, the Unfinished Journey 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford University Press, 1992); David Held ed., Prospects for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993); Miroslav Nincic, Democracy and Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 1992); Georg Sorensen, Democracy and Democratisation (Westview Press, 1993). 70. Ibid., p. xiv. 71. Ibid., p. x. 72. Ernest Gellner Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (Penguin Books, 1996) p. 188.

Notes 217 73. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 414. Of course, it would be just as simple to quibble over each of these points as any detailed definition. Moore actually expands on what institutions are required for democratic government in various places throughout the book but never in any systematic way, preferring to assume a shared understanding by his readers of what makes democracies democratic. The most systematic description of democracy is as follows: ‘Key elements in the liberal and bourgeois order of society are the right to vote, representation in a legislature that makes the laws and hence is more than a rubber stamp for the executive, an objective system of law that at least in theory confers no special privileges on account of birth or inherited status, security for the rights of property and the elimination of barriers inherited from the past on its use, religious toleration, freedom of speech, and the right to peaceful assembly’ (p. 429). Arguing against the view that Indian democracy is a sham he lists the following features: a working parliamentary system, an independent judiciary, ‘the standard liberal freedoms’, free general elections, and civilian control of the military (p. 314). Later he lists these important features: ‘the existence of legal opposition and channels for protest and criticism’ (p. 431). 74. Perhaps this is one reason why one finds so few references to Social Origins in the works of modern democratic theorists such as David Held in Britain or Robert Dahl in the United States. For an explicit account of the relationship between ideology and social movements according to Moore see the epilogue in Social Origins. 75. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 435–40. 76. His thesis here is that the combination of declining social classes with rising ones is a crucial variable in determining political outcomes. Ibid., pp. 453–83. 77. For a clear appraisal of this debate see Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988) ch. 1. 78. See Michael S. Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation (Oxford: Polity Press, 1990) pp. 129–36. 79. See Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp. 44–9. 80. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 5. Similarly, as Andrew Linklater (op. cit., p. 37) has noted, ‘Marx argued that the development of exchange relations first appeared “in the connection of the different communities with one another, not in the relations between the different members of a single community.” ’ 81. Ibid., p. 8. 82. Ibid., p. 6 quoting R.H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1912). 83. Ibid., p. 14. This is a crucial point and one not lost on those in the Third World and elsewhere who are engaged in struggles to reform states with enormous capabilities in relation to social classes or civil society. 84. Ibid., p. 28. 85. Ibid., p. 30. 86. This early version of parliamentary sovereignty was, of course, the rule of the landed upper classes with property qualifications. Ibid., p. 22. 87. Ibid., p. 32.

218 Notes 88. See Leon Trotsky, op. cit., ch. 1. 89. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 413–14. For a very stimulating discussion of the central importance for IR of this theory as outlined by Trotsky, see Justin Rosenberg, ‘Isaac Deutscher and the lost history of international relations’, New Left Review 215/1996. 90. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 424. 91. According to Justin Rosenberg, David Horowitz (Empire and Revolution: New York, 1969) adds to Moore’s account ‘… the realization that these three outcomes, for all their differences, were actually not separate historical experiences’, but a single historical process. I would argue that Moore’s analysis does point to separate historical ‘experiences’ but within a single historical process. See Justin Rosenberg, op. cit., pp. 11–12. 92. Justin Rosenberg, op. cit., pp. 8–11. 93. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 250–1. 94. For an account of the progress of industrialisation in the Third World see Gary Gereffi, ‘Capitalism, Development and Global Commodity Chains’ in Leslie Sklair ed., Capitalism and Development (London: Routledege, 1994) pp. 211–31. 95. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 430. 96. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1992) pp. 159–63. According to these authors, ‘The greater difficulties in consolidating state power in Latin America compared to Europe explain at least part of the comparative scarcity of stable institutionalized elite contestation and gradual inclusion of non-elite sectors’ (p. 163). 97. This point is made by most, if not all, texts on Third World politics and economics. See, for example, Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics (London: Croom Helm, 1985) pp. 1–39; and for an excellent account of this process according to Marx, see Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1990) pp. 25–57. 98. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 433–52. 99. Ibid., p. 417. 100. Ibid., pp. 419–20. 101. Ibid., p. 418. 102. The modern source of this connection is Seymore Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Doubleday, 1960) pp. 45–76. See also Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971) pp. 62–80; Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) ch. 2; for more critical responses see Ronaldo Munck, ‘Democracy and Development’ in Leslie Sklair ed., Capitalism and Development (London: Routledge, 1994) pp. 21–39 and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, op. cit. 103. See Fred Halliday, The World at 2000 (London: Palgrave, 2001) p. 65. 104. See, for example, Howard Handelman, The Challenge of Third World Development (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996) pp. 133–54. 105. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, op. cit., use labour ‘intensity’ rather than Moore’s notion of labour ‘repressive’ agriculture as a decisive variable (pp. 163–4). I too prefer this distinction.

Notes 219 106. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 418–20. 107. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, op. cit., p. 165. 108. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 433–52. 109. Ibid., p. 437. 110. Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996) pp. 39–40. 111. Christopher Clapham op. cit., pp. 39–60. 112. Ibid., pp. 93–101. It has been estimated that states with an overall tax take of less than 35–40% of GDP are extremely unlikely to have rates of poverty less than 10% of the population. See the interview with Jorge Castañeda in New Left Review, Vol. 7, Jan/Feb 2001. 113. Financial Times, 1 December 2000. 114. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 431. 115. Tom Kemp, Industrialization in the Non-Western World, 2nd edition (London: Longman, 1989) pp. 148–75. The following material is mainly drawn from this source. 116. Ibid., p. 166. 117. Paul Cammack, ‘Democratization and Citizenship in Latin America’ in Geraint Parry and Michael Moran (eds) Democracy and Democratization (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 185. 118. See Nicola Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America 1959–1987 (Cambridge University Press, 1989) pp. 42–50. 119. Obviously, military takeovers are not always explicitly justified on these grounds. They have been variously justified as protecting the country from the anti-democratic tendencies of civilian political parties, restoring the rule of law and order or anti-terrorism, restoring moral rectitude or anticorruption, to name but a few. See Robert Pinkney, Right-Wing Military Government (London: Pinter Publishers, 1990) pp. 22–37. 120. See Nicola Miller, op. cit., pp. 50–7. For an analysis which stresses the ‘force of example’ of revolutionary regimes see Fred Halliday, Revolution and Foreign Policy: The Case of South Yemen 1967–1987 (Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 228–32. For an analysis of the recent impact of the Cold War on the Third World see Fred Halliday, Cold War, Third World: An Essay on Soviet-American Relations (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989). 121. See Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle (London: Latin America Bureau, 1981) pp. 51–61. 122. Jenny Pearce, op. cit., pp. 84–98. The mobilisation by US companies of support against reformist regimes was particularly important in the case of Chile under Allende, of Brazil under Goulart and of Peru under Belaúnde to name but a few in South America. 123. Justin Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 10, quoting Isaac Deutscher, Unfinished Revolution (London, 1967) p. 34. 124. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 431. 125. Samuel P. Huntington develops a scheme using ‘waves of democratisation’ including partial reversals. The dates he gives are as follows: First, long wave of democratisation First reverse wave

1828–1926 1922–42

220 Notes Second, short wave Second reverse wave Third wave of democratisation

1943–62 1958–75 1974–present

See Huntington, op. cit., pp. 13–26. 126. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 427. Other analyses which incorporate ‘stages’ are Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, op. cit., and Samual P. Huntington, op. cit. 127. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 314–410. 128. Ibid., pp. 431–2. 129. Ibid., p. 431. 130. While the term ‘revolution’ is used here, it should be kept in mind that not all of these states experienced the kind of social upheaval associated with social revolutions – see Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 1979) ch. 1. Clearly, the immediate cause of the transformations in Central and Eastern Europe was the change in policies of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev. The following section focuses on the causes which led to the final collapse of the Soviet bloc. 131. See Fred Halliday, ‘The Ends of Cold War’, New Left Review 180/1990. The following section draws mainly from this source. 132. Ibid., pp. 14–15. 133. Ibid., p. 17. 134. See Göran Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies 1945–2000 (London: Sage, 1995) pp. 85–164. 135. Fred Halliday, ‘The Ends of Cold War’, op. cit., p. 19. 136. This term is used by Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens, op. cit., pp. 49–51. The concept of civil society is defined by these authors as ‘the totality of social institutions and associations, both formal and informal, that are not strictly production-related nor governmental or familial in character’ (p. 49). For the argument that civil society is a basic precondition for democratic government see Ernest Gellner, op. cit., pp. 184–9. 137. See E.J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men (London: Weidenfeld & Nocholson, 1968); Ralph Miliband, Parliamentary Socialism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961); George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1970); Michael Harrington, Socilaism: Past and Future (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1989). An interesting theory which suggests that the early achievement of the vote by US male workers made them less prone to socialist ideology is found in Michael Mann’s ‘Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship’, in States, War and Capitalism op. cit., pp. 192–5. 138. A wonderful exposition of the immense role of civil society in influencing the political outcomes even in the early years of the US Republic is John Keane’s Tom Paine: A Political Life (London: Bloomsbury, 1995). 139. Michael Ignatieff, ‘On Civil Society: Why Eastern Europe’s Revolutions Could Succeed’ in Foreign Affairs, March/April 1995. 140. The notion of historical culmination in the form of liberal democracy, of course, was a major reason for the rancour with which Francis Fukuyama’s thesis (op. cit.) was received. 141. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., p. 224.

Notes 221 142. See Justin Rosenberg, op. cit. 143. A challenging account of the struggles involved in the making of modernity or the ‘proletarianisation’ of Europe and indeed the world is Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker’s The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London: Verso, 2000).

2 Karl Polanyi, Democracy and the Global System 144. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1944). 145. There are many references to this ‘double movement’ but three of them can be found on pp. 76, 130–4, 249. 146. Ibid., pp. 43–55. 147. For the differences with feudalism see, ibid., pp. 69–70. 148. Ibid., p. 72. 149. Ibid., p. 72. 150. For elaboration on these points see ibid., chs 14, 15 and 16 respectively. More will be said on this matter when discussing the ‘post-liberal’ era. 151. Ibid., p. 130. 152. See, especially, ibid., the concluding chapter entitled Freedom in a Complex Society. 153. See, especially, ibid., Section II, Part II, Self-Protection of Society. The extent to which contemporary politics still revolve around the ‘double movement’ is remarkable. The Left and Right of politics – within and between political parties, for instance – are still largely distinguished from one another by their position with regard to the limits and uses of market principles, mechanisms and institutions. 154. Ibid., p. 65. 155. For an elaboration of the military dimension of the Industrial Revolution see G. Sen, The Military Origins of Industrialisation and International Trade Rivalry (London: Francis Pinter, 1984). 156. Ibid., p. 67. 157. Ibid., p. 75. 158. Similar points can be found in the contemporary sociological literature on class such as Anthony Giddens’ The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1973). See also, Michael Mann’s The Sources of Social Power Vol. II (Cambridge University Press, 1993) ch. 7. 159. ‘The fate of classes is much more often determined by the needs of society than the fate of society is determined by the needs of classes. Given a definite structure of society, the class theory works; but what if that structure itself undergoes change. … neither the birth nor the death of classes, neither their aims nor the degree to which they attain them; neither their co-operations nor their antagonisms can be understood apart from the situation of society as a whole.’ Ibid., p. 152. 160. Ibid., p. 156. Polanyi’s assessment of class conflict is very close to that of Michael Mann, see especially, op. cit., ch. 15. 161. Ibid., p. 135.

222 Notes 162. For another critique of the ‘harmony of interests’ proffered by liberalism within the discipline of International Relations, see E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1939) pp. 41–62. 163. Interestingly, Polanyi essentially agrees that the Speenhamland Law did indeed worsen the position of labourers by turning them into paupers. However, the cause of this degradation is seen to lie with the commodification of labour in the first place rather than with the unintended consequences of the squire’s Law. Ibid., pp. 77–85. 164. Until the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 the middle classes were not in a position to direct government policy. Thereafter, one can still argue that the state retained some autonomy from domestic social forces but perhaps with less impunity. The autonomy that was retained was especially in the field of foreign policy. See especially, Michael Mann’s States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988) chs 1–4. 165. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 138. 166. Ibid., pp. 192–200. 167. Ibid., pp. 198–9. 168. Ibid., p. 76. 169. Ibid., pp. 77–85. 170. For the role of the Tudors and early Stuarts see ibid., p. 38. 171. Ibid., pp. 86–129. 172. Ibid., p. 102. 173. Ibid., p. 101. 174. Ibid., pp. 80–3. 175. A good example here is the introduction of the Factory Act in 1833 which limited the use of child labour. See H.C.G. Matthew and Kenneth O. Morgan The Oxford History of Britain Vol. V: The Modern Age (Oxford University Press, 1984) p. 169. 176. Polanyi’s analysis of the working-class movement is not at all extensive. For a much more detailed description and analysis of the major points see, Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power, op. cit., ch. 15. 177. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Penguin, 1966) pp. 3–39. Only the United States faced a similar situation with regard to the peasantry, but it, of course, had eventually to deal with the issue of slavery, ibid., pp. 111–55. 178. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 168. 179. Ibid., p. 170. See also Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers (London: Penguin Books, 1983) pp. 84–90. 180. Ibid., p. 172. See also George Lichtheim’s A Short History of Socialism (London: Flamingo, 1983) pp. 57–73. 181. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 172. 182. ‘… [H]undreds of thousands of citizens were prepared in the capacity of special constables to turn their arms against the Chartists on that day (April 12, 1848).’ Ibid., p. 173. 183. Michael Mann, op. cit., p. 524. 184. A.H. Hanson and Malcolm Walles, Governing Britain (London: Fontana, 1970) pp. 23–40. 185. H.C.G. Matthew and Kenneth O. Morgan, op. cit., pp. 12–27.

Notes 223 186. Polanyi considers the 1870s the beginning of the ‘collectivist’ period due to the increasing success of anti-liberal forces. See, op. cit., pp. 181–4. 187. Ibid., p. 226. 188. An excellent account of this question is Justin Rosenberg’s ‘Isaac Deutscher and the Lost History of International Relations’ New Left Review 215, January/February 1996. See Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party (London: Penguin, 1973). 189. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 183. 190. An interesting exception is that of the United Provinces and its very early Republican regime. For an assessment of the ‘Bourgeois Republic’ see George Rude’s Revolutionary Europe (London: Fontana, 1964) pp. 160–77. 191. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 185. 192. Ibid., p. 186. 193. Ibid., p. 174. 194. Ibid., pp. 173–7. The protection included Bismarck’s system of social insurance, attained a good deal earlier than their British counterparts. 195. Ibid., p. 176. 196. Ibid., pp. 192–200. 197. Ibid., p. 193. 198. Ibid., p. 192. 199. Ibid., p. 195. 200. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification: 1815–1871 (Princeton University Press, 1963) p. 177. 201. Ibid., pp. 202–8. 202. Ibid., p. 205. 203. Ibid., p. 207. 204. Ibid., p. 207. 205. Ibid., p. 14. 206. See Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Monad Press, 1980) ch. 1. 207. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 201. 208. Curiously, there is no mention of the Civil War in Polanyi’s book. For an excellent account of the causes see, Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit., pp. 111–55. 209. For a theory which suggests that the early achievement of the vote by US male workers made them less prone to socialist ideology see, Michael Mann’s ‘Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship’, in States, War and Capitalism, op. cit., pp. 192–5. 210. Ibid., p. 212. 211. Ibid., p. 213. 212. For a Realist theory of imperialism see, Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 6th edition (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985) ch. 5. For Marxist theories see, Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1990). 213. D.K. Fieldhouse, The Theory of Capitalist Imperialism (London: Longman, 1967) p. xiv. 214. Polanyi, op. cit., p. 261.

224 Notes 215. 216. 217. 218. 219. 220.

Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., pp. 9–19. Ibid., p. 10. See E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, op. cit., pp. 25–6. Polanyi’s treatment of the First World War is scant in the extreme. For a superb assessment of the historical literature see J. Joll, The Origins of the First World War (London: Longman, 1984). See also, Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power op. cit., ch. 21. For the importance of the concept of ‘world-historical-time’ see the introductory chapter. 221. Polanyi, op. cit., pp. 20–1. 222. Ibid., p. 187. 223. For the effects of China’s development on the environment see, Richard Smith, ‘Creative Destruction: Capitalist Development and China’s Environment’, New Left Review 222, March/April 1997.

3 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy and the Global System 224. See, for example, Evan Luard, Basic Texts in International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1992) pp. 211–12, 220–3 and Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997) pp. 241–8. The latter is perhaps the most thorough use of Schumpeter in the IR literature. For Schumpeter’s own work see his The Sociology of Imperialisms (New York: Augustus Kelly, 1951) and Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943). 225. Doyle, op. cit., p. 308. 226. Tom Bottomore p. ix in Schumpeter op. cit., 1943. The first section of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is a critique, sometimes sympathetic but mostly emphatically critical of Marx’s work. 227. Ibid., pp. 111–20. 228. Ibid., pp. 34–7. 229. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, 1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934) referred to in J.K. Galbraith, op. cit., pp. 181–2. 230. See David Held, Models of Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987) ch. 5 for a comparison of Schumpeter and Weber. 231. Schumpeter’s definition of socialism is ‘… an institutional pattern in which control over the means of production is vested with a central authority – or … in which, as a matter of principle, the economic affairs of society belong to the public and not the private sphere’. op. cit., p. 167. 232. Ibid., p. 139. 233. Ibid., p. 137. 234. Ibid., pp. 140–2. 235. Ibid., p. 143. 236. Ibid., p. 144. 237. Ibid., p. 145. 238. Ibid., p. 145.

Notes 225 239. Ibid., p. 145. See the section entitled ‘The Sociology of the Intellectual’ (pp. 145–55). 240. Ibid., p. 150. 241. See the chapter entitled ‘The Classical Doctrine of Democracy’, ch. 21. 242. Ibid., pp. 261–3. 243. See David Held, op. cit., ch. 5. 244. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 269. 245. Ibid., p. 269. 246. Ibid., p. 283. 247. Ibid., p. 269. 248. Ibid., p. 270. 249. Ibid., pp. 271–2. The parenthetical quotation is in the form of a footnote (#6) on the same page. Schumpeter goes on to infer from this relation ‘considerable freedom of the press’. 250. Ibid., p. 272. This argument was used to defend President Nixon during ‘Watergate’ and is now used to defend President Clinton over ‘Zipper’ or ‘Forni-gate’. There is no discussion of civil disobedience in the text. 251. Ibid., p. 272. 252. David Held, Models of Democracy, op. cit., pp. 165–6. 253. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 282. 254. Ibid., p. 290. 255. Ibid., p. 285. 256. This is essentially the position of the ‘neo-pluralists’. See Robert Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985). See also, David Held, op. cit., pp. 201–5. 257. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 286. 258. Ibid., p. 287. 259. Ibid., p. 288. 260. Ibid., p. 289. 261. Ibid., pp. 296–7. 262. Ibid., p. 297. 263. Ibid., p. 298. 264. Ibid., p. 298. 265. Ibid., p. 301. 266. Ibid., p. 302. 267. For an account of how the Left in Britain helped keep Labour out of office see Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism (London: Fontana Press, 1995) pp. 692–706. 268. There are, of course, exceptions. A particularly striking one is the continuation of hereditary peers in the House of Lords. 269. Donald Sassoon, op. cit., pp. 138–9. 270. Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Printer Publishers, 1988) p. 39. 271. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 290. 272. Ibid., p. 290. 273. Ibid., p. 291. 274. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (London: Penguin Books, 1996) pp. 74–5. An interesting parallel thesis that suggests the incoherence of legal systems generally and of property law in

226 Notes

275.

276.

277. 278. 279. 280. 281. 282.

283. 284. 285.

286. 287. 288. 289. 290. 291.

292.

particular as the central reason for the failure of capitalism in the developing world – in large part due to the uneven and combined development of these legal systems – is developed by Hernando De Soto in his The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Works in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York: Bantam Press, 2000). I’m thinking here of the writings in Sociology and Political Science spawned by the works of Talcott Parsons in the 1950s. Primary among them for the subject of democracy was Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (New York: Anchor Books, 1960) but also important was Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton University Press, 1963). For a more recent account see Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000). Two interesting accounts of ‘social capital’ are Robert Putnam, ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital’, Journal of Democracy 6 (1995); Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (London: Penguin Books, 1996). Also on the Right see Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: 2000, Basic Books). On the Left, the notion that advanced consumer capitalism essentially atomises society to the point of a nightmarish Durkheimian anomie has broad support. For this view see Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Barbarism: A User’s Guide’ in On History (London: Abacus, 1998) pp. 334–50. Francis Fukuyama, The End of Order (London: The Social Market Foundation, 1997) p. 4. Fukuyama, 1996, op. cit., p. 356. See Howard Handelman op. cit., ch. 8. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 292. See David Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1998) pp. 256–75. Ibid., p. 260. An optimistic view of opportunities faced by late developers is provided by Alexander Gerschenkron in Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). Ernest Gellner, op. cit., p. 33. Ibid., p. 72. For a thesis that suggests structural limitations necessitating foreign investment and domestic repression see Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). Christopher Clapham, Third World Politics (London: Routledge, 1985) pp. 183–4. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 293. Ibid., p. 293. Ibid., p. 294. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974) p. 18. Christopher Clapham, op. cit., p. 140. See also, Samuel Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2nd edition (London: Penguin Books, 1976). Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 295.

Notes 227 293. 294. 295. 296.

297. 298.

299. 300. 301. 302. 303.

Barrington Moore, op. cit., p. 486. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 296. Ibid., p. 326. This, of course, is the context in which Trotsky develops his theory of ‘uneven and combined development’. See Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Monad Press, 1980) ch. 1. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 328. In a recent cross-country empirical study of the determinants of economic growth, the following conclusion is drawn: ‘… [T]here is a strong positive linkage from prosperity to the propensity to experience democracy, a relation called the Lipset (1959) hypothesis. Various measures of the standard of living – real per capita GDP, life expectancy, and a smaller gap between male and female educational attainment – are found to predict democracy.’ See Robert J. Barro, Determinants of Economic Growth (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1997) p. xii. See ch. 2 for the data and arguments. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1991) first published in 1944. Donald Sassoon, op. cit., p. 139. Ibid., pp. 189–208. Ibid., p. 194. That work is his The Sociology of Imperialisms op. cit. See Michael Doyle Ways of War and Peace op. cit., pp. 241–50.

4 Samuel Huntington, Political Order and the Global System 304. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale University Books, 1968). 305. Ibid., p. vii. This is actually as far as his definition of political order goes despite the centrality of the concept for the entire thesis. A good contrast is with Hedley Bull’s analysis in the first chapter of The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977) where the concept of ‘order’ and its relation to ‘justice’ is at least scrutinised from a number of different angles. 306. I’m thinking here of Machiavelli’s advice to ‘destroy’ an acquired state ‘accustomed to live in freedom under its own laws’. The Prince (Bantam Books, 1981) ch. 5. 307. For related criticisms of the claims of ‘scientific’ empiricism in IR see Fred Halliday’s Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994) pp. 24–31. 308. Huntington, op. cit., p. 373. 309. Ibid., p. 4. 310. Ibid., p. 1. 311. For a much more nuanced view of political legitimacy as a continuum see David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) p. 182. For the classical liberal tradition from Hobbes to Locke see C.B. Macpherson The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).

228 Notes 312. For a classic example see W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 1960). 313. Huntington, op. cit., p. 41. This paragraph continues with a characteristic warning about the impact of misconceived US foreign policies on developing countries. ‘For two decades after World War II American foreign policy toward the modernizing countries was in large part devoted to promoting economic and social development because these would lead to political stability. The success of this policy is, however, written in both the rising levels of material well-being and the rising levels of domestic violence. The more man wages war against “his ancient enemies: poverty, disease, ignorance” the more he wages war against himself.’ 314. See Ian Roxborough, Theories of Underdevelopment (London: Macmillan Education, 1979) p. 15. 315. Huntington (op. cit., p. 32) borrows these from Daniel Lerner’s, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1958). Both authors see the principal aspects of modernisation as bound together historically. 316. For a discussion of many of these points – detraditionalisation, simple versus complex modernisation – but in the context of ‘globalisation’ see Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right (Stanford University Press, 1994), ch. 3. 317. Huntington, op. cit., ch. 2. 318. Ibid., pp. 32–5. 319. Ibid., pp. 33–9. 320. Ibid., p. 33. 321. Ibid., p. 34. 322. Ibid., p. 36. For conclusions which mirror Huntington’s here see Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London: Fontana Press, 1993), especially chs 8–12. 323. Ibid., p. 37. 324. Ibid., pp. 37–8. 325. Ibid., p. 39. 326. Ibid., pp. 39–45. This argument also holds true for modern countries according to the author. For example, he argues that in post-war Western countries the communist vote was largest in the most urbanised areas of the least urbanised countries (p. 45). 327. Ibid., p. 46. 328. Ibid., pp. 47–9. We are reminded that Britain, the first moderniser, introduced free education only after industrial development had taken place for some time (p. 48). 329. For an argument which relates the role of rapid and uneven economic development to the Iranian Revolution see Fred Halliday’s ‘The Iranian Revolution: Uneven Development and Religious Populism’ in Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi (eds) State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan (London: Macmillan, 1988). 330. Huntington, op. cit. pp. 57–8. 331. Ibid., pp. 58–9. 332. Huntington, op. cit., p. 57. 333. Just how one measures ‘social frustration’ is not, unfortunately, addressed by the author and even if one could measure it with some precision, given

Notes 229

334. 335. 336. 337.

338.

339. 340.

341. 342. 343. 344. 345.

346. 347. 348. 349.

350. 351. 352.

353. 354.

355. 356. 357.

the elasticity of aspiration, it would be surprising indeed to find any society, no matter how advanced, without very high levels of ‘social frustration’. Huntington, op. cit., p. 55. Ibid., p. 159. Ibid., p. 159. This distinction is associated classically with Machiavelli but more modern versions can be found in the works of Gaetano Mosca, David Apter and S.N. Eisenstadt. See ibid., ff. 8, p. 148. Ibid., pp. 148–9. For a quite similar analysis of these traits and compared with other ‘agrarian civilisations’ see John Hall, Powers and Liberties (London: Penguin, 1986). Ibid., pp. 145–6. Ibid., pp. 102–3. For an in-depth analysis of the rise of Absolutism which comes to similar conclusions (in the case of England, much more attention and weight is given to the domestic and Irish dimensions than Huntington’s analysis) see Perry Anderson Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso Books, 1979). Ibid., p. 123. Ibid., pp. 96–8. Ibid., pp. 98–109. Quoted in ibid., p. 111. Several authors have suggested that the early achievement of ‘white’ male suffrage was largely responsible for the lack of purchase of socialism on the American labour movement. For a discussion that stresses the role of state repression as much as early enfranchisement see Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power Vol. II The Rise of Classes and Nation States, 1760–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) pp. 644–59. Huntington, op. cit., pp. 127–8. Michael Mann, op. cit., pp. 644–59. Huntington, op. cit., p. 135. Ibid., p. 136. Although Huntington suggests India (and Lebanon!) as an example of a successful adaptation of traditional pluralism to modern politics, it may also serve as an example of the powerlessness of liberal democratic institutions in the face of feudal social structures. Ibid., p. 136. Ibid., pp. 137–8. See ch. 1 entitled ‘England and the Contribution of Violence to Gradualism’ in Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Penguin, 1966). Moore’s account of the centrality of the American Civil War to its subsequent development is also very instructive. See ch. 3 entitled ‘The American Civil War: The Last Capitalist Revolution’. Ibid., p. 72. The literature on the politics of urbanisation as well as on rural change is vast. For a useful introduction and survey of recent research see, Howard Handelman The Challenge of Third World Development (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996) chs 5, 6. Huntington, op. cit., p. 77. Ibid., p. 77. Ibid., p. 78.

230 Notes 358. Ibid., p. 76. 359. Ibid., p. 79. Huntington’s typologies in this section correlate quite consciously with classical accounts. 360. Ibid., p. 82. 361. Ibid., p. 83. 362. Ibid., p. 84. 363. Ibid., pp. 91–2. 364. Ibid., p. 194. 365. Ibid., p. 200 366. Ibid., p. 200. 367. Basil Davidson The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation (London: James Currey, 1992). He also argues that before the imposition of colonialism in the late nineteenth Century, parts of Africa were well along in the process of evolving their own models of nation-states such as with the Asante Kingdom of modern day Ghana; a national state on its way to becoming a nation-state with many of the attributes prevalent in earlier Europe. Tribalism in Africa, he also argues, has often been a force for good, creating progressive civil societies that were eventually undermined by alien rule and imperialist partition. Western historians stripped Africa of its traditions and the social disintegration apparent after independence was in large part the result of the misfit between the model of the nation-state and the social and territorial inheritance of colonialism. 368. Huntington, op. cit., p. 201. 369. Ibid., p. 203. The examples are covered on pp. 202–8. 370. Ibid., pp. 206–7. 371. Ibid., p. 209. 372. Ibid., p. 208. 373. Ibid., pp. 219–37. 374. Ibid., p. 222. 375. Ibid., pp. 223–4 for various examples. A more recent example of the former is certainly that of Algeria and the electoral victory of the FIS. 376. Ibid., p. 240. 377. Ibid., pp. 250–63. 378. Ibid., p. 262. 379. Ibid., p. 9. 380. Ibid., pp. 9–10. The first two elements correspond to Cicero’s utilitatis communio and consensus juris respectively. 381. See also Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983) for an analysis of the social structural effect of modernisation as it relates to the development of nationalism. 382. Huntington, op. cit., p. 9. 383. Ibid., pp. 24–5. 384. Ibid., p. 27. 385. Ibid., p. 28. These quotations are from de Jouvenel’s Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) p. 123. 386. Ibid., pp. 28–32. For a similar approach to economic development see Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (London: Penguin Books, 1996). 387. Huntington, op. cit., p. 31.

Notes 231 388. Although one gets glimpses of this type of cultural determinism in this work, as is very well known, of course, Huntington makes ‘civilisational’ culture highly determinant of international politics in a much more recent book, namely, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997). 389. Huntington op. cit., p. 32. The first sentence of this quotation is itself quoted from Lucian Pye in Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba (eds) Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton University Press, 1965) p. 51. Note also the ascription of communist public order as legitimate. 390. Revolution is defined as ‘a rapid, fundamental, and violent domestic change in the dominant values and myths of a society, in its political institutions, social structure, leadership, and government activity and policies’. Ibid., p. 264. 391. Ibid., p. 266. 392. For the explanations which lead to this conclusion see ibid., pp. 264–300. Although the Iranian Revolution was the first ‘urban’ one, the Revolutions of 1989 must also fall into ‘new’ categories. For a detailed account of Revolutions generally and their relationship to the global system in particular see Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics (London: Macmillan Press, 1999). 393. Huntington, op. cit., p. 297. 394. Ibid., p. 300 395. Ibid., p. 304. 396. Ibid., p. 308. 397. Ibid., p. 262. 398. Ibid., p. 403. 399. For the revolutionaries of ‘Political Islam’, the transition to Western modernity is probably a more relevant grievance than those I’ve referred to. As to the legitimacy of their motives, to the extent that they coincide with demands for social and political equality, democracy and human rights, then I would say that they are legitimate. Where these are contradicted, as with the Taliban of Afghanistan, I would suggest that they are not. 400. For arguments around the topic of whether, at the end of the twentieth century, revolutionary transformation is an appropriate response to capitalist modernity see Halliday, Revolution and World Politics, op. cit., pp. 323–38. 401. For the international dimensions of revolutions see, Halliday, ibid. 402. Huntington, op. cit., p. 344. 403. Ibid., p. 357. 404. Ibid., p. 359. For the larger discussion of the role of violence in reform see pp. 357–62. 405. Ibid., p. 386. 406. Ibid., p. 386. An interesting reminder that progressive results to military conquest by the United States are possible. 407. Ibid., p. 364. 408. Ibid., p. 390. 409. Ibid., p. 391. 410. Ibid., pp. 59–60. 411. Ibid., pp. 59–60. 412. Ibid., p. 64.

232 Notes 413. 414. 415. 416.

417.

418. 419.

420. 421.

422. 423. 424. 425. 426. 427. 428. 429. 430.

431.

Ibid., pp. 62–3. Ibid., pp. 64–5. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., pp. 66–72. The link with foreign capital is that foreigners are apparently more likely to violate society’s norms and indigenous people are more likely to see politics as a source of wealth if the economy is dominated by foreigners (pp. 66–7). Ibid., p. 69. If such ‘over-regulation’ is a cause of corruption then ‘underregulation’ is also a contributing factor, as many of the post-communist states have found. Ibid., pp. 70–1. The author explicitly states that ‘[t]he weakness of party organisation is the opportunity of corruption’ and that communist parties in power are the strongest possible party organisation (pp. 70–1). These two propositions are only consistent if one denies the prevalence of corruption within communist parties in power. See the cover story of The Economist, July 27–August 2 2003, for estimates of the profits involved. Within liberal democracies where the environment is most often conducive to debate and reform, corruption can become a major focus of opposition parties such as in Argentina and Brazil in the 1990s. However, it can also become a stimulus to the overthrow of civilian government by the military such as currently in Pakistan. See Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (New York: Monad Press, 1980) ch. 1 for the original use of this concept. See Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge University Press, 1979) pp. 3–39 for the original use of this concept. See Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds) The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). See Edwin Williamson, The Penguin History of Latin America (London: Penguin Books, 1992) ch. 9. Huntington op. cit., p. 7. The quote from Madison comes from The Federalist, No. 51. Ibid., p. 8. He should have added, ‘in very rare and particular historical conjunctions’. Ibid., p. 402. Ibid., p. 461. See, for example, James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and its Limits (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) p. 92; Robert Cooper, The Postmodern State and World Order, 2nd edition (London: Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre, 2000); and Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, op. cit. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) ch. 2.

5 David Held’s ‘Democracy and the Global Order’ 432. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). 433. Ibid., p. ix.

Notes 233 434. 435. 436. 437. 438. 439. 440. 441. 442.

443. 444. 445. 446. 447. 448. 449. 450. 451. 452. 453. 454.

455. 456. 457.

Ibid., p. 21. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., chs 1–3. Ibid., p. 48. The controversy arises because legitimacy is written into the definition. Ibid., pp. 48–9. Ibid., p. 49. The quote is taken from A. Giddens, Social Theory and Modern Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) p. 172. Ibid., p. 49. The quoted phrases are taken from C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) pp. 2–3. See Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (London: Vintage Books, 1994) pp. 3–6. For varying interpretations of the concepts see the debate between Joschka Fischer and Jean-Pierre Chevenment as well as Tom Nairn’s response to Donald Dewar and Francis Fukuyama in Prospect (August/ September 2000). For the role of liberalism in preparing the ground for democracy see John Hall ‘Consolidations of Democracy’ in David Held ed., Prospects for Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993). Held, op. cit., pp. 50–2. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 50. For a nuanced view of political legitimacy as a continuum see David Held, Models of Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987) p. 182. Held, op. cit., p. 52. See all of ch. 3 for this discussion. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., pp. 52–3. Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 54. Interestingly, according to Michael Mann, the expansion in military spending, in proportion to overall state expenditure, that followed the changing nature of warfare and of costs was checked by the late nineteenth century by three distinct processes: ‘a military that was relatively declining and potentially insulated from civil society; increasing bureacratization, first in the military, then in the civilian, state and a civilian state perhaps consensually increasing its scope.’ See, Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power Vol II, The Rise of Classes and Nation-states, 1760–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) p. 395. See chs 11–14 for full arguments. Held, op. cit., p. 54. The quote is taken from G. Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1991) p. 101. Ibid., p. 57. The quote is taken from G. Therborn, ‘The Rule of Capital and the Rise of Democracy’, New Left Review, 103, 1977. Ibid., p. 57. The quote is taken from R. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) p. 247. If one considers the emergence of mass armies in Europe from the French Revolution onwards, the advent of male suffrage, depending on the particular country observed, was only half a century or so away – the rhetoric of liberty and democracy was, of course, part and parcel of the Revolution itself and of the wars that followed. For the emergence of mass armies see E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of

234 Notes

458.

459. 460. 461.

462. 463. 464. 465. 466. 467. 468. 469. 470. 471. 472. 473. 474. 475. 476. 477. 478. 479. 480. 481. 482. 483.

484. 485.

Revolution [1789–1848] (London: Sphere Books, 1977) ch. 4. For the politics of democracy see his The Age of Empire 1875–1914 (London: Sphere Books, 1989) ch. 4. For the usefulness of national identity to states, see E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) ch. 3. See also John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd edition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) for a comprehensive treatment of many of the issues involved here. For the links between ‘civic’ nationalism and democracy see the introductory chapter in Michael Ignatieff, op. cit. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) pp. 49–50. See E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875–1914, op. cit. See D. Rueschemeyer, E.H. Stephens and J.D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992) p. 275. One of their conclusions is that the temporally closer the process of state consolidation was to the emergence of pressures for mass incorporation, the more problematic was democratisation (pp. 275–6). Held, op. cit., pp. 59–60. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., pp. 63–4. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., pp. 64. See Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, op. cit., pp. 269–73. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., p. 65. D. Rueschemeyer, E.H. Stephens and J.D. Stephens, op. cit., pp. 269–302. Ibid., pp. 271–2. Held, op. cit., p. 67. See pp. 66–71 for the elaboration of this ‘macropattern’. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., pp. 67–8. Ibid., p. 69. Ibid., p. 69. Ibid., pp. 70–1. The principle is stated as follows: ‘persons should enjoy equal rights and, accordingly, equal obligations in the specification of the political framework which generates and limits the opportunities available to them; that is, they should be free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives, so long as they do not deploy this framework to negate the rights of others’. Ibid., p. 147. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992). Held, op. cit., p. 238.

Notes 235 486. Ibid., p. ix. 487. See David Held, Anthony McGrew et al., Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1999). See also John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Granta Books, 1998) and Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Anchor Books, 1999). 488. David Held and Anthony McGrew, ‘Globalization, Regionalization and the Transformation of Political Community’ (Paper for the Political Studies Association – UK 50th Annual Conference, April 2000) p. 1. 489. Ibid., p. 1. 490. David Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995) p. viii. 491. Ibid., p. 97. 492. Ibid., p. ix. 493. Ibid., p. ix. 494. Ibid., pp. 97–8. See ch. 4, ‘The Inter-State System’ for the arguments. 495. Ibid., p. 99. 496. Fred Halliday, ‘The Perils of Community: Reason and Unreason in Nationalist Ideology’ Nations and Nationalism, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2000 published by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN). One of the ironies of the relationship between democracy and nationalism is that as democracy legitimates nationalism it can assist in fostering amnesia with regard to the ‘foreign’ and international sources of democracy itself, both as an ideal and as a institutional framework. 497. The phrase ‘intensified social reflexivity’ comes from Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Stanford University Press, 1994) p. 42. 498. Held, op. cit., pp. 104–5. That the Human Rights Act has been enacted in the United Kingdom, allowing British courts to rule where once only the European court could, suggests that established liberal democracies can also move in this direction. 499. Ibid., p. 107. Within the discipline of International Relations the ‘transnationalism’ paradigm or school is very well established with numerous ‘foundational’ texts. For a good introduction to the issues and literature see Evan Luard, Basic Texts in International Relations (London: Macmillan Press, 1992) pp. 540–74. See also See Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (eds) Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) and Power and Interdependence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) by the same authors. 500. Ibid., p. 109. 501. Ibid., p. 109. 502. This set of policies is often referred to as the ‘Washington Consensus’. See John Gray, op. cit., for a critical assessment of the global and local consequences of these policies. 503. Examples at the institutional level include the United Nations’ Interparliamentary Union which serves as a forum for democratic regimes and the various international organisations like the UN and the EU which send ‘monitors’ to oversee elections. See Kofi Annan’s speech to the presiding officers of the Interparliamentary Union reproduced by The Independent, 1/09/2000.

236 Notes 504. 505. 506. 507. 508.

509.

510.

511. 512. 513. 514. 515.

516. 517. 518. 519. 520. 521. 522.

523.

524. 525.

Held, op. cit., pp. 110–11. Amartya Sen, op. cit. See particularly pp. 146–59. Ibid., p. 148. Ibid., p. 151. See Carolyn Merchant’s Radical Ecology (London: Routledge, 1992) for a characteristic account. Despite its ostensible commitment to political economy, there is in fact precious little differentiation of political systems and patterns, presumably because such ‘epiphenomena’ are deemed to be of little consequence for ecological outcomes. John S. Dryzek, ‘Democracy and Environmental Policy Instruments’ in Robyn Eckersley (ed.) Markets, The State and The Environment (London: Macmillan Press, 1996) p. 302. See also the arguments for democracy in this context by Paul Harrison, The Third Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1993 edition) pp. 265–7. Held, op. cit., pp. 114–15. For the rivalry between the major capitalist states, including NATO members, see Fred Halliday’s The Making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso, 1983) ch. 7. Ibid., pp. 116–18. Ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 119. Ibid., p. 119. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959) ch. 4. For the ‘democratic peace’ thesis see Michael W. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review (Vol. 80, No. 4, December, 1986); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton University Press, 1993); E. Gartzke, ‘Kant We All Just Get Along? Motive, Opportunity, and the Origins of the Democratic Peace’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 42, No. I, pp. 1–27. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994) p. 123. Timothy Garton Ash, The Independent, 8 September 2000. Held, op. cit., p. 124. Ibid., p. 126. The quote is taken from Anthony Smith, ‘Towards a Global Culture?’ Theory, Culture and Society 7, 2–3, p. 175. Ibid., p. 126. For different usage of the concept of ‘homogeneity’ in IR see Fred Halliday, op. cit., pp. 94–123. For an account of the role of mass communications in the collapse of communism in Europe see Fred Halliday, ‘The Ends of Cold War’, New Left Review 180/1990. For an extraordinary tale of CIA involvement with ‘The Congress for Cultural Freedom’ see Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy (New York: The Free Press, 1989). Held, op. cit., p. 127. The quote is taken from Stuart Hall, ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’ in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew (eds) Modernity and its Futures (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992) p. 305. I have added the exclamation mark next to Japan to highlight its incongruity. Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 130. Justifying the focus on MNC’s, Held, following N. Myers, suggests that they ‘account for 30 per cent of gross global output,

Notes 237

526. 527. 528. 529. 530.

531.

532. 533. 534.

535. 536.

537. 538. 539.

540.

70 per cent of world trade, and 80 per cent of international investment’ (p. 128). See N. Myers, ‘Gross Reality of Global Statistics’, The Guardian, 2 May 1994. Ibid., p. 128. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1944) p. 140. See Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Printer Publishers, 1988) ch. 1. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, op. cit., ch. 4. There are many writers associated with ‘dependency theory’ but perhaps the best known include Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967), Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957), Fernando Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), Theotonio Dos Santos ‘The Structure of Dependence’, American Economic Review (May 1970), and Peter Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State and Local Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). For the second theory see, Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). Bill Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso Books, 1980) p. 160. Warren is quoting from P.K. O’Brien, ‘A Critique of Latin American Theories of Dependency’, ch. 2 in Oxaal et al. (eds) Beyond the Sociology of Development: Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa (London: Routledge, 1975). See Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1990) ch. 8. Ibid., pp. 158–9. See Bill Warren, op. cit., pp. 162–70. It is interesting that Cuba, whose revolutionary government has always blamed world capitalism (imperialism) for its historic underdevelopment should simultaneously blame the US economic blockade for its many economic deficiencies, providing as it does the practical means of its development according to the theory. The case reveals just how far Warren’s characterisation of ‘dependency theory’ as ‘nationalist mythology’ was right on target. Ibid., pp. 25–6. The discussion of the importance of bourgeoise democracy continues to p. 30. For the first quote, see Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London: Verso Books, 1983) p. 110. For the second, see Andre Gunder Frank, op. cit., p. 318. Amartya Sen, op. cit., pp. 146–59. Bill Warren, op. cit., pp. 110–21. Ibid., see especially pp. 18–25. Also, his characterisation of the argument that imperialism often preserved pre-capitalist social formations which frustrated and even imperilled ‘progressive social forces’ as ‘anti-Marxist in the literal sense’ and therefore not worthy of serious consideration is an indication of how ‘over-the-top’ his progressive thesis of capitalism is (pp. 152–6). Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1973).

238 Notes 541. Rueschemeyer, Stephens & Stephens, op. cit., p. 22. 542. Jeffrey A. Frieden, Debt, Development, and Democracy: Modern Political Economy and Latin America, 1965–1985 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991) p. 239. 543. Ibid., p. 238. By the end of the millennium, Mexico itself would see the end of its single-party democracy too. 544. Ibid., pp. 251–2. 545. Ibid., pp. 15–41. ‘Sectoral cohesion flows from cooperation among capitalists and among laborers, and from cooperation between labor and capital in the sector: the more disunited owners and workers or the more hostile labormanagement relations, the weaker the sector’s political cohesion’ (p. 33). Asset specificity is used to indicate the intensity of a sector’s government policy preferences. The more specific the assets of a sector – the higher the entry barriers and the less diversified the portfolios – ‘the higher the opportunity cost of the sector not obtaining favourable government policies’ and, therefore, ‘the more likely the sector will be to seek these policies’ (p. 33). 546. Jeffry Frieden, op. cit., p. 247. 547. Ibid., p. 247. 548. Ibid., p. 247. 549. See Howard Handelman, The Challenge of Third World Development (New Jersey: Prentice Hall 1996) pp. 249–51. 550. Ibid., p. 38. 551. Ibid., pp. 43–4. 552. Held, op. cit., pp. 131–4. 553. Ibid., p. 132. 554. John Gray, op. cit., p. 21. 555. Held, op. cit., p. 132. 556. This point was mentioned in the previous chapter with regard to the effect on Greece, Portugal and Spain of the prospect of joining the EU. The same is clearly true with regard to the Central and Eastern European states including what remains of the Yugoslav Federation. 557. Turkey’s inability to secure EU membership is undoubtedly a complex story which includes its very large agricultural sector and the hostility of Greece but the European perception of the shallowness of its democracy has also played an important part. For its part, the extended process of seeking membership has exasperated even moderates and the charge of imperialism against the EU has been rather consistently made. 558. Held, op. cit., pp. 167–88. See also Amartya Sen, op. cit., pp. 111–45. 559. Ibid., p. 167. 560. Ibid., pp. 175–6. 561. Ibid., p. 171. 562. See Paul Ormerod, ‘Inequality: The Long View’ in Prospect, August/ September 2000, pp. 42–5. The contested nature of inequality does not stop with the complexities of measuring it but continues on to the social and political significance of it. For example, Michael Forster argues that inequality is of less significance in the United States than in many other countries because the poor there are comparatively well off. See Jonathan Freedland, Bring Home the Revolution (London: Fourth Estate, 1998) p. 112. 563. Ibid., p. 43. 564. Ibid., p. 44.

Notes 239 565. See Laurie Garrett Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (New York: Hyperion, 2000) ch. 2 for sub-Saharan Africa and ch. 3 for the former Soviet Union. 566. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, op. cit., pp. 205–15. 567. Paul Ormerod op. cit., p. 43 plays down the impact and historical significance of Thatcherism on inequality but has actually to recognise it. 568. ‘A Survey of India’s Economy’, The Economist, 2–8 June 2001, p. 7. 569. For the link between globalisation and declining state expenditure on domestic and international health care systems see Laurie Garrett op. cit., pp. 545–85. 570. Amartya Sen, op. cit., p. 142. 571. John Gray, op. cit., p. 196. 572. For the French cases see John Lichfield, ‘Has France become a Banana Republic?’ The Independent, 26 January 2001. For Berlusconi see ‘Why Silvio Berlusconi is Unfit to Lead Italy’, The Economist, 28 May–4 April 2001. In the United States, the 2000 elections demonstrated once again the impact of money on results. According to Arianna Huffington: ‘In the vast majority of House (94.7 per cent) and Senate (82.3 per cent) races, the candidate with the biggest war chest won.’ See, Arianna Huffington, How to Overthrow the Government (New York: Regan Books, 2001) p. xv. 573. Rueschemeyer, Stephens & Stephens, op. cit., pp. 277–8. Jeffry Frieden, op. cit., pp. 251–3. 574. See E. Kaufman, Crisis in Allende’s Chile (New York: Praeger, 1988). 575. Leslie Sklair, Sociology of the Global System (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991) p. 37. 576. An infamous case in point is Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Star Television’ in China which agreed to drop ‘BBC News 24’ from its package of programmes because of the state’s sensitivity to foreign criticism. 577. The fact that the economic imperative is not uniformly followed, as with the continued US sanctions against Cuba, leads to the quite justified charge of ‘double standards.’ 578. Essentially, given our contemporary understanding of democracy, even states like the United States and Britain have been full democracies for no more than four decades. 579. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations, op. cit., pp. 232–5. 580. Conversely, there are lots of examples, such as those of the Cuban regime, to indicate that an external threat and menace can also be used by states to deny the wisdom of political reform. 581. This is perhaps the most important contribution that nationalism makes to democracy, namely, providing legitimacy to the state where none is deserved. Needless to say, it is also a source of immense threat.

Conclusion 582. Michael Doyle, ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, op. cit., p. 1158. 583. This is, of course, the basis upon which E.H. Carr attacked this position as long ago as 1939. See endnote 149. 584. Barrington Moore Jr., op. cit. p. 414. 585. See Chapter 1 of this book.

240 Notes 586. See Chapter 3 for references to pages. 587. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, op. cit., p. 296. 588. Robert Cooper, The Postmodern State and World Order, 2nd edition (London: Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre, 2000). 589. See Fred Halliday’s, ‘ “The Sixth Great Power”: Revolutions and the Global System’ in Rethinking International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994) ch. 6. 590. One important divergence, or, at least, open question, is the extent to which the assumption of a strengthened state, post revolutionary transformation, holds for contemporary transitions to democracy. It is indeed difficult to see how the argument that the new democratic states of Europe or Latin America are in some way ‘stronger’ than what they replaced, may be sustained. In the long run, however, it may well be that they will prove to be better able to withstand social change under modern conditions than their predecessors but with much smaller proportional stakes of national income. In this sense, contemporary revolutionary transition to democratic rule is probably a reversal of the historical pattern of ‘stronger’ states associated with previous social revolutions. 591. Important debates would include modernisation theory versus dependency theory, Marxists versus dependency theorists (productionists versus circulationists; the Brenner debates), intra-Marxist debates, liberals versus mercantilists versus historical materialists etc. 592. For a superb account of the role that incarceration and capital punishment played in the institutionalisation of private property in eighteenth-century London see Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged (London: Penguin Books, 1991). 593. The argument that economic downturns are correlated with revolutions is made by James Davies, ‘Towards a Theory of Revolution’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (February 1962): 7. 594. See Fergal Keane’s article entitled ‘Mr Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is Going from Bad to Worse’ in The Independent, 17 February 2001. 595. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, op. cit., pp. 58–9. 596. Fred Halliday, The World At 2000, op. cit., p. 74. As we have seen in the previous chapter, ‘Dependency’ theory in particular has stressed capitalism’s inability to develop much of the world on the basis that the wealth of the rich comes at the expense of the poverty of the poor. 597. See Fred Halliday’s ‘A Singular Collapse: The Soviet Union and Inter-State Competition’ in ibid., ch. 9. 598. I am grateful to Fred Halliday for making the point about the US civil rights movement. 599. Los Angeles Times, 5 October 2001. Since then, of course, political divisions have opened up again due to the US military intervention in Iraq. 600. Ibid., 3 November 2001. 601. Robert Bates Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001) p. 82. 602. See ‘The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, September 2002, pp. 1–2. 603. See Nicholas Timmins, The Five Giants (London: Fontana Press, 1996) pp. 11–43.

Notes 241 604. Osama bin Laden apparently became convinced that the United States was a ‘paper-tiger’ due to its withdrawal from Somalia after its troops faced serious resistance there. 605. Thanks to Fred Halliday for this point. 606. See Thomas Carothers ‘Democracy Without Illusions’, Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 1997, Vol. 76, Issue 1, pp. 85–100. 607. The example of the way President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was so warmly received in France and Belgium – not to mention South Africa’s policy of ‘constructive engagement’ – when other liberal democratic states have been counselling increased diplomatic pressure on his increasingly violent and anti-democratic regime demonstrates at least divergent interpretations of means. The same type of dilemma has been apparent with relations over China since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and spectacularly apparent in relation to the treatment of Iraq. 608. Fred Halliday rightly suggests that a ‘time test’ of ‘a generation, twenty-five years or so, at least’ would significantly reduce the number of bona fide democracies in existence to perhaps 40 rather than the figure of up to 100 commonly given. See Halliday, The World At 2000, op. cit., pp. 83–4. 609. Interestingly, in the context of the military intervention in Iraq, longstanding human rights concerns have been overshadowed by opposition to the war. Though there are those for whom the Bush administration is the new Third Reich, one could be forgiven for thinking that the intervention was against a nice liberal regime like that of Sweden. 610. For Kant’s analysis see Michael Doyle ‘Liberalism and World Politics’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 80, No. 4, December 1986. 611. Carothers, op. cit., pp. 86–7. Another example would include the Ukraine where President Leonid Kuchma has been questioned over his role in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze. See The Independent, 9 February 2001. 612. See Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997) for a thorough comparative analysis of the United States. 613. All the factors favourable and unfavourable to its diffusion outlined in the preceding section serve to define more narrowly the changed nature of this contingency. For example, compared with the past, democracy is now the standard against which other regime types are measured. International humanitarian law, the increasing ‘good governance conditionality’ associated with international organisations, the focused political support for democratisation, and so on all serve to suggest the altered nature of this contingency. 614. The Economist, 24 February 2001, p. 17. 615. Ibid., p. 17. 616. Meanwhile, political moderates/reformers and Islamist radicals seem to be making common cause in reaction to the intervention in Iraq. See the United Nations Arab Human Development Report, 2002. For an excellent and recent analysis of the causes of many of the developmental problems in the Arab world see Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 617. Amartya Sen, ‘Democracy as a Universal Value’, Journal of Democracy 10.3 (1999) p. 3.

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Index

Absolutism 106, 109, 139, 229 n.340 absolutist state 88, 107, 143 agrarian class 21, 27, 36, 55 movement 54 protection in Europe 53–4 Allende, Salvador 181 American Convention on Human Rights 155 Amnesty International 159 Anarcho-syndicalism 52 Angell, Norman 63 anti-globalisation movements 207 anti-war movements 207 Apartheid 197 Argentina 114, 117, 171, 172, 202 democratic transition 202, 214 aristocratic–bourgeois coalition 31, 32, 188 asset specificity 172, 238 n.545 Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) 235 authoritarianism 7, 65, 159, 172, 176, 179, 181, 188, 190 Bagehot, Walter 108 Berlusconi, Silvio 181, 239 n.572 Bismarck, Otto von 57, 223 n.194 Bolshevik Revolution 66 Bolshevism 63, 65, 169, 204 bourgeois democracy xv, 80, 169 bourgeois–military coalition 32 bourgeois revolutions 21, 26, 33 Braudel, F. 146 Brazil 31, 32, 116, 123, 160, 172 ‘breakthrough coup’ 116 Bretton Woods system 66 Brewer, Anthony 8 ‘Brezhnev Doctrine’ 161, 182 ‘Bureaucratic Authoritarianism’ 137, 166, 170–4, 180, 184, 190

Cammack, Paul 8, 32 campesino movement 123, 124 capitalism, emergence/development of 6–10, 13, 17, 23, 27, 35, 38, 40–6, 50, 52–7, 60, 63–9, 70–94, 133, 136, 142, 145–8, 150, 151, 168, 183, 189, 191, 195–8 Britain’s transition to 50 industrial 48, 49, 51, 53, 146, 149 modern 60, 88, 196 Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy 70 capitalist democracy 7, 21, 79, 180 capitalist economy 31, 146, 149, 150, 152, 175, 177, 178, 182 world capitalist economy 8, 10, 165, 166, 168, 175 capitalist modernity/modernisation 20, 38, 85, 90, 98, 188, 195 central banking systems 56, 58 Chaco War 116 Chartism, Chartists 50, 51 ‘Che’ Guevara 103 Chirac, Jacques 181, 204 Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 180 citizenship 142, 148, 183, 184, 195 liberal democracy and 149–51 city–country gap 111–13 civil disobedience 76, 207 civil rights movements 14, 207 Clapham, C. 86, 88 ‘Classical Doctrine’ 73–6, 88 Schumpeter’s critique 73–7 Cobden, Richard 1 Cold War 1, 3, 7, 9, 33, 65, 90, 93, 96, 99, 132–3, 157, 161–2, 174, 181–2, 199, 200–1, 203–5, 209 colonialism 3, 29, 39, 100, 127, 132, 133, 195 Combination Acts 50 ‘combined and uneven’ development 53, 103, 110 249

250 Index Commercial Revolution 43, 48, 49, 56 communism 7, 10, 20, 21, 26, 27, 30, 35, 37, 85, 97, 130, 132, 134, 181, 190, 199, 200 ‘comparative advantage’ 56 ‘competitive elitism’ model 74 Concert of Europe (1871–1914) 62–4 constitutionalism 90, 108, 140 Cooper, Robert 192, 232 n.430, 240 n.588 Corn Laws 51, 54 corruption 87, 128–31, 180, 232 n.417 cosmopolitan democracy 137–8, 163, 184, 202 Crick, Bernard xvi Davidson, Basil 116, 230 n.367 defensive modernisation 11, 27, 53, 164, 194, 199 de Jouvenel, Bertrand 121 de Maistre, Joseph xviii democracy 3–6, 15–17, 20, 22, 27–8, 77, 134, 136–8, 150–1, 176, 184, 187, 190, 193 and the capitalist order 78–81 challenges to 139, 151–5 conceptualising 15–16 conditions favourable and unfavourable 28–35 and the global system 4–19, 137–9, 193–208 institutionalisation of 4, 14, 15, 19, 20, 34, 154, 155, 163, 168, 174, 177, 184, 187, 216 international diffusion of 187, 190, 191, 200, 201 political democracy 17, 160, 169 Democracy and the Global Order 137 democratic capitalism 10, 94, 198 democratic form of state, diffusion 5, 9, 10, 17, 28, 38, 94, 95, 136, 137, 185–9, 191, 193, 209, 210 democratic government, preconditions 28, 31, 33 democratic peace thesis xvii, 163 ‘dependency theory’ 137, 166–71, 174, 180, 190, 237, 240 de Tocqueville, Alexis 1 Development as Freedom 158

‘dialectical materialism’ 195 ‘disjunctures’ 154–5, 157, 165, 166, 182–4, 190 ‘double movement’ 40–2, 44, 47, 50, 53, 59–62, 66–7, 195, 221 class and ideology in 44–5 imperialism and 60 international political consequences 62–4 structure and agency in 42–4 Doyle, Michael 4, 5, 70 Dryzek, John 160 Dumas, Roland 180 economic development 4, 85, 130, 132, 158, 171, 177, 196, 198 social mobilization and 99–104 unevenness of 168, 169 economic globalisation 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181 economic liberalism 8, 42, 44–7, 50, 54, 63, 64, 66, 172, 173, 177, 179, 189, 202 Economist, The 179 El Salvador 116 environmental degradation 160 ethnic chauvinism 102 ethnic minorities 104, 140 equal representation 149 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 155, 156 European liberalism 140 European Union (EU) 66, 132, 135, 138, 156, 162, 176, 205, 209 factors of production 6, 41, 157, 188 Factory Act in 1833 49, 222 n.175 Falklands War 214 n.28 fascism 7, 20, 21, 26, 27, 29, 30, 37, 66, 86, 91, 203, 204 feminism 195, 199, 207 Ferguson, Adam 85 feudalism 41, 55, 82, 105, 139 Fieldhouse, D.K. 61 First World War 32 force of example/demonstration effect 5, 7, 9, 10, 17, 32, 92, 131, 136, 151, 164, 188, 190, 191, 193, 198, 207–8, 219

Index 251 foreign direct investment 33, 59, 192 Franco-Prussian War 62 ‘free markets’ 46, 68, 157, 181 French Revolution 34, 35, 51, 62, 71, 233 Frieden, Jeffry 171–3, 181 Fukuyama, Francis 7, 18, 83, 89, 151 fundamentalist reaction 112–14 Futardo, Celso 123 Garton Ash, Timothy 163 Gellner, Ernest 22, 82, 86 General Kim 118 General Pak 118 General Pervez Musharraf 199 Genocide Convention 203 global communications systems 165 global governance 11, 158 globalisation 19, 100, 136, 138, 151–4, 163–6, 174–81, 192, 202, 210 global system x, 8–9, 17, 20–8, 32, 35, 36, 38, 98, 106, 111, 122, 124, 167 conceptualising 9–14 and democracy 131–4 and democratic governance x, 20, 38 gold standard 46–8, 56–9, 61–5 and capitalism 63 ‘good governance’ 157, 158, 241 Gorbachev, Mikhail 126, 161, 182, 214 Great Depression 32, 60, 133 The Great Transformation 40, 42 Greenpeace 160 ‘Green Uprising’ 111–14 Group of 7/8 157 Guatemala 58, 116, 123, 131 Halliday, Fred xi, 11, 35, 155, 198, 213 n.21;27, 215 n.44;52;53, 218 n.103, 219 n.110;120, 220 n.131;135, 227 n.305, 228 n.329, 231 n.392;400, 235 n.496, 236 n.510;516;521;522, 237 n.529, 239 n.566;579, 240 n.589;596–8, 241 n.605; 608 haute finance 62–3 Hayek, F.A. 92 hegemonic powers 161, 163, 182 Held, David 74, 76, 136–85, 190, 191, 195, 199–200, 202

Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) 156 ‘historical communism’ 85, 98, 130 The History of the Russian Revolution 12 Holy Alliance under Metternich 62 humanitarian international law 155, 156 Human Rights Watch 159 Hundred Years War 24 ‘Hungry Forties’ 52 Huntington, Samuel 95, 110–35, 171, 190, 195, 198, 204, 208 Huntington’s theory of modernisation 102 Huntington’s theory of the state 119–22 Ignatieff, Michael 37 immiserization thesis 70 imperialism 2, 8, 60, 61, 64, 66, 94, 133, 195 import substitution industrialisation (ISI) 32, 169–72 India 23, 25, 34, 84, 114, 127 Indian democracy 169, 217 industrial capitalism 48–9, 51, 53, 146, 149 industrialism 9, 21, 36, 43, 54, 56, 150, 183, 189, 197, 198 industrial revolution 42, 46, 55, 62, 147 industrial working class 49, 123 inequality 12, 15, 61, 77, 103, 177–80, 197, 198, 208 Inönü, Ismet 118 intensified social reflexivity 156, 235 international gold standard 56–7, 61 international law 2, 153–6, 166, 182, 202 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 157, 173, 179, 205 international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) 159 international political system 2, 10–12, 42, 46, 95, 199, 202 International Relations 1–6, 9, 21, 27, 152, 153, 163, 183, 188, 203, 210, 213 n.27

252 Index International Telecommunications Union 157 International wars 3, 39, 62, 66, 195, 202–4 Inter-state competition 25, 27, 42–3, 198, 199, 201, 202 and co-operation 199–202 James, Mayall 1, 232 n.430 Japan 23, 25–8, 37, 86, 127, 145, 165, 178, 202, 204 modernisation 122 Kant, Immanuel 1, 5, 7, 63, 136, 207 Karimov, Islam 200 Kemalist Turkey 126 Kemal, Mustafa 118 ‘Keynesianism’ 35 Khan, Ayub 118 Kohl, Helmet 131, 180 labour 6, 29, 41, 44–6, 49, 67, 68, 147, 149, 157, 176, 195, 202 child 80 commodification 41–2 division of 61, 86 foreign 31 migration 93 mobility 30 Labour Exchanges 50 labour ‘intensity’ 29, 31, 218 land 25, 39, 41, 44,48, 53, 54, 67, 68, 103, 127, 157 commercialisation of 25 commodification 41–2, 59, 61 income-yielding investment 25 mobilization 61 reforms 127, 128 landed classes 24, 25, 28–32, 44, 45, 48, 57 landed élite/bourgeois alliance 29 Landes, David 85 landlord/peasant conflict 127 level playing field 176 liberal democracy xii, 6–9, 13, 14, 16, 64, 67, 80, 84, 91, 133, 136–42, 144, 149–50, 156, 157, 162, 164, 168, 175, 176, 184, 188–9, 194, 195, 197, 200, 208–10, 220 and citizenship 149–51

institutionalisation 195 rise of 139–42 ‘liberal internationalism’ xii, xiii, 17, 20, 38, 63, 67, 69, 92, 94–5, 134–5, 185–93, 198, 207, 211 n.6, 216 and democracy 4–6 and end of the Cold War 7–9 Lipset (1959) hypothesis 227 Lipset, Seymore Martin 18 ‘McCarthyism’ 35 macro-patterns of war and militarism 142, 151, 183, 190, 195 Mann, Michael 51, 215 n.53, n.137 marginalisation 156, 179, 210 of non-democratic regimes 156 market driven social dislocation 50 market mobilisation 53 market society 41–3, 54, 56, 62, 66, 67, 150, 187 opposition to 48–9 Marxism 12, 33, 52, 70, 152, 168, 169 ‘mass’ praetorianism 117, 124 mercantilism 43, 48, 56, 60 middle-class protection 56 in Europe 56–60 middle-class radicalism 96, 97 Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe 180 model of change (proletarian revolution) 10 model of ends (communism) 10 modernisation 11, 14, 17, 22, 24–7, 34, 36, 53, 85, 95–116, 133, 134, 164, 170, 188, 194, 199 and corruption 128–31 impact on developing countries 104 modernity versus 97–9 and revolution 122–5 modern state 42, 60, 143, 145–6, 153, 154, 175, 192, 195, 200 definition of 139–42 rise of 42–3 Montesquieu, Baron de 1, 22 Moore, Barrington 20, 50, 53, 89, 122, 148, 188–9, 191, 194–5, 204 multinational corporations (MNCs) 32, 165, 181, 200

Index 253 Napoleonic Wars 51, 56 national identity 107, 163, 234 n.458 and the globalisation of culture 163–5 nautonomy 178, 184, 191 non-violent direct action 207 North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) 161 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 161, 202, 209 O’Donnell, Guillermo 166, 170 oligarchic regimes 37, 124, 126 ‘one more push’ syndrome 86 ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ xvi ‘Operation Restore Democracy’ 216 n.67 Organisation of African Unity’s adoption of the Charter of Human and People’s Rights 155 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 160 Ormerod, Paul 178 Owenism 50 Paine, Tom 1, 22 Palestinian war 116 Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832 49, 222 n.64 Parsons, Talcott 226 Partnership for Peace 161 peasant revolution 21, 25, 26, 30 peasantry 13, 23, 25, 31, 44, 45, 50, 54, 57, 105, 109, 113, 123, 124, 126, 188 Polanyi, Karl 18, 40–5, 53, 59–60, 62, 65–7, 94, 166, 189, 191, 195, 196, 201, 202, 204 political change 104, 125–8 in traditional polities 104 political community 16, 98, 114, 124, 139, 144, 149, 158, 184, 210 Huntington’s theory of 119–22 political liberalism 63, 64, 150, 184 political modernity 98, 105, 106, 112, 122, 124, 128, 190 American model 107–9

British model 107 Continental model 106–7 historic routes 106–10 Political Order in Changing Societies 95, 135 political stability 114–19 Poor Law Reform Act of 1834 49, 51 ‘populist leftism’ 170 ‘Praetorian’ political systems 114 oligarchical 115 radical 115–18 ‘principle of autonomy’ 151 privatisation 172, 179 protectionism 51, 57, 85 public interest 98, 120, 160 racism 61, 152 realism 2–3, 27, 97 reform 15, 66, 92, 96, 109, 147 democratic 1, 11, 148, 205, 206 electoral 15 political 163, 182, 206 and political change 125–8 social 92, 199 Reform Movement 50 religious fundamentalist movements 102 republicanism 5, 33, 62, 152 Revolutions of 1989 161, 179, 193, 204 Ricardian trade and currency theory 58 The Road to Serfdom 92 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich 147–9, 170, 175, 181 rule of law/rule by law 15, 16, 130, 141, 188 Russian Revolution of 1917 91 Sassoon, Donald 81, 92 Schumpeter, Joseph 6, 17, 18, 69–94, 170, 189, 191, 196, 198, 204 ‘second image’ reasoning 163 Second World War 7, 32, 38, 41, 65, 66, 93, 94, 97, 116, 133, 144, 168, 201, 203, self-defining countries xv

254 Index self-interest 22, 25, 160, 188 self-regulating markets 44–6, 49, 51, 54 domestic and international institutions 46–8 Sen, Amartya 19, 144, 158, 159, 169, 179, 210 ‘Sinatra Doctrine’ 161 single-party state 140, 141 Skocpol, Theda 9, 11–12 Smith, Adam 6, 22, 25, 60, 109 social classes 22–4, 109, 111, 147, 188, 195 socialist democracy 79, 86 social mobilisation 132 socio-economic change 127, 194–8 sovereignty 2, 62, 139, 149, 152, 158, 159, 161, 176, 182, 183, 202 parliamentary 25 political 57 state 47, 108, 154, 155, 161–3, 166 Speenhamland Law of 1795 49 Stephens, Evelyn Huber 147–9, 170, 175, 181 Stephens, John D. 147–9, 170, 175, 181 Strange, Susan 81 structural dependency critique 133 suffrage 25, 108, 126 adult 16 male 15, 108, 233 universal 55, 79, 80, 110, 198 women’s 149, 207 territoriality 139, 141–2 Therborn, Göran 143 Third World countries 21, 28–31, 33, 80, 97, 162, 169, 181, 198, 204 thymos 151 trade liberalisation 172 trade union movements 50, 55, 65, 175, 196 instruments of mass mobilisation 196 transaction costs 130 transition to democracy 24, 29, 136, 214 transition to modernity 9, 21, 26, 105, 106, 110, 122, 123 Treaty of Utrecht 62 Treaty of Westphalia 62

Trotsky, Leon 12, 13, 14, 192 tsarism 14, 90, 91 ‘twin-theses’ of world politics 69 uneven and combined development xiii, xix, 12–14, 16, 20, 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 34, 36, 40, 48, 52, 54, 55, 58, 64, 67, 68, 71, 82, 90, 95, 137, 174, 186–7, 191–2, 194, 196, 198, 215, 226 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 156, 203 ‘urban breakthrough’ 111–14 urban migrants 54 urban–rural power relations 113 changes initiated by modernisation 113 U.S.–Pakistan relations 199 violence 21, 91, 97, 102, 116, 123, 163, 178, 184, 202 control of 139, 141 political 97, 99, 118 uzbekistan 200, 208 wage-price for labour 49 ‘wage slavery’ 51 Wallerstein, Immanuel 46 Wall Street crash of 1929 65 Waltz, Kenneth 18, 163 Warren, Bill 166, 168, 169, 170, 175, 192 Wars of the Roses 24 Warsaw Treaty Organisation 161 Washington Consensus 235 ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD) xvii Weimar Republic 23, 71, 91, 181 welfare states 34, 144, 203 ‘Western liberal’ states 98 Westphalian principles 155, 210 Wilson, Woodrow 1 working class 32, 36, 37, 45, 50, 63, 66, 105, 112, 117, 148, 151, 168, 170, 180, 196 males 60, 145 movement 49, 51, 134 protection 55 women 140 World Bank 157, 173, 179, 205

Index 255 world economy 11, 12, 65, 154, 165–74, 180, 181, 183 world-historical-time 10–12, 20, 40, 64, 67, 68, 91, 110, 128, 132, 137, 186, 194, 198, 208

world income inequality 178 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 157 Zimbabwe 131, 196, 208, 240 n.594 zone of peace 209, 216